Trigger Happy

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Ground-breaking account of the cultural history and impact of videogames, from Pong and Space Invaders to Tomb Raider and Tekken.

Videogames are here to stay. It is now more than a quarter of a century since the appearance of the first commercially available videogame, Pong. Now the profits on blockbuster games are measured in terms of the first weekend’s millions, like those of mass-market films. Sony estimates that nearly 1 in 5 UK households has a Playstation; worldwide sales of its console have topped 30 million. Videogame design is now the subject of accredited BSc degrees at universities. The market domination by British based videogame companies is one of the success stories of the decade.

Yet videogames are still seen as a compromised art-form, derivative at best, actively harmful at worst. In Trigger Happy, Steven Poole asks the question: If this is an artform, what kind of an artform is it? Where did it come from, and where is it going?

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Steven Poole's substantial examination of the world inside your console combines an exhaustive history of the games industry with a more subtle look at what makes certain kinds of games more engaging than others. For example, what works in which genres--the RPG (role-playing game) versus the god game--and the relationship of video games to other forms of media.

A writer and composer, Poole makes the case that video games--like films and popular music--deserve serious critical treatment. "The inner life of video games--how they work--is bound up with the inner life of the player. And the player's response to a well-designed video game is in part the same sort of response he or she has to a film, or to a painting: it is an aesthetic one". Trigger Happy is packed with references not just to games and game history but to writers and theorists who may never have played a video game in their lives, from Adorno and Benjamin to Plato. At times this approach verges on the pedantic, dwelling at length on points that will seem obvious to serious gamers ("We don't want absolutely real situations in video games. We can get that at home"; "The fighting game, like fighting itself, will always be popular"). Nonetheless, Poole's book may be favoured bedside reading for both the keen gamer and the armchair philosopher looking to understand this cultural phenomenon.--Liz Bailey

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Videogames are here to stay. It is now more than a quarter of a century since the appearance of the first commercially available videogame, Pong. Now the profits on blockbuster games are measured in terms of the first weekend’s millions, like those of mass-market films. Sony estimates that nearly 1 in 5 UK households has a Playstation; worldwide sales of its console have topped 30 million. Videogame design is now the subject of accredited BSc degrees at universities. The market domination by British based videogame companies is one of the success stories of the decade.

Yet videogames are still seen as a compromised art-form, derivative at best, actively harmful at worst. In Trigger Happy, Steven Poole asks the question: If this is an artform, what kind of an artform is it? Where did it come from, and where is it going?