BurgerTime: A Proceduralist Investigation

"BurgerTime: A Proceduralist Investigation" uses a proceduralist framework, which holds that a game's rules and dynamics should drive its interpretation rather than its visuals alone, to examine the 1982 arcade game BurgerTime. The paper's central claim is that rules are the primary carrier of a game's meaning, and it tests this claim against a notoriously difficult case. Simple readings, such as a chef preparing burgers, fail to account for the game's enemy foods and their antagonistic behavior, so the authors treat such interpretations as unconvincing when offered as comprehensive accounts.

The analysis highlights several incoherent features that resist straightforward thematic reading: floating platforms, enemies that are stunned by pepper, and chef collisions that sometimes signify cooking and sometimes signify death. Drawing on Wittgenstein's language-game framework, the authors argue that meaning must be located in the game's rules and the roles they assign to players and objects. Their evidence draws heavily on expert play, particularly Bryan Wagner's record score of 11,512,500 points set in 2008 and commentary from Greg Bond. High-level strategies, such as grouping enemies with pepper and dropping them onto plates for points, suggest that the game's procedural logic is organized around manipulating enemy chase behavior into tight, unstable clusters.

The closing section builds on these observations by proposing that expert players, including Wagner, Bond, and J.D. Lowe, treat enemy foods as resources for grouping and scoring rather than purely as threats. The authors frame this procedural logic through a chef metaphor that maps ingredient mixing and recipe following onto the game's mechanics, while acknowledging that the reading depends on the lethal collision rules that keep enemies dangerous. Presented primarily as a methodological contribution to proceduralist criticism and expert-level game literacy, the study concedes that its interpretation may not withstand strict scrutiny.