Meaning and action are complementary principles in the gaming activity and literary form called the “quest”. So argues Jeff Howard in his recent Digital Humanities Quarterly article, “Interpretive Quests in Theory and Pedagogy“. By quest, he means a journey in search of meaning, a journey that can include goal oriented activities if it takes place in a game world. Meanings can be functional and thematic. Functional meanings have to do with game tasks and things. Thematic meanings have to do with stories, which are about people and emotions. Quests mediate between storytelling and game play only to the extent that meanings go beyond utility. He suggests how.

A revised understanding of quests can help to mediate between games and narratives by showing strategies by which game designers have created meaningful action, often in ways that are either unconsciously similar to or inspired by the literary traditions of mythology, epic, and romance. Specifically, game designers can use level design to create labyrinthine spaces that encode thematic implications, in the tradition of literary allegory.

He goes on to give interesting examples his students constructed in his own teaching experiences.