The Shootout Simulation: What "No Russian" Can Tell Us About the Meaning of a Game

Abstract

A game has multiple meanings, instead of a unilateral effect on a player, Jenkins’ effects- versus meanings-model implies. At the root of this discussion is the use of violence in games. How meaning is constructed through a game’s formal aspects, is what proceduralism focuses on. Miguel Sicart criticises this method for excluding the moral subject of the player. To show how different meanings can be constructed with a change in focus, the controversial level “No Russian” is played through an implied player strategy, being a player-focused approach, and through a non-implied player strategy, being a game-focused approach. Regardless of which strategy is applied, it seems that being placed in the middle of a shooting of innocents, causes a player to experience simulation fever. The way that this discomfort leads to moral awareness, may be at the basis of the controversy surrounding the level. Playing the game as a non-implied player, it becomes clear that in order to deviate from the meaning constructed by an implied player, the player must ignore all cues the game gives, and be completely irrational. The meaning that proceduralism implies to be embedded in the game, conjuncts in this case with the meanings formed while trying to deviate from the predisposed path. Sicart’s critique merely seems to underline the uniqueness of a player, and how a player’s background may cause him to interpret a game. In this case, however, it doesn’t fundamentally affect the embedded meaning. When this research is performed on a sandbox game, other results might appear, since “No Russian” is an example for constructing meaning from a highly structured game.