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The Multiplayer Game: User Identity and the Meaning Of

The Multiplayer Game: User Identity and the Meaning Of

THE MULTIPLAYER : USER IDENTITY AND THE MEANING OF

HOME IN THE , 1972-1994

by Kevin Donald Impellizeri

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History

Fall 2019

Copyright 2019 Kevin Donald Impellizeri All Rights Reserved

THE MULTIPLAYER GAME: USER IDENTITY AND THE MEANING OF

HOME VIDEO GAMES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1972-1994

by Kevin Donald Impellizeri

Approved: ______Alison . Parker, Ph.. Chair of the Department of History

Approved: ______John A. Pelesko, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Approved: ______Douglas . Doren, Ph.D. Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education and Dean of the Graduate College

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______Katherine . Grier, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation.

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______Arwen P. Mohun, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______Jonathan Russ, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______Carly A. Kocurek, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

“We are overwhelmed by our very human need to a web of meaning where there may be none.” -- Edward Roivas, : Sanity’ Requiem, dir. Denis Dyack (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada: , 2002).

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without the encouragement, support, and kindness of the people mentioned here, this work would not have been possible.

To my partner, Katherine Lynch, who was with me through the entire process, even when it stretched the limits of the “better or worse” part of our vows.

To my parents, Donald and Patricia Impellizeri, who taught me the value of hard work and fostered a lifetime love of learning.

To the members of my comprehensive exam and dissertation committees: Peter

Kolchin, David , Jonathan Russ, Arwen Mohun, and Carly Kocurek. Special thanks to Katherine C. Grier, my patient advisor who saw this project through to despite long bouts of silence, imposter syndrome, and personal turmoil.

To Wilson Carey McWilliams and Julio Nazario, who encouraged me to pursue my academic dreams wherever they led, and to Susan Strasser, who taught me to make every word count.

To my family and friends, who have put up with me for longer than I deserve.

To the attendees of conferences and talks where I had the opportunity to share parts of my research. These include the 2010 History Graduate Student Association

Conference at North Carolina State University, the 2010 James A. Barnes Club Graduate

Student Conference at Temple University, a 2012 talk on communities at

Drexel University’s .W. Hagerty Library, the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Popular and American

Culture Association (MAPACA) Conference, and the 2014 Annual Meeting of the

Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). Thank you all for your time, attention, and constructive questions and comments.

To my colleagues and friends at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Fort

Mifflin on the Delaware, and The College of Physicians of Philadelphia who tolerated my constant talk about video games with patience and grace. Much of the work that went into the pages that follow came in the cellblocks of a historic prison, the casements of a

Revolutionary War fortress, and the break room of a medical history museum. Special thanks to Jacqui Bowman, a mentor, , and friend, who encouraged me to “just get the thing done.”

Thank you to my colleagues and friends in the Department of History at the

University of Delaware who looked at drafts during various stages of this project. Special thanks in that regard to Jon Donovan, Ben Reiss, Grace Patterson-Leatherman,

Keith Minsinger, and Elizabeth Jones-Minsinger.

To everyone over years who offered their personal histories with video games.

Even if they did not consider themselves “gamers,” I was surprised to learn the ways people connected with certain games throughout their lives.

In fact, there is only one aspect of this project for which I can truly take full credit: the mistakes. They’re all mine.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………ix ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...xi

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1

Chapter

1 PLAYING THE PAST THROUGH THE “ OF THE FUTURE”: THE FIRST GENERATION OF HOME VIDEO GAMES, 1972-1976…………………………………………………………34

"The Latest Craze—Electric Games": The First Home Video Game Boom…………………………………………………………………………36 "The New Electronic Hearth": Video Games and the American Nuclear Family……………………………………………………………….42 "For Anyone, Young and Old...At Any Time, for Any Occasion": Video Games and Middle-Class Leisure……………………………………………53 “The Premature Arrival of the Future”: Video Games and Cultural Anxieties over Computers……………………………………………………64 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...78

2 DESIGNING GAMES AND GAMERS: THE EVOLUTION OF GAME USERS, 1977-1993…………………………………………………………..79

"Have You Played Today?”: Video Gaming, 1977-1984……………...81 The “World of ”: Video Gaming, 1985-1990…………………….113 “Playing with Power” and “Doing What Nintendon’”: Game Users during the “Console War”………………………………………………….147 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….153

3 “THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE COMPUTERS”: THE FALL AND RISE OF THE HOME VIDEO GAME SYSTEM, 1982-1985……..155

Chasing the Chuck Wagon: The Rise and Fall of Home Video Games……158 Video Game Systems “ Keyboards”………………………………...171 ’s Hammer Falls: The Collapse of the American Home Video Game Market……………………………………………………………….192 From “Family Computer” to “Entertainment System”: Nintendo and the Rise of the Gaming Machines………………………………………...... 202 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….212

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4 BITS, , AND BUGS: VIDEO GAME HOBBYISTS AND THE , 1978-1986………………………………….214

“The Home Entertainment Sensation”: A History of the Bally Astrocade…………………………………………………………………...220 Hackers, Hobbyists, and Wumpus Hunters: Computer Hacking and the Rise of Male Suburban Leisure…………………………………………238 The “Astrocade Underground”……………………………………………..254 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….285

5 “WAKE UP, MOM AND DAD, THIS ISN’T PAC-MAN ANYMORE”: THE MORAL PANIC OVER VIDEO GAMES, 1993-1994…………………………………………………………………..287

“Let’s Face It—We're Getting it from All Sides”: Video Games and Controversy, 1976-1993……………………………………………………292 “You Don’t Just Play Pac-Man, You Are Pac-Man:” Interactive Media and the “Epidemic of Violence”……………………………………305 “You Are Profiting Off Of the American Child:” The December 9, 1993, Hearing……………………………………………………………………..326 “Your Mom Hates 2:” The Aftermath of the Hearings, their Legacy and the Impact of the ESRB………………………………………..348 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….357

CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………..359 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………..382

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: The “family circle” surrounded around the Odyssey 200 in a 1975 Magnavox catalog………………………………………………………..44 Figure 1.2: Family circle depicted on the packaging for the Wonder Wizard……….45 Figure 1.3: Box for the Venture Video Sports Model VS-7 depicting the family circle……………………………………………………………………..46 Figure 1.4: The …………………………………………………73 Figure 1.5: Wonder Wizard model 7702, released by General Home Products in 1976…………………………………………………………………...74 Figure 1.6: The Atari Video Computer System, released by Atari in 1977………….75 Figure 2.1: Ms. Pac-Man marquee………………………………….100 Figure 2.2: The Atari Secret Handshake……………………………………………106 Figure 2.3: Advertisement for the "Grand Stand."………………………………….109 Figure 2.4: Pitfall “Explorers’ Club” patch………………………………………...111 Figure 2.5: The ... (Robotic Operating Buddy) peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System with attachments to play the game Gyromite…..121 Figure 2.6: Microplay ad depicting computer games as the successor to the model railroad for father-son bonding………………………………….132 Figure 3.1: and Keyboard Component…………………………175 Figure 3.2: The Odyssey3 “Command Center.”…………………………………….182 Figure 3.3: Mattel Intellivision II, with cassette player, keyboard, and a VCS attachment…………………………………………………….186 Figure 3.4: Atari’s proposed keyboard attachment for the Video Computer System…………………………………………………………………..187 Figure 3.5: The “Kid’s Controller” with an overlay for Oscar’s Trash Race……………………………………………………………...189 Figure 3.6: Nintendo Advanced Video System on display at the Store, …………………………………………...205

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Figure 3.7: The Nintendo Entertainment System, released by Nintendo in 1985 and 1986, with controller……………………………………………….208 Figure 4.1: The Bally Computer System, a variant of the Bally Professional Arcade, originally released by Bally Manufacturing Company in 1978………………………………………………………………….218 Figure 4.2: Bally Home Library Computer games, such as the 1979 pinball game Bally Pin, ran on cartridges that resembled audio cassette tapes in size and shape………………………………………………….223 Figure 4.3: Bally Home Library Computer attached to the Add-On component from a 1978 product catalog……………………………….227 Figure 4.4: An advertisement for Nam-cap, developed by New Image…………….265 Figure 4.5: Advertisement for the Blue Ram expansion unit, developed by Perkins Engineering…………………………………………………….270 Figure 4.6: The VIPER System 1, developed by Alternative Engineering…………271 Figure 4.7: A 1977 Apple II advertisement depicting the computer in a suburban ………………………………………………………..273 Figure 5.1: , released by Nintendo in 1995…………………………….317 Figure 5.2: The , released by Mattel in 1989………………………….318 Figure 5.3: A “” finishing move from the home adaptation of for the Genesis…………………………………………...329 Figure 5.4: Gameplay footage from for the Sega CD depicting the vampiric “Augurs” shambling through the trap-laden house……….331 Figure 5.5: Sen. Joseph Lieberman brandishes the “Justifier” pistol at the December 9, 1993, hearing on video game violence…………………...335 Figure 5.6: Packaging of the version of Mortal Kombat 3 bearing the M (Mature) ESRB rating…………………………………...356

ABSTRACT

This dissertation analyzes the changing meanings surrounding home video game usage and consumption during the first two decades of their commercial presence in the

United States. It explores the evolution of home video games as technological devices, consumer goods, and popular culture from 1972 to 1994. It also examines the evolution of video game users, focusing on the changing target demographics of game manufacturers and advertisers as well as changing perceptions of video game usage and ownership from non-industry observers, such as journalists, lawmakers, educators, social scientists, and media activists, as well as the users themselves. I argue that, conceptually, the identity and meaning of video games and game users were shaped by a wide variety of historical actors who offered competing, even contradictory interpretations of what it meant to own and use video games. While the adolescent male “gamer” emerged by the

1990s as the predominant identity associated with video game usage, his preeminence was far from a foregone conclusion.

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INTRODUCTION

A viewer settling in for some evening programming in 1972 may have come across a commercial for the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game system in the United States. “This is Odyssey, the new electronic game simulator,” the narrator explained in one early commercial, “You attach Odyssey to your television set in seconds to create a closed-circuit electronic playground.” Viewers saw an adult couple, man and woman, sitting in their living room, each holding the system’s boxy controllers for a friendly game of tennis. Screen shots demonstrated the various games available through the system—Roulette, Football, Hockey, Analogic, States—as the players changed from the adult couple to two young children, a boy and a girl. “Odyssey comes complete with twelve and educational experiences,” the narrator explained, promising the eventual release of additional games. By the end, the entire family was in on the action, gathered together to play Haunted House: mother and daughter share a controller, as do father and son. “Odyssey is a total play and learning experience for all ages.

Odyssey: it’s new from Magnavox.” Gathered in the safe confines of the living room, the advertisement promises safe fun for the whole family.1

1 “Magnavox Odyssey Commercials and Television Appearances from 1972 to 1973,” YouTube. Accessed November 10, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MnRkPvIjKE.

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The scene depicted in the 1995 commercial for World 2: ’s

Island for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES or Super NES) offered a stark contrast to the idyllic domestic bliss of the Odyssey players two decades earlier. In it a heavyset man sat in a restaurant, table covered in food while servers pile more onto his plate. “When is too much too much?” the narrator inquired, “To find out we crammed everything into Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.” The ad alternated between gameplay footage and scenes of the man, cramming more food into his gullet, his belly expanding to the point of popping shirt buttons and his belt breaking under the strain, while the narrator enumerates upon the game’s robust features: “60 more levels, massive enemies, huge Yoshi tricks, all served up in the latest graphic technology: morph motion.” “No more,” the man says, mouth still stuffed with food, to which the narrator entreats, “Sure you don’t have room for a little bonus ?” He shrugs in agreement, eating some whipped cream off his finger, whereupon he explodes, spraying digested food and green viscera across the restaurant, dousing other restaurant goers and painting the words “Play it Loud,” then the slogan for the Super NES, on a nearby wall.2

The two ads, placed together, present significantly different interpretations of video game usage and the medium’s target audience. In the world portrayed in the

Magnavox Odyssey commercial, video games are safe, inoffensive fun for the whole family, less a new form of electronic entertainment and more an extension of traditional family pastimes, such as watching television or playing board games. Video games are to

2 “Super Mario World 2 Yoshi’s Island Commercial (US),” YouTube, accessed May 24, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJJQHF4tTo.

2 be played together. Mother and father can relax away from the kids or bring the whole family together. Moreover, they are productive fun, promising educational games such as

States that will teach children in innovative new ways. Meanwhile, the commercial for

Super Mario World 2 twenty-three years later has a starkly different interpretation of for whom Yoshi’s Island is directed and the kind of enjoyment they should get out of video gaming. The gaming environment presented in the Super Mario World 2 commercial is transgressive, “in-your-face,” its graphic content designed to shock fastidious parents, to the delight of a generation of adolescent and teenaged boys playing video games in the

1990s, this author included. It is unlikely the person excited by Yoshi’s Island is thinking about video gameplay as educational; rather, video games are an escape from school, as well as parents and other siblings. On the other hand, the emphasis on more levels and better graphics suggests it is for a discerning, specialized game player: Super Mario

World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a game for gamers, people who appreciate action and excitement augmented by the latest “morph motion” graphic technology. The transition from “the closed-circuit electronic playground” to “playing it loud” was the product of various changes in the perception of home video games as consumer goods and mass media entertainment. Exploring the transition involves examining changing meanings of video game user identity and consumption and the roles played by the producers who manufactured and marketed them, the users who played, and a host of other actors who may have neither held a controller nor programmed a line of computer code.

This dissertation analyzes the changing meanings surrounding home video game usage and consumption during the first two decades of their commercial presence in the

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United States. This project has two goals. It explores the evolution of home video games as technological devices, consumer goods, and popular culture from 1972 to 1994. It also examines the evolution of video game users, focusing on the changing target demographics of game manufacturers and advertisers as well as changing perceptions of video game usage and ownership from non-industry observers, such as journalists, lawmakers, as well as the users themselves. I argue that video games and game users as concepts were shaped by a wide variety of historical actors who offered competing, even contradictory interpretations of what it meant to own and use video games. While the adolescent male “gamer” emerged by the 1990s as the predominant identity associated with video game usage, his preeminence was far from a foregone conclusion.

Before going further, several notes on terminology are in order. This project applies a broad definition to the term “home video game,” applying it to mean any form of electronic-based interactive software, the medium through which that software is generated and played (also referred to as a video game “console” or “system”), and the equipment that players use to interact with the software, such as controllers and other accessories. I argue the video game is both the game itself and the means by which it is played. This broad definition allows this project to address video games as both technological artifact and mass culture medium, just as scholars of film, television, and radio consider both the technological medium and the content which those technologies present. The term “electronic game” will also be used interchangeably with video game; however, the term “computer game” will only be used to specifically refer to games played on computer systems; moreover, the definition of “computer” will also be

4 addressed to a certain extent throughout this project. “Home video game” also refers to the various hardware and software designed specifically for use in the home, as opposed to coin-operated games designed for play in public spaces, such as arcades or bars. One additional note on spelling: various sources alternated between referring to them as one words or two: “videogame” or “video game.” This project will maintain the spelling used by the original writers when quoted from primary sources. Otherwise, this author will use the term “video game” as it is the generally accepted nomenclature for present-day writers on the subject.

During roughly the first five years of the industry (1972-1977), video game advertising and design fostered close associations between video game usage and traditional notions of middle-class values. Console design, marketing materials, and even the popular genres of games reinforced the new medium as an extension of existing forms of suburban middle-class leisure. By the late seventies and into the , video game manufacturers gradually shifted toward creating a unique game user identity. Video game marketing focused on action and excitement over continuity and safety, gradually becoming more appealing to boys and a subculture of “gamers.” However, emerging company-produced magazines and newsletters as well as a developing body of game- centric journalism asserted video games were for men and women of all ages. Marketing the “Universal Appeal of Games,” as one video game magazine editor described it, fell out of favor following the collapse of the home in 1983 and 1984. In its aftermath, a new cohort of manufacturers led by Nintendo narrowed their marketing

5 and cultivated closer associations between video gaming and young boys. By the early nineties, a predominantly male “gamer” subculture was the primary user demographic.

The negotiation of game consumption played out on several different levels.

Video game system design—aesthetics, technical capabilities, as well as marketing and software libraries—conveys cultural values. These elements demonstrate levels of inclusion and exclusion, shaping who can be considered a game user and who is excluded from game consumption. While game hardware, software, design, marketing and other top-down, producer-generated materials shaped the video game industry’s conceptions of their target audience, the industry was not able to monopolize gaming identities. Users engaged in implicit and explicit negotiations with manufacturers over what they got out of playing video games. Moreover, there was never one type of video game user. Even when the “gamer” subculture eventually became the preeminent user identity, there remained room for other interpretations.

At the same time, observers in the popular press, activist groups, content developers in other media such as film and television, and local, state, and federal lawmakers attempted to make sense of video games as an emerging leisure, technology, and entertainment media and to establish boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable usage. Negotiations among producers, consumers, and other “players” took place within the framework of larger social, cultural, and economic forces at work in the United States during the postwar years. Relative to these larger changes as well as the cultural and financial fortunes of the medium, video games appeared as different things to different audiences at different times.

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Examining the changing discourse surrounding home video games during their first two decades in the United States reveals not one but several competing visions of what video games were and what they could be. Between 1972 and 1994, they were for all ages and just for “hardcore” players. They were for children and the “young at heart” and for men and women to play together. They were simultaneously safe and familiar and wholly different and unique. They were “cute games” for women and girls, action and excitement for men and boys. They were group and solitary activities. They were computers; they were toys. They were both lighthearted playthings and tools for users who were serious about technology. They were harbingers of the future and callbacks to the past. They were productive teachers and regressive time wasters, safe additions to the home and dangerous invaders threatening violence and addiction. While present-day interpretations focus on games as masculine play, there was never one type of game user and understanding the emergence of the “gamer” identity involves understanding these complex negotiations over meaning.

Contributions to the Scholarship:

Until relatively recently, most historical accounts of video games in the United

States came from journalists or game enthusiasts. Their books tended to cover the entire commercial history of the medium through the dual lenses of video games as cultural phenomenon and the video game industry itself. Most journalists focused on how video games became so commercially and culturally successful and introduced a general readership to popular games, systems, and the companies and developers who created

7 them.3 Enthusiasts’ works tended to focus on the technological evolution of video games, cataloging successive generations of game hardware and software in terms of technical features and innovations, including processor speeds, graphical capabilities, and levels of player agency and immersion. Several “gamer-centric” accounts were also autobiographical accounts of specific games or gaming experiences that shaped the author in meaningful ways.4 Based primarily on interviews with notable industry insiders, including business executives, engineers, and game developers, both journalistic and - written histories generally offered celebratory accounts of an industry driven by creativity and innovation, or, as journalist Tristan Donovan described in his 2010 work Replay: The

History of Video Games, “A story of technological creativity, aided by technological growth.”5

Critical accounts of video games largely emerged in the late 1990s and early

2000s with the rise of “Game Studies” as a field of study. Game Studies developed as a

3 For example, see: Scott Cohen, Zap: The Rise and Fall of Atari (New York: Xlibris, 1984); Steven Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon (Roseville, CA: Prima, 2001); Bill Logudice and Matt Barton, Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of , Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time (: Focal Press, 2008); David Sheff, : How Nintendo Conquered the World (New York: Vintage, 2011); Blake J. Harris, Console : Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation (New York: It Books, 2014). 4 J.C. Hertz, Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1997); Harold Goldberg, All Your Base are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2011); Leonard Herman, Phoenix IV: The History of the Videogame Industry (Springfield, NJ: Rolenta Press, 2017).

5 Tristan Donovan, Replay: The History of Video Games. (East Sussex, UK: Yellow Ant, 2010), xiii.

8 fusion of diverse scholars including anthropologists, sociologists, and media studies scholars. Much of the early discourse in the emerging field in gaming academia centered on developing a methodological framework through which to examine games. On the one hand were discussions of the social and cultural meanings extrapolated from narrative- driven games while on the other were debates over the ways users identified themselves and negotiated video game environments. Accounts in the “narratology-ludology” dynamic, as it came to be known, tended to favor focusing on the games themselves as subject matter, either through the lens of traditional methods employed by media scholars

(narrative and story structure, representation of characters, and the like) or through personal accounts of players.6 However, over the past two decades, numerous other frameworks have emerged as academics from other fields, historians included, began to critically examine video games. These include intersections between games and popular culture; examinations of games as elements of larger systems of labor, capital, and exploitation; and user negotiations of physical and virtual spaces.7

6 On the ludology-narratology debate, see: Jesper Juul, “Games Telling Stories – A brief note on games and narratives,” Game Studies 1, No. 1 (July 2001), accessed November 12, 2019, http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/; Kevin Moberly, “Preemptive Strikes: Ludology, Narratology, and Computer Game Studies,” The Game Culture Reader, eds. Jason C. Thompson and Marc A. Ouellate (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, 2013): 162-174.

