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Trigger Happy
113
Another fairly recent cybernetic innovation has
certainly enhanced the “feel” of many videogames:
force feedback. Sony’s Dual Shock controller is so
named because the videogame can tell it to vibrate or
“rumble” in the player’s hands. This vibrational
feedback can be used in a driving game, to simulate the
shuddering of braking or a skid into a gravel pit; it can
add a physical dimension to damage done to the
player’s character by bullet or blunt instrument; in
Metal Gear Solid, a game that makes splendidly
creative use of this extra mode of information, it even
simulates the thumping of the main character’s
heartbeat when he is looking through the scope of his
sniper rifle—the rhythmical jittering of the control pad
justifiably makes it difficult to aim accurately. We can
expect that in the future controllers will provide more
subtle gradations of vibration, as well as physically
resisting the player’s movement and even, as
hypothesized in Kurt Andersen’s 1999 novel Turn of
the Century, changing temperature according to the
action onscreen.
Perhaps the most enjoyable recent cybernetic
novelty is that offered by Konami’s fabulously
eccentric Dance Dance Revolution (now known in the
West by the inferior title Dancing Stage), in which the