Metaphors We Game By - Part II

If you haven't already, be sure to read part one of this article first. It sets up the concepts I refer to here in part two.

Lets go back to ‘systematicity’, and the entailments of the GAMES ARE COMPETITION metaphor. These are, I’ve claimed:

GAMES CAN BE WON OR LOST

GAMES ARE ENTERTAINMENT

GAMES HAVE RULES

I would argue that how closely a game adheres to these entailments influences its reception within the video game community. For example, Mortal Kombat (2011) was criticised because its final boss, Shao Khan, suffers from ‘SNK Boss Syndrome’. This is when an enemy character is difficult to beat because they are able to do things (such as unblockable attacks) that other characters are not. Shao Khan is therefore difficult because he breaks the rules of the game, and players reacted poorly because this deviated from the entailments of GAMES ARE COMPETITION, which is key to their concept of what a game is. Compare this with a game such as Ninja Gaiden. Universally seen as extremely difficult, Ninja Gaiden is nevertheless warmly received because its challenge is fair. Gamers don’t mind the game’s difficulty because it sticks to its own rules, and is therefore in line with the metaphor.

Metaphors We Game By - Part I

This will be a two-part article. In part one, I’ll introduce the concept of metaphor as it’s understood in cognitive linguistics. The second part will consist of a more critical look at the metaphors below, including a discussion of how the concepts they entail inform debates that are currently raging in the world of video game criticism. You may need to read this a couple of times to fully get the concept - I certainly did!

One of my all time favourite books on linguistics is “Metaphors We Live By”, in which Professors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson examine the links between metaphors, language and thought. This article on metaphor in gaming follows the template set out in the first three chapters of their book.