Enunciation and identification in video game spaces

Starting from a semiotic perspective, this article explores the relationship between interaction, immersion, and identity in the digital spaces of video games. In the first part, we further develop the existing theory of kinetic enunciation, which is grounded in the analysis of movement. Every video game experience requires the user to perform movements through an interface (joypads, virtual helmets, gloves, motion sensors), which are then transformed into movements within the virtual world (running, shooting, observing). This constitutes a specific reformulation of the concept of interaction, allowing us to analyze the meaning-making processes generated by the kinetic grammars specific to each video game experience (offensive, contemplative, logical-cognitive). Within this framework, immersion is understood as a consequence rather than a cause of the movements enacted through video game enunciation. In the second part, we examine the relationship between subjectivity and identity to formalize the way in which—both in video game semiosis and in semiosis more broadly—a constitutive process of identification takes place. By identification, we refer to the personal negotiation between the experiential, discursive, and social valences of semiosis. On the one hand, this negotiation produces behavioral and enunciative signs—such as hesitations, repetitions, slips of the tongue, and register shifts—that enable both observation and self-observation. On the other hand, the sedimentation of multiple identification processes can give rise to a more enduring identity with a varying degree of social reach. In relation to video games, we argue that players must negotiate between two interrelated activities: they appropriate the kinetic grammaticalization—the predefined set of game actions—by potentially developing personal styles of play while partially incorporating themselves into the controlled avatar; but they also retain interpretative freedom pertaining to the narrative roles and figurative characterization of the avatar, secondary characters, and environmental architecture. Through the analysis of exemplary video game cases, we argue that the negotiation of these two tensions drives players toward personal identity positioning. This article seeks to establish the theoretical foundations for a semiotics of identity.