Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

Interestingly, some of the first technical demonstrations of Sony’s PlayStation2 console in Tokyo concentrated on animating the muscles of a highly detailed human face in exactly the same way. In this purely cosmetic respect, it is true that videogames are converging with films.

The commercial praxis of the two industries is also looking more and more similar. The relative simplicity of computer and videogame systems in the 1970s and 1980s meant that a game was often written by just one person over a period of a few months. The graphics design, gameplay design and programming were all done by the same red-eyed multitasker, and some of them—Matthew Smith, Andrew Braybrook, Geoff Crammond, David Braben—became wealthy stars. Videogames had a relatively long period in which the auteur theory was actually true.

But now all that has changed. Just as a film is a collaborative effort between many different

specialists—director, cinematographer, actors, composer, set designer, costumier, dolly grip, best boy and so forth—so videogame “studios” today employ concept designers, animators, 3D artists, tool developers, programmers, composers, writers, character designers and a host of other experts in

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