7 On games and popular culture, see: Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games, eds. Zach Whalen and Laurie . Taylor (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008); John Willis, Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). On the relationship of games to labor and capital, see: Nick Dyer-Withford and Greig de Peuter, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Jamie Woodcock, Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggles (:

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The proliferation of more critically-driven contributions to video game history has been the product of two emerging trends. First, there has been a growing number of new academics who are willing to take video games seriously as a subject of intellectual study, in part a result of gaming’s growing mainstream popular acceptance. Along with new cohorts of game scholars there has also developed a stronger archival presence for games. The preservation of gaming materials, including ephemera, internal records, oral histories, and the hardware and software themselves has increasingly transitioned from dedicated fans to formal archival collections, and game-related repositories are present at such institutions as the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at the Strong National Museum of Play, the , Stony Brook

University, , the University of Texas at Austin, and the Smithsonian

Institution.8 New contributions to the field, supported by a more robust array of primary source materials, have increasingly placed the medium outside of the traditional industry histories and the producer-fanbase dynamic, placing video games within the larger contexts of the societies they occupy. One of the earliest critical examinations of video game history in America was Dmitri Williams’s “Brief Social History of Game Play,” an

Haymarket Books, 2019). On negotiating virtual spaces in games, see: Mia Consalvo, Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2007); Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in Second : An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

8 See also: Jerome P. McDonough, et. al., Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report (2010), accessed April 29, 2019, https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097; Raiford Guins, Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014).

10 article that appeared in an early “Game Studies” compilation published in 2006.9 Since

Williams article, a plethora of new works have offered detailed examinations of specific aspects of game history, supplanting the synthetic narratives of the journalistic and fan- driven histories that preceded them. For example, there have been deeper examinations of the technical, design, and business histories of notable game hardware and software, such as the “Platform Studies” series by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.)

Press and the “Landmark Video Games” series from The University of Michigan Press.10

There have also been detailed works on game history through the lens of notable game designers, as evidenced by the “Influential Game Designers” series, first published in

2015 by Bloomsbury.11 In July 2019, editors Laine Nooney, Raiford Guins, and Henry

9 Dmitri Williams, “A Brief Social History of Game Play,” Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences, ed. Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006), 197-212.

10 For works on video games in the “Platform Series,” see: Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, : The Atari Video Computer System (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2009); Steven . Jones and George . Thiruvathukal, Codename: Revolution: The Nintendo Platform (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2012); Nathan Altice, I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer/Entertainment System Platform (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2015); Dominic Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2017); Carl Therrien, The Media Snatcher: PC/Core/Turbo/Engine/Grafx/16/CDROM2/Duo/Arcade/RX (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2019). For works in the “Landmark Video Games” series, see: Mark J.P. Wolf, Myst and Riven: The World of the D’ni (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011); Bernard Berron, : The Terror Engine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012); Dan Pinchbeck, : SCARYDARKFAST (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); Judd Ethan Ruggill and Ken S. McAllister, Tempest: Geometries of Play (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015).

11 See: Jennifer deWinter, : Super Mario Bros., , (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015); Carly A. Kocurek, Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017); Anastasia Salter, Jane

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Lowood of New York University, Indiana University, and Stanford University, respectively, launched ROMchip, the first peer reviewed journal specifically focused on game history.12 The new journal encouraged numerous intellectual and methodological perspectives, including examinations of games as business, play, material culture, interactive experiences, and networks of inclusion and exclusion.

Identity has become a key topic of contemporary critical game studies. Among the numerous intellectual threads, the relationship between gaming and masculinity, especially the ways the American video game industry has catered to a demographically narrow audience of white, middle-class men and boys, has been a rich subject of discussion among game studies scholars. Critics have addressed the ways game design tropes reinforced heteronormative masculinity, assuming a predominantly straight, white, cisgender, male audience.13 These examinations have led to larger discussions about the ways video gaming and game communities involve levels of inclusion and exclusion, establishing barriers to whom is considered a legitimate video game user. On the other

Jensen: , Adventure Games, Hidden Objects (New York Bloomsbury, 2017).

12 Laine Nooney, Raiford Guins, and Henry Lowood, “Introducing ROMchip: What Could the History of Games Be?” ROMchip 1, No. 1 (July 2019), accessed November 14, 2019, https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/72.

13 For an early work on the subject, see: From to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games., eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1998). See also: Anita Sarkeesian, “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games – Season 1,”accessed November 15, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q&list=PLn4ob_5_ttEaA_vc8F3fjzE62 esf9yP61.

12 hand, some have also addressed the ways marginalized game communities have asserted their own agency as both creators and consumers of games.14

While much of the discourse has focused on present-day negotiations of identity, meaning, and representation though games, there is a small but growing body of archivally-driven critical works examining the historical evolution of user identity and game consumption. This project specifically engages with two recent works on the subject: Carly A. Kocurek’s Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video

Arcade and Michael . Newman’s Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in

America.15 Both Newman and Kocurek explore the ways video gaming in the United

States came to be associated with boy’s play during the medium’s formative years.

Kocurek examined the ways video gaming became culturally coded on masculine terms, examining the emergence of what she describes as the “techno-masculine” and paying special attention to the culture of the video arcade as a way of examining the development of as a whole. Newman, meanwhile, addressed the home video game system relative to changing ideas of suburban boyhood during the late

14 See: Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming, Yasmin B. Kafai et. al. eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008); Adrienne Shaw, Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Bonnie Ruberg, Video Games Have Always Been Queer (New York: NYU Press, 2019); Jodi A. Byrd, “Other Games, Other Histories,” ROMchip 1, No. 1 (July 2019), accessed November 15, 2019, https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/69.

15 Carly A. Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); Michael Z. Newman, Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2017).

13 seventies and early eighties, focusing on the entry of video games into the domestic sphere and contested ideas of boyhood and technology.

This project expands on their contributions in several ways. First, it complicates the emergence of boys and the “gamer” subculture during the 1980s by addressing the ways video game manufacturers marketed toward other audiences. During the first two decades of the American home video game industry, manufacturers attempted to associate their products with traditionally domestic values. The aesthetic design, marketing, and technical capabilities of game hardware and software catered to a broad suburban, middle-class consumer base, one that included adult couples, housewives, grandparents, computer hobbyists, and the entire family. The popular press similarly attempted to make sense of the emerging pastime, interpreting video game usage relative to changing ideas of middle-class identity, suburban leisure, and computerized technology. Adolescent and teenage boys emerged as the primary target demographic by the late 1980s; however, examining these complex, and at times contradictory, interpretations of video game consumption reveals their ascendance was by no means preordained.

Moreover, Kocurek and Newman focused primarily on video gaming during the late 1970s and early 1980s, each ending their studies just prior to the mass collapse of the

American video game industry in 1984. I expand the timeline beyond what Newman describes as the “Atari Age,” the period encompassing roughly 1980-1982 when Atari was the predominant video game company, to 1994, when the industry adopted a comprehensive, content-based ratings system. Examining the late 1980s and early 1990s

14 shows there are several evident caveats to the “gamer” identity. Even as “gamers” gained preeminence in the corporate and cultural perception of the medium, deviations remained, including the rise of computer gaming as an entity separate from “console” gaming and the development of an industry-created body of adult “game counselors” who aided youth players. Despite these alternatives, the design, marketing, and content of home video games also became increasingly exclusionary to certain audiences, especially women and girls.

Expanding the timeline into the early 1990s also leads to fresh insight into the social, cultural, and political ramifications of the rise of the boy gamer. During the second half of the 1980s, producers, led by Nintendo, shifted their products more directly toward boys as an act of economic self-preservation. The industry recovered financially from the collapse of the mid-1980s. However, narrowing the demographic also left video games susceptible to greater anxiety and suspicion from legislators, media watchdogs, and other moral activists concerned about the impact of mass media on the youth. These anxieties culminated in a moral crusade against video game violence in the early 1990s which ultimately forced the industry to organize and regulate itself in ways it never had before.

The industry’s self-reflection, brought upon by a negative backlash to several titles anti-game activists deemed too violent, comprises the final reason for the chronological shift. In 1994, following the moral panic against video game violence, the hardware and software companies operating in the United States formed the first lobbying organization specifically devoted to video games: the Interactive Digital

15

Software Association (IDSA), known today as the Entertainment Software Association

(ESA). They also established the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), a comprehensive content-based ratings system that assigned a letter rating to all game software based on an assessment of a game’s age appropriateness, akin to the Motion

Picture Association of America ratings for film. The creation of the IDSA and ESRB, in many respects, marked the beginning of, for lack of a better term, the “modern” video game market. The IDSA and ESRB significantly changed the ways the video game industry interacted with the public and shaped the discourse for future discussions about video games’ target audience and the identity of its user base.

This project also recognizes previously neglected actors involved in the video game industry. Many popular and academic histories tend to focus on the companies, systems, and franchises that have had the largest commercial and cultural impact:

Nintendo, Atari, Sega, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Atari 2600, the

Sega Genesis, Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros. This approach makes sense as at times

Nintendo and Atari each controlled over 80 percent of the American market during the period of this study. However, expanding to include some of the lesser-known or less culturally or financially successful properties further complicates the discourse surrounding video games and their user base. Addressing lesser-known consoles, such as the North American Phillips Odyssey2, the ViewMaster Interactive Vision, and the Bally

Astrocade, also reveals source materials that have hitherto been neglected or examined in a cursory way.

16

This project also fosters a closer link between the history of video games and the story of computers in America. Most histories of computing in the United States tend to downplay the role of home video games in the evolution of computers as both technological devices and consumer goods.16 However, the two markets are inexorably linked. As sociologist Dmitri Williams observed, game systems often preceded computers as the first computerized technology in American households.17 Both computers and video game systems emerged around the same time; from a technical standpoint, they shared similarities—components, graphical/sound capabilities, ability to run software—and at certain intervals in the histories of both industries, the line between what constituted a “computer system” versus a “video game system” was ambiguous.

However, despite their similarities, the relationship between the two was complex, fluctuating relative to the economic and cultural fortunes of their respective markets.

During this period, game manufacturers alternated their approach, at times closely associating video game systems with computers while downplaying their associations at other times. Early video game systems, such as the Magnavox Odyssey and the home version of Pong, reached American homes as mainframe computers dominated both the computer industry and popular understandings of computers. As computers became more

“personal,” video game manufacturers situated their products relative to home computers, developing keyboards, modems, printers, and programming languages for their units. As the game market soured, several companies even attempted to discard dedicated game

16 For one notable exception, see Newman, 115-152.

17 Williams, “A Brief Social History of Game Play,” 200.

17 consoles in favor of inexpensive computers. Conversely, computer manufacturers during the late seventies and eighties marketed their products relative to video games, introducing gaming elements such as cartridge support and . These associations fluctuated throughout the seventies and eighties, and examining the relationship between computers and video games reveals complex discussions over computing, leisure, and domestic technology.

This project also examines the relationship between video games and the suburban American family. Part of the story of home video games is a story of economic privilege. Home video gaming is an expensive pastime. Participation in video game consumption requires buying expensive technical equipment, and software, accessories, or additional services (such as online subscriptions) demand additional investment. The

Magnavox Odyssey initially retailed for $100 (roughly $615 in 2019 when adjusted for inflation) following its 1972 release. Modern game systems, such as the PlayStation

4, One, and , can range anywhere from $200 to $600.

Home systems also require access to a television and owning multiple systems may necessitate owning multiple TVs. Gameplay is also a significant time investment with some games demanding hundreds of hours of dedicated playtime. Even shorter, simple games require some degree of access to leisure time. Then and now, home video game consumption requires a certain level of economic stability, a stability that often went hand-in-hand with interpretations of American suburbia. The financial security to purchase a home, raise a family, and invest in consumer goods became connected to

18 postwar suburban living, and video games often became part of a larger discussion over achieving what some called “the good life.”

Moreover, their association with suburban Americans linked video games to changing ideas of the role of the middle-class family in American society during the latter decades of the twentieth century. Even as games became more closely associated with gamers, manufacturers often framed video games in terms of suburban leisure, be it by young players, adults, or whole families. Early game advertising situated video gameplay in middle-class living rooms or bedrooms on an extra television. Close connections between video games and stability reflected fears of the decline of the middle-class family in the wake of economic and social change in the sixties and seventies. Moralist panics over video games often paralleled concerns about the state of the family and the impact of media on society.

Overview of Historical Actors and Sources:

This project argues the “home video game” is a socially constructed concept, shaped by larger social and cultural forces negotiated by various bodies of actors, rather than by technical development and innovation alone. It draws upon the SCOT (social construction of technology) methodology, where sociologists Trevor Pinch and Wiebe

Bijker introduced the idea of “relevant social groups,” bodies of actors or forces that exert influence on the values associated with a given object. These groups include producers and consumers, along with cohorts of actors not directly involved in production or consumption. The interplay of these various groups eventually leads to a

19

“convergence,” or codification of a device’s meaning or function into culturally constructed systems of values that become associated with that object. Later scholars expanded this concept to include the influence of non-users and “anti-users,” actors who consciously or unconsciously are not involved in direct development or use yet whose presence affect the design, intended use, and meanings associated with an object.18 This project examines the roles of four broad categories of relevant social groups, described here as “players” in the spirit of the subject. This project utilizes a variety of source material to measure the influence of these players in the social construction of home video games in the United States. Some of them will be familiar to games scholars and cultural historians—advertisements, packaging, government records (census data, congressional hearings, legislation), and the popular press—while others have been hitherto underutilized or unexamined.

The first category encompasses what can be collectively called the “American video game industry,” the producers who designed, manufactured, distributed, and marketed video game hardware and software to a mass consumer audience. Producers, on one hand, created the initial interpretations of their products, their role in the household, their intended use (what Beth Preston described as the “proper function” of an object),

18 Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,” Social Studies of Science 14, No. 3 (August 1984): 399-441. See also: Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch, “The Social Construction of Technology,” in The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd ed., eds. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999), 113-115; How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technologies, edited by Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).

20 and their target user demographic.19 This initial meaning-making shaped what users were supposed to get out of video game consumption. On the other hand, these initial meanings did not emerge in a vacuum. In designing and marketing video games to

American homes, producers needed to be aware of larger social, cultural, and economic forces at work in the United States. The ways audiences viewed leisure time, the understood identities of members of the household (as well as the family as a whole), and perceptions of the role of computerized and electronic technology in the home influenced the ways manufacturers shaped their products. In order to understand the changing identity of video games in the eyes of producers, this project examines the numerous forms of promotional and front-facing material created and disseminated by the various hardware and software companies. These include television and print advertisements, company-produced newsletters and magazines, product catalogs and other promotional materials, packaging, and the aesthetic and technical design of the games and systems themselves.

However, there are limitations to examining these types of producer-generated materials. They give little insight into the internal discussions and negotiations over meaning that took place within the companies themselves. They reveal the prevailing identities and meanings but do not shed light on the alternative interpretations discussed among developers, marketing teams, executives, or any of the other administrative or

19 Beth Preston, “The Function of Things: A Philosophical Perspective on Material Culture” in Matter, Materiality, and Modern Culture, ed. P.M. Graves-Brown (London: Routledge, 2000), 22-49.

21 creative bodies within these companies. The reason for focusing on front-facing materials stems in part from a lack of access to corporate records, which from this period are generally either unavailable to researchers or nonexistent. The games industry has had a notoriously poor record of preserving its own history and many internal materials created during the period of this study have either been lost or destroyed. For example, in 1984, following Warner Communications’ sale of the division of Atari, new owner hosted massive fire sales where the cash-strapped company sold filing cabinets full of internal materials, including corporate records, marketing drafts, and even the original source code for games. Whatever was not sold was often destroyed.

There have been numerous instances of long-lost materials being discovered in the possession of former employees or uncovered by collectors.20 In other instances, business archives are inaccessible to researchers in the interests of preserving trade secrets.

Moreover, geographic and linguistic barriers limit access to scholars without the financial means for long travel jaunts or proficiencies in certain languages, especially English and

Japanese.

Fortunately for researchers, there are several outlets available for accessing promotional materials. The earliest stewards of items related to video game history were gaming fans who collected, preserved, and (following the popularization of the )

20 John Anderson, “Where Games Go to Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis, Part 1,” Gamasutra, January 27, 2011, accessed February 13, 2019, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6271/where_games_go_to_sleep_the_game_.ph p; Timothy J. Seppala, “This is the Nintendo PlayStation that almost was,” Engadget, July 3, 2015, accessed February 13, 2019, https://www.engadget.com/2015/07/03/nintendo-playstation-prototype/.

22 digitized and shared these materials on various fan sites and open-source digital repositories such as the , (http://archive.org), Bally Alley

(http://balleyalley.com), and Atari Age (https://www.atariage.com/). Over the past two decades, several cultural institutions have continued what the fans started, and researchers have access to several major video game collections in the United States.

These include the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at the Strong National Museum of Play, the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing at Stanford University, the William A. Higinbotham Game Studies

Collection at Stony Brook University, the UT Video Game Archive at the Dolph Briscoe

Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, the Computer History

Museum, and the National Videogame Museum.

The second group comprises the various video game users: the actual consumers of video game products. While producers helped shape initial perceptions of home video games, the users themselves asserted agency over the meanings behind their usage and the ways they applied video game hardware and software to suit their needs. Moreover, as the audience changed, manufacturers sought to adjust or respond to the ways users consumed their products. I hesitate to call these “players” as various groups of users utilized video games for various purposes, some of which did not involve gameplay. As this project demonstrates, video game usage to fans could mean becoming part of a larger community of “gamers,” fostering closer relationships between family and friends, demonstrating gaming prowess through achieving high scores or discovering secrets, or

23 even an access point to careers in developing technical fields, such as computer programming and engineering.

However, user agency can be difficult to measure, especially in a pre-internet period. While video game magazines, produced either by the industry or independent publishers, often included sections for user-generated content (high score lists, strategies, letters to the editor, and the like), these materials were curated by the magazine editors who chose materials that coincided with their prescribed notions of identity. Access to their voices depends in no small part on the users preserving their own stories.

Fortunately, some fan club materials exist from the period, and one specific chapter will examine the activities of a subculture of game enthusiasts whose materials were preserved and digitized.

The third body of players encompasses what game historian J.S. Clemens described as “mediators”: actors who operated amongst the industry who were not directly involved in the production, design, or distribution of game hardware and software.21 This dissertation devotes specific attention to the emerging body of “third party” specialty magazines and newsletters: a unique subgenre of “games journalism” that first appeared in the early 1980s and evolved alongside the industry. Content creators and editors of such publications as Electronic Games, Video Games, Joystik, GamePro,

Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), and Video Games & Computer Entertainment

21 Jonathan Scott Clemens, “Defining Play: Producers, Mediators, and Users in the History of Video Arcade Games, 1971-1985,” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2015.

24 situated their magazines at the middle ground between producers and consumers, simultaneously acting as industry boosters and consumer advocates.22 On the one hand, magazines published reviews and buyer’s guides on the auspices of allowing readers to make informed purchases. On the other hand, they relied on game manufacturers for content and advertising revenue. Their position as a middle ground of sorts between the developing industry and the emerging user fanbase allowed contributors to shape the boundaries of game usage and user identity, emphasizing which qualities constituted the ideal video game player and prescribing acceptable and unacceptable forms of game consumption. While gaming magazines make up the bulk of the mediators emphasized in this project, other actors in this category include retailers, who stocked video game products and enticed potential customers with in-house advertisements and promotions, and the myriad aspiring entrepreneurs who capitalized on the medium’s periods of financial through game-related products such as breakfast cereals, Saturday morning cartoons, strategy guidebooks and , game hacking devices, and a legion of

“score enhancers” ranging from specialized gloves to controller stands.

Finally, this project examines the role of actors who operated outside the sphere of producers, users, and mediators in shaping home video game meaning and identity.

Companies in complimentary and competing industries such as television, film, telecommunications, and computers observed, responded to, and at times capitalized on video games’ varying economic and cultural fortunes. Writers in academia and the

22 Many of these materials have been digitized and preserved by fans and the cultural institutions mentioned above.

25 popular press attempted to make sense of video games and contextualize them in terms of larger social, cultural, economic, and technological trends. Popular media such as TV shows, movies, and local and national news reports often provided Americans’ first exposure to video games, acting as their first, and in many cases only, interpretive lens through which to view video games as technology, leisure, or entertainment. Media watchdog groups, parents’ organizations, and local, state, and federal lawmakers negotiated the cultural impact and potential implications of home video games, at times prompting activist confrontations over the role of video games in suburban life, their impact on children and families, and the boundaries of taste. Together, these four broad social groups—producers, users, mediators, and outside observers—make up a competitive multiplayer game where various complex, often contradictory, meanings emerged.

Chapter Overview:

This project examines the evolution of home video games in America through five chapters, arranged roughly chronologically from 1972 to 1994. The two dates encompass the commercial introduction of home video games, beginning with the

Magnavox Odyssey, and ends with the establishment the Interactive Digital Software

Association (IDSA), the industry’s first lobbying organization, and the Entertainment

Software Ratings Board (ESRB), the industry’s content-based ratings system. At the outset, the identity and user base of video games were comparatively flexible, absent of the “gamer” subculture of hobbyist users who associate video gaming as a key element of their personal identity. However, by the early 1990s, this primarily young and male

26 subculture had emerged as the predominant identity of the game user for both the industry and mainstream American popular culture. The ramifications of this association between video games and male hobbyists resonate through the present day, shaping game design and marketing as well as contemporary debates about user identity and the meaning of video gameplay.

