Trigger Happy
Videogames’ special virtue of interactivity, though, vastly increases this technological dependence until it attains a quality of symbiosis. You are perforce a happy accomplice. For though you can appreciate a photograph or watch a film quite happily without being able to operate a camera or movie projector, you cannot play a videogame without using the technology yourself.
Now as far as we can tell, human beings have been playing games for a very long time. We have so far looked back a mere century and considered videogames’ place in a technological history. But one would expect that some or other aspect of play is represented in game forms throughout civilized time.
Veni, vidi, lusi
The earliest games that we know of from ancient records are of two basic kinds: contests of, say, spearthrowing through rolling hoops, and board games of chance. The first is clearly socially useful, as a hunter society does well to the extent that accurate spearthrowing ensures a plentiful supply of food for the community. In modern industrial civilization, such aptitudes are no longer essential for survival, but humans for some reason still derive pleasure from
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