In Video Games, The Players Of The Game Are A Big Part Of Cr ✓ Solved

In video games the players of the game are a big part of cre

In video games the players of the game are a big part of creating the game itself.

The choices the player makes can determine the route the story takes, the outcome of the plot, and the kind of character the story revolves around.

Who creates the meaning of a work of art: the artist, the audience, or both? If both, how do they each contribute to creating meaning and what aspects of the creation is each responsible for? What kinds of things does the reader or audience contribute?

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction

The question of who creates the meaning of a work of art—artist, audience, or both—has been central to aesthetics, literary theory, and media studies. In interactive media such as video games this question gains urgency because players often influence narrative outcomes, character development, and even the form of the work itself (Murray, 1997; Aarseth, 1997). Rather than choosing a single originator of meaning, this paper argues that meaning is co-constructed by artists and audiences: the artist establishes a field of signifiers, constraints, and affordances, while audiences (or players) enact, interpret, and extend that field through contextual understanding, choices, and cultural practices. This interaction produces the emergent meanings that critics and users encounter (Barthes, 1967; Eco, 1989).

The artist's contribution: form, intention, and affordances

Creators begin meaning-making by selecting materials, structures, and signals that orient interpretation. In traditional arts this includes formal elements—line, color, rhythm, plot, and character—that guide reading (Barthes, 1977). In games, designers provide mechanics, rules, narrative possibilities, visual and audio cues, and UX flows that foreground certain interpretations and discourage others (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004; Juul, 2005). These design choices are intentional acts: they encode possible readings and establish a horizon of expectation. Roland Barthes famously argued that authorial control is limited once a work is released, but that does not negate the artist’s role in shaping what interpretations are plausible; it simply reframes that role as setting conditions for meaning rather than dictating a single meaning (Barthes, 1967).

Moreover, procedural rhetoric—how systems communicate values through rules and outcomes—demonstrates that game designers express ideas not only through text but through playable systems (Bogost, 2007). A designer decides what options are available to the player and what consequences those options produce; those decisions materially constrain and shape emergent meaning before any player interaction occurs (Aarseth, 1997).

The audience's contribution: interpretation, enactment, and context

Audiences contribute meaning through interpretation, prior knowledge, cultural positioning, and active engagement. Reader-response theory and Iser’s concept of the “implied reader” show that texts invite readers to fill in gaps and actualize meaning through expectations and imaginative work (Iser, 1978). In gaming, players do not merely interpret—they perform. Players explore mechanics, exploit affordances, make choices, and sometimes subvert intended paths. This participatory role produces unique experiences that can diverge significantly from the designer’s projected narrative (Jenkins, 2004).

Player communities also extend and transform meaning by remediating, modding, and discussing games. Fandom practices—mods, fan fiction, commentary videos, and social play—create layers of meaning that the original artist did not explicitly encode (Jenkins, 2004). Umberto Eco’s notion of the “open work” supports this: works that allow multiple realizations rely on interpreter activity to complete them (Eco, 1989). Therefore, the audience’s cultural background, expectations, and practices are crucial to how a work’s meaning is ultimately experienced.

Co-construction in practice: how responsibilities divide

Meaning is best understood as a negotiated outcome. The artist is primarily responsible for the system of signs and affordances: the formal constraints, the options given, and the immediate incentives and disincentives that shape player behavior (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004; Murray, 1997). The artist can embed themes, symbols, and procedural rhetoric to nudge interpretation (Bogost, 2007). The audience, by contrast, is responsible for the realization of meaning through perception, choice, and communal practices. They supply context—historical, cultural, personal—which activates different possible interpretations (Fish, 1980).

In video games the division of labor is especially visible. Designers create branching paths and outcomes, but players choose which branch to follow; different players thus instantiate different narratives within the same designed architecture. As Aarseth (1997) and Juul (2005) note, this ergodic element requires physical or cognitive effort from users to generate the sequence of events that becomes their experience. Consequently, authorship of the experienced narrative is shared: the designer authors the space of possibilities; the player authors the path taken through that space.

Examples and implications

Consider a game that offers moral choices: the developer programs consequences for different decisions, but individual players decide which choice to make and interpret the moral landscape based on personal values and context. Players may also subvert intended meanings by intentionally choosing contrary paths, or by collectively producing new meanings through shared practices (modding, speedruns, critique). These outcomes exemplify Eco’s “open work” and Fish’s concept of interpretive communities: communities of players often converge on shared readings that differ from the designer’s stated intent (Eco, 1989; Fish, 1980).

For criticism and pedagogy, this co-construction model means analysts must attend to both designer intent and audience practice. A full account of meaning in interactive media examines textual affordances and procedural systems as well as player behaviors, community interpretations, and sociocultural context (Jenkins, 2004; Murray, 1997).

Conclusion

Meaning arises neither solely from the artist nor solely from the audience; it is co-constructed. Artists supply form, constraints, and rhetorical systems that delimit possible interpretations, while audiences enact, interpret, and extend those possibilities based on cognitive, cultural, and performative practices. Video games foreground this shared authorship because their mechanics make audience participation an explicit factor in narrative realization. New media scholars and critics should therefore frame meaning as emergent from the interaction between authorial design and audience enactment, analyzing both the affordances set by creators and the interpretive labor performed by audiences (Barthes, 1967; Aarseth, 1997; Jenkins, 2004).

References

• Barthes, R. (1977). The Death of the Author. In Image–Music–Text. Hill and Wang. (Original essay, 1967).
• Iser, W. (1978). The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Fish, S. (1980). Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Harvard University Press.
• Eco, U. (1989). The Open Work. Harvard University Press. (Translated edition; original 1962).
• Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Murray, J. H. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press.
• Jenkins, H. (2004). Game Design as Narrative Architecture. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (Eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. MIT Press.
• Juul, J. (2005). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press.
• Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press.
• Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press.