“Semiotic NPC Design — Mapping Symbols of Identity”: a summary and challenges.

The Semiotics of Identity.

Hey there! Quick recap:

In 2022 I gave a talk at Game Devs of Color Expo 2022 called “Semiotic NPC Design — Mapping Symbols of Identity”. This draws on my years-long work in anthropology studying the theory of identity and personhood and I’ve applied such things to inform my game design and quest for meaning-driven games.

(I was also awarded GDoC’s 2022 Humble Bundle Game Creator of Color Award… still gobsmacked about that one.)

As a supplement to that talk, I put together a quick PDF containing additional material —essentially just a summary and practice tasks to help you wrap your head around the process of semiotic design.

Find the talk here:

And the accompanying PDF here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ep6pe5yuymvsx2oza2rfj/Semiotic-NPC-Design-Mapping-Symbols-of-Identity.pdf?dl=0&rlkey=kqad2tigkt9hbb47xmjumwoi1

Sample:

Snippet from the PDF.

Semiotic NPC Design - Mapping Symbols of Identity.pdf

Hope this gets your juices flowin! Any questions, feel free to sing out, comment, or hit me up over on Twitter (@thoughtrise). To follow what is fundamentally applied semiotic design, the game darkwebSTREAMER, keep up with our development and eventual release date over on @darkwebSTREAMER. And for inquiries, you can send me a message on Twitter or over at chantal@whalitf.com.