Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 101)

Trigger Happy
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drama.
18
In a universe where guns have infinite
ammunition and spacecraft infinite fuel, it is life itself
that becomes a resource whose loss is survivable.
Yet a videogame “life” is not just a resource but
also a possible reward. Games such as Defender or
Space Invaders offer “extra lives” when a certain score
is achieved (usually a multiple of ten or twenty
thousand). It resembles an ethically inverted form of
Buddhism. In the Eastern philosophy, if you commit
wrongs, your growing karmic debt means you are
constantly reincarnated into a new existence in order to
suffer anew. But whereas Buddhism’s final aim is to
jump off the exhausting carousel of constant
reincarnation and to be no more, life in a videogame is
always a good thing, and killing is the morally
praiseworthy action required to resurrect it. The fact
that simple survival edges the player closer, as the score
increases, to an extra life argues that—as Nietzsche
would have growled through his mustache after half an
hour at the Robotron controls—what does not destroy
you makes you stronger.
The concept of multiple videogame “lives,” then,
bespeaks an arena of strategic experimentation in
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18 The claim that classical drama was born from the gameplaying instinct
is made persuasively in Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens.