Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
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Trigger Happy
316
Look at the cherries below the playing area, for
instance. They seem iconic (like fruit), but in fact they
are indices: they indicate that shortly some cherries will
appear temporarily in the middle of the screen. If Pac-
Man eats those, they earn him 100 points, or ten times
the value of a single dot. Now imagine that your score
is 9,900, there are only three dots left in the maze, and
there is a cherry sign below it. Rather than complete the
level by eating the dots—worth a measly 30 points—
you would be better advised to wait for the cherries to
appear in the center, because they will then operate
symbolically as a power-up, giving you an extra life. In
that situation the cherries signaling below the maze
would be a third-order sign. They would be (deep
breath) an index denoting the future appearance of a
symbol about other symbols.
Now, all right, hang on. Pac-Man is a videogame,
no? It’s not rocket science. It has chirpy music, bright
colors. You trundle around the maze eating dots and
getting your own back on the ghosts. It is fun. It would
be lunacy to suggest that someone playing Pac-Man is
consciously doing all this semiotic calculus.
But this analysis does help in two ways. First, it
demonstrates that videogames are complex systems
rather than just simple toys. Secondly, and more