Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 262)

Trigger Happy
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3 is an idealized amalgam of body-building action
grunts such as Schwarzenegger and martial arts movie
heroes.
A good videogame character is one that the player,
because of a fulfilled combination of dynamic and
iconic criteria, likes—just as we like cartoon characters
such as Sylvester the Cat or Cartman. But since the
character is under our control, if we like him (or her)
we must also feel somehow protective, and anxious lest
we cause the character harm through our own manual
inadequacy. And so a good character, as well as being
aesthetically pleasing, constitutes one very strong
motivation for playing the videogame well: you want
Mario to overcome his surreal obstacles; you want Lara
to escape from those pesky dogs; you want Sophitia to
hack Rock to bits. Jeremy Smith of Core Design
remembers how Tomb Raider nearly featured a man:
The original script and graphics that were done, it just was
Indiana Jones, and I said, “Christ, you can’t do that—
we’ll be sued from here to Timbuktu!” And they said,
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. We’ll work on it.” And
then literally two weeks later we had another project
meeting and there was this babe there. I said, “It’s a
woman—what are you doing?” and they said “No, it’s