Xavier Aranda obtained his PhD in Philosophy in the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, where he is lecturing subjects such as Philosophy of G.W.F Hegel, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind and Language, and Analytic Philosophy and Contemporary Pragmatism. He also has participated in several International Philosophy congresses. During his academic career he has shown an interest in Literary Studies, Semiotics, and Cinema. More recently he began coordinanting a seminar in Ludology, exploring the works of J. Huizinga, R. Callois and E. Fink.
Game as a constituent unit of meaning
FROG 2022 – Poster
Ludology’s development as a discipline of its own has been dedicated for the most part to the study of hypermedia, VR, and videogames, letting mostly behind the question about which elements are shared between those games and the more basic -and probably vaguely defined- kind of games like children’s play, board games, sports, etc. That is, the question about if it’s possible to reach a definition of ‘game’ that ties together all the different ‘play’ manifestations as it seems to be rather difficult to answer. The following presentation will be an attempt at this, aimed at showing ‘what a game is’ as a unit of analysis, the special conditions that allow it to constitute meaning and therefore, to be suceptible of being an object of study for Aesthetics, Narrative studies, and Semiotics. This approach must be Philosophical in nature as it should be any foundational effort for any given discipline (though not achieved through Philosophy exclusively). We will consider the following as antecedents of the present work 1) the studies about games and play made by J. Huizinga, R. Callois, and E. Fink, and 2) the extensive use of ‘language as a game’ analogy present in Philosophy of Language and Epistemology, which has showed the intrinsic relationship between rules and meaning (in L. Wittgenstein and S. Kripke among others). We will propose a theoretical framework aimed at providing a definition of game (and play) with a semiotic performance through the pragmatical use of concepts which will be indicative of the narrative-performative character of any game.
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