Trigger Happy
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aesthetic compost for supposedly “filmlike”
videogames? No one has yet claimed that a videogame
is like a good comedy film (though it may be funny in
other ways, as is Grim Fandango, a rococo
puzzlesolving RPG with delightful cartoonish
graphics), or that a videogame tells a heartbreaking
romance. The answer is that the horror genre can easily
do away with character and plot; it is the detail of the
monsters, the rhythm of the tension and shocks, that
matter. Plot and character are things videogames find
very difficult to deal with.
The fact is that Silent Hill and Resident Evil
resemble each other far more than they resemble any
film you care to name. But will this necessarily always
be the case, or could the much-hyped “convergence”
between films and videogames become a reality?
The gift of sound and vision
Videogames are superficially like films in one major
respect, which is that they communicate to the player
through eyes
and
ears. Just as film crews include
specialized audio technicians for the post-production
dubbing of sound effects, the sound design of
videogames too is a mini-art in itself, and development
companies also employ composers to provide musical
