Trigger Happy
Crisis 2. The player in such games is always cast, not as
aviolent gun-toting maniac, but as a law-enforcing agent of national security. The fictional calculus of letting innocent hostages die versus killing terrorists thus in some small way palliates the violent form.
Meanwhile, the arcade racing game Thrill Drive displays a message to the player warning that in “real life” he or she should drive carefully and respect other road users. Interestingly, the game that tries so hard to be a “realistic” simulation of careering down packed motorways at 200 mph feels the need to remind the player that it is only a digital fantasy—it’s not real, after all. Videogames will become more interesting artistically if they abandon thoughts of recreating something that looks like the “real” world and try instead to invent utterly novel ones that work in amazing but consistent ways—because, as we have seen throughout this book, a “realistic” simulation is always built on a foundation of compromise anyway. And this will also be an ethical improvement, for one can revel unashamed in the joy of destruction all the more if what is being incinerated could never possibly exist.
A hint of what might be the ruling approach in the future is provided by the fact that the central
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