Trigger Happy Steven Poole review by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu) Created: Mar 31, 2005 Updated: Apr 21, 2005 http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/triggerhappy.txt I read Trigger Happy so you don't have to (Zube as Scrubbing Bubble?). Frankly, unless your time is nearly valueless, look elsewhere. This book is a mess. It tries to make several arguments about how video games should be, what designers should do and pleads, nay demands complete freedom in some games, sometimes, but maybe not and oh, here's a quote from Wittgenstein's _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_. Poole takes 86 breathless pages to get to this: "For the moment, it is hard to see how videogames and movies could ever converge without losing the essential virtues of both." and takes another ten pages to reach this: "... the thing about FMV is that they are completely predetermined." and along the way we see some typical pitfalls: * pictures have inane captions * subheadings have a forced theme _In my mind and in my car_, _Might as well jump_, _Sometimes you kick_, _Two tribes_, _It's a kind of magic_, _Let's get physical_ are all section headings. Very clever, perhaps, for a 9th grade school report. * _Joystick Nation_ and _Game Over_ are either praised, quoted from, or both * dropping words I admit that I'm not the brightest star in the sky, but when a book uses the words and terms: avant la lettre Kindertotenlied soi-disant petit mort in the first 56 pages, it sends me running to my dictionary, tripping over everything except, well, clarity. The second-worst part of the book is Proof by Assertion. There are possibly 50 or more instances in its 242 pages where the author asserts something as fact. Did you know videogames are boring to watch (except for Crash Bandicoot)? Yes, it's true and it can all be yours for one assent. The worst part of the book is the ugly scraping sound of the goalposts moving. Here's my interpretation of the book: B: Hey, did you know that movies and books aren't like video games? Z: Really? B: It's true. Hang on while I take 100 pages to explain it. Ok, got it? Z: ZZZZZZz, oh, yes! B: Now, why can't games have total freedom? I want to be able to blow that door up. Z: Well, it's difficult to create a world that is nearly equivalent to this world without recreating this world, no? It might even be impossible. B: Sure, it may be hard but it should be done. But I don't want total freedom. Z: Why not? B: Because sometimes freedom is boring. And reality can be boring. Video games take shortcuts, you know. Z: No! B: Yes, I don't want them to take shortcuts. But sometimes they have to and this is good. Z: Wait ... B: Sometimes you don't want reality. Aren't you listening? Because things like laser fights between spaceships wouldn't be fun if they followed the laws of physics. Z: So what you are saying is ... B: "The signs at bottom left, meanwhile, furnish symbols (numbers) for altitude, but again provide the same information indexically, as an arrow pointing to subdivisions of a meter rises and falls. Top center is the player's radar, which works as a triumvirate of all three semiotic modes: symbolically, because each (green or red) dot is agreed to stand for a civilian or enemy craft; indexically, because the red triangle "points to" the next mission objective; and iconically, because the whole arrangement is a simplified "picture" of local space." (p. 198.) Z: Uh, ... B: Sometimes game designers will make games *better* than reality. Because we don't want our reality too real, or that's boring. But I don't want functional incoherence. "Anything that looks like a door, I should be able to open unless it's locked, or break it down if it's made of rotting wood; if its hinges are visible I should be able to blow them off with a shotgun." "Let's see no more spatial incoherence either. If I can climb that wall, I should be able to climb up that tree." Z: Ah! I see. Whenever a designer must make a decision about how real a game should be and what parts of reality must be modeled without compromise, the designer should pick up the phone and call the author and ask him. He can then say that the reality of physics in space is boring, so don't bother, but the reality of using the splinters of blown-up doors to clean the wax out of our hero's ears, or to pick a lock or to fashion a beanie propeller is interesting and should be modeled exactly. Then the designer will know exactly where the goalposts are at the moment. That's what you want, right? B: Yes, and as Wittgenstein states, "Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same", so if that's good enough for me, that's good enough for you. Z: Nods .... off and hits head on table while quickly wishing table wasn't real. That exchange is a not a little unfair as I have most certainly cherry-picked from the book. Still, IMHO it accurately sums up the feel of the book. One thing that is good about _Trigger Happy_ is this idea, which I think is brilliant: "One can imagine, for instance, a far more ambitious game along the lines of Tomb Raider, in which adventures in different times and places would be rendered in the appropriate [artistic] style. Tomb raiding among the freshly built pyramids would draw the world in the statuesquely side-on, information-stuffed mode of ancient Egyptian art; Lara's exploits in early twentieth-century Paris would present objects as fabulous collages of their shapes apprehended under different viewing angles ...." Thank you for that. I'd like to say it was worth the price of the book, but, alas, cannot.