How do game systems become meaningful, both to their creators and the players? This thesis aims to understand this question through an investigation of what "game system" is, how it works, and how the concept influences the way we discuss, appreciate and make video games. The main notion that I challenge is a representational conceptualization of game system - as equivalent to the formal mathematical structure, or the computational structure of video games. This equivalence has a historical significance in fundamentally changing how we think about the "gameness" of games, what game rules are and what gamic agency means, thus shaping what we think a game can be and should be. The equivalence can also become problematic by seeing the game system as a stable object, separate from social discourses and interpretations. Through philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Karen Barad, I introduce an anti-essentialist approach to conceptualizing the game system as not merely something that affords interpretations, but is also produced by interpretations, both materially and discursively. I argue that this approach can challenge the system vs. audiovisuals, gameplay vs. narrative, code vs. representation or form vs. content split that has haunted video game discourses ever since the medium's beginning. It also enables us to investigate deeper into the software materiality of video games, in terms of how it both inherits and expresses certain technocultural assumptions around computation that often fade into the background and are conceived of as value-neutral. It also allows us to pay more attention to how different aspects of a video game interact to produce meaning, which I demonstrate by detailing my design process of a speculative, narrative-driven and critical AI game Sea of Paint. The aim is to show how a rethinking of game systems allows us to cut through the societal, philosophical and technical dimensions of software and video games so one can become a more conscious and effective thinker-practitioner of the medium.

Event Host: Henry Zhou, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media

Advisors: Michael Mates and Noah Wardrip-Fruin