Trigger Happy
why the wonder induced by videogames should not enjoy a similar motivational power. Early videogame designers were inspired by imagery from comics, films and paintings. Now that videogames enjoy a general popularity and pervasiveness easily comparable to those media, we should be prepared to discover that, just as Percy Bysshe Shelley was moved by wonder to write odes to the forces of nature, so future videogames might plant seeds of inspiration in people who then become painters, architects, animators or videogame designers themselves.
That is the good news, the utopian possible future. But here is the bad news, the embryonic dystopia: how videogames might darken our inner lives. As an industry, videogames will have to choose which side they’re on. Because videogames’ powerful creative potential incurs a weighty responsibility too. To illustrate this, let me tell you one last little story about the difference between reality and simulation. It is a theme that we’ve seen in many different contexts: physics, artistic perspective, Japanese fishing games; it has been at the heart of some of the major arguments. But it is not just a nice intellectual puzzle.
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