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.

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