Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Organization1 report
Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab was a games research and development lab at MIT, run in partnership with Singapore's Media Development Authority. It publishes research papers and reports on game design and play, such as work on metaphors in abstract games.
Documents
Whitepaper17 pages
Experiential Metaphors in Abstract Games
Jason Begy's "Experiential Metaphors in Abstract Games" argues that abstract games, which lack obvious representational "aboutness," can nonetheless be interpreted through experiential metaphor.
- Begy argues that abstract games, whose objects function as symbols rather than icons (e.g., Go and Rod Humble's The Marriage, versus the largely iconic Chess), can still carry meaning through experiential metaphor, a cognitive form of structural metaphor grounded in the player's lived experience of play.
- Meaning emerges when players map the affective texture of gameplay (tension, relief, panic) onto other experiences, relying on image schemata and systemic correlations within a game's formal properties.
- Both metaphor and simulation amplify some aspects of their source while masking others, so any interpretation depends on what a game emphasizes or omits.
Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game LabJan 2011