Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual 296

Trigger Happy

flow or anything else: cognitive scientists have shown that practicing complex sequences of finger movements actually rewires neuronal connections in the brain until they become automatic. A reduction in self- consciousness is naturally pursuant upon the observation that my critical “self” is no longer controlling my mechanical finger movements, so that I feel to that extent absorbed into the music itself. And exactly the same process operates in videogames.

So here are two important observations about videogame pleasure. Firstly, when you are really “in the groove” of a well-designed, fast-moving action game such as Robotron, Gran Turismo 2000 or Time Crisis 2, one of the reasons you feel so fluidly involved is that your muscle memory has taken over the mechanical business of operating buttons, joysticks, trigger or foot pedals. This clearly has important implications for videogame designers. A videogame with a clunky or overcomplex control system, such as G-Police—or, even worse, RC Stunt Copter45—is not as much fun to most players precisely to the extent that

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45 A good candidate for the title of most pointlessly difficult videogame of the decade, this “simulation” of a radio-controlled helicopter boasts such counterintuitive and oversensitive controls that even seasoned videogame critics switched off in sheer frustration.

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