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Trigger Happy
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machine guns, guided missiles) that one so enjoys
playing with.
Metal Gear Solid, then, toys with the player’s
emotions in largely non-interactive ways, as a film
does. The future challenge is this: if videogames choose
to try to expand their nuances of emotional impact
interactively, they will need to become irreversible; yet
that means having a game system that is able to create
an interesting and evocative story even out of really
dumb decisions by the player, a huge and perhaps
insurmountable challenge.
To begin to guess how videogames might become
more sophisticated in the future, remember what they
are already really good at. Games will never be as good
as films at telling stories visually. They’ll never be as
good as books at weaving cerebral tapestries of ideas
and human lives. But videogames are already extremely
good at providing an exhilarating blast of the animal
emotions. Fear and triumph—that is why you play a
videogame at the moment. Jeremy Smith of Core
Design points out that these fundamental pleasures can
be traced right back to the beginning of the form. “Why
did we all play that stupid tennis game that used to burn
lines on our screens?” he asks, chuckling. “Because it
was actually just good fun to try