Chapter 6
Mechanics as Message
“All play means something.”
—Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
What is a game about? Is Super Mario Bros. a game about Italian plumbers? Or is it a game about jumping? Or is there a deeper subtext? Or is it a combination of all of these things? Or are games essentially meaningless pastimes? In this chapter, we discuss some games that have a design that leads us to ask further questions about the medium and the world outside the medium.
Warning: Spoiler Alert!
This chapter contains descriptions of the games Passage, The Marriage, and Bioshock that may contain spoilers. The Bioshock section in particular contains major spoilers in both play and story. If you wish to play those games without foreknowledge of their systems, ...
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