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Trigger Happy
282
Videogames’ special virtue of interactivity, though,
vastly increases this technological dependence until it
attains a quality of symbiosis. You are perforce a happy
accomplice. For though you can appreciate a
photograph or watch a film quite happily without being
able to operate a camera or movie projector, you cannot
play a videogame without using the technology
yourself.
Now as far as we can tell, human beings have been
playing games for a very long time. We have so far
looked back a mere century and considered
videogames’ place in a technological history. But one
would expect that some or other aspect of play is
represented in game forms throughout civilized time.
Veni, vidi, lusi
The earliest games that we know of from ancient
records are of two basic kinds: contests of, say,
spearthrowing through rolling hoops, and board games
of chance. The first is clearly socially useful, as a
hunter society does well to the extent that accurate
spearthrowing ensures a plentiful supply of food for the
community. In modern industrial civilization, such
aptitudes are no longer essential for survival, but
humans for some reason still derive pleasure from