Chapter One examines the commercial introduction of home video games in

America and explores the preliminary meanings associated with home games and their users. The first "generation" of home games (1972-1976) is also the only period where games were completely absent of a dedicated fan subculture. In an environment of games without "gamers," video game manufacturers utilized techniques associated with introducing earlier domestic technologies, such as sewing machines, radio receivers, and television sets, and marketed their products as safe devices that would promote family stability and domestic harmony. Moreover, producers and observers in the popular press presented video gameplay as an acceptable form of modern middle-class suburban leisure for all members of the family. These presentations of video games as a welcome addition to the home rather than an interloper or invader coincided with growing anxieties in postwar America over the state of the nuclear family, the role of technology, and

America's changing place in the world during the tumultuous years of the 1970s.

Early video game companies such as Bally, , and Atari marketed their products as safe havens for the American nuclear family against growing social, cultural, and economic forces set (in the eyes of observers) on undermining middle-class family values. They provided personalized entertainment during a period of heightened

27 awareness of personal fulfilment and self-actualization, a period described by journalist

Tom Wolfe as the "Me Decade" and by historian Christopher Lasch as the "Culture of

Narcissism."23 Finally, home video games provided a safe introduction for computers into the American home at a time when computers had other complex meanings, conveyed in popular culture, epitomizing fears of automation and the displacement of human agency.

Chapter Two brings the narrative into the second decade of home video games in

America and focuses on how both changes in technology and marketing efforts brought about a change in whom companies targeted as their primary market. During the 1980s, video game hardware transitioned away from dedicated home game systems that played a set number of pre-installed games toward "programmable" game systems that ran games on removable cartridges. Meanwhile, a cohort of journalists and publications emerged that were dedicated specifically to covering video games. As manufacturers and observers in the popular press and the developing body of video game journalism negotiated the meaning of video game usage, several competing user identities took shape. The positioning of video games as middle-class leisure for the whole family, what one game journalist described as the "Universal Appeal of Games," now had to compete with a developing "gamer" subculture of dedicated users as well as an increased focus on teenaged and adolescent boys. As the decade progressed, the "Universal Appeal" gradually eroded, giving way to boys as the primary user identity. The changing rhetoric

23 Tom Wolfe, "The 'Me Decade' and the Third Great Awakening," New York, August 23, 1976, accessed May 10, 2017, http://nymag.com/news/features/45938/; Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978).

28 around video game players left several socially acceptable means for adult players. These included a growing market for computer games and a body of industry-employed video game counselors, who worked at call centers devoted to providing gameplay advice to stumped players. However, by the late 1980s, the home console market was predominantly dedicated to boy's play. Moreover, its growing focus on aggressive, heteronormative boy came at the expense of women and girls, who found themselves increasingly marginalized as players.

Chapter Three focuses on the ways manufacturers sought to redefine the meaning of video game systems between 1982 and 1985. Following a meteoric rise in commercial and cultural popularity, the American home video game industry faced a sudden and dramatic economic collapse. Market oversaturation, corporate mismanagement, and overreach led to a sharp decline in the market value of games. This caused many of the key players in the industry to abandon the video game market or go out of business entirely. The period is known in popular histories as "The Great Video Game Crash" or simply "the Crash." The most common interpretation conveyed in most popular accounts conceptualizes the Crash as a cautionary tale, emphasizing corporate hubris or managerial incompetence on the part of major game companies, especially industry leader Atari.

Otherwise, the Crash is brushed over as a transition between the dominance of US-based console manufacturers in the early 1980s to that of Japanese-based companies, namely

Nintendo, in the late 1980s. However, this chapter offers a new perspective on the Crash and examines the lengths to which companies such as Atari, Mattel, Coleco, and North

American , sought to minimize its impact. To that end, many manufacturers

29 attempted to shift the market away from dedicated game systems toward home computers. This involved designing and marketing computer hardware and software and introducing computing elements and equipment, such as programming languages, printers, keyboards, and modems, for existing home game systems. Marketing materials also sought to help ease consumers’ transition from game systems to computer systems.

In a similar act of self-preservation, video game magazines attempted to pivot toward computers, repackaging themselves as consumer-oriented computer educators. Neither shift to computers proved successful, and Nintendo, with the release of the Nintendo

Entertainment System in 1985-1986, re-asserted the identity of home video game systems as devices unique from computers, namely as children's toys.

Contemporaneous with the user identity negotiations discussed in Chapter Two, a separate group of users developed independently. This cohort is the subject of Chapter

Four. As advertisers, journalists, developers, and players addressed the boundaries of gameplay, a smaller group of technically-oriented hobbyists emerged who gravitated toward video games not simply for play but as a medium for technical design and experimentation. Known by various terms—homebrewers, modders, or hackers—these users approached video games as tinkerers interested in manipulating their hardware and software. Their lineage dates back to similar technical and mechanical hobbyist subcultures, such as builders of radio receivers in the 1910s and model railroad operators in the 1950s. However, they were a direct product of a growing body of amateur computer hobbyists that appeared in the postwar period. These user communities

30 developed their own software and manipulated their computer hardware to suit their needs and shared their discoveries with like-minded users through clubs and newsletters.

This chapter focuses on the earliest known video game community, a group of users interested in the Bally Professional Arcade (also known as the Home

Library Computer, System, or Astrocade), a system initially released by

Bally Manufacturing Co. in 1978. While a commercial failure, the system attracted a small but dedicated group of fans interested in exploring its technical capabilities. These users—known at various times as the Arcadians, BUGs, and Astrocade Underground— primarily used the system to expand their engineering and programming skills. At times during the system's commercial lifespan (1978-1985) the users also assumed roles typically associated with producers, including hardware and software development, technical support, and marketing and distribution. Drawing on hitherto unstudied local and nationally-circulated fan newsletters, this chapter examines how these users perceived and negotiated their usage. Moreover, this chapter explores game homebrewing as an emerging activity for suburban men. Although quantitative data on user demographics is impossible to determine, it can be inferred through reading user group materials that the “BUGs” were predominantly men and boys with the economic means to own a computer system; sporadic accounts from women exist, although generally within the confines of male play, such as the wives of BUGs. Finally, it seeks to briefly place the BUGs within the context of similar computer hobbyist communities that emerged from the late 1950s through the 1970s.

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Chapter Five examines the consequences of the changing ideas of game usage and user identity examined in the previous chapters and the intersections of video games with two larger socio-cultural trends: technofuturist fads such as interactive movies and virtual reality (VR) technology and a period some contemporary observers described as an

"epidemic of violence." In 1993 video games were the subject of a moral panic over violence, culminating in a series of three Congressional hearings where lawmakers urged game manufacturers to regulate their content, lest the federal government do it for them.

The industry's focus on adolescent and teenage boys as the target demographic made the medium susceptible to moral activism as Congressional leaders, social scientists, and educators cited fears over violent content in video games and games' treatment of women as potentially hazardous to America's youth. Moreover, the industry's reassertion of video games as toys rather than computer systems prompted activists to call for safety regulations. The hearings resulted in the industry creating an independent ratings board that rated game content in a manner similar to the film rating system of the Motion

Picture Association of America (MPAA). Calls for industry regulation came during a period of heightened anxiety over the role of violent crime in American society and the potential ramifications of media on American families.

Conclusion

This project argues that neither the “gamer” identity nor the perception of video gaming as a predominantly masculine pastime were foregone conclusions. Rather, they were the products of complex, contentious negotiations between producers, mediators, consumers, and nonusers, a multiplayer game in which various actors competed over the

32 identities of game usage and ownership. These competitions took place within an

American cultural, social, political, and economic arena surrounded by larger discussions over the identity of the suburban family, aspirations and anxieties over the role of media in society, hopes and concerns for the ascendance of computers, and the varying economic fortunes of both the American video game industry and the country as a whole.

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Chapter 1

PLAYING THE PAST THROUGH THE “ELECTRONIC GAME OF THE FUTURE”: THE FIRST GENERATION OF HOME VIDEO GAMES, 1972-1976 Observers of home video game history frequently set periodization in terms of

"console generations," cohorts of game systems released around the same time that bear similar technical capabilities. The first generation of systems consisted mostly of devices with a finite set of pre-installed games and had no room for expansion. This generation began with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 and ended in roughly 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Video Entertainment System, the first of a series of

"programmable" game systems that relied on removable cartridges. This period is unique in video game history in that it enjoyed no established fanbase, no “gamer” culture. This raises the question of what does it mean to consume video games in an environment devoid of a dedicated fan subculture? What are games without "gamers"?

The first generation represents the initial cultural meanings for home video games in America. Through marketing, including television and print advertising, product packaging, and product design, the various home game manufacturers presented their vision of the ideal target audience and the meanings those users could derive from consuming their products. Outside observers in the popular press attempted to understand and contextualize the sudden popularity of video games. Negotiations over meaning during this first generation of games reflected larger conversations regarding the nature of

34 leisure, the stability of the nuclear family, and the changing role of technology in

American life.

Analysis of the surviving ephemera of the industry and popular commentaries in the context of the early 1970s reveals the overarching themes of these systems were stability, safety, and continuity. According to manufacturers and observers, video games reinforced the middle-class family, offered a sophisticated extension of middle-class adult leisure, and represented a safe entry point for computerized technology that promised to stabilize domestic space rather than disrupt it. These of video games as safe, stabilizing products came when cultural conceptions of the home and family faced significant social, political, cultural, economic, and technological anxiety.

Told through advertising, product design and packaging, and the popular press home video game systems of the early 1970s represented a new form of leisure that reinforced traditional middle-class values. As consumer goods, they were simultaneously new and not new at all.

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first briefly introduces the dramatis personae of the early home video game market: the various game systems and companies. The other three sections focus on the meaning-making surrounding those games through three distinct cultural lenses. The first examines the contested role of the nuclear family in postwar America and how video game advertising presented home systems as a means of bolstering family stability and togetherness. This took place at a time when the concept of the nuclear family faced numerous challenges. The second addresses the evolving role of middle-class adult leisure, particularly commentary

35 surrounding personal fulfillment and self-actualization, and how video game marketing set home systems as a compliment to Americans acting in what one observer described as the "Me Decade." The final section addresses cultural anxieties surrounding computers in postwar America and how video games acted as a safe means of introducing computerized technology into the home.

“The Latest Craze—Electric Games”: The First Home Video Game Boom

Television manufacturer Magnavox unveiled its first , christened “Odyssey,” at a series of media demonstrations in May 1972 with a full retail release later that year. First sold exclusively in Magnavox specialty stores, it eventually appeared in some national retailers such as Bloomingdales and Gimbels department stores. Odyssey attached to a television set via a switch box that connected through the antenna port and allowed the user to switch between the Odyssey and regular television viewing without having to disconnect the system. Removable game cards allowed for slight variations in play, including tennis, football, hockey, roulette, a matching game

(Simon Says), and games for teaching math and U.S. geography (Analogic, States).

Players interacted with these games through one of a pair of boxy controllers hard-wired to the system. A later accessory included a shooting galley game complete with realistic- looking rifle. Odyssey ran on six C- batteries or via an AC power adapter which could be purchased separately.

Odyssey was limited even by the technical standards of its time. The system lacked any semblance of (AI) and all games required two players.

36

Despite the apparent variety in gameplay, Odyssey could do little more than project white squares onto a blank field and actual fidelity to the rules of the various games, including score keeping, was left to the players themselves. To compensate for the system’s hardware limitations, Magnavox packaged Odyssey with accessories including game pieces, playing cards, and Mylar overlays that fit over the television screen to give the illusion of color graphics. Odyssey, unlike similar systems that soon followed it, also had no sound output.

That same year, Atari, a recently-created Sunnyvale, CA, video game company established by engineers and , released the coin-operated tennis game Pong. Created by Atari engineer Al Alcorn, Pong was an electronic adaptation of table tennis in which two competing players used built-in paddles to bat a simulated ball. Successfully navigating the ball past the opponent earned the player a point. With its simple controls (a player could successfully play Pong while still holding a drink, a boon in the bars where it first appeared) and objectives (a text screen proclaiming “avoid missing ball for high score” marked the extent of user instruction provided by the game), Pong became an instant success, and Pong cabinets rapidly appeared in bars across the country. A commonly-repeated story involved Alcorn being called to Andy Capps, the Sunnyvale watering hole where Pong debuted, to perform maintenance on a broken machine. According to folklore, Alcorn opened the apparently- malfunctioning cabinet only to find it had stopped working because it had been clogged

37 with quarters.1 Atari’s success with Pong prompted other manufacturers to release their own Pong variations over the next year. These included Winner (Bally-Midway), TV

Ping-Pong (Chicago Dynamic Industries), Paddle Battle and Tennis Tourney (both by

Allied Leisure Associates).2 The Pong sensation also likely granted a second life to the

Odyssey, which had only achieved moderate sales of around 200,000 units by September

1974. Department store advertisements promoted the original Odyssey at or around its full price of $100 through 1975.3

By 1975, video game competition expanded to the home market. Atari engineers

Bob Brown and Harold Lee developed a home adaptation of Pong in 1974, and the following year Atari entered an exclusive deal with retailer Sears Roebuck and Co. to stock the system—renamed Tele-games Pong—in Sears department stores. Magnavox responded the same year with two successors to the Odyssey. The Odyssey 100 ran two games—tennis and hockey—and came with a built-in sound generator. The higher-end

Odyssey 200 included one additional game, an electronic version of squash, and supported up to four players. Both versions dispensed with the Mylar overlays and board

1 Donovan, Replay, 24.

2 Regarding Winner, according to William K. Ford, Bally-Midway had secured a license from Atari to develop their Pong variation, agreeing to pay Atari “a royalty of $31.00 per unit.” William K. Ford, “Copy Game for High Score: The First Video Game Lawsuit, 20 J. Intell. Prop. .1,” The John Marshall Institutional Repository (January 1, 2012): 17, accessed September 7, 2016, http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1340&context=facpubs.

3 Peter Ross Range, "The Space Age Pinball Machine," New York Times, September 15, 1974.

38 game accessories of their forebear, instead projecting all the action on the television screen. News reports touted video games as the popular product of the 1975 holiday season. A reporter for the New York Times predicted in a December 25, 1975, article,

“The delighted cries of young children this Christmas morning will be punctuated in many homes by ‘blips’ and ‘pongs’ as families settle down to the latest craze—electric games.”4

The following year, increased availability of inexpensive computer chips led to a dramatic expansion of the home video game market. In 1976, General Instrument

Microelectronics (GI) released the AY-3-8500 chip. The first in a series of game-based integrated circuits, the AY-3-8500 contained all the necessary information for a two- player ball-and-paddle a single computer chip. It contained six games: four

Pong variants and two shooting gallery games. It cost significantly less to manufacture than the transistor-reliant Odyssey, effectively lowering the cost of admission for other home video game aspirants.

With newfound access to an inexpensive entry point into the video game market, a legion of manufacturers developed and released their own Pong adaptations.

Connecticut-based Coleco was the first to make use of the “Pong on a chip.” Founded in

1932 as a leather goods firm that evolved into a toy company and manufacturer of above- ground swimming pools, Coleco (short for Connecticut Leather Company) entered home video games in 1976 with Telstar. The first in a series of home systems manufactured by

4 William D. Smith, "Electronic Games Bringing a Different Way to Relax," New York Times, December 25, 1975.

39

Coleco, the original Telsar came with three similar games—tennis, hockey, and handball—and sold for around fifty dollars. Thanks in part to its comparatively low cost,

Telstar had robust sales, moving roughly 1 million units in 1976 alone, and led to a chip shortage as the demand for more AY-3-8500 units outpaced GI’s initial supply.5 Other competitors eventually followed Coleco into the market with their own chip-based systems, including (Adversary), APF (Match, TV Fun), GHP

(Wonder Wizard), Unisonic (Tournament), and Venture Electronics (Video Sports). Later

Odyssey units, including the Odyssey 300, 400, and 500, also utilized the AY-3-8500 chip.

Fueled by high supply and decreasing costs, video games remained the popular

Christmas item through the 1976 holiday season. One article from the December 9, 1976, edition of the Wall Street Journal noted, “Devices that turn TV sets into electronic game boards are grabbed up by shoppers,” attributing declining prices as a key element of the market's success.6 A variety of crowded the market. A Bloomingdale's ad that appeared in the November 21, 1976, issue of the New York Times devoted space to six systems: Atari Superpong, the Odyssey 300, Indy 500 (a in a market flooded by tennis, hockey, and football variants), Video Action IV, "Face Off" Executive

Hockey, Quadtronics, and the cartridge-based Fairchild Video Entertainment System

5 Leonard Herman, “Ball-and-Paddle Consoles,” in Before the Crash: Early Video Game History, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2012), 57.

6 “Business Bulletin,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1976.

40

(VES).7 Most observers projected 1977 would be an even more profitable year for video games; however some predicted that the glut of manufacturers would lead to a culling of the market. As Blake Downing of Creative Strategies Inc. informed a New York Times reporter in December 1976, “First you have to realize there has been an electronic chip shortage. Therefore, there has been a shortage of games manufactured. Now that the supply is beginning to catch up with the need, there are more games and the price goes down. Some of the weaker companies will fall out, and profits will rebuild to normal levels.”8

By the end of 1977, the market for home video games had effectively bottomed out. Oversaturation combined with rapidly-declining prices forced many aspiring companies to leave the market or fold entirely. The players in the video game market that survived were those that shifted from systems with pre-programmed games to cartridge- based units, "programmable" systems that allowed for greater software variety. The first of these cartridge-based systems was the Fairchild VES (later known as the Fairchild

Channel ), created by engineer Jerry Lawson for Fairchild Semiconductor and released in 1976. Atari, recently acquired by media conglomerate Warner Communications, Inc., released the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) in late 1977. Other successors included

7 “Gifts for the Family that Plays Together,” New York Times, November 21, 1976.

8 John Wark, “Boom and Bust in Video Games?” New York Times, December 12, 1976. It was not the first time observers predicted a clearing-out, and Chapter Three will show that it was far from the last. Through the years of the first video game boom, several observers predicted an end to the tennis game fad. During the lawsuit between Allied Leisure and Bally in 1974, David Braun of Midway commented the video game industry was "played out like yesterday's newspaper." Ford 35-36.

41 the Bally Professional Arcade, the Mattel Intellivision, and the Odyssey2 (created by

North American Philips, which had purchased Magnavox in July 1975).9

"The New Electronic Hearth": Video Games and the American Nuclear Family

Despite an industry historically characterized by novelty, domestic harmony was the predominant theme of early video game marketing. The television commercial for the original Magnavox Odyssey opened on a starry field overlaid with the stylized "Odyssey" logo before shifting to a middle-class American living room where members of a family of four—father, mother, and young son and daughter—played the various titles in the

Odyssey library. The ad alternated between shots of gameplay projected on the television screen and reactions of the various members of the family: mother and father playing tennis, brother and sister playing “Simon Says,” concluding with the family gathered together on the couch, brother and sister seated on father and mother’s laps, as together they played “Haunted House.” A narrator explained the system’s appeal to all members of the family: “Odyssey is a total play and learning experience for all ages.”10 Odyssey print advertisements showed a nuclear family gathered around the TV set, two members holding controllers while the entire family shared in the experience, observing the action or perhaps waiting their turn. The same tableaux appeared on the front of the Odyssey’s packaging. Similar scenes of families playing together appeared in marketing and

9 "Magnavox Wholly Owned by North American Philips," New York Times, July 25, 1975.

10 "Magnavox Odyssey Commercials and Television Appearance from 1972-1973," YouTube, accessed May 14, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MnRkPvIjKE.

42 packaging for other systems, including the Odyssey 100, Odyssey 200, the Venture

Video Sports Model VS-7, and the Wonder Wizard.11 (Figs. 1.1-1.3)

The tableaux presented in these early marketing materials was an adaptation of a common advertising trope, the "family circle." Iconography of the family circle exhibited a seamless integration between the domestic space and the advertised product by situating the targeted product within the living room or parlor, surrounded by members of the family. The intended goal of this trope was to reassure potential consumers that the new product—be it radio, television set, or video game system—would not be disruptive.

Rather, ownership and consumption of it would reinforce the family unit and maintain the family's stability and strength. As advertising historian Roland Marchand observed, the family circle image, “connoted stability. The products of modern technology…were comfortably accommodated within the hallowed circle. Whatever pressures and complexities modernity might bring, these images implied, the family at home would preserve undaunted harmony and security.”12

Advertisers who utilized the family circle trope sought to capitalize on another powerful American cultural symbol: the hearth. Indeed, historian Dmitri Williams characterized home video games of this period as “the new electronic hearth,” unseating

11 A variation on this theme presented one adult family member, predominantly the father, playing alongside one child. The child was predominantly male; however, at least one game package for the Radio Shack Electronic TV Scoreboard displayed a rare image of a father and daughter playing together.

