Initial thoughts on video games and Wittgenstein

Overview

Indulging in both Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the new Legend of Zelda game have led to some mishmash of wires in my brain.  Foremost, the Tractatus, the more I read it, seems to describe a game engine of sorts and the limits it imposes upon the imagination.

Since this post is slightly longer than my regular posts, I have broken it down into a few sections.
- First: we will look at the mappings, how concepts from the Tractatus map flawlessly to the Legend of Zelda: a Link Between Worlds.
- Second: I shall muse on how it describes the world.
- Third: we shall consider what this means if we were an NPC (Non-Playable Character - an character inhabiting the digital world).

For convenience, I have highlighted any terms used by Wittgenstein in italics.

A little caveat - this writing is doubly to help me further my understanding of what I read by explaining my thoughts and as a reference for the future when I look upon the text again.

Mappings

Mappings are very relevant in the Zelda games.  Recall that the behaviours of objects are encoded within themselves.  Interestingly, the behaviour for interacting with a bomb is not encoded within a rock.  I've tried blowing up a rock repeatedly to no avail.  Recall that a rock can only be picked up and thrown.  There is no way to blow up a rock (except for a special type of rock with a crack in it).  Use a ton of dynamite and it will always remain.

A state of affairs is essentially the layout within a dungeon.  A level if you will.  Using an appropriate editor, many state of affairs can be brought to life.  All state of affairs are possible if imagined from objects.  It is the objects of the game world that limit the imagination.  Instead of composing complexes from atoms, the smallest building block is the size of a rock.

A picture is a design for a level.  It can relate an actual level, but doesn't have to.  It can be a subset of a level, a screen capture.  We can think of a level.

A picture, in this sense can also be thought of.  The thought encapsulates this toy world.

Game World

Interestingly, the thought process is further confined as we map the terms of the Tractatus to the toy world of a game.

These first few pages that build a model of the world so aptly describe the limits of our digital worlds.

I'm still working out the details of how they mesh - but there is something there.  Something describing the limits of what we can make, not just what we can think.

NPCs

There is also something interesting in regards to our own world.  Consider the rabbit that takes over Link's house and sets up shop - to sell all his possessions for a healthy profit to Link.  We obviously know that this character is following a simple script, but let us give him the benefit of the doubt and assign consciousness to this character.

Let's suppose one day he decides to question how his world works.  He would be able to analyze what is thinkable as Wittgenstein has done, eerily similar conclusions.  Except, the micro world would be completely different.

To feel the world around him would be to see himself from above, hear things.  He would see that he is made of pixels.  But that would be normal.  (I could have gone the route of seeing himself as a polygonal shape - conclusions would be similar).  As long as pixels looked right without any magnification, everything would be ok.

But let's say our NPC is a scientist and decides to zoom in.  Then what would be seen between the pixels?

Let's say we're dealing with an image encoded with the DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform).  Zoom in a lot!  As much as you wish!  Underneath there is a wave-like function that provides progressively blurrier visuals.  There is a point where the image is in focus.

I have deviated a bit, but this question has been in the back of my mind lately.  Is there an ideal zoom for our world, and any further magnification reveals the algorithm and not the substrate?  If I think of atoms as pixels (gross simplification, but hear me out), then as we zoom into atoms we are looking at a byproduct of the matter that holds the universe and not the actual matter.

Furthermore, are we at the intended zoom level, or are we just a happy accident that makes up the most basic of objects.

Wittgenstein must be rolling in his grave by now, by how I'm trying to subvert his work to apply to everyday toys.