Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

Games as Novelty

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 "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.

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