Raúl Alejandro Treviño González (Universidad TecMilenio)
Abstract
This study develops a framework for analyzing how players interpret video games and their characters from a cultural studies perspective. Based on qualitative interviews with Mexican gamers, the study combines classic ideas from reception theory with concepts from game studies, creating a bridge between the two fields. The main result is a reading typology that includes aesthetic, narrative, ideological, and metatextual readings, along with ludic readings focused on challenge and difficulty, game mechanics, control, playability, and immersion. This typology helps examine how players engage with games at multiple levels, addressing both their understanding of narrative, symbolic, and ideological meanings and their direct interactive experience of gameplay. The model offers a flexible tool for analyzing the complex ways players experience and interpret video games. It can inform future research in both cultural studies and game studies on how players make sense of video games.
1. Introduction
Over the past several decades, cultural studies scholars have developed a solid framework for understanding how audiences interpret media texts. The work of Stuart Hall (1980) on encoding and decoding, together with contributions from John Fiske (1987) and David Morley (1992), established the idea that audiences are active, exercise agency, and construct meanings based on their social position, experiences, and interaction with popular culture. This theoretical tradition, which focused mainly on television analysis, enabled the identification of reading positions that show how hegemonic messages can be accepted, reinterpreted, or resisted. Although this framework has been used productively in video game research, such as in the study by Treviño, Maza, and Maeda (2024), there remains a need for a more specific adaptation that accounts for the particularities of video games and the ways players interact with them.
Within game studies, various approaches have explored the player experience through the medium’s specific characteristics. Models such as MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics), proposed by Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek (2004), and Gordon Calleja’s (2011) work on presence, involvement, and incorporation have expanded the understanding of how the player-game relationship operates. These perspectives are complemented by Marie-Laure Ryan’s (2015) reflections on interactivity and immersion, which help explain how video games require particular forms of participation and engagement. However, while these frameworks explain key dimensions of the gaming experience, they tend to focus on game structure or immediate play, leaving the interpretative dimension less developed, namely, how players make meaning, negotiate, or “read” the worlds, narratives, and characters they engage with.
In this context, this study aims to develop a typology of players’ readings to analyze how gamers interpret video games and their characters from a cultural studies perspective. Based on qualitative interviews with gamers from Monterrey, Mexico, this proposal brings together classic ideas from reception theory and contemporary approaches from game studies to bridge the two areas. The goal is to offer a conceptual tool that broadens the understanding of video game reception and can serve as a foundation for future research on the diverse meanings that emerge through play, considering the agency players exercise as they interact with games.
2. Theoretical Framework
To develop a typology of readings from a cultural studies perspective, it is first necessary to acknowledge that, although media texts often reproduce dominant ideologies, audiences have the agency to negotiate, reinterpret, or reject those meanings (Hall, 1980; Fiske, 1987; Morley, 1992). Media texts are polysemic, allowing for multiple interpretations depending on each individual’s cultural repertoire and lived experience (Hall, 1980). These interpretive differences are mediated by values, social experiences, attitudes, and ideological positions, which influence how audiences relate to media texts (Fiske, 1987; Orozco, 1991). This perspective is central to the present study, as it foregrounds interpretation as an active, situated process rather than a passive decoding of fixed meanings.
Based on these assumptions, Stuart Hall’s (1980) encoding/decoding model outlines three broad reading positions. A preferred reading accepts the hegemonic meaning proposed by the text. A negotiated reading partially accepts this meaning while adapting it to personal experiences or social contradictions. An oppositional reading rejects the dominant framework and articulates an alternative interpretation from a critical standpoint. Importantly, for Hall, reading involves relating signs to one another and to broader social contexts, activating the receiver’s interpretive agency rather than merely recognizing encoded meanings (Terni, 1973).
Subsequent reception studies expanded and refined Hall’s original model by specifying different interpretive positions. Hacker et al. (1991), in their study of television news audiences, identified four types of readings: criticism, understood as general comments about the content; resistance, expressed as skepticism toward what is presented; challenge, which questions the factual accuracy of the information; and deconstruction, where viewers recognize and critique the ideological framing of the news.
