Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 344)

Trigger Happy
346
good game. Conversely, a game built entirely from
abstract visual symbols can be a bad game if those
symbols do not interact in interesting ways. Tic-Tac-
Toe, played by arranging the abstract symbols X and O,
is a boring game for exactly this reason, as well as the
more general competitive reason that it is always a
draw. Beatmania, however, combines a mere four
symbols in compelling rhythmic ways and so is a good
game.
But a good videogame character—a well-designed
and attractive icon such as Sonic or Lara—can vastly
increase our enjoyment of the game. So how can these
two apparently contradictory claims be reconciled—on
the one hand, that iconicism is irrelevant to gameplay;
and on the other hand, that beautiful icons increase our
enjoyment?
Well, the hermeneutic (in videogames, mostly
iconic) and pragmatic (mostly symbolic) imaginations
are not mutually exclusive. For instance, when reading
a detective novel (hermeneutic), you are very likely to
try to figure out how (pragmatic) the hero should
proceed in his case. And the same is true of modern
videogames. They just require more sophistication on
our part to “read” them properly: hermeneutic
imagination for the gorgeous pictorialism, as well as