Trigger Happy

become predictable, and the element of pleasurable surprise is lost.

A videogame designer must therefore consider the large-scale distribution of such aspects of his game and organize them to the best effect—then it will have good tempo. A brilliant example of this aspect of design is Resident Evil. Perhaps the greatest reason for the game’s success is its virtuosic tempo: periods of wandering through deserted environments with a gnawing sense of unease are interrupted by startling high-adrenaline events, such as a vicious dog monster crashing through a window (see fig. 18). Tempo in this game relies on creative alternations of suspense (not giving you what you expect, holding back) and shock (giving you what you don’t expect). As with its visual style, Resident Evil’s tempo is also drawn from a movie template. The tempo of Alien, for example, works in exactly the same way: periods of nervous movement through the Nostromo’s service ducts punctuated by sudden, horrific appearances of the slimy xenomorph.

One final comment we can make on the timing of videogames’ symbolic interactions is that just as games have graphic resolution—the number of little dots or pixels on the screen from which the image is

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Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual