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Quick guide to Trigger Happy
“What is the inner life of video games? Where did they come from, and where are they going? Could we even consider them an art form?”
Trigger Happy examines from a UK perspective, the world of the home video games console, the history and development of the games industry, what works in which genre and what makes certain types of games more immersive than others.
The first chapter gives an overview of how consoles and games took off in the home from their early creation through to the growth and success of the playstation in the 1990s. It speeds through marketing successes of games and franchises and also glosses over Plato’s definition of ‘play’ & ‘utility’ in regards to games, asking the questions “where do video games fit in the history of play?” and can gaming be classed as an art form due to a player’s aesthetic response to a game.
Chapter 2 goes on to cover the history of video games. From the creation of the first video game (a rudimentary tennis game drawn on an oscilloscope by an analogue computer in 1958), through Pong and coin-operated arcade machines such as space invaders to the evolution of home consoles in the 1980s and 1990s. Each genre of video game is described with its characteristics and gameplay using best examples from each game genre.
Further chapters go on to cover topics such as how video games are like films, story telling and narratives in games, graphics and the visualisation of objects shapes and images, characters in video games, the associated evils of video games, and the players’ development of skills required to progress through and complete a game.
Published in 2000 it refers frequently to the Playstation 2 and the state of the games industry at the start of the last decade, but it gives a great insight into the culture and growth of video games as an entertainment form using references to theorists and writers in a simplified and understandable language
I found this book to be a great beginner’s introduction and a generally interesting read. I particularly found the chapter “Solid Geometry” interesting to me as it talks about the use of vectors and polygons and the evolution of game graphics with the evolution and development of new methods and technologies.
“The Prometheus Engine” gives a good review of critic’s reactions and typical attitude that violent games will train and turn players into murderers and looks at several examples of murders that have been partially blamed on games having an influence.
I found this book generally easy to read through and take in, and found it useful that it focused primarily at the UK games industry, history and culture. I would like to see an updated version with new case studies and analysis of newer technologies and trends but in all this book manages to cover “the inner life of video games” very well.
Ludology
Narrative vs game... Eskelinen argues that we should think of narrative and game / interactivity as entirely different things.
He says:
“A sequence of events enacted constitutes a drama, a sequence of events taking place a performance, a sequence of events recounted a narrative, and perhaps a sequence of events produced by manipulating equipment and following formal rules constitutes a game.?
Sure we might question the unproblematic application of traditional narrative theory to games as texts, but we might also wonder whether his categorisations here don’t circumscribe the definition of narrative a little too much? Is drama not narrative? And, this definition of game (manipulating of equipment, formal rules) could easily describe the process of making a video. Maybe ‘making media’ is a form of game?
Tags: game ludology narrative narratives-4
Useful concepts for talking about games and play
Caillois' very influential book has a very useful set of concepts which gives us the tools to talk about play and games in an analytical way.
He defines paidia and ludus as contrasting tensions in all games: paidia is the open-ended, freeform, spontaneous, joyous, improvisational, exploratory nature of play; ludus, meanwhile, capture the rules-based structures that many games are based around.
Alongside this 'spectrum', we also have categories or 'classes' of games: agon - games of skill; alea - games of chance; ilinx - vertiginous risk-taking; and mimicry - performance, acting out, part-playing.
Of course, many games and much play may intermingle aspects of any or all of these categories. Chess may by pure agon, while poker mixes agon and mimicry (poker faces and strategy) and alea (the random shuffling of the cards) and maybe even ilinx (the thrill of the gamble).
Crucial reading for grasping basic tools to understand play, and essential to understanding later approaches to ludology.
Tags: game ludology narrative narratives-4 play