[coldtea]

>It strikes me as so empty and abstract as to be "not even wrong". Yes, a book is an inert object that needs to be combined with a very specific decoding mechanism (namely, a human) in order to derive semantics. This is also true of shoes.

I find this argument to be "not even wrong" (not really, I see some point in what you say, but I just wanted to convey how bad is this "outright dismissal" it attempts to the author's points).

The shoes don't give us back a narrative/plot from the semantics we derive for them -- No Man's Sky does.

So the author's point has some merit in pointing out this, even if he doesn't qualify fully what kind of semantics he means (not the crude semantics we get from interpreting "most things"). The nature of the game's derived semantics make it more like a book than a pair of shoes or a t-shirt with a slogan.

[dmreedy]

I will admit I was overstating for comedic effect, and that was somewhat unfair. However, I disagree with your defense here.

I would say, semi-seriously, that one can definitely find a story in a pair of shoes. It may not have quite the same complexity as the story found in a book, but I'd be careful to avoid implying that that somehow makes it less. Consider the job of an archaeologist/anthropologist, for example.

However, I'll concede you that there is a possible hierarchy of things that convey 'more' (ehhh...I hate to use that word here, but for lack of a better one at the moment) semantics. And that No Man's Sky could be placed higher on that hierarchy than a pair of shoes. Even given that premise, I don't really see any strong arguments presented in the piece that No Man's Sky is any different from any other game in that sense.