Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

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.

An early example may be found in a 1981 episode titled "Trapdoors" of the buddy detective series Simon & Simon.  Created by Philip DeGuere, Simon & Simon ran for eight seasons on CBS and focused on the contrasting personal and professional styles of two brothers in business as Private Investigators in San Diego, California. Although the show was not overly invested in narratives about emerging technology, the series' creator DeGuere (who wrote the screenplay for "Trapdoors" early in the first season) went on to create the series Whiz Kids (1983-84), which aired for just one season on CBS, about four teenagers who use their knowledge of computers to solve crimes. Where Whiz Kids presumably drew its inspiration from the commercial success of WarGames (1983), focusing on high school students, "Trapdoors" featured a considerably younger child computer prodigy (Robbie Rist), who benignly diverted large sums of money from a bank. When questioned about his online activities, the boy describes playing fantasy games "like Dungeons and Dragons, only better." He goes on to explain how he figured out how to divert funds from the bank after simply "play(ing) with the machine a lot." Instead of pressing charges against the boy, the bank officer offers him a job, noting, "anybody as good with computers as you are is not going to have to worry about earning money."

Steven Lisberger's Tron (1982) presented a uniquely personified vision of the functioning of software programs within a computer game system, via anthropomorphized characters and epic narrative struggles. Cinematically, the interface between operator and system combined the mundane drudgery of command line typing with visual spectacles of computer generated imagery in the context of a 3D video game world. The Walt Disney produced Tron also represented a symbolic point of origin for attempts to capitalize on corporate tie-ins between products of the film and games industries. Although Disney was disappointed by the relatively low box office returns for the movie, multiple games derived from the film outperformed film sales and kept the franchise alive long enough to warrant production of the sequel Tron Legacy in 2010.

The character played by Matthew Broderick in John Badham's WarGames (1983) accidentally stumbles into a defense department mainframe via phone modem while searching for games to play on his personal computer. Although he brings the world to the brink of nuclear destruction, Broderick's character remains exempt from condemnation within the narrative logic of the film. The same youthful experimentation that nearly resulted in catastrophe also provided the unconventional thinking that ultimately averts nuclear holocaust by trusting the artificial intelligence of the computer to learn about the futility of nuclear war by playing Tic-Tac-Toe. A likeable, white, middle class, suburbanite, Broderick's character would serve as a prototype for Hollywood's more forgiving treatments of gamer-hackers. However, Broderick's emotionally stable, nice-guy computer prodigy figure was destined to become increasingly rare, as both hackers and gamers grow increasingly linked with antisocial and criminal behavior in the decades that followed.

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.

Following the success of Tron in 1982, Glen A. Larson created the ABC TV series Automan (1983-84), a direct competitor with DeGuere's Whiz Kids, until both series were cancelled after just one season in 1984. The character Automan was an artificial intelligence agent, able to traverse the real and digital worlds by means of holography. Automan also poses as a Federal Agent to assist in crime solving in conjunction with his creator, the police computer specialist played by Desi Arnaz, Jr.  Stereotypes of 1980s popular culture (from which Automan derives most of his knowledge about human culture and behavior) abound in this campy, derivative sci-fi comedy that is nonetheless symptomatic of its moment in the evolution of games on film and television. In a nod to the increasingly familar conventions of personal computing, Automan is accompanied by a virtual sidekick named "Cursor," a floating polygon capable of "rezzing" digitally generated objects into the physical world. Automan thus occupies a transitional space in the emerging genre of cinematic and televisual games, deploying tropes of both video game culture and the early PC-era. Although they had many features in common, Automan and Whiz Kids took oppositional approaches to the depiction of games and computers on screen. Whereas Whiz Kids attempted to stay close to the reality of early 1980s home computing, Automan freely traversed the boundaries between fact and fiction; technology and fantasy.

Cloak and Dagger (1984)

In the low-budget, youth-oriented feature film Night of the Comet (1984), Regina, a teenage girl played by Catherine Mary Stewart, uses her work time in a movie theater to play video games, provoking the ire of her boss during unnecessarily protracted game play sequences of the Atari game Tempest. In addition to using her video game prowess to resist doing menial chores in the theater, Regina is saved from destruction when a comet strikes the earth because she is having sex with her boyfriend in the theater's projection booth. Contrary to the narrative conventions of mainstream teen movies of this era, both video game skills and teenage sex are rewarded rather than punished. The film also does not hesitate to position Stewart as the undisputed champion of the Tempest game, causing her to be upset when a male challenger's initials appear among the top ten scores of the game. A similar scene recurs a decade later in the movie Hackers (1995), when Angelina Jolie's top score is beaten by her future love interest Johnny Lee Miller. However, the character of the sexually liberated girl gamer played by Stewart in Night of the Comet reverts to more traditional gender roles the very next year, when Stewart is relegated to the role of the neglected girlfriend in The Last Starfighter (1984). Decades later, when Hollywood returns to the narrative conceit of video games superceding romantic relationships in films such as The Breakup and Couples Retreat, home consoles may be seen to play a very different role than the exo-domestic arcade consoles of The Last Starfighter.

In The Last Starfighter, a teenage video game prodigy (Lance Guest) earns the adulation of his intergenerational trailer park community by breaking the high score record on the Last Starfighter arcade game, not realizing that the game was being used by an alien civilization to recruit expert players to assist them in an intergalactic war in the real world. The sequences of simulated game play were produced by Atari in anticipation of a Last Starfighter video game release that fell victim to the game industry crash of 1983. Although they are being used to cultivate teenage military competence -- a problematic conceit that returns in Toys (1992) and Ender's Game (2013) -- the general framing of videogames as catalysts for teenage competence and independence from parental or societal control is uniquely characteristic of the decade's dispensation toward games and their potential for positive impact on real world social behavior. Released the same year as the McIntosh computer (which was memorably marketed as a device capable of delivering the masses from totalitarian bondage), The Last Starfighter tapped into nascent PC-era cultural fantasies of technology as a means of improving one's social status.

In D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), an android boy who has lost his memory begins to suspect he is not an ordinary human when he turns out to be an expert player of the racing game Pole Position on an Atari home computer system. In this protracted sequence of game play,  D.A.R.Y.L. reveals the film industry's fascination with the emerging genre of computer-generated imagery and its willingness to profit from association with video games in popular culture. Narratively, D.A.R.Y.L.'s video game playing skills demonstrate their value when he turns out to be an expert car driver in the real world, allowing him to escape from his military creators. As D.A.R.Y.L.'s social skills and self-knowledge improves -- essentially reforming his autistic-like social tendencies to more socially acceptable behavior -- he is ultimately integrated into his adopted family as if he were an ordinary child.

Even during the games-positive decade of the 1980s, few films achieved the level of synergy seen in Todd Holland's The Wizard (1989). Created through a close collaboration between Universal Pictures and game manufacturer Nintendo, the film presented audiences with their first glimpse of  both Nintendo's newest version of the popular Super Mario Bros. franchise and its now infamous Power Glove controller. Although it comes close to decade's end, The Wizard offers perhaps the most unwaveringly boosterish vision of games culture, featuring multiple, protracted sequences of on-screen game play featuring Nintendo titles, leading up to a climactic showdown in which contestants play Super Mario 3 as a spectator sport at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Audience reactions to the final competition offer a final moment of redemption and familial bonding toward the withdrawn videogame prodigy who turns out to be using games as a way of working through a trauma related to his sister's death.

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