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Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

A domestic video arcade signifies evil in Never Say Never Again

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Games of the 1980s A comparatively forgiving vision of video games is articulated by Hollywood throughout the decade of the 1980s, but it is important to make a distinction between the depiction of arcade and PC games vs. home console games during this period. Generally speaking, PC games are presented as coextensive with the emerging world of computer programming -- a technical skill with economic and professional rewards -- as distinct from home console games, which are strictly used for entertainment and therefore more closely linked with TV watching, a distinction that would grow increasingly stark in the decades that followed. Although "computer experts" were commonly featured in Hollywood narratives of the PC-era, the association of computer "hacking" with criminal activity was not codified in Hollywood until the early 1990s. During the 1980s, in fact, computer skills were often non-judgmentally linked with gaming skills, and PC-based game systems were seamlessly repurposed to other ends. In the early 1980s, on screen video game play was still enough of a novelty to warrant extended sequences of computer generated animation, as in Superman III (1983). What appears to be game play in the film is actually supposed to be a computerized rendering of a simultaneous, real-world showdown between Superman and a villain (Robert Vaughn), who operates a room-sized supercomputer dubbed, "The Ultimate Computer." Although these animated sequences were produced by Atari in anticipation of a video game release, the intended game was never completed due to the video game industry crash of 1983. Conceived at the dawn of the PC-era, the U.K.-produced Superman III portrayed Richard Pryor as an idiot-savant with a natural ability to program and design computer systems. In Never Say Never Again (1983), a Bond villain's ostentatious display of wealth, evil and eccentricity is underscored by the fact that his opulent home includes a full-scale video game arcade featuring dozens of Atari machines. These arcade games prove to be merely the backdrop for a customized home gaming system that is ultimately used to provoke a contest of masculinity with James Bond (Sean Connery). In this centerpiece showdown sequence, the videogame obsessed, sociopathic villain (Klaus Maria Brandauer) challenges Bond to a public video game contest, the stakes of which are a large sum of money donated to charity or a single dance with Brandauer's girlfriend (Kim Basinger). The elaborate two-player system designed by Brandauer, titled "Domination" also delivers electric shocks to the loser, amplifying the hypermasculine aspect of the challenge. Although it is an unconventional interpretation of the concept of a home gaming console, the obsessive and ruthless associations of this game within the narrative context of the film make it consistent with Hollywood's stereotypical denigration of home gaming systems. An automotive version of Pac Man is compared unfavorably to computers by the artificial intelligence agent KITT in the 1983 episode of Knight Rider titled "Soul Survivor." Created by Glen A. Larson, Knight Rider (1982-86) was an NBC road genre adventure series starring David Hasselhof and his computerized, artificially intelligent talking car. During a narratively inconsequential sequence at the opening of the episode, Hasselhof is playing Pong on the dashboard computer monitor while the car drives itself. The pedantic KITT chides Hasselhof for his incessant game playing, to which he retorts, "I thought you'd appreciate my getting into computers." KITT responds condescendingly, "Playing a video game where circles eat blobs is hardly 'getting into computers.' A computer is a sophisticated, very complicated piece of equipment." Although this car-based version of Pac Man is not a typical "home console" (though the on-screen game play is clearly from Atari's home version of the game) its intrusion on the domestic relationship between Michael Knight and his talking car makes it eligible to be considered a prescient example of Hollywood's characteristic antipathy toward console games. Cloak and Dagger (1984) Games inadvertently catalyze family bonding
Novelty The inclusion of long sequences of full-screen game play in movies of the 1980s must be situated in the context of the concurrent introduction of computer generated imagery into visual effects sequences in feature films. Prior to the early 1980s, the technology for transferring computer generated images to film was prohibitively expensive, difficult and outside the realm of competence for the existing generation of visual effects artists accustomed to conventional animation and analogue compositing techniques. For audiences of the early 1980s, the very fact of videographic images appearing on the big screen represented a novelty in movie theaters. Viewed from the perspective of contemporary digital culture, these scenes often seem to go on much longer than is justified by their limited contributions to the narrative of a given film or TV show.