Building on these ideas, Palmer and Hafen (1999) adapted the model to television fiction, distinguishing between naive acceptance, when viewers take the fictional text at face value; sophisticated acceptance, when they agree with the text while recognizing other possible viewpoints; sophisticated rejection, when viewers disagree using personal experience or narrative inference; and deconstructive readings, which focus on the text as a manufactured product shaped by ideological interests. Inzunza-Acedo (2012) further expanded this framework by introducing naive rejection, a form of dismissal lacking explicit argumentation, and distancing, a reading characterized by awareness of production processes.
While cultural studies originally focused on media such as television and film, applying its interpretive logic to video games requires accounting for the medium’s specific characteristics. Unlike non-interactive media, video games are ergodic texts that unfold only through player action (Calleja, 2011). In this sense, audience control differs fundamentally: in television, viewers exercise only semiotic control over meaning, whereas in video games, control is material, through the directional pad and buttons; players directly influence on-screen events (Fiske, 1989; Corona, 2018). Meaning is therefore produced not only through representation but also through action.
This shift requires considering concepts such as immersion, interactivity, and presence. Presence refers to a state of awareness that allows players to act across physical and virtual spaces (Minsky, 1980; Calleja, 2011). Immersion describes the imaginative engagement that draws players into a fictional world, while interactivity refers to the player’s capacity to influence events within that world (Ryan, 2015). Incorporation, as proposed by Calleja (2011), captures the sense of being situated within the virtual environment through the avatar. Together, these concepts help explain how gameplay conditions mediate the construction of meaning in ergodic texts.
Within game studies, several authors have emphasized player subjectivity, cultural context, and social practice as central to the interpretation and negotiation of meaning through gameplay. Consalvo’s work (2007) is particularly relevant, as it frames digital games as cultural systems in which meanings and ways of playing are constantly negotiated among players, communities, and the game industry. Similarly, Pearce (2011) understands play as a social and performative practice through which players collectively contribute to the production of meaning beyond designers’ intentions, while Shaw (2015) shows how players’ relationships with avatars and game worlds are influenced by gender, sexuality, and identity. Taken together, these approaches help situate gameplay as a culturally embedded practice in which interpretation emerges through situated forms of play.
Additionally, game studies research has paid particular attention to identifying different types of video game players and understanding what players want from video games. Bartle (1996) proposed a typology of players, such as achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers, based on their preferred forms of interaction within game worlds. Similarly, Yee (2006) examined players’ motivations for play, highlighting dimensions such as achievement, social interaction, and immersion.
Building on this experiential focus, the MDA model proposed by Hunicke et al. (2004) offers a practical framework for analyzing how player experiences and preferences are structured. The model distinguishes between mechanics, the rules and actions available to players; dynamics, the behaviors that emerge through interaction with those mechanics; and aesthetics, the emotional and experiential dimensions of play.
As Hunicke et al. (2004) identify, the MDA framework proposes eight aesthetics, understood as forms of game-related enjoyment that help describe what players seek in play. These include sensation, defined as sensory pleasure; fantasy, associated with imaginative escape; narrative, linked to games experienced as drama; challenge, centered on overcoming obstacles; fellowship, which frames games as social experiences; discovery, tied to exploration; expression, related to self-discovery and creative play; and submission, referring to games enjoyed as a pastime. Although the MDA model focuses on forms of enjoyment rather than on interpretation, it is useful for this study because players’ tastes and motivations mediate patterns of acceptance, preference, or rejection in their readings of video games and characters.
Calleja (2011) further refines this experiential focus by distinguishing between macro-involvement, engagement that takes place outside gameplay, and micro-involvement, the moment of play. Micro-involvement comprises six dimensions: kinesthetic involvement, related to control and movement; spatial involvement, linked to navigation and orientation in the game world; shared involvement, concerning awareness of and interaction with others; narrative involvement, connected to engagement with story events; affective involvement, referring to emotional responses; and ludic involvement, centered on decision-making and challenge. Together, these dimensions contribute to what Calleja defines as incorporation, a state in which the player’s actions and the virtual world become an integrated experience.
While Calleja’s model focuses on player involvement rather than interpretation, it remains relevant to this study, as patterns of gameplay engagement help explain players’ acceptance or rejection of games and characters (Treviño, 2025). Drawing on these contributions, this study combines cultural studies approaches to reading with experiential frameworks from game studies to propose a typology of video game readings. Rather than imposing categories a priori, the typology emerges from the dialogue between theory and players’ accounts of their own play experiences.
