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Trigger Happy
339
Information overlord
Now as signs are basically vehicles of meaning,
48
a
videogame will, for its own part in the conversation,
need to erect highly efficient, semiotic systems as it
tries to present ever greater quantities of raw
information to the player. That information can be
broken up into different signs in different areas of the
display.
Consider the screen of G-Police (see fig. 20). It
shows a perspective construction of solid-looking
buildings, roads, cars and other aircraft. In visual terms,
this highly iconic construction is far closer to the film
Blade Runner than it is to the videogame Pac- Man. But
arrayed around the edges of the screen are ghostly,
transparent figures that constitute a knotty system of
signs that the player must read and react to in order to
play the game competently. These figures are the
game’s “HUD,” or head-up display, which recreates an
actual military technology whereby instrument readings
are projected on to the cockpit window directly ahead
of the pilot so that he doesn’t have to look away for
information.
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48 Or actually, on readings such as the Saussurean one, constitute meaning
by virtue of their arrangement