181.
The four possible endings of Deus Ex fit on a ‘Greimas square.’ Which is to say, the endings are terms in a game of meaning making. (See Fig. 8) If George Perec is the avant garde aesthete of gamespace, Greimas is its pioneering theorist, for whom all culture can now be thought retrospectively in terms of the game. A. J. Greimas: “Perhaps out of a desire for intelligibility, we can imagine that, in order to achieve the construction of cultural objects (literary, mythical, pictorial, etc.), the human mind begins with simple elements and follows a complex trajectory, encountering on its way both constraints to which it must submit and choices it is able to make.” Or in other words, the play of meaning is made within the bounds of a game. At stake here is the relation of play to game. As topography gives way to topology, game rises in prominence relative to play. In the realm of avant garde strategies, the game within constraints of George Perec supercedes the play beyond game of Guy Debord. In the rear guard of theoretical strategies, the game of meaning supercedes the meaning of games; A. J Greimas tops Johan Huizinga. For Huizinga play precedes game. It is the play ‘instinct’ that inspires the formation of forms. Greimas anticipates the enclosure of play within gamespace. As the whole of space succumbs to the game, it is the logic of constraints which determine the possibilities of play.
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