3. Methodology
This study seeks to develop reading typologies that help understand how players make sense of video games and their characters within a cultural studies framework, from a qualitative perspective. To achieve this, semi-structured interviews were used, as they facilitate the exploration of participants’ perspectives, lived experiences, and interpretive processes (Taylor & Bogdan, 1987). The interview corpus analyzed in this article forms part of a broader qualitative research project. Previous publications have examined the same empirical material from different analytical perspectives (Treviño, Maeda, & Maza, 2024; Treviño, 2025), whereas the present study focuses specifically on developing a reading typology. The interviews addressed participants’ gaming trajectories since childhood, their current play practices, preferences for video games and characters, and the meanings they attribute to female characters through play.
The snowball sampling technique was used to recruit participants. The selection criteria included being a millennial, actively playing video games, having engaged with video games since childhood, and residing in the Monterrey metropolitan area in northern Mexico. This contributed to a relatively homogeneous group, facilitating consistent comparisons across interviews. The focus on millennial players (Dimock, 2019) is particularly relevant, as participants, ranging from their late twenties to early forties, experienced the transition from early arcade and console gaming cultures to contemporary narrative-driven cinematic games. References to practices such as playing in local arcades and engaging with titles like The King of Fighters or Mortal Kombat in their youth appeared repeatedly in the interviews, reflecting a shared generational and localized gaming background that mediated specific forms of engagement and interpretation.
For the study, 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted, 15 with men and 15 with women, with the aim of achieving theoretical saturation, defined as the point at which additional data no longer yield new insights into the phenomenon (Rahimi & Khatooni, 2024). All interviews were audio-recorded with participants’ consent, transcribed in full, and analyzed manually through an iterative qualitative process based on close reading and constant comparison of the material, which enabled the identification and progressive refinement of analytical categories, as well as patterns, convergences, and contrasts across participants’ accounts.
The development of the reading typology followed an abductive logic, combining theoretical frameworks from cultural studies (Hall, 1980; Fiske, 1987; Hacker et al., 1991; Morley, 1992; Palmer & Hafen, 1999; Corona, 2018) and game studies (Hunicke et al., 2004; Calleja, 2011; Ryan, 2015) with inductive insights derived from empirical material. All participants were informed of the study’s confidential nature, participated voluntarily, and were assigned anonymized codes that combined the interview number, gender, and age (e.g., I1M33; I15F28).
While this contextually grounded approach is a strength, it also represents a limitation. The typology emerges from a specific cultural and generational setting and should be understood as a proposed analytical framework rather than a universal model. Future research could test and refine this typology in other cultural, national, or generational contexts.
4. Developing the Typology of Player Readings
Responding to the need to develop a typology of readings from a cultural studies perspective (Hall, 1980; Fiske, 1987; Hacker et al., 1991; Morley, 1992; Palmer & Hafen, 1999; Inzunza-Acedo, 2012) that recognizes players’ agency in the interpretation of interactive cultural products (Fiske, 1989; Corona, 2018), while also considering the specificities of video games as ergodic texts (Hunicke et al., 2004; Calleja, 2011; Ryan, 2015), this section presents a proposed typology of videogame readings. The readings outlined below are not mutually exclusive, as a player account may draw on several forms of reading simultaneously. Each reading can operate as an acceptance, negotiation, or rejection of the intended meanings encoded in the game, and the different types of readings, particularly ideological ones, may operate as an overarching interpretive frame that influences or reconfigures others.
The first type of interpretation proposed in this study is the ideological reading, based on Hacker et al.’s (1991) deconstruction reading but adapted to the context of video games. In an ideological reading, the player understands that a game is not only an interactive text composed of mechanics and narrative elements, but also a product embedded in social, political, economic, or cultural meanings. This type of reading involves taking some distance from the text (Inzunza-Acedo, 2012) and recognizing the power dynamics and ideologies (Fiske, 1987) present in the game.
Some readings of acceptance towards Samus Aran from the Metroid series focused on her importance as one of the first major female protagonists in video games. These are considered ideological readings of the character, since the player’s appreciation is based not on gameplay or narrative, but on her cultural significance in gaming, as can be seen in the account of one of the female participants:
I think I could say Samus is my favorite, even though I haven’t finished all her games. But what she represents, I love that. I was actually one of those people who was surprised when I found out Samus was a woman. (I6F32)
On the other hand, some players showed ideological readings of rejection toward games they perceived went against their beliefs, describing certain characters that appeared on titles like The Last of Us Part II (2020) as “forced inclusion”, framing representation itself as an ideological imposition rather than a narrative or aesthetic choice.
