Beyond Procedurality: Situating The Witness in the Proceduralism Debate

This paper posits a comparative analysis between two views of ludic meaning in game studies. The same two puzzles from Thekla, Inc.’s 2016 puzzle adventure game The Witness are interpreted first from a proceduralist perspective and then are reinterpreted from a play-centric perspective derived from a combination of practice theory and game scholar Miguel Sicart’s formulation of play. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate how a game otherwise well-suited to proceduralist readings might be more completely understood from such a play-centric perspective and presents this experimental method of analysis by example.