For example, a narratively inconsequential videogame play sequence precedes the primary action of Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987), which implicitly favors reading and cinematic storytelling over videogame play. The fantasy-adventure story read by a grandfather (Peter Falk) to his grandson (Fred Savage) and the cinematic action it conjures dramatically eclipse the novelty of the protracted gameplay sequence of the Accolade game HardBall! that opens the film. By comparison with the live action fantasy adventure offered by the cinematic rendering of the book's narrative, the low res graphics of the HardBall! game played on a small television screen across the room seem visually unimpressive. The trajectory from the opening game play sequence, designed to capture and mislead audience expectations to a lavish cinematic spectacle provides evidence of the conflicted and transitional relationship between games and film during this period. The film also marks a particular moment in the emerging gender politics of games as a boy-dominated market, as Fred Savage initially resists the central Princess Bride narrative as a "kissing film," but is ultimately drawn into the surrounding adventure. Falk's character, likewise goes to great lengths to position the story as part of the boy's masculine heritage, as a story that was passed down from father to son for several generations. The overtly feminized narrative of the film stands in stark contrast to the implicit masculinity of the HardBall! game.

The cinematic tactic of opening a feature film with full-screen videogame play is continued in Penny Marshall's fantasy comedy Big (1988) with a fictional text adventure game called "Cavern of the Evil Wizard." The precredit opening of the film shows a 12 year old boy playing a video game on a home PC but he is interrupted before finishing it. After being transported into the body of a grown man, he later completes the game but is deprived of the satisfaction he would have experienced had his childhood gameplay not been interrupted by the (literal and metaphorical) intervention of adulthood. Except for the presumed novelty of beginning the film with full-screen game play, this bland but ultimately uncritical depiction of a PC game indicates that games were becoming increasingly integrated into the domestic life of white, suburban, middle-class Americans, but like the comparatively unsatisfying experience of videogame baseball in The Princess Bride, the crude animation and laborious text input of the game in Big, continue to serve as a reminder of the ultimate superiority of cinema for visual entertainment.

Extended sequences of on-screen video game play also appeared in Superman III (1983). What appears to be game play in the film's final showdown is actually meant to be understood as a computerized rendering of the synchronous, "real-world" showdown between Superman and a villain (Robert Vaughn), who operates a room-sized supercomputer dubbed, "The Ultimate Computer." Although these animated sequences were produced by Atari in anticipation of a video game tie-in with the film, the intended game was never completed due to the video game industry crash of 1983. Conceived at the dawn of the PC-era, the U.K.-produced Superman III portrayed Richard Pryor as an idiot-savant with a natural ability to program and design computer systems, but the film remained anachronistically anchored to a mainframe-era mentality that the most powerful computers were also the largest. Pryor's discovery of an innate programming ability also shackles the film to an era of digital mystification that the PC revolution had already begun to erode.

In Never Say Never Again (1983), a Bond villain's ostentatious display of wealth, evil and eccentricity is underscored by the fact that his opulent home includes a full-scale video game arcade featuring dozens of Atari machines. These arcade games prove to be merely the backdrop for a customized home gaming system that is ultimately used to provoke a contest of masculinity with James Bond (Sean Connery). In this centerpiece showdown sequence, the videogame obsessed, sociopathic villain (Klaus Maria Brandauer) challenges Bond to a public video game contest, the stakes of which are a large sum of money donated to charity or a single dance with Brandauer's girlfriend (Kim Basinger). The elaborate two-player system designed by Brandauer, titled "Domination" also delivers electric shocks to the loser, amplifying the hypermasculine aspect of the challenge. Although it is an unconventional interpretation of the concept of a home gaming console, the obsessive and ruthless associations of this game within the narrative context of the film make it consistent with Hollywood's stereotypical denigration of home gaming systems.

An automotive version of Pac Man is compared unfavorably to computers by the artificial intelligence agent KITT in the 1983 episode of Knight Rider titled "Soul Survivor." Created by Glen A. Larson, Knight Rider (1982-86) was an NBC road genre adventure series starring David Hasselhof and his computerized, artificially intelligent talking car. During a narratively inconsequential sequence at the opening of the episode, Hasselhof is playing Pac Man on the dashboard computer monitor while the car drives itself. The pedantic KITT chides Hasselhof for his incessant game playing, to which he retorts, "I thought you'd appreciate my getting into computers." KITT responds condescendingly, "Playing a video game where circles eat blobs is hardly 'getting into computers.' A computer is a sophisticated, very complicated piece of equipment." Although this car-based version of Pac Man is not a typical "home console" (though the on-screen game play is clearly from Atari's home version of the game) its intrusion on the domestic relationship between Michael Knight and his talking car makes it eligible to be considered a prescient example of Hollywood's characteristic antipathy toward console games.