Trigger Happy
Time, gentlemen, please
Remember that a videogame is not a static “text”; it is a dynamic form. And since videogames operate through time, another constituent of good symbolic conversation is obviously going to be its rhythm, or how the symbols combine over time.
The importance of rhythm is exemplified most nakedly in a style of videogame that was hugely popular at the 1999 Tokyo Game Show, which relies completely on it, combining a handful of symbols with complex temporal interaction. As we saw earlier, Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution shows combinations of four arrows floating down the screen; when they reach the bottom line, the player must step on the corresponding arrows of a sensory floormat beneath the feet, in time to the banging techno music from the loudspeakers. Hundreds of young Japanese men and women were lining up to show off their skills at this game, practicing their moves groovily in line. The best of them combined the moves required by the game with their own creative gestures and twirls.
Beatmania, meanwhile, consists of five large buttons (styled like half an octave of a piano keyboard) and a mock DJ turntable; similarly, various
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