Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Stephen Poole (2000)

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Trigger HappyVideogames and the Entertainment
RevolutionStephen Poole (2000)
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• Outline
• 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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Theyre here
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Demographics

• 61 of U.S. videogame players are 18
• 42 U.S. computer game players 35
• - interactive digital software associations
  video and pc games industry trends survey, 2000

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Videogames are Americas favorite leisure
activity.
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Videogames were named the favorite form of
entertainment by Americans.

• 2x TV
• 3x Cinema
• 3x Books
• 6x Rental movies
• - Interactive Digital Software Associations
  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?
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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 (FMVs)

• 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 players actions
• spectator is protagonist
• current slot of plot cant 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-screengod-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

• 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 Invaders distant descendant

• Ikaruga