Quick-Time Event

Prompt appears, a short window opens, and the correct button either continues the sequence or triggers a failure branch. Player has no positional control and no strategy, only recognition and reaction. Design value is that any authored animation, however complex, can be made participatory at almost no cost, which is why the technique attaches to scenes that would be impossible to build as real gameplay.

Dragon's Lair, produced by Advanced Microcomputer Systems in 1983, ran hand-drawn animation from a laserdisc, a medium that could play film but could not render anything. Only possible interaction was choosing which pre-filmed segment played next, so the game became a series of timed inputs against gorgeous footage. Term itself came later, from Shenmue, but the structure was fixed in the arcade in 1983.

Cheapness explains its persistence, since a studio can make a cinematic moment interactive by adding a prompt rather than a system. Same cheapness explains the contempt, because the input rarely expresses anything about the player beyond attention, and failure repeats a scene already watched. Modern use is mostly narrow, either as a deliberate gesture in interactive drama or as punctuation inside a real combat system.