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must construct larger shapes—except the videogame
challenge is again a dynamic one, introducing time
pressure on the player.
And children have always made up their own
“exploration games,” playing, for instance, in a
deserted house and imbuing it with magical qualities.
Now the technological prosthesis afforded by a
videogame such as Tomb Raider or Zelda 64 allows
such activity to be far more complex and cognitively
challenging, so that the gamer really can, in Walter
Benjamin’s phrase, “calmly and adventurously go
traveling.” Again, Shigeru Miyamoto has said that he
draws his inspiration from childhood memories of
exploring the Kansai countryside around his home,
finding caves and hidden paths through the woods.
History also tells us that seeing people at play has
often angered those in power. In Saint-Omer in 1168,
gameplayers were pilloried; in Basel in 1386, a
backgammon player who had ignored an injunction to
avoid the game had his eyes put out; the same
punishment was common in fifteenth-century
Amsterdam; and in Germany players might have limbs
judicially amputated or be executed by drowning.
43
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43 For more on the bloody history of gameplayers’ persecution, see Alain
and FrÉdÉric Le Diberder,
L’Univers des jeux vidÉo.
