Words: 2024 Approximate Reading Time: 15-20 minutes
Returning to the topic of the art of interpretation and applying it to games, I want to step back for a moment to do some defining.
We engage in this activity for a lot of reasons. Sometimes we find a thread in a game or book or film that we want to pull at. Sometimes we want to share something interesting that we found. Sometimes we just find putting a narrative puzzle together to be interesting. In a sense, it all boils down to it being engaging.
And of course, part of that activity is doing it as part of a community. Writing essays, chatting on forums, making videos. Through this we gather more information and ideas to put together. We learn to see a given work through multiple perspectives. Interpreting on our own loses a lot of its power.
But like any conversation, there is a risk of talking past one another. It turns out there are a number of activities that fall under the umbrella of “interpretation,” and not all of these activities share the same purpose. They often don’t carry the same meanings. Even when they use the same words and evidence, they are asking different questions to arrive at different answers.
So for this essay I want to draw a few distinctions.
The Author and the Audience
When we talk about a work, we are dealing with something that was crafted. Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, but regardless it’s all put together by another person or a lot of other people. Which means that there is an intent behind it all. There is a meaning that exists within the heads of those creators. That meaning can be clearly defined, or it could be slightly hazy. What matters is that it’s there.
One of the activities we engage in when we talk about interpretation is trying to get at that intent. This can shake out multiple ways. The most common version we see is a kind of lore breakdown. A story contains various bits of backstory and other elements that are only ever revealed in tiny pieces, giving the audience the opportunity to put those pieces together into a coherent whole. The audience’s goal, then, is to figure out what that whole picture should look like.
But we can dig deeper into the meaning of the work itself. We can pull out themes and ideas that are more than the narrative and dialogue that make up the work. Here the audience is still relying on the core material, but is also focused on symbolism and nuance. A specific choice of wording or a particular design doesn’t just hint at a connection to another part of the story, but at a point. It is an attempt by the author to say something, and so interpretation is a way of listening.
All of this relies on the idea that that intent exists and that we as the audience can discern that intent, either wholly or partially. Perhaps more importantly, it relies on the idea that we should be trying to discern that intent.
This is one of the things we mean by “interpretation.” This activity to get into the head of the creator.
But sometimes when we talk about a work, we are also talking about an experience that we had. We are seeing that work through a variety of different lenses. Our pasts with all of their triumphs and failures and traumas and breakthroughs create a veil through which the work takes on a meaning that is unique to us. And that personal meaning is – or at least can be – interesting in its own right.
Maybe in a character’s struggle with their identity we see a struggle that we engaged in ourselves. Maybe a revolution within a story reminds us of our own political beliefs. Maybe the state of a fictional world gives us an opportunity to think about the state of the real world.
In these cases, the work is not necessarily speaking to us, so much as inspiring us to speak for ourselves. The work is not a puzzle to be unraveled, but a platform upon which we stand to share the ideas we have gained from the experience. The work takes on meaning not of its own accord, but because it is something that has an audience – it is through the audience that it gains purpose.
This activity sometimes ignores the actual work itself and its intricacies to focus on the audience. The point, after all, is not to ask what the intent of the author is, but how the work makes us feel, or what it makes us think about.
This too is “interpretation.” This activity to express ourselves through the work.
And sometimes when we talk about a work, we are not talking about the content, but a version of it within our head. In effect, we make up what we would like the work to be, and not necessarily what it is. We often call this “headcanon” or “fancanon.”
It might seem like this kind of activity is rooted in a mistake. You mishear a line or misunderstand the intent, and arrive at an incorrect view. But this conclusion is itself a mistake. Sometimes the story isn’t really fulfilling. Sometimes a character isn’t interesting to us. Sometimes a world could use a few extra details that the author didn’t put in. Headcanon can potentially be rooted in errors, but it can just as much be rooted in creativity
In these cases, the intent of the author and even the text of the work are effectively irrelevant. We are not trying to have a dialogue with the work. We simply want to do something that we find fun. It is, in effect, a form of play.
And this too is “interpretation.” This activity allows us to just take the complicated tasks of engaging with a work and find a pure joy in it, regardless of what the outcome is.
Conversation and Interpretation
My interest in these distinctions is not to make claims that any one of these types is superior or more correct. Interpretation is not a competition, even in the realm of trying to figure out the author’s intent (where there can be a correct answer, but one we might never know for certain).
