What Video Games Can Tell Us About Interactive Technical Communication

Video games are forms of multimodal technical communication, conveying complicated information about game goals, mechanics, game physics, and more, to the player in a way that usually feels integrated into the game itself. This article highlights ways that games use interaction to convey information to players, classifying the communicative elements in several popular games into C.S. Pierce's classes of sign (decoratives, indicatives, and informatives). This paper asserts that technical communicators can take cues from video games to design technical communication products that better meet contemporary users’ expectations of agency and interaction—allowing them to explore and discover on their own.