Magnavox Trigger Happy User Manual

 

Trigger Happy 

282 

 

Videogames’ special virtue of interactivity, though, 

vastly increases this technological dependence until it 
attains a quality of symbiosis. You are perforce a happy 
accomplice. For though you can appreciate a 
photograph or watch a film quite happily without being 
able to operate a camera or movie projector, you cannot 
play a videogame without using the technology 
yourself. 

Now as far as we can tell, human beings have been 

playing games for a very long time. We have so far 
looked back a mere century and considered 
videogames’ place in a technological history. But one 
would expect that some or other aspect of play is 
represented in game forms throughout civilized time. 

 

The earliest games that we know of from ancient 
records are of two basic kinds: contests of, say, 
spearthrowing through rolling hoops, and board games 
of chance. The first is clearly socially useful, as a 
hunter society does well to the extent that accurate 
spearthrowing ensures a plentiful supply of food for the 
community. In modern industrial civilization, such 
aptitudes are no longer essential for survival, but 
humans for some reason still derive pleasure from