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Trigger Happy
134
relatively hermetic fields. The first stage in
development of a videogame at British designers Core,
for example, consists of the writing of several hundred
pages of a “Game Design Document,” which is rather
like a (nonlinear) script for a film: the game’s
characters are introduced through drawings and verbal
sketches; the gameplay concept is elaborated; and
example situations are described. A top game will now
take around two years to develop, with a budget of
anything up to tens of millions of dollars—which is
Hollywood blockbuster money. And the rewards can be
equally impressive.
Meanwhile, Japanese videogame giant Square
moved the other way, making an entirely digital feature
film based on its best-selling Final Fantasy games.
Videogames and the cinema nowadays certainly look
like close media competitors.
Perhaps this perceived competition is one reason
why, when videogames themselves feature in films,
they are so often shorthand for moral or cognitive
vacancy, or actual destructive tendencies. Russ Meyer
shows a woman playing Pong at the beginning of
Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens precisely to
indicate her anomie and lack of sexual interest in her
partner. Meanwhile, the superb slice of 1980s teen