12 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 254.

43

Figure 1.1: The “family circle” surrounded around the Odyssey 200 in a 1975 Magnavox catalog. Magnavox Television: The Magnificent Magnavox…Quality in Every Detail (The Magnavox Company, 1975), 46, Internet Archive, accessed May 26, 2019, https://archive.org/details/MagnavoxTVCatalog1975.

44

Figure 1.2: Family circle depicted on the packaging for the Wonder Wizard. Image source: greenbackin, eBay, accessed September 25, 2019, https://ebay.to/2naImPf.

45

Figure 1.3: Box for the Venture Video Sports Model VS-7 depicting the family circle. Image Source: antoinbryant-stewar-0, eBay, accessed September 25, 2019, https://ebay.to/2nefvJX.

46 the previous electronic hearth: the television set.13 According to television historian

Cecelia Tichi, the hearth acted as a bulwark against social change and presented a nostalgic image of protection and safety. In the face of outside threats to the stability ofthe home, the hearth (and, by extension, its heirs apparent) offered reassurance of continuity and stability, dating back to America’s colonial roots; it was a conservative image relying heavily on evoking nostalgia. According to Tichi:

The embrace of the hearth was really a way out of the discordant, tumultuous process of history and an entry into the American myth. That myth says that social change is not occurring as long as the hearth remains in place. Political shiftings, violence, social hierarchy, transformations of family patterns and demographics—all these are denied by the symbolism of the hearth. Dynamic processes of virtually every kind are denied. In fact the meaning of the hearth is that history does not exist.14 In the case of the home video game system, advertisements depicting the family circle appeared at a time when the middle-class suburban family faced significant social, cultural, and economic upheaval. Advertisers suggested that video games, by contrast, acted as a bulwark, reinforcing traditional family values.

Economic prosperity following the end of World War II combined with dramatic changes to the American mortgage system gave rise to an expanding middle class that migrated from urban and rural areas to a rapidly-growing suburban landscape. In the postwar years, young couples settled down in newly-built suburban housing developments to raise families, giving rise to the postwar “baby boom.” Beyond

13 Williams, “A Brief Social History of Game Play,” 199-200.

14 Cecilia Tichi, Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 56.

47 aspirational goal and symbol of the “good life,” the suburban nuclear family became a powerful symbol of American family values in the Cold War years, embodying traditional gender roles as well as the end goal of economic success. Under this model, men had the economic means to act as providers and defenders of the homestead while women were free to exit the workforce to assume homemaking and child-rearing roles assisted by a plethora of new labor-saving appliances. Moreover, the nuclear family acted as the end-result of capitalism: the freedom for Americans to own their own property and a cornucopia of inexpensive consumer goods from television sets, to automobiles, to washing machines. It acted as a symbol of the ultimate “Freedom from Want.” The

American nuclear family also acted as a powerful propaganda tool during the Cold War, epitomized during the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, where representatives displayed a suburban American kitchen as the embodiment of American capitalism.15

However, by the early 1970s, the suburban middle-class family as economic and cultural ideal faced significant social, political, and economic changes. As the baby boom generation came of age, they eschewed many of the values advocated by their parents in favor of freer sexuality and a more lenient stance on marriage. Advocates of second-wave feminism challenged women’s traditional roles as wives and mothers. Marriage rates declined and divorces increased, bolstered in part by systemic changes to American

15 For more on the suburban nuclear family as a symbol of economic privilege, see Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: BasicBooks, 1988) 162-182.

48 divorce law and the creation of “no fault” divorce. These reforms, combined with increased access to birth control, also saw a reversal in the baby boom. Moreover, by the early 1970s, the post-war economic boom had come to an end. Between 1973 and 1975,

America entered the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

Unemployment climbed as high as 8.7% and the country entered a period of,

“stagflation” with rising costs combined with stagnant economic growth.16 The economic downturn appeared to undermine or outright upend the suburban nuclear family model, prompting some observers to conclude the model was rapidly becoming obsolete.

Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy epitomized this sentiment when he commented in a 1973 Congressional hearing on the state of the American family:

Statistics about our children and our families indicate that the modern family is continually going thru [sic] important changes. High divorce rates, declining birth rates, rejection by youth of traditional family styles, and the alarming estimate of a half a million teenagers running away from home every year are some of the powerful influences on today’s family members. Many observers see that these forces have resulted from increased mobility in our society and the changing roles of mothers and the children. But some events have led social science experts to fear that other changes may surely destroy the fabric of the family as we know it.17 Whereas capitalist proponents of the 1950s cited the suburban family as a symbol of economic prosperity and the strength of the American capitalist system, observers during

16 Economic Report of the President: Transmitted to the Congress February 1975 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1975), 3.

17 American Families: Trends and Pressures, 1973: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Children and Youth of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Ninety-Third Congress, First Session on Examination of the Influence that Governmental Policies Have on American Families (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 2. Hereafter referred to as American Families.

49 the sixties and seventies viewed its harried state as both cause and symptom of national decline. Failures in Vietnam and the 1973 OPEC oil embargo shattered illusions of

American invincibility. President Richard Nixon’s resignation undermined faith in government institutions. Violent crime rates quadrupled between 1960 and 1975.

Perceiving a decline in parental involvement in family life, child psychologist Urie

Bronfenbrenner lamented at a 1973 Congressional hearing, “The cocktail hour has replaced the children’s hour in our homes.”18

In a political and social environment focused on both national and familial decline, video game marketing presented games as the antidote to the harried American nuclear family. Print and television ads adopted visual cues, including the hearth imagery of the family circle, to reinforce video games’ connection to family and harmony.

An article from the November 27, 1975, issue of the Times explained the

Sears Tele-games Pong system enhanced television viewing by bringing back family game time:

Back in the days before television, families used to spend much of their leisure indoor hours playing monopoly, checkers, dominos, cards and numerous other so- called parlor games. Then, along came TV and many families lost the institution of the game night. Now, thanks to some ingenious electronic inventions, the television set can return home games to their previous popularity. Just in time for this Christmas season, Sears has introduced an electronic game called Pong which is the first of the company’s exclusive new Tele-Games series.19

18 American Families, 137.

19 “New TV Game Brings Back Family Fun Night,” Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1975.

50

Copy from Magnavox’s 1975 catalog portrayed the Odyssey 100 as an ideal cure for rainy-day cabin fever, describing it as “Perfect on rainy days when you hear the lament,

‘There’s nothing to do and there’s nothing good on TV!’”20 The iconography of the family circle displayed parents who focused on leisure with their kids, reasserting the power of the family hour over the cocktail hour. Parents concerned about the negative influence of television need not fear video games, as Magnavox also promoted the

Odyssey as an educational tool. The inclusion of such titles as Simon Says, Analogic, and

States promised to cultivate impressionable minds. As one December 1972 print advertisement taken out by New York-based Liberty Music proclaimed, the Odyssey was a “Great teaching tool for children. And great fun for children and adults.”21

Advertisements asserted that games reinforced entertainment in the home over more public amusements, including coin-operated video games in arcades and bars. In a

1975 Atari television commercial for the home adaptation of Pong, a man dressed in the stereotypical garb of a Texas rancher addressed “Doreen,” an absent family member whom he explained in a rustic southern drawl was so engrossed in Atari Pong she “got to having so much fun [she] plain forgot to come home.” He offered a remedy to Doreen and other families orphaned from Pong-addicted relatives in the form of Atari’s home

20 Magnavox Television. The Magnificent Magnavox...Quality in Every Detail, 1975: 46, in Internet Archive, The Magazine Rack, accessed July 19, 2016, https://archive.org/details/MagnavoxTVCatalog1975.

21 "Give a little…and get a lot of love with one of Liberty’s Beautiful Gifts,” New York Times, December 17, 1972.

51 adaptation. As the ad concluded, he placed his ten-gallon hat over his heart, imploring for

Doreen (and by extension other Pong enthusiasts) to “come on back home.”22

In addition to affirming the strength of the family, advertisements and observers suggested that home video games also offered an escape from the perceived external threats poised to upend the domestic stability of the home. The television broadcasted disturbing news stories of urban race riots, the Vietnam War, international terrorism, violent confrontations between student protesters and law enforcement, the humiliation of

Watergate and the gas crisis, and the troubling effects of economic stagflation. However, these and many other crises could be obstructed from view by digitized balls and paddles.

When asked to comment on the growing commercial success of home video games, a spokesman for Sears observed, “It is part of the consumer desire to get away from harsh realities” citing the simultaneous growing popularity of citizen’s band (CB) radio as “part of the same syndrome.”23 While game advertisements frequently reassured consumers these systems would not interfere with television viewing, on another level they acted as a protective shield, literally blocking out the TV set’s images of the harsher aspects of life in the seventies from suburban consumers.

22 "Atari Pong—1st Atari Commercial," in Atari Museum, Video Library, http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives//archives/Video-Library/videos- gamingPong.htm.

23 William D. Smith, “Electronic Games Bringing a Different Way to Relax,” New York Times, December 25, 1975.

52

“For Anyone, Young and Old...At Any Time, for Any Occasion”: Video Games and Middle-Class Leisure In addition to the advertising rhetoric of continuity and stability, observers of both coin-operated and home video games emphasized video gameplay as a sophisticated form of leisure. In the coin-operated market, observers noted video games offered a more high- brow form of leisure than the , pool table, and pinball machine associated with blue collar adult play. Numerous small business owners, who purchased or rented coin-operated machines for public play, expressed their interest in using game systems to attract more affluent clientele. Stephen Sansweet of the Wall Street Journal noted in a

March 1974 article: “[T]he video game goes where the pinball machine would never be seen. Quiet and streamlined, it has invaded such places as the exclusive Sausalito Club in

Miami and the lounge of the plush new Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles.” Another industry observer described video games’ appeal as a draw for more well-to-do players who would typically eschew other coin-operated activities: “For years, our games—pinballs, shuffle alley, pool—appealed mainly to, you know, the laboring class. Now with video games, you have a broader patronage. I mean, a lot of lounges will take a video game that never would let a pinball machine in the door.” In a September 1974 article, a New York

Times reporter dubbed video games “the thinking man’s plaything, his intellectual equivalent to the truck driver’s pinballs.”24

24 Stephen J. Sansweet, “Sophisticated Cousin Of Pinball Machine Entrances the U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 1974; Peter Ross Range, “The Space Age Pinball Machine,” New York Times, September 15, 1974.

53

Meanwhile, imagery from home system advertisements associated games with modern suburban living. Product catalogs and print and television advertisements staged video game systems in elegant or relaxed living room settings far removed from the tavern space. An entry for the Odyssey 200 from Magnavox’s 1975 product catalog, mentioned above, displayed the system among a modern living room with a suburban family gathered around the television set. What can be seen of the room displays modest but tasteful furnishings: art deco style rug, leather couch, modestly-sized television set on a small TV stand, small coffee table.25 These images created a visual association with middle-class leisure spaces. Decreasing game costs—for example, the Telstar’s $50 retail price—likely appealed to families on a modest budget as economies of scale and the rapid oversaturation of the home video game market between 1975 and 1977 drove down their prices, placing many home video game systems within reach of a broader audience.

These advertisements also subtly coded home video gameplay as white.

Advertisements that presented users playing systems such as Coleco or the exclusively focused on white users. This likely reflected predominant cultural assumptions of the whiteness of middle-class suburban nuclear families. While the suburban nuclear family theoretically offered the promise of middle-class prosperity to all Americans, in practice people of color and non-Christians often found access elusive.

Discriminatory mortgage lending practices, redlining, and outright segregation barred many nonwhite and non-Christian families from suburban homeownership. In the years

25 Magnavox Television, The Magnificent Magnavox…Quality in Every Detail, 46.

54 following the construction of the first Levittown on Long Island, NY, in 1947, African

Americans were outright banned from residency. Real estate developer and Levittown namesake William Levitt himself once proclaimed, “We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two.” The August 1957 arrival of Daisy and Bill Myers, the first African American residents in Levittown, PA, sparked several days of protests from white residents.26 In this sense, video game advertising imagery of the 1970s reflected larger conceptions of American suburban life as predominantly white.

Home video game advertisements also reflected a connection with middle or upper-class adult sensibilities. Contrasting more recent depictions of video games as a pastime of the young, print advertisements for the Odyssey allowed for adult play, frequently noting the system offered fun for the whole family. “The exciting TV

Electronic Game Center for Children and Adults,” an ad from the February 17, 1974, issue of the New York Times assured readers, “Odyssey is a play and learning experience for all ages.”27 The 1975 Magnavox product catalog described the Odyssey 100 as “A great gift…for anyone, young and old…at any time, for any occasion”28

26 Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 241; "Black Family Challenges Racial Barriers in Suburb," The History Engine, accessed May 14, 2017, https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5271.

27 Magnavox Sale ’74,” New York Times, February 17, 1974.

28 Magnavox Television. The Magnificent Magnavox...Quality in Every Detail, 46.

55

Advertising also portrayed this adult-oriented video gameplay as a gender-neutral activity, one which men and women could feel comfortable partaking together. Next to the family circle, depictions of adult men and women playing were among the most common tableaux in home video game print and television advertising. During one segment of the initial television commercial for the Odyssey, mother and father are seen sitting alone playing Odyssey together, young brother and sister are out of the room, presumably safely nestled in bed, while the parents share some quality time. These advertisements implied these systems could also be viewed as sexual levelers.

Computerized technology has been historically associated with masculinity. Indeed, coin- operated video games such as Pong and its myriad derivatives appeared in bars and clubs, locales predominantly considered male-dominated spaces. However, in these advertisements, the men and women are on equal footing in their participation, each manipulating their own set of controls. They also play within the safe confines of the private home.

In emphasizing the universality of gameplay, what one journalist later described as "the universal appeal” of video games, producers situated home video games within a larger spectrum of adult-oriented leisure in 1970s America. Producers and observers positioned video games not just as family amusement but as an acceptable form of modern middle-class adult play, an interpretation that fit the medium within larger trends in American culture. Cultural critics characterized middle-class leisure in the seventies as a search for personal self-fulfillment, embodied in a variety of trends emphasizing the cultivation of the self and an enhanced sense of self-worth. Self-improvement took on

56 numerous forms: the physical through the “fitness craze” embodied by the rise in gym membership and the popularization of jogging, aerobics, tennis, and other fitness trends; the spiritual through “New Age” spiritualism, such as increased participation in yoga,

Scientology, and Erhard Seminars Training (est) and the resurgence of evangelical

Christianity; and the psychological, such as participation in individual and group therapy and counseling. “Never has self-awareness been so prized,” one psychologist commented in 1979, “Great claims have been made for increased self-awareness in the form of greater happiness, self-satisfaction, more rewarding relationships, and increased productivity.”29 As historian Christopher Lasch observed in his 1978 work The Culture of

Narcissism:

After the political turmoil of the sixties, Americans have retreated to purely personal preconceptions. Having no hope of improving their lives in any of the ways that matter, people have convinced themselves that what matters is psychic self-improvement: getting in touch with their feelings, eating health food, taking lessons in ballet or belly-dancing, immersing themselves in the wisdom of the East, jogging, learning how to "relate," overcoming the "fear of pleasure."30 Author Tom Wolfe provided a pithy synopsis of adult leisure during this period when he dubbed the 1970s the “Me Decade” in a 1976 article for the New Yorker. Meanwhile, social scientists devoted renewed attention to narcissism, both as a clinical diagnosis and an overarching commentary on middle-class social life.31

29 Ann . Montgomery, “Personal Growth: Quest for Perfection?” Counseling and Values 23, No. 2 (January 1979): 130.

30 Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, 4.

31 Tom Wolfe, “The ‘Me Decade” and the Third Great Awakening,” New York, August 23, 1976, accessed May 10, 2017, http://nymag.com/news/features/45938. For critical

57

As a way of capitalizing on the sentiments of the “Me Decade,” video game advertisements of the 1970s emphasized the interactivity of games as a means of creating personalized entertainment experiences. In this potentially tumultuous environment of self-realization, video games offered the promise of an electronic form of self-fulfillment.

When asked to explain the popularity of video games, one retail analyst observed in

1975, “Warm-up suits, jogging, power hockey, electronic games in which you have to use your reflexes. We may be leaving the spectator era for the participation era,” adding on a personal note, “For my part I don’t plan to watch the Super Bowl this year.”32

Observers of the first video game boom cited interactivity as a fundamental aspect of the medium’s popular appeal, and active involvement in personal leisure became a key selling point. A 1976 television commercial for the Coleco Telstar opened with a shot behind the backs of an adult couple as they played a game of electronic hockey; during

examinations of the “Me Decade,” see: Benjamin Rader, “The Quest for Self-Sufficiency and the New Strenuosity: Reflections on the Strenuous Life of the 1970s and the 1980s," Journal of Sport History 18, No. 2 (Summer 1991): 257; Kenneth Cooper, Aerobics (New York: M. Evans, 1968); Richard Kyle, The New Age Movement in American Culture (New York: University Press of America, 1995); Elizabeth Lunbeck, “Narcissism: Social Critique in Me-Decade America,” in Engineering Society: The Role of Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880-1980, eds. Kerstin Brükweh, Benjamin Ziemann, Richard F. Wetzell, and Dirk Schumann, (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2012), 198- 214. Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 183-221. For contemporary examinations of narcissism, see: Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (New York: International Universities Press, 1971); Otto Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (New York: J. Aronson, 1975); Peter Marin, “The New Narcissism,” Harper’s (October 1975): 45-56; Richard Sennett, “Narcissism and Modern Culture,” October 4 (Autumn 1977): 70-79.

32 Emphasis added. William D. Smith, “Electronic Games Bringing a Different Way to Relax,” New York Times. December 25, 1975.

58 their competition, a narrator explained to the audience, “You’re watching the most exciting game you’ll ever see on your TV set.”33

Historians writing on television’s impact on American life have characterized marketing for TV sets during the same period as focused on television as a “window to the world,” a means of experiencing faraway events and locales from the comfort of one's home.34 Video games offered to take this metaphor one step further, transforming the television from vicarious enjoyment into hands-on participation as the passive viewer became the active player. While debuting the Odyssey at a May 1972 press event,

Magnavox president Robert . Black boasted the system “is an educational tool that transfers television from passive to an active medium.”35 A 1972 print ad for Odyssey promised, “With Odyssey you participate in television…you’re not just a spectator! The fascinating casino action of Monte Carlo, the excitement of Wimbledon, the thrills of a heated game of football—can all be duplicated right in your own living room!”36

Depictions of people playing various sports, including tennis, hockey, and football, frequently appeared on product packaging. The copy for a May 1976 Bloomingdale’s

33 “PONG – Coleco – Telstar Console Commercial,” YouTube, accessed February 1, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq_K0dmlWUA.

34 Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 99-135; Tichi, Electronic Hearth, 84-103.

35 “Magnavox Unveils TV Game Simulator,” New York Times, May 11, 1972.

36 Odyssey: A Total Play and Learning Experience for All Ages (Magnavox Co., 1972), accessed April 29, 2019, http://www.magnavox- odyssey.com/Odyssey/Collector/Pamphlet2_2.jpg.

59 department store advertisement for Pong, Video Action III, and Executive Tennis emphasized how the competing systems simulated the action of major sporting events:

“Through the magic of ‘digital scanning’ the screen of your own television becomes the scene of action worthy of center court at Wimbledon or of the Stanley

Cup play-offs.”37

Tennis comparisons are an especially apt reference as during the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a dramatic expansion in the sport’s popularity. Television networks rapidly focused on tennis during this period, for the first time offering televised coverage of major tournaments, such as Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the Davis Cup, as well as minor contests and individual match-ups, such as the highly-publicized 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” matches.38 Recreational tennis play exploded during the early seventies as

Americans took to the courts in record numbers. High schools and colleges rushed to found tennis teams and aspiring amateurs scrambled to join clubs or stake out space on courts. Sales in equipment rose steadily and there was a boom in indoor and outdoor court construction to keep up with the demand. Reportedly, 5,000 new courts appeared in

37 “Play-TV,” New York Times, May 9, 1976.

38 Tennis achieved a level of mainstream popularity the sport has hitherto been unable to emulate. More recent popular articles on the sport have lamented declines in both general interest and the competitiveness of American pros, frequently citing the sport’s heyday in the 1970s. See, for example: Matthew DeBord, “U.S. Open Tennis: The American Tennis Boom Was a Fluke,” Huffington Post, November 11, 2009, accessed March 6, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-debord/us-open-tennis-the- americ_b_284094.html.

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1972 alone.39 “With more than 13 million players wielding rackets made of animal innards or nylon and wood (as well as aluminum),” a Los Angeles Times reporter commented in June 1973, “tennis is fast becoming the national pastime.”40

Long considered a pastime of the elites, advocates during the tennis boom touted the sport's widespread appeal. “The ‘sissy’ sport is suddenly a game for all people,” one

Los Angeles Times reporter noted in 1968, “Congressmen, housewives, football coaches, beauty queens, and dock workers. It is a game for kids from 3 to 83.” “Tennis, once a game for the classes has become a sport for the masses,” Neil Amdur of the New York

Times wrote several years later. Grahame M. Jones wrote for the Los Angeles Times in

June 1973, “[I]t seems clear that the cliché, ‘Tennis anyone?’ is no longer valid.