It’s kind of like what people say about Netflix, you know? Like, they added those characters [Abby and Lev] just to include a certain demographic group, just to have that representation in the game. (I1M34)
As mentioned before, the proposed types of readings do not operate in isolation. Ideological readings tend to overlap with and reframe aesthetic, narrative, metatextual, or ludic interpretations, especially when players evaluate characters or games primarily through broader social or political frameworks rather than through internal textual features. The emergence of ideological concerns often shifts attention away from narrative or gameplay, acting as a transversal interpretive layer rather than a separate category.
The second form of interpretation from players is the aesthetic reading, which emphasizes the visual and sensory aspects of a video game. In this reading, players focus on the artistic style, graphics, color schemes, music, and other elements that contribute to the overall sensory experience. For example, one participant (I1F33) mentioned enjoying how the music responded to her actions in Tetris Effect (2018), describing it as a visually and sonically intense experience, emphasizing sensation (Hunicke et al., 2004):
Oh, I also like puzzle games, I really loved Tetris Effect too… It’s a Tetris game, but it’s one where the music kind of syncs with your movements. It’s really trippy, I love it! (I1F33)
Along the same lines, the reading of acceptance towards Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3 (2003) was based on the character’s visual design and outfit, with narrative aspects such as dialogue playing a secondary role.
Physically and visually, I find her character design attractive; her outfit resembles that of an ordinary teenager. Aesthetically, I really like the character, the acting, the voice, the dialogues … (I2M35)
In this case, the player prioritized aesthetic elements over the narrative, but both readings are evident in the account, with the former overlapping the latter, which introduces the third form of ergodic text interpretation: the narrative reading.
The narrative reading draws on Calleja’s concept of narrative involvement (2011); the player’s interpretation focuses on the game’s development of the story, including the plot, emerging conflicts, the evolution and motivations of characters, and the degree of player control over these elements (Ryan, 2015). Several participants expressed narrative engagement with video game characters; for example, participant I14M36 articulated a reading of acceptance toward Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2013) based on the character’s arc:
I really liked the new Tomb Raider, the 2013 reboot. They made her feel more human, and I appreciated that. You can really see how her character develops as she goes through all these tough challenges, and she manages to overcome them on her own despite everything stacked against her. That whole character arc was really interesting to me. (I14M36)
Ergodicity, understood as the interaction and control players have over a game’s narrative (Calleja, 2011), was another key factor in participants’ narrative readings, particularly in story-driven titles such as Japanese role-playing games. Some interviewees noted that video games allow players to experience stories in ways that go beyond passive consumption typical of television or books, offering direct involvement through control and interactivity (Ryan, 2015).
For me, playing video games is kind of like reading. It might sound silly, but that’s really how it feels. I do it because I enjoy it… I like experiencing good stories, you know? A story that’s cool, and on top of that, I get to play it. (I11M33)
The fourth type of interpretation is the metatextual reading, which draws primarily on Inzunza-Acedo’s notion of distancing (2012), originally developed to account for audience awareness of audiovisual production processes, and is expanded here through Calleja’s concept of macro-involvement (2011). This type of reading occurs when players go beyond the interactive text and base their interpretation not only on production-related aspects, but also on memes, discussions, or topics surrounding the game and produced by fan communities.
An example comes from participant I2M35, who linked part of his enjoyment of Silent Hill 3 (2003) to the viral “It’s bread” meme, in which Heather, the game’s protagonist, interacts with a piece of bread. While this reading of acceptance is primarily metatextual, grounded in a meme that circulates outside the game’s narrative, it also overlaps with an appreciation of Heather’s narrative qualities, particularly her personality.
