Trigger Happy
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Crisis 2. The player in such games is always cast, not as
a violent gun-toting maniac, but as a law-enforcing
agent of national security. The fictional calculus of
letting innocent hostages die versus killing terrorists
thus in some small way palliates the violent form.
Meanwhile, the arcade racing game Thrill Drive
displays a message to the player warning that in “real
life” he or she should drive carefully and respect other
road users. Interestingly, the game that tries so hard to
be a “realistic” simulation of careering down packed
motorways at 200 mph feels the need to remind the
player that it is only a digital fantasy—it’s not real,
after all. Videogames will become more interesting
artistically if they abandon thoughts of recreating
something that looks like the “real” world and try
instead to invent utterly novel ones that work in
amazing but consistent ways—because, as we have
seen throughout this book, a “realistic” simulation is
always built on a foundation of compromise anyway.
And this will also be an ethical improvement, for one
can revel unashamed in the joy of destruction all the
more if what is being incinerated could never possibly
exist.
A hint of what might be the ruling approach in the
future is provided by the fact that the central
