How Overwatch Uses Symbolism To Communicate 

"I have this little finger tapping one to communicate that I'm a bottom" may be the greatest line ever written

And then there’s Mauga’s ability icons. I have no idea what is going on with them

I think it's interesting how the conlang Toki Pona basically works like a Chinese style writing system, except the characters are made up of Roman letters, in that you have to interpret each depending on the context. Like, instead of "dog" you might say "friend mammal" for instance. Also, this video made me realize that using your blink lights in a car is the same principle as teabagging in videogames.

16:16 this makes me want a red cross healer who you're not allowed damage

Fan-fucking-tastic video dude. This is the kind of high quality content that’s keeping youtube valuable. It is so interesting hearing how passionate you are about these two completley seperate topics and how they’re linked. I’m a ride or die rn

As a League player, and considering that you directly mentioned it in the video: League is absolutey *insanely* riddled with this. Symbols for stats you can build, symbols for detrimental status effects, symbols for different objectives like towers or dragon or baron... Even color is used as a symbol alongside many of those icon symbols to convey different stats at a glance, or to convey things such as a damage type. Most impressively there's a deep level of coherency to it all which is really appreciable; things like attack damage (the stat) and physical damage (the damage type) both being different shades of orange because in most cases, champions that want attack damage do mostly physical damage (though there are exceptions), while ability power and magic damage do the same but in different shades of blue. Even armor and magic resist, the stats that block each of those damage types respectively, use yellow and light blue, which are both lighter versions of the colors that the damage types themselves use

My favourite form of symbolism is the visceral reaction I get just by typing 999

also i think its funny that mercy's eidgenossin skin bypasses the red cross rule by just making her suit red and the cross white lol

4:16 😭

Off topic But i just live how you gave the characters cunty outfit in that BG3 clip

You have so distinctly summarized my issue with communication in general. I have autism...which essentially means I don't get the Comprehensive Body Language Dictionary that seems built-in to everyone else. It doesn't mean I can't learn it, but it does mean I have to work a hell of a lot harder to "read" and "write" that language fluently and efficiently. What's funny is that I am adept at using metaphors and symbolism to understand and communicate complex concepts, sometimes to the point where explaining it any other way won't work for me. This video is making me want to make an Overwatch Dictionary...maybe even a video game dictionary... Anyway, I LOVE this video and I can't wait to keep seeing more from you. Thanks king!

i come here for great video essay content, but moreso i come here for bottom representation

great work on linguistic aspects of symbolism! you masterfully explain uni level material in simple terms and examples, that's so cool!

In answer to your League of Legends comment: As someone who has played League for over 6 years -- there is virtually no tutorial. The tutorial that does exist is honestly misleading on what you're really even supposed to be doing in the game. If you don't have an experienced friend to teach you what you're doing, or a really good how-to video on youtube, you're going to REALLY struggle. Add on the fact that at least half of the new accounts are actually smurfs, and you have a game that has a huge learning curve and is really not very fun until you finally do stumble into figuring things out.

This may seem random, but I've never seen anyone use the rear windscreen wiper to 'wave' before. Is that a Canadian thing?

8:22 i did not expect a reference to the golden compass, holy crap you just reminded me of my favorite movie from childhood.

2:28 Or 4, there is possible someone in your backseat and the other driver is trying to warn you/scare them off

thanks for showing us how you dress your tav and halsin lmao.

FUCKING FINALLY SOMEONE GETS HOW SHITTY THOSE LED HEADLIGHTS ARE I FEEL SO VALIDATED AAAAAA

since you talk pretty fast, it might be a good idea to add captions to your videos. I'm not one of them, but non-native english speakers will can have trouble understanding a video without them. youtube has a pretty easy way to generate them, where you put in the script and it does the timings for you. i once got a comment on one of my videos that thanked me for adding them and it was incredibly heart warming and satisfying for the little effort i needed to put in to get it. also, good video. very interesting and thought provoking.

0:48 Oh, we are not just going slide past Astarion and Halsin like that, especially when the active decision was made to make them look that way🤭

Such a good video

re: Sombra's hacking icon I want to say that there's precedent for a visual association between skulls and hacking, but the fact I can't think of any examples speaks to how non-ubiquitous it would be if my statement is even accurate. Without the context of Sombra a skull might suggest poison or some sort of "doomed" status effect like in Final Fantasy (only a couple FF games actually use a skull for that, I just bring it up to explain what I mean by doomed), though the geometric shapes of Sombra's symbol do imply a technological aspect

you could also make an argument for the use of the cross to indicate healing that it can also be interpreted as a plus sign, which is not inappropriate since healing Makes A Number Go Up (that number being your health)

amazing video as always! I'm interested if you've seen matpats recent video about how to teach someone how to game focusing more on the controls and inputs. his steps were really straightforward and I wonder if there's a similar way to teach some basic ideas (ie cross=health) and layer new symbols on top of those? this also reminds me of the Gaming for a non gamer series where the creator has realized how many things seem instead to people who game which might not make sense to people who haven't dealt with those symbols before.

Yes swords bard ! I picked the same class for my first playthrough haha. J guess the gays like the funny singing class and pushing people off in chasms with thunderwave and pushing flourish. ! Ok but on the sibject of the video I am actually Studying concept art ( gay artist shocking) and visual communication is so important, I've seen my peers crack their heads trying to create some poster for an assignement and get bad grades because it was either too literal or too complicated to understand not enough information being transmitted etc. It's so important for so many jobs. Advertisement, artist, Lawmakers pretry much every job that requires interactions with people be it direct or indirect.

THE RED CROSS HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH CHRISTIANS? Im sorry but that seems so wierd to me i never made that asosiation

Hi girly pop where have you beeen, I've missed your vids

always a good day when my favorate twink vtuber scholar posts