Yeah, I actually really like Heather Mason. She’s just a regular teenager, you know? She reacts in a very realistic, very teenage way, sometimes sarcastic, impulsive, making fun of people or situations. I really like her personality, and also the bread meme. (I2M35)
Another participant (I7F32) engaged in a metatextual and ideological reading by rejecting Sony’s censorship practices in games imported from Japan to Western markets, particularly regarding the portrayal of female characters and their clothing. In this account, the player demonstrates awareness of the company’s role in these modifications while simultaneously criticizing the ideology behind such censorship:
It does bother me a bit when they say things like “we’re going to remove this character because she’s a woman wearing a miniskirt and it bothers people”. What really bothers me is when they take things out or avoid including something just out of fear of offending someone. PlayStation does that a lot. The thing is, Sony shifted heavily toward the Western market, so everything they get from Japan ends up being censored. (I7F32)
The fifth type of reading is the ludic interpretation, which is based on the gameplay experience, players’ involvement (Calleja, 2011), and interaction with the game world (Ryan, 2015). Within ludic readings, four subtypes are distinguished: those based on challenge and difficulty; on game mechanics; on control and gameplay; and on immersion and absorption. As with the other types of readings in this typology, these subtypes can reflect either acceptance or rejection and are not mutually exclusive.
The first subtype, the ludic reading based on challenge and difficulty, occurs when players focus on the obstacles a game presents and the satisfaction or frustration experienced in overcoming them, resonating with the challenge aesthetic of the MDA model (Hunicke et al., 2004). For instance, a participant (I11F30) expressed this reading when describing their enjoyment of games such as Mortal Kombat (1992), emphasizing the sense of accomplishment derived from mastering difficult encounters.
In Mortal Kombat, I remember really focusing, especially when I was playing solo and had to beat several bosses as the game got harder. It was always this mix of thinking about what I was going to do next, and when I finally won, even after several tries, I felt kind of accomplished, like really satisfied. (I11F30)
In contrast, some participants articulated rejection readings based on difficulty, noting that excessive challenge could make the experience frustrating rather than enjoyable:
Even though I love easy games, I do make an effort when there’s a challenge I cannot get through. I try and try and try before giving up, because eventually I do get annoyed and that’s it, bye. I’m not playing to suffer either. (I7F32)
The second subtype of ludic reading is based on game mechanics, understood as the rules, actions, and behaviors that players use to achieve a game’s objectives (Hunicke et al., 2004, p. 3). Some participants explained that mechanics such as exploration and puzzle-solving in games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) were central to their enjoyment of the title.
For example, I really liked the Zelda game, but honestly, it wasn’t because of the story. It was the puzzles, all the riddles, and that kind of stuff. That’s what really caught my attention, and yeah, it pulled me in a lot… but mostly because I wanted to finish all the shrines and everything (I7M29)
In contrast, one participant expressed a reading of rejection toward one of the mechanics in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), particularly the section in which the player must escort Princess Ruto through a dungeon:
I don’t like annoying characters in games, like the little fairies in Zelda; they drive me crazy! And those helpless characters you have to follow around or basically herd? Ugh, they really got on my nerves. Ruto… she annoyed me so much! (E1M33)
The third subtype of ludic reading is based on gameplay and control. In this interpretation, players focus on how the game feels to play, including character movement, enjoyment of control (Ryan, 2015), and the sense of mastery over the avatar’s actions. When participants engaged in this type of reading, their attention became more kinesthetic (Calleja, 2011), centering on movement, control complexity, input sequences, or specific gameplay features such as weapons
This is evident on the account of one participant (I3M33), who preferred to play as Amy Rose in Sonic Adventure (1998) for the enjoyment of using her hammer as a weapon. In the same account, the participant expressed a reading of rejection toward Sonic, explaining that the character’s speed made gameplay uncomfortable and disorienting:
I like Amy from Sonic. She’s this pink character in a dress who carries a big hammer, kind of like El Chapulín Colorado. I hadn’t mentioned it, but I had a Dreamcast and played Sonic Adventure there, and I remember that her sections were the most fun. Hitting things with the hammer was great. Sonic, on the other hand, made me dizzy when he would spin. (I3M33)
The participant referenced the Chapulín Colorado, a well-known Mexican comedic superhero character who uses a large red toy hammer as his signature weapon. This comparison helps illustrate why the player associates Amy Rose’s hammer with humor and enjoyment, adding cultural context to their interpretation of the character.
