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

trigger happy * sunny yoon and anthony saunders

Trigger Happy:Videogames and the

Entertainment Revolution

Stephen Poole (2000)


Outline

• Intro: Impact/prevalence• History• Genre• Videogames and Film• Narrativity• Refractions of Reality in Videogames• Play• The Symbolic Realm: A Case Study• Discussion


“They’re here…”


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


Videogames are America’s

favorite leisure activity.


Videogames were named the favorite form of

entertainment by Americans.

• 2x TV• 3x Cinema • 3x Books • 6x Rental movies

- Interactive Digital Software Association’s Video and PC Games Industry Trends Survey, 2000


Money Talks

• Movies: $7.3 billion box office receipts

• Videogames: $8.9 billion

– Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2000


who do you know?

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.


who do you know?

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.


who do you know?

By 1990, more children recognized mario than they did mickey mouse.

- Stephen Poole, Trigger Happy (2000).


Genres of Games


Platform Games

Super Mario Bros 3


Exploration GamesThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time


Beat-em up: Fighting Games

Virtua Fighter 4


God Game

Sim City


Strategy Games

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance


Sports Games

Virtua Tennis


Role Playing Games

Chrono Trigger


Puzzle Game

Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo


Film and Videogames


Full-Motion Video Sequences (FMV’s)

• Linear narrative sequences interspersing interactive, action oriented segments

• Meta narrative


• 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

Similarities


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


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


Failure of translation from video games to

film:

• Street Fighter: The Movie

• Super Mario Brothers

• House of the Dead


Constructing realities: camera shots

• 2d full-screen:‘god-like objectivity’

• Player-centered cams

• Player-controlled cams,‘creates on-screen world rather than recording’


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)


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.


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


The Story


Let there be light…

• The backstory as creation myth

– Identity

– Rationale


Possible Worlds: Choose Your Own

Adventure

Interactive narrativity

•Delimited options

•Choices available at certain narrative junctures


– Linear narratives allow for building of plot, based upon past actions

– Interactive narratives are amnesiac

Memory: videogames and interactive narratives


navigation: beyond the

canvas


wandering beyond the canvas

• Looping scenery

• Scrolling

• Parallax scrolling

• Isometric scrolling


Homo Ludens


To play is human• X-ray machines as carnival entertainment

• Mutoscope: handcranked cinema


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


The symbol and the symbolized


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.”


“Neo-Marxist parable of late capitalism”?


The lexicon• Symbol: representation• Icon: mimetic representation• Index: contextualized represenation

• Floating signifier: meaning consists entirely of change in rest of the signs


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


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


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”


Critical Reception

• Theoretical premises

• Research techniquees

• Structure


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? Whatwill it take for games to achieve respectability?

If videogames "defeat" television, what will wetalk about at the water cooler? Will theindividualistic experience fracture popular culture? Or will multi-player games actually build recreational comunities?


A love story:


…a game about death:

Silent Hill 2


And a game about politics?

Japanese Sega CD Cover Art


Space Invader’s distant descendant

Ikaruga

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

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