Imagery and pictographs in a videogame

With a serious career interest in game design and theory, it is easy for me to overlook how people play games. I am often too far caught up with mechanics and balance, ensuring that a game is not unfair, to notice that sometimes people can have trouble playing the game itself. This brings me back to the basics, as they say, and I want to consider very early games, iconography, and the arguments presented by Drucker and McGann in their article "Images as Text: Pictographs and Pictographic Logic."

In the article, our authors argue that ideas and knowledge are not only contained within pictographs, but also within their structure, location, orientation, and construction material. Before continuing with their thought, I thought it important to also note the manner in which the authors write. While the authors create an article that I agree with, I feel that their writing was, shall we say, soporific? I too can use expensive adjectives and adverbs, yet the writing would be no better. The arguments aren't intensely simple, but maybe reading the original paper would go better given more careful attention to vocabulary. There; diatribe over.

Anyways, after reading the article, I considered one of the first games I have ever played, and how pictographs were an intrinsic nature of learning and playing the game. 'Super Mario Bros.,' originally released on the Nintendo console, is still a classic. There are only a handful of times where text is seen, be it an on-screen timer or an apology for a missing princess. As such, everything must be learned by the player, and at a very cruel method. Unlike today's games, lives were in short supply, continues unavailable, and death quick and brutal. Despite all this, the game was not impossible and much was learned through observation.

One such example of pictography are the question blocks. Shown here, they were special blocks that once broken open could give coins or powerups.  In turn, these powerups were uniquely shaped. They could be a mushroom, a glowing plant, or even a star. All of these images eventually came to be instantly recognized. I find it amazing that people of any background or upbringing can begin a game of Mario and immediately pick it up.

How does all that relate to pictographs? The same way all knowledge must originate. These symbols described have been repeated over and over again in sequels and new Mario games yet never need explanation to those who have played before. Like anything else learned, these pictures now, arguably, reside as a form of basic societal knowledge.