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Bad Object 2.0: Games and GamersMain MenuIntroductionBad Object 1.0: TelevisionHollywood's critique of TVGames of the 1970sThe earliest depictions of video games on filmGames of the 1980sExperimentation and dispensationGames of the 1990sCultural anxieties and responsesGames of the 2000sViolence, sexuality and social normativityCounter-currentsExceptions and reconfigurationsMedia ChronologyA chronological gallery of all media included in this projectSteve Anderson3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805G|A|M|E Journal
Videogames as geek seduction in Hackers
12014-09-03T08:24:12-07:00Steve Anderson3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a80530251Videogames and gender competition are coextensive with 1990s teenage technology hackingplain2014-09-03T08:24:12-07:00Steve Anderson3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805
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12014-09-05T14:17:07-07:00Steve Anderson3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805Media ChronologySteve Anderson23A chronological gallery of all media included in this projectstructured_gallery2014-09-09T07:35:30-07:00Steve Anderson3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805
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12014-09-04T14:49:28-07:00Generational conflict10plain2014-10-07T09:34:08-07:00Instances of generational conflict that emerged in the depiction of video games on film and television during the 1990s took multiple forms, including cultural anxieties about the emergence of new social behaviors and associations among game players. These fears, which resonate with previous generation's concerns over previous "new" technologies such as television and comic books, resulted in both industry policies to regulate exposure and a variety of contested responses in the cultural sphere.
In Toys (1992), Robin Williams discovers that his family's toy company is developing war games for children to play that are being used in real world military missions. The children in this scene, who believe themselves to be innocently playing videogames are in fact blowing up real people and military targets. This is typical of the Hollywood critique of games, in which players are consistently victimized, hyperviolent and stripped of any real world agency by game manufacturers. Toys reinforced a vision of game and toy manufacturers as a paternalistic industry "entrusted" with creating products that would not harm children.
In spite of the film's focus on emerging technologies of the 1990s, videogames play a relatively minor role in Iain Softley's Hackers (1995). However, games play a key role in an initial gender-based competition cum romance between teenage hackers played by Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller. When Miller defeats Jolie at a public arcade version of Wipeout (Psygnosis 1995), it sparks a rivalry that can only be resolved through a competition in computer hacking and ultimately by the two teaming up to defeat a cynical black hat hacker and systems administrator (Fisher Stevens). As is often the case with videogame narratives on film, on-screen gameplay is used as a surrogate for the relatively non-visual activities of computer programming. Unlike video games, which had fully entered the visual vocabulary of Hollywood by mid-decade, depictions of computer programming still ranged from real-time keyboard typing of The Net (1995) to extremes of psychedelic, 3D motion graphics that appear in several different scenes of Hackers, drawing overt parallels between the fluidity with which the film's teenage cast is able to traverse urban spaces and digital environments, as compared with the constipated physical and technological blockages of older generations.