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• 1 2014-08-26T10:49:03-07:00 Games of the 1990s 55 Cultural anxieties and responses plain 89274 2016-09-07T11:07:09-07:00 During the 1990s, cinematic and televisual depictions shifted to present more anxious visions of games and gamers, focusing on the potentials for antisocial behavior and the widening gap between generations raised on different types of media and technology. Cultural associations between gaming and antisocial behavior are sometimes supported by social scientific research arguing that games are able to manifest causal or associational "effects" on their players -- especially related to violence -- 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 my desire to actively distance this project from effects-based models whenever possible. Instead, I hope to use this media survey to diagnose the cultural anxieties and antagonisms evinced by film and TV when representing games and gamers at specific moments in time.
  
  In 1994, public pressure succeeded in establishing a central entity for rating the contents of video games. The social movement that led to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) in 1994 was formed partly in response to improvements in the graphic capabilities of video games and the corresponding emergence of graphically violent games such as Mortal Kombat (Midway 1992). The 1990s also witnessed the first specific 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. In spite of the continuing popularity of Nintendo's game franchise, Super Mario Bros. the movie failed at the box office. Hollywood eventually reconciled its desire to capitalize on the popularity of games by eschewing video game aesthetics in favor of loose tie-ins with well-established action and horror genres such as the Street Fighter, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil franchises.
  
  In the absence of more broadly successful strategies for adapting games to the big screen, games shifted from the 1980s convention of playing "starring" roles (e.g., Tron, The Last Starfighter, The Wizard) to the more modest convention of making "cameo" appearances that are contained by a conventional cinematic narrative. As less central narrative elements, games and gamers on film were more readily subjected to critique or ridicule, as seen in the following paths devoted to Generational Conflict, Addiction and Banality. Nonetheless, 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.