Abstract
Fireworks in games translate the sensory power of a real-world aesthetic form to the realm of digital simulation and gameplay. Understanding the role of fireworks in games can best be pursued through through a threefold aesthetic perspective that focuses on the senses, on art, and on the aesthetic experience that gives pleasure through the player’s participation in the simulation, gameplay and narrative potentials of fireworks. In games ranging from Wii Sports and Fantavision, to Okami and Assassin’s Creed II, digital fireworks are employed as a light effect, and are also the site for gameplay pleasures that include design and performance, timing and rhythm, and power and awe. Fireworks also gain narrative significance in game forms through association with specific sequences and characters. Ultimately, understanding the role of fireworks in games provokes us to reverse the scrutiny, and to consider games as fireworks, through which we experience ludic festivity and voluptuous panic.
Highlights
On March 9th, 2000, Sony released the fireworks-themed Fantavision (Sony Computer Entertainment 2000) in Japan as one of the very first titles for its new Playstation 2
Hit a home run in Wii Sports (Nintendo Co. 2006), or complete a track in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (Amusement Vision Ltd 2006), and you will be rewarded with a burst of digital pyrotechnics
Teasing out a fuller account of the contribution of fireworks to games is best sought through a threefold aesthetic perspective (Niedenthal 2009) that focuses on the senses, on art, and on the aesthetic experience that gives pleasure through the player’s participation in the simulation, gameplay and narrative potentials of fireworks
Summary
On March 9th, 2000, Sony released the fireworks-themed Fantavision (Sony Computer Entertainment 2000) in Japan as one of the very first titles for its new Playstation 2. Approaching fireworks in games with reference to fireworks aesthetics and hedonic psychology allows us to propose that fireworks constitute a kind of pleasure primitive in games, punctuating the longer and more nuanced (fractal) trajectory of gameplay sessions, anchoring the unique pleasures and powers of particular game moments, and expanding the capacity for sensory disruption and “voluptuous panic” (Caillois 2001) in game forms. Fireworks acquire their power from their visual, aural, percussive and olfactory effects. Niedenthal Indoor Fireworks higher altitudes as the show moves towards its climax, gradually introducing more tension into the neck and back just as the explosive power of the shells peaks
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