Trigger Happy:
Videogames and the
Entertainment
Revolution
Stephen Poole (2000)
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Outline
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Intro: Impact/prevalence
History
Genre
Videogames and Film
Narrativity
Refractions of Reality in Videogames
Play
The Symbolic Realm: A Case Study
Discussion
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“They’re here…”
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Demographics
• 61% of U.S. videogame players are
18+
• 42% U.S. computer game players 35+
- interactive digital software association’s video and pc games industry
trends survey, 2000
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Videogames are
America’s favorite
leisure activity.
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Videogames were named the
favorite form of entertainment by
Americans.
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2x TV
3x Cinema
3x Books
6x Rental movies
- Interactive Digital Software Association’s Video and PC Games Industry
Trends Survey, 2000
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Money Talks
• Movies: $7.3 billion box office receipts
• Videogames: $8.9 billion
– Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2000
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who do you know?
Quic kT i me™ and a T IFF (Unc ompres s ed) dec ompres s or are needed t o s ee thi s pi c ture.
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who do you know?
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who do you know?
By 1990, more children recognized
mario than they did mickey mouse.
- Stephen Poole, Trigger Happy (2000).
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Genres of Games
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Platform Games
Super Mario Bros 3
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Exploration Games
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
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Beat-em up:
Fighting Games
Virtua Fighter 4
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God Game
Sim City
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Strategy Games
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
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Sports Games
Virtua Tennis
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Role Playing Games
Chrono Trigger
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Puzzle Game
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo
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Film and
Videogames
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Full-Motion Video Sequences
(FMV’s)
• Linear narrative sequences interspersing
interactive, action oriented segments
• Meta narrative
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Similarities
• incorporate diachronic visuals and audio
• advanced sound technologies are used to increase "realism”
• ‘framed’ visuals
• "auteurs" - powerful directors who control the creative process:
Shigeru Miyamoto vs Stanley Kubrick
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Differences
• non-linearity
• explorable environments
• interactivity between player and music: music can
alert player and also react to player’s actions
• spectator “is” protagonist
• current slot of plot can’t refer to past
• control
• emotional/character development
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Good movies about games
• Disney's Tron - a movie about the secret life
of games.
• Wargames - a teen hacker looking to play
some games almost starts world war 3.
• eXistenZ - exploration of virtual reality &
multiplayer role playing games
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Failure of translation from
video games to film:
• Street Fighter: The Movie
• Super Mario Brothers
• House of the Dead
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Constructing realities: camera
shots
• 2d full-screen:‘god-like objectivity’
• Player-centered cams
• Player-controlled cams,‘creates on-screen world
rather than recording’
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constructing realities: types of
player-centered cams
• follow cam: behind, slightly above
– flying/driving games
• chase cam: lower view
• cockpit cam: shows virtual controls
• aerial cams: helicopter view
• shoulder cams: behind, lower shoulder view (Tomb Raider)
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A "cinematic" game: Silent Hill
• Most cinematic element: pre-rendered video,
rather than a part of the actual game.
• The only real cinematic aspect of the real
game is it's incredible atmosphere.
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Reflections vs. Refractions
• Death-health: binary vs. sliding scale
– power-ups
– extra lives
• videogame logic in causality, function, space
• Real vs. Virtual: the difference is an explicit,
intentional one
• Physical interaction: physical feedback (shaking
joysticks) and physically interactive games like DDR
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The Story
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Let there be light…
• The backstory as creation myth
– Identity
– Rationale
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Possible Worlds:
Choose Your Own Adventure
Interactive narrativity
•Delimited options
•Choices available at certain narrative junctures
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Memory: videogames and
interactive narratives
– Linear narratives allow for building of plot,
based upon past actions
– Interactive narratives are amnesiac
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navigation: beyond
the canvas
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wandering beyond the
canvas
• Looping scenery
• Scrolling
• Parallax scrolling
• Isometric scrolling
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Homo Ludens
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To play is human
• X-ray machines as carnival entertainment
• Mutoscope: handcranked cinema
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Taming modernity: work
station to PlayStation
• Play as an intrinsic means of constructing culture
• Segregation of play results in an “anomic and
impoverished world” (Johann Huizinga, 1938)
• Videogames are a means to coopting play, shift
from passive to active entertainment
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The symbol and the
symbolized
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I am what I eat
“A jaundiced figure floats across the screen. He is
constantly searching for things to eat. We are looking
at a neo-Marxist parable of late capitalism. With his
obsessively gaping maw, he clearly wants only one
thing; to feel whole, at peace with himself. He
perhaps surmises that if he eats enough -- in other
words buys enough industrially produced goods – he
will attain this state of perfect selfhood, perfect
roundnesss. But it can never happen. He is doomed
forever to metaphysical emptiness. it is a tragic fable
in primary colors.”
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“Neo-Marxist parable of late
capitalism”?
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The lexicon
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Symbol: representation
Icon: mimetic representation
Index: contextualized represenation
Floating signifier: meaning consists
entirely of change in rest of the signs
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The Language
• Pac-man the symbol (represents
consumption), the icon (looks like mouth)
• Toru Iwatani: his “form simply repsresents
the personification of eating” -- a partially
eaten pizza
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The Language
• Dots: pure symbols - things to be consumed
• Ghosts: symbolic, iconic and index (eyes)
• Blobs
– floating signifiers - meaning derived from how it affects
others
– “Power-ups” - magical liminal element in gaming,
subvert social order
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The end…
Death:
[His] “mouth opens wider and wider,
passing into the horizon and continuing,
until there is nothing left of him at all. In
his mania of consumption, he has eaten
himself”
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Critical Reception
• Theoretical premises
• Research techniquees
• Structure
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Discussion Questions
Lightguns vs. Fencing: What are the societal implications of violence in
videogames?
How interactive is a videogame? Is it really a subversive form of cultural
construction?
How many of us in the class play games? Casually?
Deeply? What impression of gaming do we have? What
will it take for games to achieve respectability?
If videogames "defeat" television, what will we
talk about at the water cooler? Will the
individualistic experience fracture popular culture? Or will multi-player
games actually build recreational comunities?
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A love story:
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…a game about death:
Silent Hill 2
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And a game about politics?
Japanese Sega CD Cover Art
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Space Invader’s distant descendant
Ikaruga
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