''Trigger Happy'' is a book by
Steven Poole, examining
videogames in terms of their
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
appeal - what makes certain games more
fun to play than others. It covers aspects such as the effective use of
space and
perspective in videogames, rewards and progression through games, the
design of an appealing
video game character and the debate over
violence in games.
In different editions (published by
Fourth Estate () and
Arcade Publishing (), it has had the
subtitle
Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informati ...
s ''The Inner Life of Videogames'' and ''Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution''.
''Trigger Happy'' was released for free in
pdf format under a
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license in 2007. The book may be downloaded from the author's website.
See also
*
Video game studies
Game studies, also known as ludology (from ''ludus'', "game", and ''-logia'', "study", "research"), is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a field of cultural studies that deals with a ...
*
List of books on computer and video games
The following is a list of books about video games, which range from development, theory, history, to game art design books.
Business
; ''Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made'': () by Ja ...
External links
''Trigger Happy''a
Steven Poole official website
2000 non-fiction books
Books about video games
Creative Commons-licensed books
{{videogame-book-stub