Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 326)

Trigger Happy
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become predictable, and the element of pleasurable
surprise is lost.
A videogame designer must therefore consider the
large-scale distribution of such aspects of his game and
organize them to the best effect—then it will have good
tempo. A brilliant example of this aspect of design is
Resident Evil. Perhaps the greatest reason for the
game’s success is its virtuosic tempo: periods of
wandering through deserted environments with a
gnawing sense of unease are interrupted by startling
high-adrenaline events, such as a vicious dog monster
crashing through a window (see fig. 18). Tempo in this
game relies on creative alternations of suspense (not
giving you what you expect, holding back) and shock
(giving you what you don’t expect). As with its visual
style, Resident Evil’s tempo is also drawn from a movie
template. The tempo of Alien, for example, works in
exactly the same way: periods of nervous movement
through the Nostromo’s service ducts punctuated by
sudden, horrific appearances of the slimy xenomorph.
One final comment we can make on the timing of
videogames’ symbolic interactions is that just as games
have graphic resolution—the number of little dots or
pixels on the screen from which the image is