Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

film or a book, a videogame changes dynamically in response to the player’s input. Surely this must mean something drastic for the traditional concept of a story, authored jealously by one godlike writer? Two extreme responses, for example, might be: videogames are so radically different from stories that there can be no comparison; or videogames have the magical, catalytic ingredient that will change our very conception of what a story is.

Now some theorists, such as the designers I met in L.A., cleave to the latter view. They see in the unique quality of videogames a potential revolution, a liberation from the shackles of old, “linear” storytelling. How? Well, according to a speculative essay by Chris Crawford, “because the story is generated in real-time in direct response to the player’s actions, the resultant story is customized to the needs and interests of the audience, and thereby more than makes up for any loss in polish with its greater emotional involvement.” (But the telephone directory is “customized to the needs and interests of the audience” about as much as anything could be, yet it still doesn’t make me cry or laugh. There has to be something more to the idea of storytelling than that.) Interactive narrative, or interactive storytelling, it is

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