Free your purchased eBook form adhesion DRM*! * DRM = Digtal Rights Management Trigger Happy VIDEOGAMES AND THE ENTERTAINMENT REVOLUTION by Steven Poole Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................ 8 1 RESISTANCE IS FUTILE ......................................10 Our virtual history....................................................10 Pixel generation .......................................................13 Meme machines .......................................................18 The shock of the new ...............................................28 2 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES ....................................35 Beginnings ...............................................................35 Art types...................................................................45 Happiness is a warm gun .........................................46 In my mind and in my car ........................................51 Might as well jump ..................................................56 Sometimes you kick.................................................61 Heaven in here .........................................................66 Two tribes ................................................................69 Running up that hill .................................................72 It’s a kind of magic ..................................................75 We can work it out...................................................79 Family fortunes ........................................................82 3 UNREAL CITIES ....................................................85 Let’s get physical .....................................................85 Let’s stick together...................................................95 Life in plastic .........................................................101 Out of control.........................................................109 4 ELECTRIC SHEEP ...............................................119 The gift of sound and vision ..................................122 Ciné qua non? ........................................................130 Camera obscura......................................................142 You’ve been framed...............................................153 5 NEVER-ENDING STORIES.................................161 A tale of two cities .................................................161 Back to the future...................................................166 How many roads must a man walk down . ........172 Erase and rewind....................................................176 Cracked actors........................................................181 Talking it over........................................................187 The play’s the thing ...............................................192 Tie me up, tie me down..........................................195 6 SOLID GEOMETRY.............................................199 Vector class............................................................199 The art of the new ..................................................204 Pushing the boundaries ..........................................206 Points of view ........................................................213 Being there.............................................................217 The user illusion.....................................................226 The third way .........................................................233 Brave new worlds ..................................................236 7 FALSE IDOLS.......................................................240 Dress code..............................................................240 Virtual megalocephaly ...........................................244 Gender genres ........................................................250 Character building..................................................258 Some say life’s the thing . ...................................267 8 THE PLAYER OF GAMES ..................................271 Tiny silver balls......................................................271 Power tools ............................................................276 Veni, vidi, lusi........................................................282 Get into the groove.................................................291 You win again........................................................298 9 SIGNS OF LIFE.....................................................307 I am what I eat........................................................308 Deep in conversation..............................................317 Time, gentlemen, please.........................................322 Say something else.................................................330 Information overlord..............................................339 Drawing you in ......................................................345 10 THE PROMETHEUS ENGINE...........................351 God’s gift ...............................................................351 Burn this.................................................................354 Bad company .........................................................356 Genesis...................................................................364 The final frontier....................................................367 In an ideal world ....................................................371 Virtual justice.........................................................378 The moral maze......................................................382 Ashes to ashes........................................................388 AFTERWORD..........................................................398 BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................411 INDEX ......................................................................418 ABOUT THE AUTHOR...........................................430 Trigger Happy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Eat pixels, sucker: this book grew out of an orphaned article to which Stuart Jeffries kindly gave a home. I am grateful to everyone who agreed to be interviewed: Paul Topping, Richard Darling, Jeremy Smith, Olivier Masclef, Nolan Bushnell, Terry Pratchett and Sam Houser. David Palfrey saved crucial passages of the manuscript from themselves. Jason Thompson phlegmatically suffered innumerable defeats at Tekken 3 and Gran Turismo, but turned the tables in Bushido Blade. He and Kate Barker also made constructive comments on the text. Dr. Mark Griffiths and Maugan Lloyd generously provided psychology material, Gavin Rees was a most hospitable guide to Tokyo, and I enjoyed useful conversations with Caspar Field, Mike Goldsmith, André Tabrizifar and Teresa Grant. My agent, Zoe Waldie, has been an oasis of profound calm and encouragement. Thanks also to Rev. Stuart Campbell and Chris Arrowsmith for expertly homing in on 8 Trigger Happy factual errors, and to Cal Barksdale and Danielle A. Durkin for their work on the U.S. edition. Trigger Happy owes much to the incisive attentions of its editor, Andy Miller: il miglior fabbro. Any infelicities or errors that remain I acknowledge mine. Readers are invited to email comments for future editions to: [email protected]. 9 Trigger Happy 1 RESISTANCE IS FUTILE Our virtual history In the beginning, the planet was dead. Suddenly, millions of years ago, arcane spontaneous chemical reactions in the primeval ooze resulted, by a freak cosmic chance, in the first appearance of what we now call “the code of life.” Formed in knotty binary strings, each node representing information by its state of “on” or “off” and its place in the series, the code grew adept at replicating in ever more complex structures. Eventually, the organizations of code became so dense that an overarching property emerged that could not be explained by reference to any of the constituent parts. This was “life” itself. The first videogame formed in the sludge. It was a simple organism, but a father to us all. Soon enough 10 Trigger Happy (in geological terms) videogames crawled out on to the shore, developed rudimentary eyes and legs, and gradually began to conquer Earth. Biologically speaking, early videogames were, as they are today, radically exogamous—that is to say, they did not replicate by breeding with each other, but with “humans,” a preexisting carbon-based life form whose purpose was, and still is, unknown but seemingly providential. If the videogame managed to impart particularly intense pleasure to a parasitic human during the reproductive act, the chances of its offspring surviving were enhanced. Obviously, videogames were programmed by Nature to be as promiscuous as possible: the more humans impregnated with code, the more likely that some of the next generation would survive to breed in their turn. The work of such genetic programming persists in the primeval substratum even of modern, sophisticated videogame civilization. Over this vast meander of time, the pressures of adapting to varied conditions prompted the formation of different genera and species of organism with different habitats, social structures and breeding strategies. The fittest survived. 11 Trigger Happy But nothing could be certain in the great evolutionary game. Some seemingly successful species found it impossible to adapt swiftly enough to catastrophic changes in the environment, and died out. They were the dinosaurs. (By copying their “code” and letting it gestate under laboratory conditions, however, we can actually bring these fossils to life again, and let them roam happy, if confused, in virtual amusement parks.) Nor was