Apparently the 1973 version should be ‘Tennis everyone.’” Reporters and tennis enthusiasts frequently described tennis as a superior alternative to golf, arguing tennis offered more physical activity, lower equipment and facility costs, and a more fast-paced experience with significantly shorter matches than a typical round of golf. Tennis also offered a broader appeal among women.41

39 Thomas B. Carter, “The Racket Crowd: Tennis Gains Popularity as a Way to Keep Trim, Have Fun Year Round,” Wall Street Journal (July 8, 1968); Grahame M. Jones, “Tennis Boom Creates Shortage of Courts,” Los Angeles Times (June 10, 1973).

40 Grahame M. Jones, “Tennis Boom Creates Shortage of Courts,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1973.

41 Jeff Prugh, “’Tennis, Everyone!’ Americans Suddenly Taking Their Sport to Court as Once ‘Sissy’ Game Booms,” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1971; Neil Amdur, “Plush Indoor Courts Spurring Popularity of Tennis,” New York Times, April 9, 1972; Grahame M. Jones, “Tennis Boom Creates Shortage of Courts,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1973; Thomas B. Carter, “The Racket Crowd: Tennis Gains Popularity As a Way to

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Video game advertisers and observers of the new medium made frequent comparisons between tennis and its virtual equivalent. Versions of racket or paddle-based tennis variants, including singles and doubles tennis, table tennis, and squash, appeared on most game systems between 1972 and 1976. The associations between home video games and real-life tennis were frequent, suggesting the former could serve as a substitute for the latter, especially for less athletically inclined households. “Imagine,” mused the copy of one Gimbels ad for the Apollo 2001, a four-in-one game system manufactured by

Enterprex, “Your own tennis, hockey, squash and practice courts at home.”42 In an electronic extension of the real-life amateur-professional tennis showdowns, an amateur player defeated Norwegian professional tennis champion Ilie Nastase in a game played via National Semiconductor’s Adversary system broadcast during a November 1976 college football game. A print advertisement published in the New York Times later in the week boasted Adversary as, “The game you saw Ilie Nastase lose (gracefully) on NCAA football Sat.”43 A cartoon from the November 1978 issue of Changing Times presented a couple in full tennis regalia (shorts, t-shirts, sneakers, and visors) sitting on the couch and

Keep Trim, Have Fun Year Round,” Wall Street Journal, July 8, 1968; Dave Distel, "Challenge of the Sexes: Name of the Game is Entertainment," Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1975.

42 “Save $10 on the Apollo 2001...Four TV Games in One,” New York Times, November 18, 1976.

43 “Adversary…A Very Challenging Game from National Semiconductor,” New York Times, November 7, 1976.

62 holding controllers while playing an electronic tennis game on the TV set, their rackets discarded on the floor and leaning against the couch.44

In this environment, video games offered a potentially accessible point of entry to modern middle-class leisure. The associations between virtual and actual tennis appeared even in from the period. In a humorous December 1976 article for the New York

Times, columnist Georgia Dullea poked fun at the potential and pitfalls of video games as a social substitute for tennis. Dullea introduced readers to a fictitious middle-class suburban couple, Harry and Phyllis Brown, a pair of tennis-challenged socialites who aspired to use the sport as a way of connecting with their neighbors. “Poor kid,” Dullea laments of Phyllis, “She and Harry have had it rough ever since they moved into town.

This is a total tennis town, you see, winter and summer. Non-players are socially nowhere.” To keep up with the tennis-inclined Joneses, the Browns instead play its electronic equivalent. Clad in “fashionable tennis dress,” the pair take to the virtual court to hone their skills; perhaps more convenient than actual tennis, albeit less than health conscious, Harry cracks open a . “’Schlitz and tennis at the same time!’ Harry cried, left hand hoisting a beer can, right hand on the dial of the video game. ‘Can Arthur Ashe do that?’”

Dullea asserts that despite the clear conveniences in the minds of the Browns, it is unclear whether video games proved a shortcut to connecting with their tennis-playing peers. Phyllis laments the purchase of a tennis video game had not led to greater

44 Changing Times 32 (November 1978): 43.

63 socializing despite her hopes they could fake their way through a conversation with real tennis players. She explains, drying tears from her eyes: “It’s just that I thought things would be better when we got the game...I thought we could go to brunches in sweatsuits and say things like ‘I just won 6-love’ and nobody would know we meant TV tennis.

Now I don’t know.’” Ostensibly taking solace in the quality time their matches grant each other, the vignette closes with an intense game of electronic tennis between the pair, perhaps too intense as Phyllis angrily unplugs the system after losing a match:

Blip...blip...blip… Well they were both fiercely aggressive players. After a close match, Harry emerged the winner. As he prepared to leap the set, something came over Phyllis. Eyes blazing, she charged the set and pulled the plug. That wasn’t like Phyllis. “No, it wasn’t," Harry agreed gravely. "I’m worried about Phyllis.”45 Dullea’s article pokes fun at the suburban leisure movement; however, he also plays with the notion of video games as a substitute for real life experiences. Meanwhile, for advertisers, video games offered the promise that American couples could take part in their own personal "battles of the sexes" in the comfort of their living rooms.

“The Premature Arrival of the Future”: Video Games and Cultural Anxieties over Computers In addition to a new or modified form of suburban leisure, video games also represented, in many respects, the initial introduction of computers into the American home. Between the 1950s and 1970s the American public was introduced to computers.

45 A practice known in modern video gaming parlance as a "rage quit." Georgia Dullea, “Beer and Tennis at the Same Time—Can Arthur Ashe Do That?” New York Times, December 25, 1976.

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Computers garnered a mixed reception during the postwar years. Advocates celebrated their potential to increase efficiency and promote military, scientific, and technological progress. However, the coming of computers soon conjured fears of automation and the de-skilling of human labor. Discussions of the early commercial success of video games aroused discussion over these conflicting meanings. An article from the June 13, 1976, edition of the New York Times commented on the increased public exposure to computers through such devices as electronic and video games. At the end of the article, the authors mused over the potential drawbacks of an increasingly computerized society:

The efficiency and speed of computers notwithstanding, there are critics who question whether the quality of life in a computerized society will be better. Already there is concern about the invasion of privacy and the loss of jobs because of automation. Will the "dehumanizing" aspect of computers, the critics ask, eventually lead to a growing physical and intellectual ennui among people?46 Aside from a small but developing subculture of hobbyists during the early seventies who will appear in Chapter Four, computers were largely the purview of business, industry, academia, and the federal government. Most Americans’ direct exposure to computers occurred largely in print, television, and film, where they became a subject of Cold War . The computers of popular culture became a means of examining the complex meanings of their real-life equivalents as writers and producers addressed larger cultural fears over automation in terms of human labor, thought, and agency.

Computers in popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s often acted as a surrogate for human deskilling or the elimination of human agency. In ’s 1963

46 Donald Johns and Tom Fer, "Ideas and Trends," New York Times, June 13, 1976.

65 black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, nuclear war is initiated by a “doomsday machine,” a network of computers designed to automatically launch the Soviet nuclear payload in the event of an attack or upon any attempt to deactivate it. Kubrick expanded on the horrors of automation several years later in his 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey wherein the HAL 9000, an artificial intelligence responsible for overseeing a manned space mission to Jupiter, goes mad and systematically murders the crew. In the 1960s primetime animated series The Jetsons, the titular family live in a fully-automated society. Patriarch George Jetson pushes buttons at

Spacely Sprockets while RUDI handles the bulk of the work.

Mechanized technology offers greater time for leisure and comfort for the Jetsons; however, automation also offers problems for the suburban family of the future as devices often malfunction to comedic consequences. Meanwhile, the contemporary science fiction television series The Twilight Zone devoted several episodes to the potential horrors of technological progress. Among the series’ examinations of the effects of technological development was the November 8, 1963, episode “The Old Man in the

Cave,” wherein the decisions of a small community operating in the aftermath of a nuclear war are dictated by a community leader who consults a mysterious old man in a cave who is revealed by the end of the episode to be a mainframe computer. While computers offered the promise of a futuristic utopia, their presence also evoked anxieties over the human consequences of that progress.47

47 Other works that examined tensions over the competition between human agency and computer-driven automation include Kurt Vonnegut’s 1950 short story EPICAC, where a

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By the early 1970s, these anxieties over automation blended with larger tensions over the ramifications of postwar industrialism. Scholars increasingly examined the environmental and social effects of rapid technological change. One of the most widely circulated among these commentaries was Alvin Toffler’s 1970 best-seller Future Shock.

An expansion of ideas introduced in a 1965 Horizon magazine article, titled “The Future as a Way of Life,” Future Shock explored the social, cultural, and psychological consequences of rapid technological advancement. Computers, in Toffler’s assessment, were part of a growing series of tensions developing in twentieth century America, which he characterized as in a state of constant and rapid change. According to Toffler, over the past century the nation had experienced expanded urbanization, accelerated population growth, rapid technological change, and the accelerated rate of information diffusion; however, while technology moved rapidly, cultural response to this swift development was hard-pressed to keep pace. These factors contributed to a state of stress he diagnosed as “future shock,” the social and cultural anxieties created from rapid technological change, or, in Toffler’s words, “Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought upon

mathematician and the eponymous mainframe computer compete for the romantic affections of a human colleague; his 1952 novel Player Piano in which skilled human labor has been systematically supplanted by machines, creating two social castes: an elite of upper class managers and a rapidly-expanding, labor-displaced proletariat; and the 1959 film Desk Set, where the introduction of a mainframe computer in the research library of a television network creates fears among the human workforce that their jobs will be eliminated. See: Ted Friedman, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 50-72; Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010), 137-139; Steven G. Anderson, The Digital Imaginary: Dissertation Complement by Steven Anderson, accessed June 1, 2017, http://imaginary.digital/.

67 by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow.”48

According to Toffler, transience was the most significant consequence of future shock. In an ever-changing world, with new devices, a constantly changing physical and cultural landscape, and a growing array of mass-produced consumer goods, this transience extended to encompass human interaction, rendering permanent social connections obsolete. According to Toffler:

[I]t is precisely these relationships that, as acceleration occurs in society, become foreshortened, telescoped in time. Relationships that once endured for long spans of time now have shorter life expectancies. It is this abbreviation, this compression, that gives rise to the almost tangible feeling that we live, rootless and uncertain, among shifting dunes. Toffler’s prediction of the future focused on novelty and impermanence, a world of abbreviated social interaction and disposable goods (among the most pervasive image taken from Future Shock by critics was his prediction that clothing would be increasingly disposable, introducing readers to the paper wedding gown) as well as disposable relationships.49

48 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 18th Printing (New York: Bantam, 1972) 11. Writing specifically about the computer, Toffler was much more tentative: “Recently the computer has touched off a storm of fresh ideas about man as an interacting part of his physiology, the way he learns, the way he remembers the way he makes decisions. Virtually every intellectual discipline from political science to family psychology has been hit by the wave of imaginative hypotheses triggered by the invention and diffusion of the computer—and its full impact has not yet struck.” Toffler, Future Shock, 30.

49 Toffler, Future Shock, 45-46, 52-54.

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Future Shock resonated with readers and became an instant best-seller: it debuted at number nine on the New York Times best-seller list for non-fiction and was reprinted numerous times in multiple editions throughout the decade.50 In 1972, Future Shock received a short documentary adaptation hosted by filmmaker Orson Welles, purportedly the first in what was to be a series of installments on the subject.51 In attempting to explain its popularity, a critic for the New York Times argued Future Shock and similar works tapped into a growing concern for mankind’s place in the world, especially in light of sudden technological developments:

[Rapid technological changes] have undermined or broken up much of the carefully devised structure that gave order and direction to our lives and defined for us the boundaries of reality and our personal being. Thus deprived, we have been forced back…upon a reconsideration of the "terrifying" questions of who we are and what we want to do with ourselves. Until we find answers to these questions we will have no organizing principle for the management of means so powerful they will enable us to do anything that enters our heads or so powerful, left untended, that they will destroy us.52 In early 1970s America, computers embodied these complex meanings over the consequences of technological development. Human agency and labor converged with convenience and progress, creating a tension over computers as well as computerized devices.

50 “Best Seller List,” New York Times, October 11, 1970.

51 The documentary was not released until August 1974, and the remaining series never came to fruition. One Los Angeles Times critic observed Future Shock had, ironically, become dated a mere four years after its initial release. Cecil Smith, “’Future Shock’ Becomes Old Hat,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1974.

52 Elting E. Morris, “What to do today before tomorrow gets you,” New York Times, July 26, 1970.

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The design and marketing of home game systems during the period addressed these larger anxieties by associating video games less with a technological future and more with the idyllic past. Despite proclamations by Magnavox that the Odyssey was the

“electronic game of the future” (and the name’s obvious callback to the Kubrick film), producers largely marketed video game systems in terms of continuity and stability, something simultaneously new and not new at all. In doing so, game systems during the

1970s shared a similar theme with the introduction of other forms of industrialized technology into the domestic space: concealment.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, manufacturers have endeavored to present new forms of household technology, especially those with significant electronic or mechanical components, as posing no risk to the sanctity of the home. While the old model of separate spheres—the industrialized, “masculine” outside world in contrast to the genteel,

“feminine” domestic space of the home—was a constantly contested notion throughout the twentieth century, advertisers of new forms of technology often—and still—designed and marketed consumer goods in relation to this conception of gendered space. Designers and advertisers attempted to assuage concerns that new technology could act as a disrupting force to American households by appealing to traditionally feminine sensibilities, emphasizing such qualities as style, elegance, or thrift. During the turn of the nineteenth century, sewing machine manufacturers designed in which the machines could be stored, transforming the industrial manufacturing device into a piece of elegant furniture. A similar design choice predominated radio receivers beginning in the 1920s and 1930s. Manufacturers during this period reconceptualized what had

70 previously been a product for a predominantly male hobbyist audience into one marketed more directly at middle-class housewives, concealing the receiver within ornate wood cabinetry. This practice continued with television sets beginning in the 1950s, persisting through the 1970s53 Advertisements and product catalogs placed radios and TV sets in living room and parlor spaces, creating a semiotic connection between the devices and the opulence, gentility, or general comfort of the home. Tichi observed these products metamorphosed from industrial machinery into furniture, because:

the middle class American woman needed persuading that a large box approximately the size of a , containing an exotic-sounding technology called the cathode ray tube, was neither intrusive nor invasive in her most respectable living space, that on the contrary it was enhancing of that space and ought to be accorded a promising position as focal object.54 In this context, sewing machines, radio receivers, and TV sets were far from the invasive

“machine in the garden” threatening to destabilize the security of the home; rather, they could be designed to fit seamlessly into the parlor or living room.55

53 See: Diane M. Douglas, “The Machine in the Parlor: A Dialectical Analysis of the Sewing Machine,” Journal of American Culture, 5, No. 1 (Spring 1982): 20-29; Louis Carlat, “A Cleanser for the Mind: Marketing Radio Receivers for the American Home,” in His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology, eds. Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 7-37; Lynn Spigel, “Installing the Television Set: Popular Discourses on Television and Domestic Space, 1948-1955” in Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer, eds. Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 3-40; Spigel, Make Room for TV, 48-50.

54 Tichi, Electronic Hearth, 18-19.

55 Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).

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Video game manufacturers employed similar design strategies to present their products to consumers. Borrowing from the aesthetic design of contemporary TV sets and radios, numerous game systems utilized some form of wood or faux wood accenting.

The original Odyssey blended the technical sophistication of the space program with the domestic: the system paired sterile white plastic with wood-grain accenting along the trim on the console as well as the tops of the controllers. (Fig. 1.4) Later units in the Odyssey line dispensed with wood-grain accenting; instead, they took on the appearance of plastic radios with their multicolored cases and dials. Other systems designed with wood accents included Tele-games Super Pong IV, the APF TV Fun, the Wonder Wizard, and National

Semiconductor’s Adversary.56 (Fig. 1.5) The Coleco Telstar came with a decal mimicking wood paneling along the front. In 1976, Magnavox carried the concealment idea further with the Magnavox Model 4305, a television set that came with a fully functional Odyssey unit built within the cabinet. The first generation of cartridge-based systems followed the trend of their predecessors, and consoles such as the Fairchild

Video Entertainment System (1976), Atari Video Computer System (1977), Bally

Professional Arcade (1978), and Mattel Intellivision (1979) included wood detailing.57

(Fig. 1.6)

56 One collector described the Adversary in 2005 as “a lovely little console, resplendent in the faux woodgrain décor previously reserved for family station wagons.” “Adversary – National Semiconductor,” Atari Age, August 17, 2005, accessed April 18, 2017, www.atariage.com/forums/blog/87/entry-540-adversary-national-semiconductor/.

57 The cartridges of the Fairchild VES, known as "Videocarts," also bore a noticeable resemblance to eight-track tapes.

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The wood paneling on the game system paralleled the wood cabinetry of the TV set, and advertising imagery frequently depicted the two objects together. Part of this tableaux served the practical purpose of illustrating graphical capabilities as the sets displayed game footage; however, this aesthetic also served to illustrate continuity between the more established leisure of television watching and the new practice of video gameplay. In reality, the relationship of video games and TV sets is parasitic: the game system cannot function properly when devoid of a TV set and video gameplay takes screen time away from television viewing. However, the imagery of game ads and commercials presented a symbiotic connection, a harmonious union beneficial to both entities: the television set bringing the video action to life and the game system augmenting the power of the television set to bring families together. Reinforced through

Figure 1.4: The Magnavox Odyssey. Image Source: Evan Amos, Wikimedia Commons, accessed May 26, 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnavox-Odyssey- Console-Set.

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Figure 1.5: Wonder Wizard model 7702, released by General Home Products in 1976. From the author’s personal collection.

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Figure 1.6: The Atari Video Computer System, released by Atari in 1977. From the author’s personal collection.

75 the family circle motif, the video game system is shown to not be disruptive but rather an enhancement of family leisure and an unintrusive, even attractive, element of room décor when not in use.

As with radio receivers and television sets, producers of home video game systems sought to distance consumers from the technical aspects of their computerized systems. The wires, transistors, computer chips and circuit boards were all concealed from consumers’ view through plastic cases embellished with wood grain finish. Further, specific technical specifications were generally absent from video game advertising during this period. While copy for the various competing systems highlighted technical advancements, they presented these features primarily in terms of overall gameplay experience—number of players or game variants, presence of color, sound projected either through the television set or system itself, whether the system gave players individual controllers, digital or manual scoring—rather than computing power. Some technical interface proved unavoidable, as the game system needed to be attached to the television set via a specialized converter installed on the set’s antenna connection.

However, instruction manuals and promotional films reassured potentially wary consumers of the ease of installation as well as its permanence. A game system need only be installed once, and an included adapter allowed users to transition between broadcast television and electronic gaming with the flip of a switch. The instruction manual for the

Fairchild Video Entertainment System assured readers, “[F]or all the sophisticated

76 technology, [it] is surprisingly simple to install, play, and maintain.”58 A November 1976

Bloomingdale’s advertisement for Pong, Super Pong, Executive Games Face Off, Indy

500 by Universal Reach, and the Fairchild Video Entertainment System promised, regardless of which system a consumer chose to purchase, each would “hook up easily to any TV set.”59

Advertisements pairing game consoles with TV sets also indirectly addressed a growing concern that video game systems could potentially damage .

Contemporary articles addressed fears of signal interference between game systems and

TV sets. An October 1976 article from Popular Mechanics reassured readers oversight from the Federal Communications Commission ensured quality video game systems would pose no threat to the integrity of the TV set:

Even with these switches [designed to counteract radio interference], poorly designed games could radiate interference. So the FCC tests all new models, allowing sale of only those that pass. The wait for FCC approval is one reason why new games aren’t popping up that rapidly. Besides, the FCC plans to slow down or stop approving transmitter-type games in the future. But there’s still quite an assortment...and more are in the works.60 Moreover, concerns arose that games would permanently burn images of playing fields into TV screens. In response in December 1976, the Federal Trade Commission opened

58 The Fairchild Video Entertainment System: The Best of the Video Games, Explained, 1976, Game System Manual, from Internet Archive, Console Manual Library, accessed May 10, 2017, https://archive.org/details/Fairchild_VES_Manual_1976_Fairchild.

59 “Electronic Video Games...An Entertaining Gift for the Whole Family,” New York Times, November 28, 1976.