Instead my aim is to highlight how the ambiguity of “interpretation” leads to people performing very different actions that – on the surface – look the same. And that surface-level similarity gives way to confusion and disagreement.
Imagine that we are all trying to discuss a character within a game or book or movie. A villain, perhaps. And we all have the same basic material to work with – the work provides us with information about that villain through narration and dialogue and perhaps visual design.
But in trying to talk about this villain and their role in the work, we can find ourselves engaging in interpretation in a variety of different ways. Perhaps we want to delve into the villain’s lore: we have no real information about why this villain turned out to be a bad person, and we find that question interesting.
Some people might take that question and try to piece together whatever information is provided. To put together the “true story” of the villain’s life. Where the information is sparse, people may find themselves coming up with theories that don’t mesh well together. Some people will end up having disagreements. But this disagreement is fine, because at least they are all engaged in the same activity.
But then someone else comes in and starts talking about this neat idea they had about the villain’s backstory. They imagined a scenario where something traumatic happened – something which might not really be indicated within the work itself. Maybe the person developed their theory because they thought it sounded cool, or because it reminded them of another character that they really liked.
You can see here two different activities – the kind of interpretation that seeks to identify authorial intent, and the kind of interpretation we call “headcanon.” And the issue is that to our group, this person with their headcanon is effectively speaking an alien language and seems almost like an intruder. This person is ignoring evidence that clearly runs against their theory and has built their ideas off of sand…how could they be so shortsighted?
Conversely, let’s instead imagine a group of people sharing their various headcanons about the same villain. The point is not to try to prove or disprove these ideas, but just to talk about something that everyone enjoys and finds engaging.
And then into the middle of this steps someone seeking authorial intent. And that person looks at all of these discussions about headcanon and immediately tries to pick them apart. One theory doesn’t make sense. Another lacks evidence. Again, we have two different activities meeting each other. And to the group, this new person seems like a jerk. They’re just trying to have fun…so why does this new person need to ruin it?
Were everyone siloed off in the way I just described, the solution would probably seem relatively simple – just make sure you know what you’re doing, then join the right group.
But of course, those lines aren’t clearly demarcated. When we talk about any work, we are all jumbled together.
And so what I am presenting here is a way to step back and see those conversations. To recognize what we are doing when we engage in interpretation, and what others are doing.
This is a lesson perhaps most needed by those who are focused on authorial intent – focused on what a work is really “about.” Because it is this group that is most likely to engage in a form of gatekeeping about interpretation – to engage in criticism and attack others for their “wrong” theories.
But I think it’s also worthwhile for us to not simply know what others are doing, but what we ourselves are doing. To be clear and open about our intentions. Because it is common to see these words and echo them without really thinking about what we want to accomplish. Are we saying this thing just to have fun? Are we saying it to be convincing? Are we saying it because we think it’s “true”? I get the sense that often people don’t stop to ask these kinds of questions that lurk at the bottom of their theories. There is a missing sense of what kind of conversation a person wants to have about their theory.
Concluding Remarks
I enjoy interpretation quite a bit. It’s fun to do for a lot of reasons. I love searching for authorial intent and trying to put the work together like a puzzle – to decipher symbolism and search for clues that put me into the author’s head. I also find the practice of thematic analysis – even when those themes are not strictly speaking intended – to be intellectually stimulating. It invokes a kind of creativity by asking us to see a work through a unique lens.
But the problem with sharing that activity is that you don’t always know who you’re dealing with. Sometimes you find another soul who wants to have the same kind of discussion about the work that you do…and sometimes you find someone who isn’t really looking for a discussion at all.
It would be easy enough to say that what we need is some kind of linguistic separation. That “interpretation” is too vague, and that each activity should get its own word – after all, we at least refer to headcanon with its own unique terminology.
But trying to impose this system will fall short. There is honestly too much overlap in these activities. There is too much ambiguity for what these activities even are. I may have made these divisions seem rather clean, but in truth we can’t always be sure of what we’re doing. Maybe we can engage in more than one of these activities at the same time. Maybe we can fool ourselves about what we’re really doing. Whatever the case, we can’t simply define our way out of this problem.
Abstracting Games 