Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

Colophon

We should be wary of historical models that imply causal relations or direct reflection between the real world and the worlds depicted on film and television. The goal of this project is not to prove that the rising economic threat of the games industry in general -- or home consoles in particular -- motivated individuals or institutions in Hollywood to systematically work to discredit video games. A great many more factors certainly influence the content of films and TV shows and it is my hope to avoid making assertions that are overly deterministic or historically reductive. However, I believe these questions are worth taking seriously and it is only by viewing the original media themselves that an informed hypothesis may be made. Although the media samples included in this project are not exhaustive by any means, I have made every effort to include as many clips from the most diverse range of sources possible (given the project's parameters), dating back to 1973.

I hope it is self-evident from the project's framing as an annotated/narrativized media archive that my goal is not a scientific evaluation of the media under consideration here. Certain concepts such as the "cultural imaginary" would easily elude any desire for proof that my interpretation is true or data in support of my claims. Instead, I invite reader-viewers to investigate the arguments and observations put forward here not as definitive or exclusive readings, but as interpretive beginnings, which I hope will be generative of further discussion and research.

Finally, I recognize that this project contains a large number of clips -- probably too many to expect any individual reader to watch them all. Therefore, whenever possible, the argument put forward in each "path" of the project has been conceived with minimal dependence on adjacent sections. My hope is that this will enable readers to explore the project according to their own areas of interest instead of necessarily following the linear arguments presented by the sequence of paths in this article.

Readers are encouraged to undertake their own investigation of the broad range of media included in the project chronology. The collection of clips included in this article constitute a sub-archive within the critical media sharing site Critical Commons, where all original media files may be downloaded for further use or investigation. In addition to the various paths featured in this project, readers are invited to explore the full collection of media samples via the Media Chronology page. Finally, readers are encouraged to deploy the Main Menu drop-down in the upper left of each page to jump to individual paths or pages in any order.

This page has paths: