by Tony Dungan, St. Olaf College, 2020
Agent – Any actionable character in a video game. This could be other players or non-playable characters.
Aggression – Any form of intentional, active confrontation between a player and an in-game agent.
Conflict – The act of characters or players working to obtain something. The “something” could be an item, greater skills, societal status, or something else entirely.
Pacifism – A nonviolent ideology. The most popular branch of pacifism refers to those that are anti-war, while other branches advocate for war in “just” times, or are against violence in all circumstances.
Semiotic domains – Associations between concepts that communicate meanings distinct to that domain. Everything exists within a semiotic domain. There’s a semiotic domain for math, golf, television, religion, and video games, since all have unique definitions and understandings of specific words.
Verb – In the context of games, verbs are the actions coded into the game that players can do. Common verbs in games include shooting, jumping, and walking.
Violence – Behavior that inflicts physical harm upon another person or animal
