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Trigger Happy
261
you regard them as traditional static pictures. But as we
must keep reminding ourselves, videogames are a
kinetic art form: many of their pleasures can only be
realized through time. And on a very basic level, Pac-
Man and Lara do in fact share one important attraction.
If you swing the joystick to move Pac-Man around his
maze, he opens and shuts his mouth automatically
while on the move. If you press a button to make Lara
walk forward, she walks in a fluid, hip-swinging
motion that is the result of hundreds of frames of
painstaking digital animation.
These are both examples (one ancient, one modern)
of how characters give us videogaming pleasure:
through a joyously exaggerated sense of control, or
amplification of input. All you do is hold down a
button, and you get to see this wonderfully complex,
rich behavior as a result. This is one very basic
attraction of all types of interactivity, and it also seems
to be a near-universal pleasure among humans in the
modern industrialized world. Why do people enjoy
driving cars? Amplification of input: you just lower
your foot and suddenly you are moving at exhilarating
speed.
This kind of attractiveness is true of all good
characters in modern videogaming: a few simple
controls result in absorbing, complex movements.