60 Cindy Morgan, “Video Games: Put Your Backhand on TV,” Popular Mechanics (October 1976): 79.

77 an investigation into this potential phenomenon. Following a year-long investigation, the

FTC reported no evidence except from dealers who left game systems on too long in showroom displays.61

Conclusion

During the first generation of the home video game industry in America, manufacturers sought to play on both the past and the present to market "the electronic game of the future." There was a concerted effort to establish video games in terms of continuity and stability, and the prevailing meanings focused less on technological prowess or novelty and more on promoting domestic harmony. In this light, home game systems reaffirmed the nuclear family; offered the promise of safe yet sophisticated leisure for adults as well as children; and provided Americans with a relatively benign introduction to home computers. The emphasis on safety, sophistication, and social play at home positioned video games as an antidote to the cultural, social, and technological anxieties of 1970s America: the changing role of the American family, self-fulfillment in the "Me Decade," and the concerns over premature technological advancement and automation. In essence, the new technology was far from new at all.

61 Leonard Wiener, “Video Games On Too Long May Hurt Set,” , December 17, 1976; “FTC Says Video Games Shouldn’t Harm TV Sets,” Wall Street Journal, December 20, 1977.

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Chapter 2:

DESIGNING GAMES AND GAMERS: THE EVOLUTION OF GAME USERS, 1977-1993 By the end of the 1970s, manufacturers had transitioned away from self-contained home game systems that relied on a limited library of pre-installed games in favor of systems with removable cartridges. This represented a fundamental shift in and marketing. Cartridge-based systems had a longer commercial lifespan than their predecessors. They could support a potentially limitless supply of new games, reducing the risk of consumers losing interest in a system provided there was a steady stream of new content. Following the advent of "programmable" systems, as some journalists of the time described them, console manufacturers released their systems as loss-leaders, taking an initial financial hit on the system's release and gaining profits through game sales, a practice that is still commonplace.

These changes in technology and business strategies begat new types of game users. The evolution of predominant meanings surrounding who consumed home video games and who was left out of that consumption took place during three distinct periods during the 1980s and 1990s. In the first period, home video games were part of a larger surge in public exposure to video games in general. Atari—makers of the Atari Video

Computer System—was the industry hegemon, controlling roughly 75 percent of the

American home market, followed by a series of other rival console companies, including

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North American Philips, Mattel, and Bally. Between roughly 1977 and 1984, marketing materials and cultural commentary in the popular press offered several competing, at times contradictory, interpretations of video gameplay. Television and print ads still described video games as suburban, white, middle-class leisure; however, this "Universal

Appeal" as one journalist described it in 1983, was concurrent with a new conception of video game players as part of an exclusive subculture. This was the earliest iteration of the "gamer" identity so closely associated with the medium to this day. These emerging new user identities left women and girls in a complicated position, alternately characterized in marketing materials and journalist commentaries as either outsiders or a new potential unique audience.

By the second half of the decade, many of the key industry players had been culled from the market in a period known among game enthusiasts and popular observers as the Great Video Game Crash of 1983-1984 or simply "the Crash," which will be the subject of Chapter Three. The new cohort of hardware and software developers, led by

Japanese manufacturer Nintendo and the Nintendo Entertainment System, adopted many practices like their pre-Crash predecessors. However, the argument that home video games had "Universal Appeal" gave way to a narrower focus on adolescent and teenaged boys as the primary video game audience. During the 1990s, Nintendo found their hegemony challenged by another Japanese manufacturer: Sega. During a period described in some popular histories as “The ,” the game playing audience further narrowed, with teenaged boys emerging as the primary use base, replacing the broad demographic appeal toward middle-class families that characterized video game

80 marketing in the 1970s.1 While outlets for older male players appeared, such as through a growing market of complex computer games, the home video game market became increasingly exclusionary toward women and girls.

“Have You Played Atari Today?”: Video Gaming from 1977 to 1984

In 1976, Fairchild Semiconductor released the Fairchild Video Entertainment

System (VES, later rebranded in the early 1980s as the Channel F). Akin to cotemporary competitors, the VES came with two pre-installed Pong variants: Tennis and Hockey.

Unlike its contemporaries, the VES also ran games from removable cartridges. The cartridge formula became standard for systems over the next several years, and companies that survived the first culling of the American video game market in the late

1970s released their own cartridge-based home game systems. The most commercially successful of these was the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), later renamed the Atari

2600, which debuted in 1977. Other cartridge-based systems included the Bally

Professional Arcade (1978), North American Philips (NAP) Odyssey2 (1978), and Mattel

Intellivision (1979).

As in the 1970s, home video gaming in the 1980s was an economically exclusive pastime. Video game consoles were expensive compared to other family amusements, such as board games or television viewing. Programmable systems of the late seventies were expensive even compared to the Pong-variant predecessors popular earlier in the

1 For one study of the “Console Wars,” see Blake J. Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation (New York, Harper Collins, 2014).

81 decade. Economies of scale coupled with the oversaturation of the game market in the aftermath of the AY-3-8500 chip meant that systems such as those in the Atari

Pong/Tele-games and Odyssey series generally sold for under $50 by 1977. However, the systems that followed were significantly more costly. The Fairchild VES, first of this new cohort, released in 1976 for $149.95. The Atari Video Computer System retailed for just under $200 following its release in the fall of 1977. The Odyssey2, released in 1979 by

North American Phillips, sold for $179.00. Some contemporary systems sold for even more: the Bally Professional Arcade (1978) and Mattel Intellivision (1979) both initially retailed for around $300. Moreover, these “programmable” game systems required software from removable game cartridges that sold separately at prices ranging from $10-

$50 depending on the system. Added to this price were the extra expenses incurred from additional peripherals such as extra controllers, memory expansion units, and other novel devices such as keyboards, modems, or voice modulators. Some manufacturers sought to offset cost concerns by packaging an array of features with their game systems, including multiple controllers or prepackaged or pre-installed games.2 However, for the aspiring game enthusiast looking to build a library of multiple games, let alone systems, video games could prove to be an expensive investment. As a result, home video game

2 Some manufacturers sought to soften the financial blow of investing in game systems by asserting their cost effectiveness. In an effort to capitalize on the success of Atari, the highest-selling company of the period, several manufacturers developed peripherals to play Atari Video Computer System games their competing systems, including the Colecovision and Intellivision. In 1982, Atari developed an attachment that allowed users to play Atari Video Computer System games on a newer, more technically advanced system dubbed the . The peripheral was to alleviate customer anxieties over having to buy a newer system with new games and discard the library on the then aging Video Computer System.

82 ownership presupposed a buyer with a necessary level of disposable income; conversely, this barred access to video game enthusiasts of moderate or limited means, save from the arcades.3

As with the previous generation, video game advertisements of the late seventies and early eighties emphasized home video games as an acceptable form of suburban leisure. Many advertising materials still focused on images of white suburban family members of varying ages and genders playing together. Commercials and print ads further distinguished home gaming from coin-operated arcades. Whereas the latter inherited their tavern predecessors’ stigma along with fears of juvenile delinquency, home video game advertising continued to emphasize safety and domestic harmony.

Advertising imagery for programmable game systems situated the devices in middle-class settings, and backdrops of suburban living rooms pervaded among packaging, catalogs, and television and print materials. Moreover, the persistence of wood or faux wood accenting on systems such as the Atari VCS, Intellivision, and Bally Professional Arcade, represented a continued semiotic association between home video games and established living room/family room objects, such as furniture, home stereo systems, and the television set.

3 This is not to suggest that arcades were necessarily any more economically egalitarian than home games. As Carly Kocurek has pointed out, coin-operated games required a certain level of disposable income among players. Maximizing the amount of play one could utilize out of one quarter became a measure of skill in the early gaming community; however, to obtain that level of skill often requires a significant financial investment as inexperienced or dedicated players are forced to pour in more quarters to continue playing. A common criticism of arcade gaming of the time was that it was both a waste of time and money. Kocurek, Coin Operated Americans, 11-12.

83

As with the Odyssey and other early game systems, corporate marketing materials as well as the growing body of independent game magazines emphasized video gameplay as something that could be enjoyed by all members of the family, a phenomenon

Electronic Games editor Arnie Katz characterized in a 1983 article as the “Universal

Appeal of Electronic Gaming.” As Katz described, “One of the great things about this industry is that it appeals to people of all ages and from every conceivable walk of life."4

In a similar vein, Odyssey2 Adventure scribe Jeff Gaydos characterized home video gaming as entertainment for everyone:

What other recreation can hold the interest of people of all ages and allow them to compete on the same level in areas they never dreamed they might excel? Sociologists say this phenomena is bringing families back together. And the letters we’ve received from Odyssey2 families all over the country bear them out. A mother who says it had been a long time since the whole family could sit around and enjoy each other’s company for a whole evening, and laugh and compete and look forward to more of the same. A grandfather who bought his grandkids each an Odyssey2 mainframe for Christmas tried it himself and knew right away he had to have one. Now the family has tournaments that include three generations of Odyssey2 adventurers. “Let’s face it,” one industry observer noted recently, “this is a hobby to a great many people just as stamp collecting might be—something that everyone does.”5 Universality was a common theme in commercials for Atari products, under the slogan

“Have you played Atari today?” In one such 1981 TV ad for the Video Computer

System, the commercial alternated between on-screen footage from various games in the

4 Arnie Katz, "The Decline and Fall...of Prices," Electronic Games 2, No. 8 (October 1983): 6.

5 Emphasis added. Jeff Gaydos, “The Future is Now,” Odyssey2 Adventure 1, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 5.

84

Atari library and different members of a suburban household playing the system. First, a pair of young boys, followed by one of the boys playing (presumably) with his father, then mother and daughter play together, followed by a pair of adult players (perhaps neighbors or aunt and uncle), and grandparents. By the end of the commercial, the living room is packed with people. Along the way, a police officer and a delivery boy have joined the rest.6 In these and other advertisements, game manufacturers continued to assert their products as a commonplace form of suburban leisure, joining board games or the TV set itself in suburban living rooms.

As with game marketing during the seventies, the “Universal Appeal” presented home video games as a generational leveler and social safety valve. In contrast to the socially tense, and predominantly male-dominated, spaces of the tavern and video arcade, the Universal Appeal conceptualized video games as an appealing and safe form of entertainment. According to testimonials from users reprinted in game-themed magazines, the only social tension was over whose turn it was to play. “With my nine- year-old son playing all the time, I can’t watch a bit of television,” one father lamented in the Spring 1982 issue of Odyssey2 Adventure, the official newsletter for the Odyssey2 system, “But I can play all the Odyssey2 I want.”7 Family unity was also a common theme. According to Katz, “Unlike many other activities, electronic gaming brings

6 “Atari VCS Commercials,” YouTube, October 7, 2008, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69USFTM6-7w.

7 Jim Keeler, “Compliments,” Odyssey2 Adventure 1, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 3.

85 families together. How many other things can mother and son, father and daughter, enjoy on an equal basis?”8

Company newsletters also devoted special attention to adult gameplay. Writer

Mark Jacobson in the January 1983 issue of Video Games noted, “Formerly, a typical video game player might be a warty teenager, a National Lampoon reader, blasting AC-

DC in his room, who went to the arcade to kick a machine’s butt. But now...these elitist video cowboys might be as extinct as their doggiepunching pinball forerunners.” Eugene

Jarvis, creator of the arcade shooter Robotron: 2084, mused that the Universal Appeal risked making video games less fashionable with the teenage audience: “How can you feel cool if your mother is playing the same arcade? It’s like she put on your Led

Zep[pelin] record and liked them better than you.”9 An article in the Winter 1982 issue of

Intellivision Game Club News spotlighted a local fan league of NFL Football players led by Frank Ehlers, an advertising manager for Newmans Inc. Connecting gameplay to other forms of middle-class leisure, the author likened the fantasy league to a bowling league; among the advice for players looking to do the same, the writer recommended players,

“Challenge sportswriters and sports commentators to compete—just for the fun of it.”10

One letter-writer to fan club magazine Activisions noted, “I just wanted you to

8 Arnie Katz, “The Joys of Electronic Gaming,” Electronic Games 1, No. 2 (March 1982): 6.

9 Mark Jacobson, “Zen & the Art of Donkey Kong,” Video Games 1, No. 4 (January 1983): 32.

10 “Frank Ehler’s Local Intellivision Football League,” Intellivision Game Club News, No. 2 (Winter 1982): 3.

86 know that your game is not only exciting for the younger generation, but for a widowed senior citizen also. I will be 68 in May and your STAMPEDE game has kept me from the lonely hours I had before I bought it.”11 Dale Hinton, husband, father, and Laser Blast enthusiast from Charleston, IN, wrote to Activisions, joking over a growing tension between gameplay and his family interactions:

LASER BLAST has changed my life. My wife is going to leave me if I don’t stop playing the game. My children won’t talk to me anymore because I won’t let them play the game. And my dog doesn’t come to me anymore when I call him. But I am going to get 100,000 points if it is the last thing I do!!12 When the independent magazine Video Games devoted advertising space to R-rated films and vodka, the “adults only” advertisements suggested a broader audience for video gaming beyond children and teenagers. Publishing adult testimonials through articles and letters to the editor helped video game magazine and newsletter editors normalize adult gameplay. Their inclusion may have been intended to reassure potentially wary adults that video games were not just for the young, making it acceptable for them to play as well. They may also have made it more palatable for suburban parents to purchase a game system by offering the possibility of group entertainment time. Conversely, young readers could direct their parents to these testimonials as further justification to buy a game system under the auspices that it offered something for the whole family.

One such adult testimonial appeared in the Winter 1982 issue of Odyssey2

Adventure. "Confessions of an Odyssey2 Addict" offered a first-person account of a

11 “Dear Jan,” Activisions, Vol. 3 (Spring 1982): 6.

12 Dale Hinton, “Dear Jan,” Activisions, Vol. 4 (Fall 1982): 6.

87 husband and father who was an avid arcade player. As a means of off-setting the cost of pouring quarters into or Asteroids machines, he purchases an Odyssey2 after playing it at dinner party. He soon finds himself engrossed in the science fiction shooter UFO and becomes determined to best his son's high score. However, his fixation on UFO begins to encroach on his personal and social obligations, culminating in him missing a dinner party, which his wife attends by herself. To his surprise, when she returns, she explains the party hosts had an Odyssey2 out as part of the entertainment and she asks him to introduce her to it. Video game-related marital tension apparently allayed, the "addict" prepares the game system for his wife, the prose taking on sexual overtones as the two consummate their burgeoning gaming "addiction":

Then she said a lot of people at the party were playing Odyssey2. And I smiled. And she said she’d picked it up just for a few social games and kind of enjoyed it. And ever so quietly I slipped the UFO cartridge into its slot, shuddering at the wonderful click it makes as it slams home and programs the main frame. I pressed Space and quietly slipped the right-hand control into her trembling hand. “C’mon, honey,” I said, “just one game.” And I snuck out of the room feeling smug.13 Odyssey2 Adventure emphasized the system as offering something for the whole family, and North American Phillips, manufacturers of the Odyssey2, cast a wide net in advertising for their system. Television commercials directly targeted children, with an emphasis on arcade-esque games such as UFO and K.C. Munchkin sold through the company spokesman the “Wizard of Odyssey," a generic fantasy wizard with robe and long, white beard. Games in the "Master Series"—Quest for the Rings, Conquest of the

13 Han Schirmer, “Confessions of an Odyssey2 Addict,” Odyssey2 Adventure 1, No. 1 (Winter 1982): 9.

88

World, and The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt—attempted to bridge the gap between board and electronic games as well as appeal to older audiences, offering games that relied on physical pieces such as game boards to supplement the system's limited graphics. In this sense, "Confessions" falls in line with NAP's appeal to all members of the suburban family.

While the “Universal Appeal” pitch represented a continuation of marketing practices dating back to earlier systems, such as the Odyssey and home Pong series, a key distinction of early programmable game marketing was its new emphasis on escapism and fantasy. With limited exceptions, games such as Pong, Telstar, Odyssey, and the like represented electronic adaptations of real-world sports such as tennis, hockey, or football.

Advertising copy asserted video games’ ability to bring, as one Odyssey ad put it, “The fascinating casino action of Monte Carlo, the excitement of Wimbledon, [and] the thrills of a heated game of football” into the American living room. However, many programmable video games of the late 1970s and early 1980s increasingly focused on escapism. Beginning in the late seventies, science fiction and medieval fantasy games predominated in both the home market and the arcades. This can be explained in part by the resurgence of science fiction brought upon by the sudden popularity of the film franchise and the emergence of the 1978 arcade hit Space Invaders. Other science fiction shooters included Asteroids, Defender, , Berserk, UFO, and

Demon Attack. Medieval fantasy games included Adventure, Joust, and Atari’s

Swordquest series (Earthworld, Fireworld, and Waterworld).

89

The shift in genres represented a fundamental change in the representation of the television set in game advertising. Rather than demonstrate the TV with game system attached as the interactive “window to the world” and a recreation of major sporting events, these newer ads portrayed the game-projected action on the TV screen as an escape away from the “real world.” A commercial for the Atari 5200 version of the Joust portrayed a dramatized version of the game, wherein dragon-mounted knights square off in mid-air duels, as true to life as though it was part of a film, with bright colors and highly-detailed characters. The ad slowly pulls away from the heated action to display a television set playing the home version of Joust. The actual game's graphics were a from the epic scene depicted at the start of the commercial; however, the ad implied that the television set acted as a bridge between the fantasy world of Joust and the real world. "A video game? Hardly!” the narrator declares,

“Joust: you don't play it. You live it." A television commercial for Tunnel Runner, a game created by CBS Electronics for the Atari Video Computer System, depicted a player looking out from within a television screen, scenes from the game playing behind him. “They think I’m trapped,” he says to the viewer, “but I’ll escape” as he runs further into the game’s virtual maze. In a commercial for Solar Fox, a science fiction game for the 2600 also developed by CBS Electronics, a couple play in what appears to be a spaceship cockpit. The advertisement depicts a blending between the action on the screen and the living room: the pair sit closely together as though on a couch, the woman munches popcorn nervously while the male player focuses on the task at hand. The futuristic aesthetic of the commercial is intended as a glimpse into how the player

90 perceives the action. In this context, the video game system is now more than a gateway to Wimbledon, Monte Carlo, or the Super Bowl; it is now a portal to other worlds.14

However, despite promotional materials depicting home video gameplay as a pastime for all members of the family, the “Universal Appeal” motif still framed a complicated, contested role for female players. Industry observers, despite calls for the

Universal Appeal in print and television materials, frequently asserted the preeminent role of male players, especially teenaged boys, as the target audience. Rich Stearns, vice president of , commented in an interview with Video Games that his firm’s target audience was “a 14-year-old male.”15 developer added in a 1983 interview, “Ultimately, these are the players—our target audience, mostly male, between the age of 8 and 14—who determine how good a game is.”16 Observers

14 “Joust Atari Commercial Retro Gaming,” YouTube, April 10, 2019, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzyCvX49b28; “Tunnel Runner Commercial,” YouTube, May 6, 2007, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMFEiJFrafs. This is not to say the sports games completely went away. The genre remained common during the late seventies and early eighties. For example, marketing for the Mattel Intellivision focused heavily on a more realistic sports experience compared to competitors. Mattel hired sports journalist George Plimpton as the Intellivision spokesmen and secured licenses to develop games of American professional sports leagues. A series of television commercials placed Mattel sports games such as NFL Football and Major League Baseball side-by-side against their equivalents on the Atari Video Computer System.

15 Steve Bloom, “Parker Brothers Strikes Back,” Video Games 1, No. 4 (January 1983): 53.

16 Rob Fulop, “An Act of Creation,” Video Games 2, No. 3 (December 1983): 52.

91 characterized the commercial video arcade space as a male-dominated domain.17

However, a key selling point for home systems of the early eighties was their ability to play faithful home adaptations (known in the industry as “ports”) of popular arcade titles, such as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong. By developing ports of arcade titles, manufacturers may have sought to coax arcade players away from the arcades and into the home, a space traditionally associated with women and girls.

With the rise of the video arcade as a space dominated by teenaged boys, parents, legislators, and media activist groups increasingly viewed public gaming spaces with suspicion. Amid fears of addiction, truancy, delinquency, and crime, municipalities imposed curfews, banned players under eighteen during school hours, or required youths to have an adult present.18 An Atari survey conducted by Custom Research, Inc., appeared to attempt to stave off criticism of the potential corrupting influence of arcade games. According to a report on the study published in the June 1983 issue of Video

Games:

The average video game player is a well-adjusted, socially active teen who keeps his school grades at a B average or above. He can be termed a “doer,” preferring group activities and team sports to solo recreation. His life does not revolve

17 Whether the perception of arcades as male-dominated spaces has been overstated has been the subject of recent debate. In her 2015 study of coin-operated games and male youth culture, Carly Kocurek challenged this idea. Based on interviews with arcade owners and players, including her own experiences playing games in the early eighties, girls had a presence at arcades. Among her more interesting points is her observation that roughly twenty percent of contestants on the video game-themed game show (1982-1983) were girls. Conversely, that still meant eighty percent were boys. Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 19-20.

18 For more on anxieties over video arcades and moralist responses to them, see Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 91-114 and Newman, Atari Age, 153-182.

