The Relationship Between Signs and Context: Semiotic Meaning-Making in Digital Games

This paper examines how players interpret signs in digital games, arguing that meaning arises from the relationship between a sign, the thing it seems to refer to, and the player's interpretive activity rather than from the symbol alone. Drawing on semiotic theory and the Symbol Grounding Problem, it proposes that games make interpretation an active, consequential process in which understanding is confirmed, challenged, or revised through play. The author frames this process through a two-variable model that crosses symbol familiarity (conventional or unconventional) with context familiarity (conventional or unconventional), yielding four interpretive situations.

The analysis finds that each combination places different demands on the player. Conventional symbols in conventional contexts produce immediately legible meaning because denotation and genre convention point in the same direction. Conventional symbols placed in surreal contexts shift attention toward connotation, atmosphere, and reflection, since their practical function is removed. Unconventional symbols in familiar task structures become understandable through consistent behaviour and repeated outcomes, while unconventional symbols in unconventional contexts demand exploratory hypothesis-testing, producing meaning that is personal yet can stabilise through repetition and feedback. The paper also argues that procedural signification, where rules express arguments through behavioural constraints, works alongside visual signification to shape how players construct meaning.

The work is a theoretical and conceptual study rather than an empirical one. It draws on a set of semiotic, narratological, and game studies sources and illustrates its model with examples such as coin iconography and the surreal game Mountain. No survey, sample, or experimental data is reported, and the scope is therefore interpretive and analytical rather than statistical, situating games as a distinctive medium for examining how symbolic systems operate under interaction, uncertainty, and invention.