Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
Page 319
Trigger Happy
321
exercising the pragmatic imagination. And indeed, we
can say that a videogame is better as its symbolic
conversation becomes more interesting.
The aesthetic importance of symbols to videogames
is played on in the commercial sphere too, in marketing
imagery. The four “action” buttons on the right of the
PlayStation control pad are identified purely by abstract
symbols: circle, square, triangle and X. These symbols
have become so closely identified with the PlayStation
and PlayStation2 hardware that Sony can release
advertisements that identify themselves as such only by
having the four symbols somewhere on the page. One
particularly inventive image, “Lovely Buttons” (press
advertisement, 1999), simply shows a young man and
woman in tight Tshirts, staring with blank sexual
confidence into camera. Upon closer inspection, what
appear to be their protuberant nipples are actually tiny,
solid PlayStation symbols poking through the fabric.
The advertisement carries no other information, textual
or otherwise, to identify the brand as Sony. The
symbols are all.