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around video games. In fact, chances are he spends no more than half-an-hour, timewise, and $1, moneywise, per arcade visit.19 Advertisements for home video games during the same period sought to alleviate parental concerns over potential negative effects of gameplay. To that end, some television commercials targeted suburban mothers, gatekeepers to the suburban household, and manufacturers sought to assuage their potential anxieties over video games. In a 1982 commercial for the Atari VCS adaptation of E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial, a mother sits next to her young son as he plays the game, which involves gathering parts of a while avoiding scientists and government officials to help the eponymous alien contact his home planet. The mother is there both to monitor his play and take part in the action, actively encouraging him along his adventure. As E.T. returns to his spaceship at the end of the ad, the pair wave goodbye to the screen together.20 The content implies video games can be safely mediated by involved parents, and any potential negative consequences of video gameplay can, therefore, be neutralized through careful adult supervision within the suburban living room.

On the other hand, several ads suggested mothers themselves could get involved in the video action. A series of TV commercials for Atari, titled “Dear Atari

Anonymous,” focused on anxieties over home video gameplay told from the perspective of women. In one such commercial, a suburban mother narrates to Atari her anxieties that her family has become video game addicts. “Dear, Atari Anonymous, my son, Boris, has

19 Sue Adams, “Meet Joe Video Game Player,” Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 16.

20 “Atari 2600 – ET the video game,” YouTube, July 5, 2006, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VakiwDmJ-lI.

93 a Missile Command problem. Lately, my daughter has developed a similar problem with

Circus Atari. Now, with Video Pinball, my husband has been acting funny lately.”21 A similar episode took place in a commercial for the Video Computer System version of

Asteroids. In this case, the tension manifested among a suburban Martian family. “Tell me, Atari Anonymous, with everybody hooked on Asteroids, what on Earth is a poor

Martian mother to do?” a Martian mother laments as she watches her family—husband, two children, and pet robot—excitedly play Asteroids in the living room. The War of the

Worlds turned upside down, the VCS invades the Martian household and conquers its denizens, reflecting the potential anxieties over video game addiction.22 However, Atari reassures its potentially concerned mothers—earthbound or otherwise—that the system is a welcome addition to the home. In both segments, the concerned mother eventually comes around. “With Atari so ingenious, so involved and so intense, I ask you, Atari

Anonymous, is this problem contagious?” the mother in the first commercial inquires.

However, the ad’s progression from son to daughter to husband suggests she will soon be playing as well. Meanwhile, her Martian counterpart finds herself playing along with the family by the end of the ad. In “Confessions of an Odyssey2 Addict,” the wife and mother is eventually swayed after seeing other people play the system, emphasizing a need to convince women of the value of gameplay.

21 “Atari 2600: Dear Atari Anonymous,” YouTube, November 26, 2016, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg4ypEpbDNc.

22 “Atari 2600 - Dear Atari Anonymous - Asteroids (Air date Nov. 22, 1981),” YouTube, July 4, 2015, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAjb4GLit4E.

94

Both the “Dear Atari Anonymous” campaign and “Confessions of an Odyssey2

Addict” emphasize the role of male players, both men and boys, as the point of entry to video gaming for women and girls. The aforementioned Solar Fox commercial concluded with the male player’s female companion, presumably a girlfriend, asking, “Can I try now?” In another commercial in the "Have you played Atari today?" series, a series of drawn still images has a young boy playing with various family members in succession: sister, father, before finally playing with a mother who wears an expression of shock.23

The emphasis on female users entering the hobby belied a tension between women as observers and men as players. In these settings, women often had to be convinced to play by male players. Even in the jovial accounts of marital tension recounted in the fan club testimonials, many involved adult male players’ addiction to the chagrin of their wives.

“This letter is for my long lost husband,” one harried spouse wrote to Activisions, “who I only see when his ‘buckets’ [from playing Kaboom] are all gone and he passes by on his way to the fridge for more carrots (he says they’re great for better vision).”24 This dynamic, where women were secondary potential customers, reflected the gender imbalance in the video game industry, as the majority of programmers, game magazine writers, and players were male.

However, the sudden popularity of Pac-Man in 1981 appeared to observers to represent a shift toward developing content to appeal directly to female consumers.

23 “Atari 2600 Commercials,” YouTube, October 7, 2008, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69USFTM6-7w.

24 “Dear Jan,” Activisions, Vol. 2 (Winter 1982): 4.

95

Initially developed by Japanese manufacturer and licensed to American audiences by Midway and Atari for the arcade and home, respectively, Pac-Man was an early example of what observers alternately described as a “maze” or “chase” game. The player assumed the role of the yellow, circular Pac-Man (the name derives from a Japanese phrase for the act of eating), who traveled through mazes to consume white dots, all the while chased by four ghosts of varying colors. The objective was to accumulate as many points as possible while avoiding four ghosts, who chased Pac-Man around the screen.

Players could earn bonus points by eating food and keys periodically placed inside the maze; the player could also temporarily dispatch their pursuers by consuming “Power

Pellets” that allowed the player to eat the ghosts. Pac-Man proved an instant hit in and caused a similar sensation in American arcades, inspiring a host of merchandise, a

Saturday morning cartoon, and a hit song, “Pac-Man Fever,” by novelty duo Buckner and

Garcia.

Writing in Electronic Games, Video Games, Joystik, and similar publications, video game journalists at the time frequently attributed the game’s appeal among women as the cause of its sudden success. Midway spokesman Stan Jarocki informed Electronic

Games, “Pac-Man was the first commercial video game to involve large numbers of women as players. It expanded our customer base and made Pac-Man a hit.” Arnie Katz added, “The Pac-Man coin-op gobbled up quarters at a record rate by expanding the market to include adults in general and women in particular.”25 Steve Bloom, Katz’s

25 Arnie Katz, “The Games that Shaped Video and Computer Entertainment,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (December 1989): 164.

96 counterpart at Video Games, further described Pac-Man’s impact on attracting women to video games:

While breaking ground in both maze design and its novel use of cartoon-type characters, it is probably best recognized as the game that dragged women out of the video closet and into the arcades. Traditionally, men have had the arcades largely to themselves. But Namco’s Pac-Man changed all that. Though it clearly was not intended that way...Pac-Man is even now being hailed by some as the first "women’s" video game.26 The success of Pac-Man spawned a sequel: Ms. Pac-Man. A commonly circulated account by game journalists characterized Ms. Pac-Man as a subtle nod to female players. As one writer recalled:

Since the original Pac-Man was more of a hit with women and girls than the other arcade offerings, the ingenious programmers in Japan rubbed their hands together and said, “Hey—instead of making a sequel let’s program a ‘more feminine’ version of Pac-Man for America.” And the next thing you know, Ms. Pac-Man comes out a year later and girls start spending their school lunch money in the arcades like the boys.27 The sudden success of the Pac-Man franchise facilitated a need among rival developers to “get cute,” as one reporter put it, and develop titles that were ostensibly more appealing to women.28 In the wake of "Pac-Man Fever," manufacturers rapidly produced minimally-violent or non-violent games featuring cartoonish avatars. Writers at

Electronic Games, Video Games, and the like dubbed games in this vein “cute games” with the assumption they would appeal to female players. “While space ships and

26 Steve Bloom, “The Absolutely, Positively Last Word on Pac-Man,” Video Games 1, No. 1 (August 1982): 23-26.

27 Christie Hewlett, “Ms. Pac-Man,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (June 1989): 28.

28 Steve Sanders, “The Arctic Antics of Pengo,” Joystik 1, No. 5 (April 1983): 46.

97 explosions still star prominently in the coin-op universe,” observed in the

May 1982 issue of Electronic Games, “a definite trend is developing toward ‘cute’ games with more wider (read: female) appeal than the macho shoot-em-ups.”29 Commercial hits to follow Pac-Man in the “cute” vein included Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981), which cast players as Mario, a carpenter who scaled a series of scaffolding and girders to rescue his girlfriend, Pauline, from the clutches of a colossal ape, the eponymous Kong;

(, 1981), which charged players with navigating frogs across a multilane highway; and -bert (Gottlieb, 1982) where players leapt on a pyramid of tiles to change their color while avoiding snakes, bouncing balls, and other obstacles. In a 1982 article for Video Games, editor Steve Bloom described these and similar games as “arguably designed with women in mind.”30

Whereas the science fiction and fantasy titles, such as Adventure, Space Invaders,

Berzerk, and Defender, emphasized traits culturally associated with masculinity, such as aggression, confidence, and power, this “more feminine” version of Pac-Man simultaneously reinforced sexualized depictions of women and traditional domestic roles for women as wives and mothers. Official artistic renditions of Ms. Pac-Man in advertisements, product packaging, and on the arcade cabinet itself depicted her as sexualized, with a beauty-mark and makeup, long legs and high heels. (Fig. 2.1) Her in-

29 Bill Kunkel, “King Kong Goes Coin-Op,” Electronic Games 1, No. 3 (May 1982): 27.

30 Steve Bloom, “The Absolutely, Positively Last Word on Pac-Man,” Video Games 1, No. 1 (August 1982), 23-26. Centipede is also noteworthy for being one of several games of the time developed by a woman: Dona Bailey.

98 game counterpart resembled Pac-Man with the addition of lipstick, a pink bow, and a beauty-mark. A commercial for the Atari 2600 version had Ms. Pac-Man perform a seductive dance, sporting a feather boa in addition to her makeup and heels. “Don’t you know,” she croons in between kicks, “I’m more than Pac-Man with a bow!” Meanwhile, narrator Don Pardo, at the time the announcer for Jeopardy and Saturday Night Live, encouraged viewers with a double entendre to “Reach for Ms. Pac-Man.”31 As in its predecessor, Ms. Pac-Man presented small interludes in between game stages. In the original, these included comic scenes of Pac-Man chasing ghosts. Those in Ms. Pac-Man, meanwhile, presented Ms. Pac-Man meeting Pac-Man, falling in love, and having a baby.

However, despite the apparent influx of female players into the arcade and home markets, the actual number of players still appeared to be heavily male. Reporting on an informal survey of game users in the May 1982 issue of Electronic Games, Katz observed a significant gender gap in the user base, “Although the number of female players is rising rapidly…men still account for 96% of the total.”32 The March 1983 issue of Video Games included a lengthy biography of several female developers in the games industry, citing their minority status in the video game business.33 There were some

31 “80s *Ms. Pac-Man* Atari 2600 Commercial,” YouTube, April 14, 2007, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgqE2fwKt4c. 32 Arnie Katz, “Switch On,” Electronic Games. 1, No. 3 (May 1982), 6. 33 Anne Kreuger, “Welcome to the Club,” Video Games 1, No. 6 (March 1983): 51-54, 81.

99

Figure 2.1: Ms. Pac-Man arcade cabinet marquee. Image Source: Wally Gobetz, via Flickr Commons, used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://bit.ly/2KaGWhr, no changes made, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/.

100 exceptions, such as Centipede developer Dona Bailey, Electronic Games co-founder and writer Joyce Worley, and Jan Marsella, customer relations representative at Activision who acted as a spokeswoman in the company’s fan newsletter, Activisions, with her

“Dear Jan” series. However, the preponderance of articles heralding the influx of women into both the industry and the user community belied a sense that observers still viewed their presence as a novelty.34 Media scholar Michael Z. Newman observed that in responding to the appeal of Pac-Man and other "cute" games as paving the way for women as players, accounts in game magazines and the popular press presupposed that the default user identity was male. The popularity of the Pac-Man series did little to challenge the predominant message that video gaming was a masculine activity.

According to Newman, "Having a handful of games with a less intensely masculine made room for other players without threatening the overwhelming young and male focus on games more generally."35 Moreover, the male writers observing the video game industry in third-party magazines tended to reinforce gendered stereotypes in their commentaries of the success of the Pac-Man series and the apparent influx of female players. Electronic Games focused on female players as the subject of the May 1982

34 For examples of articles about the influx of women to video games: Joyce Worley, “Women Join the Arcade Revolution,” Electronic Games 1, No. 3 (May 1982): 31-2; Anne Krueger, “Welcome to the Club,” Video Games 1, No. 6 (March 1983), 51-4, 81. A 2018 article on the video game website compiled retrospective accounts from several women who worked for Atari in various roles during the late 1970s and 1980s: Cecelia D'Anastasio, "Sex, Pong, and Pioneers: What Atari Was Really Like, According to Women Who Were There," Kotaku, February 12, 2018, accessed June 3, 2018, https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057.

35 Newman, Atari Age, 198-199.

101 issue in which the cover depicted a woman in tight clothes bent seductively over a

Centipede cabinet underneath the headline “Move over guys, here come the gals!”

Amid debates over the demographic identity of game users, the early 1980s marked the first concerted effort by manufacturers to market their products toward a distinct subculture of hobbyist players, marking the earliest iteration of the “gamer” identity that has since become synonymous with the medium itself. This identity went by several names at the time, including “gamer,” “arcader,” and “hardcore” user. Elements of the hardcore gamer identity first appeared in the pages of first and third-party video game publications. During the 1980s game developers employed a new marketing tactic: specialized game fan clubs. Fan clubs were effectively collective rallying points for users where they could share their enthusiasm for gaming with like-minded players. The first of these publications was Activisions, created in 1981 as the official fan club for third- developer Activision. Advertisements for the fan club came packaged with

Activision games, with membership available for one dollar for a year’s subscription. The newsletter included news about upcoming Activision titles, profiles on game developers, and testimonials from players. Equivalent publications produced by rival companies soon followed, including Atari Age, Odyssey2 Adventure, Intellivision Game Club News, and

Imagic’s Numb Thumb News.

An emerging cohort of journalists in specialized game-themed magazines also mediated this developing gamer identity. As the commercial popularity of video games escalated in the early eighties, a library of magazines published independent of the

American video game industry appeared on newsstands. Among the early contributors

102 were Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz, who wrote “Arcade Alley,” a regular column on coin- operated games for the television-centric magazine Video. In 1981 they became the editors of a bi-monthly magazine focused on home and coin-operated video games, appropriately titled Electronic Games. Other competing magazines quickly followed, including Video Games and Joystik. Independent magazines printed sections devoted to industry news as well as reports from trade conventions such as the annual meeting of the

Amusement Machine Operators of America (AMOA) and the biannual Consumer

Electronics Show (CES). They also printed previews of upcoming hardware and software, frequently featuring one as a cover story. They situated their publications as consumer advocates, providing industry commentary, product reviews, and consumer buyer’s guides. Moreover, as with the first-party newsletters, each magazine or newsletter included space for (mediated) user-generated content, including letters to the editor, high scores, fan-discovered strategies or secrets, and, in some instances, even artwork and poetry.

The contributors and publishers of third-party magazines such as Electronic

Games, Video Games, and Joystik, situated their publications as a mediated space between producers and consumers. These magazines simultaneously served a dual role as industry boosters and consumer advocates. On the one hand, magazines published reviews and buyer’s guides on the auspices of allowing readers to make informed purchases. On the other hand, they relied on game manufacturers for content and advertising revenue, qualities which also influenced how they envisioned the game user.

In the same pages one could see advertisements for games and systems, hardware and

103 software reviews, strategy guides, and news. Moreover, unlike television advertisements or product packaging, the magazines served as a means for players themselves to contribute content. High score submissions, fan-submitted strategies, artwork, and letters to the editor offered the possibility of user empowerment in a way that other marketing materials did not. However, this user forum was also carefully mediated by editors, who ultimately held final sway over which user-generated content to disseminate. In so doing, publishers influenced the parameters of user identity and shaped the boundaries of acceptable usage and consumption. These qualities put the third-party magazines in an advantageous position as mediators, offering them significant influence in shaping the development of the new video game hobby.

Content creators for the various fan club newsletters characterized video game users, particularly those who consumed their specific of game products, as experts and insiders. These corporate publications promised users access to privileged information, including developer biographies, previews of upcoming hardware and software, and gameplay strategies and secrets. They also encouraged user participation through offering contests, publishing fan mail and user-generated art, and printing high scores. As Jeff Gaydos, editor of Odyssey2 Adventure, described in the publication’s inaugural issue: “There are thousands of Odyssey2 fans out there, and your numbers are growing. We felt it was time you got to know each other better and get to know the kinds of activities that are occurring because of the widespread interest in your game

104 cartridges.”36 The same article referred to readers as “insiders,” suggesting the readers received a unique, exclusive glimpse into the inner workings of Odyssey2. Activisions writer Jan Marsella referred to readers as members of the “Activision family,” reinforcing a sense of an intimate social network of users and a direct connection between producers and players. Carrying the idea of insider information even further was the “Atari Secret

Handshake,” introduced in the December 1982 issue of Atari Age:

We met recently with an Atari Vice President (who prefers to remain anonymous), and in the course of our conversation, she let slip the secret of the “official” Atari handshake which has been making the rounds at Atari headquarters. It’s too good to keep to ourselves, so we’ll share it with you–but remember, we’re swearing all of you to secrecy on this!37 (Fig. 2.2) Whether players took part in such activities is unclear; however, copy such as the Atari handshake represented attempts by content creators to cultivate a feeling of disseminating privileged information to their readers, allowing readers to feel a sense of exclusivity, community, and an air of authority among players who did not have a subscription.

In addition to privileged information, the pursuit of high scores became a key measure of social capital among video game hobbyists. Beginning with Atari’s Asteroids

(1979), manufacturers developed coin-operated machines capable of storing and displaying user high scores. If users obtained a certain score milestone, they had the option to enter a signature of up to three characters (four or more were often avoided to prevent users typing obscenities). The game stored these scores and displayed them as

36 Odyssey2 Adventure, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1982): 2.

37 Emphasis added. “’Official’ Atari Handshake Revealed!” Atari Age, Vol. 1, No. 4 (November-December 1982): 7.

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Figure 2.2: The Atari Secret Handshake. Image Source: Atari Age 1, No. 4 (November- December 1982): 7.

106 part of the unit’s attract screen, the screen that displayed when the machine was not in use to entice players to enter coins.

Printed in the pages of newsletters and magazines, as well as among players themselves, high scores were the barometer of skill in the early game hobby community, and a cult of high scores emerged, facilitating competition at a distance and encouraging players to compete for bragging rights in their homes and local arcades. On February 9,

1982, Walter Day, owner of Twin Galaxies Arcade in Ottumwa, IA, created the Twin

Galaxies National Scoreboard, a standardized list of video game high scores that rapidly became the chief governing body for world records. In 1983, Day assembled the U.S.

National Video Game Team, which competed with other teams in international competitions.38 Local competitions proliferated in arcades across the country. Magazines encouraged users to send their high scores with the chance to have them published. As visual evidence was often a prerequisite for published recognition, many went so far as to offer instructions on how to properly take a picture of a game screen for submission.

Electronic Games, Video Games, and other magazines devoted entire sections to both official and user-submitted guides to maximizing scores. Some publications, such as

Joystik, focused almost exclusively on tips for besting coin-operated or console-based scores. In 1982, cable television network TBS premiered Starcade, a video game-themed game show where contestants competed for the chance to win prizes by achieving high scores in select games.

38 For more on Walter Day and the advent of competitive video gaming, see: Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 37-65.

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The cult of high scores also begat its own cottage industry of erstwhile score- augmenting products. A library of strategy guides with names such as How to Win at

Video Games and How to Master the Video Games appeared in book stores.39 Game magazines published advertisements for a variety of purported “score enhancers.” Such ambitious enterprises included “The Grand Stand,” a wooden podium upon which a controller could rest, and “Bat Mitt,” a pair of specialized gloves sold by Kaol Sales Co. described as “A video game glove [for] comfortably improving your scores.”40 (Fig. 2.3)

Even the song “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner & Garcia addressed the obsession over achieving high scores: “I’ve got all the patterns down, up until the ninth key,” went a line from “Pac-Man Fever.”

Activision went so far as to extend tangible rewards for high scores through the creation of game-specific fan clubs. Players who achieved such a milestone could take a photograph of their television screens and send them to Activision; in exchange, each player would receive a sew-on patch signifying their membership in one of several clubs.

For example, a score of twenty or higher in game three or seven of Freeway, a game where players attempted to navigate a chicken across a busy freeway, would earn entry into the “Save the Chicken Foundation”; a score of 100,000 points or higher in the

39 Ray Giguette, How to Win at Video Games (Torrance, CA: Martin Press, 1982); Tom Hirschfield, How to Master the Video Games (New York: Bantam Books, 1981); Arnie Katz, "Arcading—Fad or Hobby?" Electronic Games 1, No. 5 (July 1982): 6.

40 "The Grand Stand," Electronic Games 1, No. 10 (December 1982): 130; “New…Bat Mitt,” Electronic Games 1, No. 14 (April 1983): 103.

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Figure 2.3: Advertisement for the "Grand Stand." Electronic Games 1, No. 10 (December 1982): 130.

109 science fiction shooter Laser Blast would secure the user a patch in the “Federation of

Laser Blasters” with an additional patch for a score surpassing one million. Skilled players who achieved a score of 99,000 points in Pitfall II, a game where players navigated explorer “Pitfall Harry” through a jungle to uncover treasure, could become members of the “Explorers’ Club.” (Fig. 2.4) Upon reaching the desired score, players took a photograph of their television screen as evidence and mailed their photos to

Activision, whereupon they received letters of achievement from Jan Marsella, Customer

Relations Representative, along with the specific badge. Players also had the opportunity to have their name, photograph, and high score reprinted in a future issue of Activisions, earning them recognition from both local and extended members of the Activision user community.

