New Media, New Challenges for Terminology: the Semiosis of Electronic Entertainment

Starting from the observation that modern mass culture as well as specialised communication is becoming increasingly multimodal due to the dramatic pervasiveness of new media, this paper sets out to explore conceptual representation levels used in entertainment software, a digital genre which originated in conjunction with the technological turn. While a number of new media, like web sites, have been explored from various angles, video games represent an emerging sui generis medium which has only recently gained academic attention. First, we will single out the semiotic dimensions involved in entertainment software. Not unlike television broadcasts or DVDs, video games combine the acoustic and the visual channels to create meaning. Moreover, they share iconic, textual and interaction techniques typical of web sites and software applications, combining such multimodal elements as graphics, sound, interface, gameplay and story. Next, taking a number of onscreen text instances as our object of enquiry, we will single out a number of unique extra-linguistic forms of conceptual representation relevant to video game semiosis, acknowledging their implications for specialised communication. In a changing digital landscape, the main research question is how non-verbal and dynamic conceptual units should be treated in a terminological description serving both the game industry professionals (termbases) and the final users (Help files, user guides).