As discussed earlier, some interpretations reflect a negotiation between different reading types. This is evident in participant I5F36’s reading of Princess Zelda from The Legend of Zelda, where appreciation of gameplay elements overlaps with ideological rejection. The participant explained that while she enjoys using Zelda’s move set in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018), she dislikes the character overall due to her recurring portrayal as a “damsel in distress” in the main series:
I use Zelda in Smash, but mostly because of her attack set. I don’t really like Zelda as a character… I don’t know, she just doesn’t appeal to me. Even though she’s one of the princesses who’s more involved in her own rescue, that whole dynamic still doesn’t sit well with me. (I5F36)
The fourth subtype of ludic reading is based on immersion, understood as the imaginative experience that transports players into the virtual worlds created by the game (Calleja, 2011; Ryan, 2015). In this type of reading, players emphasize feelings of presence, absorption, and temporary disconnect from their immediate surroundings. Several participants explained their enjoyment of specific titles in these terms, highlighting the freedom to explore and the sensation of “being there” as central to their engagement. This was particularly evident in accounts referring to open-ended games such as Minecraft (2009) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), as illustrated in the following accounts:
I really love adventure games, and my favorite is The Elder Scrolls. What I like the most, especially about Skyrim, is that it’s an RPG where you can just go wherever you want. Skyrim has all these cool things like exploring and seeing different places without actually leaving your house. (E12M30)
I usually get really into the game. The world can be going on around me, and I don’t care. This especially happens with Minecraft, which is why I like playing it so much. It’s kind of my moment to relax. (E14M40)
Taken together, the reading typology outlined in this section offers a tool for analyzing how players interpret video games as interactive texts. Building on cultural studies approaches originally developed for film and television, this framework adapts those insights to the specific affordances of video games, organizing interpretations across ideological, aesthetic, narrative, and ludic dimensions. As the empirical examples show, players’ readings may take the form of acceptance or rejection and often involve overlaps and negotiations between different types of reading, reflecting the complexity of how meaning is constructed through characters, stories, and gameplay.
Table 1 outlines the types of readings proposed for future research on how players interpret characters and the video games in which they appear.
| Type of reading | Definition | |
| Ideological | Addresses how players accept, negotiate, or reject the game’s social, political, or cultural meanings. | |
| Aesthetic | Focused on the visual and sensory elements of the game, such as art style, graphics, color palette, sound, and music. | |
| Narrative | Centers on story development, conflicts, and character arcs within the game. | |
| Metatextual | Based on the game’s production, creative process, and surrounding contexts, including memes or fan discourse. | |
| Ludic – Challenge and difficulty | Focused on overcoming obstacles and the satisfaction or frustration derived from difficulty and progression. | |
| Ludic – Game mechanics | Centered on the game rules, systems, and actions that structure how objectives can be completed. | |
| Ludic – Gameplay and control | Emphasizes the player’s sense of control over the avatar, including movement, responsiveness, abilities, and inputs. | |
| Ludic – Immersion | Based on players’ sense of presence and absorption in the game world. |
5. Conclusions
This study proposes a reading typology for analyzing how players interpret video games by adapting concepts from cultural studies to the specific characteristics of ergodic texts. Building on approaches such as deconstruction (Hacker et al., 1991), distancing (Inzunza-Acedo, 2012), negotiated readings (Hall, 1980) and the role of ideology in the decoding process (Fiske, 1987), the model proposed offers a framework for examining how players make sense of characters and narratives while engaging with gameplay elements such as control, challenge, interactivity, and immersion (Hunicke et al., 2004; Calleja, 2011; Ryan, 2015). By understanding interpretation as an active process, the typology emphasizes that meaning in video games emerges through players’ situated engagements rather than being fixed by design alone.
The typology integrates four interpretive dimensions inspired by communication and media studies, namely aesthetic, narrative, ideological, and metatextual, traditionally applied to media such as film and television. Nevertheless, when applied to video games, these readings are mediated by players’ engagement with plot, characters, visuals, and the interactive possibilities of play (Calleja, 2011; Ryan, 2015). In combination with four ludic readings: challenge and difficulty, game mechanics, gameplay and control, and immersion, this framework addresses both interpretive meaning and embodied experience. Player interpretations often negotiate across reading types, highlighting the complexity of engagement with interactive texts.
While influential game studies models have focused on player typologies, motivations, or engagement patterns (Bartle, 1996; Yee, 2006; Calleja, 2011; Hunicke et al., 2004), this study shifts the analytical focus toward interpretation as a culturally embedded practice. In dialogue with Consalvo (2007), Pearce (2011), and Shaw (2015), the model highlights how players negotiate meanings through gameplay in relation to ideology, identity, and social context. A key contribution of the typology is its focus on ideology as a dimension that influences players’ acceptance, resistance, or ambivalence toward characters and games, even when they enjoy the gameplay.
