The immersive power of semiotic domains

One of the most powerful ways to engage your players in a game is to immerse them completely in a fully holistic environment and experience. The best way to describe something so all-encompassing in terms of a narrative, language, community and understanding is with the term: semiotic domain.

The concept of the semiotic domain is not something you will often come across in your daily life. The specific term of Semiotic Domains can be attributed to the works of James Paul Gee and specifically his book What Video Games have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007).

To give you an idea of what a semiotic domain is; it is a possibility space of learning that uses a system of ‘signs’ or semiotics. This ‘sign’ system should be understood as one that uses all modes of communication; visual, sounds, writing, speech, and so on. JP Gee gives the example in his book of two types of science students in a class. The first has a passive knowledge of Newton’s Laws for example. He can list them, but he cannot apply them. The second student, on the other hand, can both recite them, and is able to apply them, but also has the ability to manipulate them in order innovate and create new knowledge for herself. This second student has, therefore, become literate in the semiotic domain of “science”.

The benefits of entering something like a semiotic domain, according to Gee, has three distinct results:

• The opportunity to experience the world in new ways
• You automatically become affiliated with a like-minded social group
• And you gain the resources for future learning and/or opportunities to become affiliated with other (similar) domains.

As such this piece will mainly focus on the concept of the semiotic domain as an active learning environment; the steps of comprehension, (re-)production and innovation. In his book, Gee discusses over 30+ learning principles that can help transform learning for students in all walks of life and several relate to the concept of the semiotic domain. But these are too various to explore as well in this piece, so I recommend if you are interested in this then please do have a look through What Video Games have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007) by James Paul Gee.