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Trigger Happy
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original environments so far in modern gaming have
been seen, ironically, in some of the worst products,
those triumphs of virtual tourism over symbolic
richness Myst and Riven, whose pleasurably organic
topography extrapolates inventively from the real,
natural world.
Another straightforward conclusion: videogames
need to play to their strengths. Shigeru Miyamoto said
exactly the same thing in September 1999: “The beauty
of interactive media is it is different from other types of
media, so we need to concentrate on those differences.”
In this instance, that means recognizing that whereas
film—at least naturalistic, “live-action” film—is tied
down to real spaces, the special virtue of videogames is
precisely their limitless plasticity. And only when that
virtue is exploited more fully will videogames become
a truly unprecedented art—when their level of world-
building competence is matched with a comparable
level of pure invention. We want to be shocked by
novelty. We want to lose ourselves in a space that is
utterly different. We want environments that have never
been seen, never been imagined before.