Trigger Happy
from traditional cartoons into videogame development. Musicians who might once have become television or film composers are now writing videogame soundtracks, and there is even such a beast as the professional videogame scriptwriter. There’s a huge amount of thought and creativity encoded on to that little silver disc. And aesthetics, by which I mean in the most general terms the systematic study of why we like one painting or one film more than another, cannot ignore this bizarre digital hybrid.
The original Greek meaning of “aesthetics” refers to things that are perceived by the senses. Modern videogames—dynamic and interactive fusions of colorful graphic representation, sound effects, music, speed and movement—are unquestionably a fabulously sensual form; furthermore, the simple fact is that some videogames are better than others, yet so far no serious attempt has been made to understand why. Videogames are an increasingly pervasive part of the modern cultural landscape, but we have no way of speaking critically about them. The noisy lightshows competing for attention in living rooms around the globe appear as some kind of weird, hermetic monolith: mysteriously exciting to the initiated, baffling to the non- player. But both kinds of people are
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