Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 277)

Trigger Happy
279
In this, videogames are again part of a larger
tradition: this time, that of the technological
prostheticization of play in general. Tennis, for
example, has been transformed over the past few
decades by material racquet technologies and
stringdampening. Serious chess players routinely use
computer analysis and million-game CD-ROM
databases to prepare for matches, or to work on
correspondence games. Golfers may avail themselves
of carbon-fiber clubs and balls coated with space-age
Kevlar, so that they fly more truly through the air. The
whole running shoe industry is predicated on a promise
that an extra air pocket, say, will somehow make you
run faster. And serious running is now itself in part a
game of numbers made possible only by timing devices
that count in the thousandths of a second.
Role-playing videogames began as a technological
prostheticization of the Dungeons & Dragons board
game, with the computer taking over the onerous
duties of numerical calculation. Many videogames
have arisen in this way, building on preexisting game
formats. Time Crisis, for instance, the lightgun game,
is at heart nothing more than a technologically
enhanced version of fairground duck-shooting with
airgun pellets, except that whereas the latter retains