Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

good game. Conversely, a game built entirely from abstract visual symbols can be a bad game if those symbols do not interact in interesting ways. Tic-Tac- Toe, played by arranging the abstract symbols X and O, is a boring game for exactly this reason, as well as the more general competitive reason that it is always a draw. Beatmania, however, combines a mere four symbols in compelling rhythmic ways and so is a good game.

But a good videogame character—a well-designed and attractive icon such as Sonic or Lara—can vastly increase our enjoyment of the game. So how can these two apparently contradictory claims be reconciled—on the one hand, that iconicism is irrelevant to gameplay; and on the other hand, that beautiful icons increase our enjoyment?

Well, the hermeneutic (in videogames, mostly iconic) and pragmatic (mostly symbolic) imaginations are not mutually exclusive. For instance, when reading a detective novel (hermeneutic), you are very likely to try to figure out how (pragmatic) the hero should proceed in his case. And the same is true of modern videogames. They just require more sophistication on our part to “read” them properly: hermeneutic imagination for the gorgeous pictorialism, as well as

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