a ttrpg is a text that is decoded by players during the process of playing the game, and while the creator encodes certain meanings into the game, it is impossible to perfectly control what meanings players take from that game. it is thus more interesting / fun to create games with the awareness that players may refuse the 'intended' meaning, and focus on taking strong positions and scaffolding for players to bounce off of.
Instead, Hall argues, the production, distribution, and reception of media discourses takes places across several determinate moments — parts of the overall process of communication at which a discourse must have its meaning ‘encoded’ into the discursive forms that media is capable of transmitting and subsequently ‘decoded’ in order to be internalized and passed forward as actionable knowledge capable of shaping an audience’s relationship with the world. [...] The nature and variety of these determinate moments makes it impossible to guarantee that a certain message, once encoded, will be decoded in a certain way.
I believe a game is a text which is being read through the lens of play.
These scripts of play are comparable to philosopher Bernard Suits’ idea of the “lusory attitude” — the element of ‘buy-in’ that the player brings to the game-object that allows it to be played-as-game.
Much hay is made of incentive frameworks, of designing games to produce a certain type of play. We can call this a ‘mechanistic’ approach, prioritizing the determining role of the game object’s inscription in the results of play. This is at the crux of the ‘system matters’ camp, with its most extreme articulation coming from Luke Crane and Jared Sorenson’s provocative assertion that “game design is mind control.”
Creators of TTRPGs have both a unique advantage and a unique disadvantage: the process of negotiation and decoding are visible in a way they’re not for most other mediums.
Because the coin don’t have no say, because players can step outside the rules whenever they like, our rules get to be stronger, totalizing, to invite and welcome pushback.
can minecraft similarly be said to have a decoding/encoding process that's very visible? -- seen in mcrp?
do something on purpose to provoke interesting reactions -- the object is a component in making conversation. y'know, this might not be a Correct application of the theory but it is kind of how i think about writing fic. put meaning in, see what other people pull from it, this is the joy