Trigger Happy
it is so much harder to get past the initial mechanical demands.
Secondly, the optimal match of demands and skills that we looked at earlier is the other factor that contributes materially to the pleasurable loss of selfconsciousness, because if the brain is having to process a lot of information very quickly to keep up with the videogame’s challenges, it is clearly going to demote other considerations, such as keeping track of clock time or noticing that a foot has gone numb, right to the back burner until the challenges have been overcome.46
Videogames share deeply embedded aspects with many other sorts of games through history, yet they also share two components of pleasure with other common activities, such as piano playing, that are not usually considered “games” at all. (The videogame combines aspects of play and performance that nudge it in one sense nearer the family of sport. There are now regular world videogaming championships at
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46 Now that we have established this highly physical aspect to videogaming pleasure, by the way, it provides another nail in the coffin of the “interactive storytelling” dream. Nolan Bushnell, the father of videogaming, made this incisive point to me: “The big problem with interactive storytelling is a basic conflict. When telling a story one wants the listener to abandon his body and space and be swept along in a new place, time or world. When you ask a person to make a decision, you push that person back into his own body.”
