ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the usefulness of conceiving procedurality as a semiotic mode in the context of multimodal discourse analysis and social semiotics. It argues that procedurality—in the context the rules, systems, and parameters of a game—should be viewed as a semiotic equal alongside established modes such as text, image, and music. Procedurality is an established, core concept in game studies. To make the case that procedurality is a legitimate semiotic mode it is necessary to set out some criteria for what constitutes a mode in the first place. The chapter outlines the value of adopting the procedural mode into multimodal analysis generally. Procedurality can affect the overall meaning of an ensemble as well as the other modes within it. Procedurality therefore deserves to be included in the catalog of modes within multimodal studies as it provides an analytical framework for examining interactive artifacts like videogames and other computational media.
