Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

Games of the 1990s

During the 1990s, cinematic and televisual depictions shifted to present a more consistently troubling vision of games and gamers, often focusing on three general areas of antisocial behavior: addiction, violence and sexual repression. The terminal points of this discussion include two critical vectors in which I find grounds for hope. First is the legacy of games as potential catalysts for adolescent freedom and competence, which, although less common in the decades after the 1980s, is not entirely eradicated. Second is the appearance in the 2010s of a narrative counter-current in which video games play a productive role in the reconstitution of families and the domestic sphere, the very cultural formations that much of the moral panic surrounding video games supposes to be at risk.

Cultural associations between gaming and antisocial behavior have been supported by social scientific research, much of which presumes that games manifest causal "effects" on their players, which may be observed in the real world. It is beyond the scope of this project to recapitulate the body of theoretical writing that seeks to decenter the importance of "effects" research, but I would emphasize that I hope to actively distance this project from effects-based models whenever possible.

The 1990s also witnessed halting attempts by the film industry to produce adaptations of popular video game franchises. The first of these was Super Mario Bros. (1993), co-produced by Nintendo and released by Disney.

Emergent tropes: generational conflict; violence

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