Finally, this typology was developed based on accounts from players living in the Monterrey metropolitan area. This contextual focus enabled a relatively homogeneous sample, which supports analytical depth and internal coherence. At the same time, it constitutes a limitation, as players’ readings are mediated by specific cultural, social, and regional conditions. Future research could apply and adapt this typology to different geographic, cultural, and demographic contexts, further testing its flexibility and contributing to comparative studies on the reception of video games across diverse player communities.
References
Bartle, R. (1996). Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs. Journal of MUD Research, 1(1).
Calleja, G. (2011). In-game: from immersion to incorporation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. doi 10.7551/mitpress/1802.001.0001
Corona, A. (2018). Identidad-Agencia-Espacio: El videojuego desde los estudios culturales. Saltillo, México: Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila.
Dimock, M. (2019, January 17). Defining generations: Where millennials end and Generation Z begins. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/
Fiske, J. (1987). Television Culture. London, UK: Routledge.
Fiske, J. (1989). Reading the Popular. London, UK: Routledge.
Hacker, K., Coste, T., Kamm, D., & Bybee, C. (1991). Oppositional Readings of Network Television News: Viewer Deconstruction. Discourse & Society, 2(2), pp. 183-202. doi 10.1177/0957926591002002003
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, media, language (pp. 128–138). London, UK: Hutchinson.
Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004). MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. AAAI Workshop – Technical Report. Northwestern University. Retrieved from https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf
Inzunza-Acedo, B. E. (2012). Lecturas de aceptación y de rechazo de la serie norteamericana ‘Lost’ entre jóvenes de Monterrey, México. Global Media Journal México, 9(17), pp. 30-43. Retrieved from https://gmjmexico.uanl.mx/index.php/GMJ_EI/article/view/42
Minsky, M. (1980). Telepresence. Omni Magazine.
Morley, D. (1992). Television, audiences, and cultural studies. London, UK: Routledge.
Orozco, G. (1991). Recepción televisiva: Tres aproximaciones y una razón para su estudio. Cuadernos de Comunicación y Prácticas Sociales, 2. Universidad Iberoamericana.
Palmer, A., & Hafen, T. (1999). American TV through the eyes of German teenagers. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Pearce, C. (2011). Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rahimi, S., & Khatooni, M. (2024). Saturation in qualitative research: An evolutionary concept analysis. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 6, 100174. doi 10.1016/j.ijnsa.2024.100174
Ryan, M. L. (2015). Narrative as virtual reality 2: Revisiting immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Shaw, A. (2015). Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. doi 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693153.001.0001
Taylor, S. J., & Bogdan, R. (1987). Introducción a los métodos cualitativos de investigación. Barcelona, España: Ediciones Paidós.
Terni, P. (1973). Memorandum. Council of Europe Colloquy, Leicester, England.
Treviño, R., Maza, M. & Maeda, C. (2024). Haciendo las paces con Peach: interpretaciones de videojugadoras mexicanas sobre personajes femeninos en videojuegos. Contratexto 41, pp. 149-165. doi 10.26439/contratexto2024.n41.6638
Treviño, R. (2025). El involucramiento como mediación en las lecturas de personajes femeninos en videojuegos: Un estudio comparativo entre jugadoras y jugadores [Doctoral dissertation, Tecnológico de Monterrey]. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/11285/703868
Yee, N. (2006). Motivations for Play in Online Games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(6), pp. 772–775. doi 10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772
Ludography
Metroid, Nintendo, Japan, 1986.
Minecraft, Mojang, Sweden, 2009.
Mortal Kombat, Midway Games, USA, 1992.
Silent Hill 3, Team Silent, Japan, 2003.
Sonic Adventure, Sonic Team, Japan, 1998.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Nintendo, Japan, 2018.
Tetris Effect, Enhance Games, Japan, 2018.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda Game Studios, USA, 2011.
The King of Fighters ’94, SNK, Japan, 1994.
The Last of Us Part II, Naughty Dog, USA, 2020.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo, Japan, 2017.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo, Japan, 1998.
Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics, USA, 2013.
Authors’ Info
Raúl Alejandro Treviño González
Universidad TecMilenio
raultg@tecmilenio.mx
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.