Trigger Happy
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Fig. 18. Resident Evil: a shocking moment ( 1997 Capcom)
built up—they also have temporal resolution, which
describes the fluidity or otherwise of the image’s
movement through time. Now if a videogame suffers
from “jerky” animation, in that there are too few frames
to the second, the player’s absorption into the
temporally based semiotic conversation will be injured;
it is analogous to having a conversation with a friend
who pauses briefly after every word he utters. Even
worse, in a high-speed driving or flying game, a low
temporal resolution is just not giving the player enough
information to make apt decisions. If you only