High scores served an important purpose in shaping acceptable forms of game usage. As Carly Kocurek has observed, high scores rewarded players who played by the rules prescribed by developers. According to Kocurek, video games, unlike other forms of play, offer little variation for players. An , for example, can be used in the ways shaped by advertisers: He-Man figures can be used, as shown in their commercials, to recreate action from the cartoon program. However, players can also use them in any way they wish, including play with other properties (such as G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, or

The ) or taking the toys apart. Board games, such as chess or checkers, can be played by the accepted rules; however, users can develop their own rule variations or repurpose game materials, such as boards and pieces, for a variety of other uses. Video

110

Figure 2.4: Pitfall “Explorers’ Club” patch. Image Source: back_then, eBay, accessed May 26, 2019, https://ebay.to/2ExIRZA.

111 games, on the other hand, are developed within enclosed systems of rules. Players can only navigate and interact with the game space in predetermined ways. Missile Command players only have agency inasmuch as they can choose which incoming missiles to shoot first. Donkey Kong players can only have Mario climb to reach the top of the tower, with some choice in which set of ladders to take to get there. To deviate from these actions is either to not play or lose. Moreover, in competitive game settings, external systems of rules create a governing mechanism wherein specific means of play are allowed. For example, Twin Galaxies Arcade, which still operates as the governing body for video game high scores in the United States, has specific hardware conditions under which they will accept a score as a world record.41 Kocurek concluded that this focus on high scores validated gaming success in terms of adherence to these top-down, prescribed systems of rules:

One principal lesson that the arcade teaches players is that there is only one way to play; even for games that can be played using various strategies, a player can sustain the game’s length only by playing to the game’s objectives. The better an individual plays by the rules, the more value he or she receives for his or her financial expenditure. The longer a player can play, the more points he or she can

41 For a more contemporary example, in April 2018, Twin Galaxies disallowed competitive game player Billy Mitchell’s 2010 high score in Donkey Kong of 1,062,800 points, the world record at the time, after it was revealed he did not achieve the score on an original game cabinet. Instead, he earned the score using a MAME emulator, a computer program designed to simulate the conditions of an arcade machine. As further punishment, he also had his other high scores vacated and was banned from competitive play. Owen S. Good, “King of Kong’s Billy Mitchell’s High Scores Wiped Out by Twin Galaxies,” , April 12, 2018, accessed April 18, 2018, https://www.polygon.com/2018/4/12/17228994/billy-mitchell-king-of-kong-high-scores- vacated-banished.

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earn, and the more clout he or she has in the competitive social environment of the arcade.42 While home game players did not need to expend quarters for repeated play, regardless of individual skill, extending individual game time and maximizing high scores remained a measure of social capital espoused in first and third-party magazines. Aside from modification of a game's hardware and software, practices generally discouraged by both manufacturers and game journalists, players were confined to playing the way developers intended with little room for unauthorized player agency.43 This adherence to the rules of gaming shaped much of early video game user culture.

The “World of Nintendo”: Video Gaming, 1985-1990

By 1985, many of the major players in the American video game market had abandoned video games or folded entirely. What came to be known in historical and popular accounts as the “Great Video Game Crash of 1983-1984” or simply “the Crash” will be addressed in greater detail in the next chapter. Suffice to say, by 1986, a new cohort of console and game developers filled the void left by “the Crash.” The new leaders of the industry were predominantly Japanese companies, with Kyoto-based

Nintendo and its Nintendo Entertainment System replacing California-based Atari as the new industry hegemon. Other new console competitors included the Sega

42 Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 31.

43 Proscriptions against unauthorized usage, however, do not completely deter all users and there are entire user communities devoted to user-driven modification and alteration of game hardware and software. Chapter Four will examine one of the earliest of these “modder” game communities.

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(1986), the (1986), the Turbografx-16 (1989), and the Sega Genesis (1989).

Despite a significant change in the video game industry landscape, many of the new players employed similar marketing techniques as their American predecessors. Nintendo and other companies continued to cultivate video gameplay as a unique “gamer” subculture. A new library of first-party fan club newsletters and third-party magazines emerged in the late eighties. In 1987, Nintendo of America launched Nintendo Fun Club

News, a quarterly newsletter in the same vein as Atari Age and Activisions. In 1988, the newsletter changed to a bi-monthly magazine format with a new name: .

GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), and Video Games & Computer

Entertainment (managed by Electronic Games veterans Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, and

Joyce Worley, who in the interim had written game reviews in several computing publications, such as Atari Explorer) filled the third-party magazine void.44 The new publications borrowed much from their pre-Crash predecessors, such as strategy guides, reviews, and user-generated content as well as advertising space and game previews. The contributors assumed the role of the new mediators of game usage.

However, the new generation of video game fans, as mediated through these publications, measured social capital through a different lens than high scores. Whereas publications during the early 1980s emphasized the high score as the barometer of the skilled video game user, by the late 1980s, the high score gave way to a new metric: completion. “Beating” a game and playing it through to a programmed end point

44 Arnie Katz and Bill Kunkel, “Atari Computer Games for Two or More,” Atari Explorer (Summer 1985): 72.

114 supplanted the high score as the measure of skill. Magazine publishers gradually relegated high score leaderboards, once a staple of video game magazines of the early eighties, to the back pages or removed them completely.45 As in the earlier generation, magazine publishers encouraged players to submit their game strategies and tips, and producers offered rewards for completion. The editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly

(EGM) offered a free game to any reader who submitted a strategy the editors deemed worthy of publication.46 In the fall of 1990, Nintendo licensee Natsume introduced a promotion wherein they offered a free T-shirt to the first 100 people who sent a photograph of the ending credits screen on one of their games.47 Nintendo Power published biographies of Nintendo “Power Players,” spotlighting individual players and their video game conquests.48

Game completion also became the metric of authority within the community.

Developers and critics alike frequently established their credentials as experts by listing

45 Elements of the cult of high scores remained in the late 1980s. For example, GamePro discontinued posting high scores following the February 1990 issue, only to reinstate them several months later. However, in adherence to the newfound value of game completion, the new high score listing provided space for "Completed" games. LeeAnne McDermott, “I Want My ProChallenge,” GamePro (April 1990): 13. High scores also comprised the crux of the plot in the 1989 film The Wizard, where three kids venture to Universal Studios in California to take part in a video game tournament, hustling players with high scores along the way.

46 “Win a Free Game from EGM,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1989): 55. 47 “Amazing Penguin The Attack is On,” GamePro (November 1990): 48.

48 “Video Spotlight: Power Players,” Nintendo Power (November/December 1988): 100- 1.

115 their conquests. Game designer Ken Lobb, writing for Nintendo licensee Taxan in the inaugural issue of EGM, enumerated his gaming pedigree: “On the Nintendo

Entertainment System I’ve beaten every game I’ve ever wanted to beat; more than 100 games in all!”49 When video game magazines included game reviews, critics often included a brief bio listing their completed games. A biography of one critic for EGM boasted, “Jim is game player on the Electronic Games staff, having mastered over 200 games for the Nintendo [Entertainment] and Sega [Master] Systems.”50 Another added, “From the most sophisticated RPGs [roleplaying games] to the most mindless shooters to the most intricate action/adventure games, this trio of video champs have racked up more points and completed more titles than any other group of gaming professionals on the face of the planet!”51

With the shift toward completion, a new cottage industry emerged of guides and game enhancers. A new series of instructional video cassettes appeared, including “Secret

Video Game Tricks, Codes, and Strategies,” which producer MPI Home Video boasted had sold over 100,000 copies in a 1989 ad, and the creatively-named “Video Game

Guide,” a forty-minute instructional tape endorsed by a group calling themselves the

“American Video Game Players League.”52 Bachiero of Torrance, CA, released the

49 Ken Lobb, “Introduction to Taxan,” Taxan Videodiction, No. 1 (1988): 1.

50 “Electronic Gaming Review Crew,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1989): 11.

51 “The EGM Review Crew,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 5 (December 1989): 6. 52 Nintendo Players Get Higher Scores…Video Game Guide,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (November 1989): 51; “Secret Video Game Tricks, Codes and Strategies,”

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"Thumb Master," a rubber sleeve that fit over a player’s thumb with the promise of

“Eliminat[ing] Video Thumb!”53 The , meanwhile, provided users with an edge by allowing them to modify their games. Initially developed by British-based

Camerica as the “Power Pack” and licensed to toy manufacturer , the Game Genie attached to a game system and allowed players to enter codes, up to three at a time (akin to a genie’s three wishes), that temporarily altered elements of the game code. Codes could allow players access to hidden elements of the game, such as the ability to select a level or access deleted content, or even change the game’s rules, such as inserting infinite lives or invincibility for their characters. /Galoob also encouraged user experimentation and offered rewards for players who discovered new and useful codes.54

The video game fandom that emerged and solidified in the 1980s soon became closely tied to consumerism. Beyond saving money on quarters in the arcades, the purchase and ownership of video game products was part of what defined a user as a fan, separating the "hardcore" from the "casual" players. The true "Power Players," to borrow a term from Nintendo Power, were those who owned all the systems, games, and peripherals, subscribed to the magazines, and called into the various help lines, a substantial investment given most charged by the minute. These all necessitated access to a significant amount of disposable income. In the 1989 movie The Wizard, a film

Video Games & Computer Entertainment (November 1989): 159; “Seeing is Believing,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1989), 22.

53 “Eliminate Video Thumb,” GamePro (July 1990), 107.

54 “The Game Genie,” GamePro (June 1990): 26.

117 developed by Universal in conjunction with Nintendo, the character Lucas epitomized the new fandom. Introduced midway through the film, Lucas serves as a competitive foil to young Jimmy, a skilled game player who travels westward with his brother,

Corey, and fellow runaway, Haley, to take part in a video game competition in California.

Along their journey, they meet Lucas, another aspiring competitor. When he is first introduced, Lucas opens a carrying case displaying his Nintendo cartridge collection, explaining to Corey and Haley he owns every game in the Nintendo Entertainment

System library. To further demonstrate his gaming prowess, he plays the NES racing title

Rad Racer using the Power Glove, a glove-based peripheral for the NES designed by

Mattel. Although the film's objective is for viewers to sympathize with Jimmy, Corey, and Haley, it clearly wants the youth viewers to envy Lucas and his robust collection.

Even the trio stare in awe as he navigates Rad Racer with the expensive Power Glove peripheral. The true "power players," as described in Nintendo Power, were those who owned the system along with the games, subscriptions to Nintendo Power and/or one of the independent game magazines such as GamePro or Video Games & Computer

Entertainment, and score-enhancing controllers. Achieving bragging rights in the cult of completion required access to games; these games were increasingly those designed for home systems alone where players could regularly hone their skills without need of a steady supply of quarters. Access to these products and the corresponding social capital connoted a certain degree of economic status, barring video game fandom to aspiring players of modest economic means.

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The gaming landscape of the late 1980s also marked the final erosion of the

Universal Appeal in favor of more direct marketing toward children, especially boys. As mentioned earlier, despite assertions of video games as fun for the whole family, regular players remained predominantly male. This was an extension of trends evident during the

“Atari Age.” Citing a 1985 study from the journal Marriage and Family Review,

Newman observed that while all members of the family would potentially play video games together as they would board games at the outset of purchase, boys ended up logging the most game time over the long term, suggesting they stuck with video games as other members of the family lost interest.55 In marketing the Nintendo Entertainment

System to retailers previously spurned by the Crash, Nintendo's promotional materials continued this trend.

The company directly targeted an adolescent market, emphasizing the Nintendo

Entertainment System as a toy in a measure designed to assuage reluctant retailers, burned by the Crash. To that end, Nintendo bundled the NES with ROB. Short for

Robotic Operating Buddy, ROB was a toy robot designed to sync with the NES and interact with specific games. Its inclusion was likely a response by Nintendo to the success of interactive dolls and toys in the mid-1980s, led by the success of Teddy

Ruxpin, a teddy-bear released in 1985 by Worlds of Wonder with a built-in and a motorized mouth that gave the illusion of speech while playing cassettes. ROB, meanwhile, interacted with two Nintendo games: Gyromite, which also came bundled

55 Edna Mitchell, "The Dynamics of Family Interaction Around Home Video Games," Marriage & Family Review (1985): 121-135, cited in Newman, Atari Age, 98.

119 with the system, and Stack Up. At select sections of each game, ROB lifted or moved objects, such as plastic discs or tops, while the player played the game.35 (Fig. 2.5) A

November 1985 Macy’s department store advertisement displayed a nearly full-page image of ROB, with a significantly smaller image of the NES, the “Zapper”

(used for several shooting gallery games including and Hogan’s Alley), and several games in the lower right corner. “Finally, a creature who thrives on video more than your kids!” proclaimed the ad’s copy, which focused more heavily on ROB’s programmability than on the game system with which it came packaged.36 In a similar effort to appeal to the toy market, fellow Japanese manufacturer Sega initially partnered with American toy company Tonka to distribute its Sega Master System to U.S. audiences.

Other manufacturers followed a similar focus toward youth players. A headline in a print advertisement for the NES game Rescue: The Embassy Mission advised players,

“Do not attempt your mission until the choppers are overhead, snipers are in position, and your homework’s done!”56 An ad for the Atari 7800 encouraged readers to “Pick a fight after school,” inquiring, “After a hard day at school, have you ever just wanted to go home and break a few heads? Destroy a couple cities? Or just blow up the universe? Of course you have. And now you can without getting grounded.”57 A 1989 Kemco-Seika

56 Emphasis added. “Do not attempt your mission until the choppers are overhead, snipers are in position, and your homework’s done!” GamePro (January 1990): 57.

57 “Pick a Fight After School,” GamePro (March 1990): 2-3.

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Figure 2.5: The R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System with attachments to play the game Gyromite. Image Source: Phil Bond via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gyromite_ROB.jpg ), CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), no changes made.

121 advertisement for the NES titles Shadowgate and Desert Commander promised youth players freedom from adult oversight:

Being treated like a little kid can be a real drag. Grown-ups always telling you what to do. What to think. Like you haven’t one intelligent thought of your own. Okay. So you have a few more years to grow. Doesn’t mean your only interest is zapping aliens all day, running up the highest score. Sure, there was a time when you enjoyed playing simple games designed for children. But you’re older now. Smarter. You want something more. Something like a challenge. A grown up challenge. A challenge that tests your mind, not just your wrist. Well, check out Shadowgate and Desert Commander by Kemco-Seika. The ad concluded with a challenge: “If you’re ready to leave the kid stuff to your little brother and get into something more interesting, get into Kemco-Seika’s Shadowgate and

Desert Commander. Because hey—you don’t need to be big to think big.”58

The animated series Captain N: The Game Master is one example of the new target demographic during the late eighties. Produced by DIC Entertainment, the series ultimately ran for thirty-four episodes between 1989 and 1991 as a Saturday-morning cartoon on NBC, airing as part of a block of video game-themed cartoons. Captain N followed the adventures of Kevin Keene, aka Captain N: The Game Master, a teenaged boy who, while playing his Nintendo Entertainment System, finds himself and his dog sucked into the TV set. He lands in “Videoland,” a world populated by smaller worlds themed after games in the NES library. Alongside a small team of heroes, known as the

"N Team," and armed with an NES controller and the “Zapper” NES light gun peripheral,

Captain N sought a way back to the real world while saving the denizens of Videoland

58 “Introducing Two Nintendo Games for the Grown-Up in You,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (November 1989): 11.

122 and thwarting the evil , the villain of the series, and her band of minions. The show acted as a weekly introduction to games in the NES library, each episode having the team travel to a world themed around a specific Nintendo or

Nintendo-licensed title. Accompanying Captain N were a cast of characters from games that appeared in the Nintendo game library: (star of the series of the same name), (of Konami-developed ), (of the eponymous game), and, eventually, a sentient Nintendo . The team also featured Princess Lana, an original female character who provided a "will they, won't they" romantic tension with Keene.

Unlike other Nintendo-licensed cartoon shows, such as The Super Mario Bros.

Super Show and The Legend of Zelda, Captain N: The Game Master focused on an original character. Most television adaptations of video games of the 1980s focused on the games themselves, utilizing the limited source material of game content, advertising, and packaging art to establish lore for games such as Pac-Man, Q-Bert, The Legend of

Zelda, and Super Mario Bros. What separated Captain N: The Game Master from its contemporaries was its representation of the game user. Captain N acted as a stand-in for video games’ target user base. A clear counterpoint to moralist concerns of delinquency and truancy associated with excessive video gameplay, Keene is a clean-cut everyman, an athlete wearing a letterman jacket in addition to a video game expert. He is portrayed as well-adjusted and capable, relying on his wits and quick reflexes alongside his intimate knowledge of Nintendo games. He embodies the youth video game fantasy of being

123 physically sucked into his games with the chance of becoming an actual hero rather than manipulating an in-game .

The placement of Nintendo products within retailers served to further reinforce the barrier between the adolescent audience that made up the NES’s targeted user base and the adult world. Nintendo staged their hardware and software in retailers in specialized kiosks known as the “World of Nintendo.” Developed by former Kenner executive John Sakaley, “World of Nintendo” presented consumers with wall-to-wall

Nintendo products, flanked by stations where users could sample or view video previews of new games from Nintendo and its licensees.59 A subdivision of toy departments or specialized sections of toy retailers such as KB Toys or Toys 'R Us, "World of Nintendo" acted as a Nintendo arcade within the retail store, immersing potential customers in

Nintendo products in a family-friendly arcade setting. According to Nintendo historian

David Sheff:

Nintendo displays were elaborate. At some locations, laser-light beams shot through the air. Silver-metallic and fluorescent-yellow pipes and tubes snaked through the air around girders. It was as if you were inside a Nintendo game. The displays won awards from the Point of Purchase Advertising Institute (POPAI) several years in a row.60 As in earlier designs for department store tableaux, World of Nintendo created a safe environment for consumers to experience their products. Moreover, its placement relative

59 “A Whole New World,” Nintendo Power (May/June 1989): 92.

60 Sheff, Game Over, 175.

124 to other more established toys reinforced video gameplay as a world inhabited by children.

Indeed, children served as the gatekeepers to the world of Nintendo. As with earlier newsletters, Nintendo Power occasionally printed testimonials from adults; however, the printed testimonials often emphasized gameplay as mediated through children. It is indicative that many of these adult testimonials involved a parent or grandparent being introduced to Nintendo games by a child.61 For example, one young writer to Nintendo Power noted introducing video games to his mother as a way to help her escape domestic boredom:

A few months ago, my mother said how sometimes how life was monotonous. I told her, “Why don’t you play games on the Nintendo Entertainment System?" She said, "What difference would it make?" The next day she tried and ever since that she has been beaming aliens, turtle bopping, punching wrestlers, knocking out boxers, designing courses (tracks), racing cars, saving royal maidens, defeating monsters, etc. Thank you.62 Third-party developers and competing console manufacturers also propagated the physical and symbolic barriers to gameplay. An advertisement for the Atari Lynx, a portable hand-held system designed to compete with the Nintendo Game Boy warned,

“The following scene may be too graphic for adults.”63 TV commercials frequently depicted boys playing alone in the den or family room or in a bedroom, separated from

61 For example, see: “A Zelda and Poetry Fan,” Nintendo Power (November/December 1989): 6.

62 “Obliterate Monotony,” Nintendo Power, (September/October 1988): 98. 63 “The Following Scene May Be Too Graphic for Adults,” GamePro (December 1990): 96-7.

125 the rest of the family. In some cases, manufacturers created actual barriers between adults and childhood play, as in the case of the Personal Stereo Controller. In 1989, unveiled the Personal Stereo Controller, a controller for the Nintendo Entertainment

System with a built-in set of stereo headphones. One advertisement depicted parents leisurely reading while a headphone-clad teen in the same room played video games over the caption “No more TV noise,” separating the more “grown up” activity from its youthful counterpart.64 Some marketing campaigns sought to subvert the barrier between youth and family play. An advertisement for the NES adaptation of , developed by third-party game developer LJN, boasted the drawing game was “The first NES game for any family.” “An NES game that everyone in the family will enjoy playing? Not your family you say? Wait ‘til you play LJN’s Pictionary!”65 An ad for Lee Trevino’s

Fighting Golf read, “This one’s for dad, too.”66

Conversely, depictions of adult video game users occasionally took on more scandalous connotations. Far from the confessing Odyssey2 addict and the determined

Laser Blast player risking family and pet to join the "Federation of Laser Blasters," the adult testimonials reprinted in Nintendo Power frequently included qualifiers acknowledging video games as a children’s pastime. One adult user wrote, “Even though

I am an adult, I’m also a kid at heart. I would make statements about Nintendo Power as

64 “Enjoy Hudson: Be there with the magic of sound,” GamePro (January 1990): 4.

65 “An NES game that everyone in the family will enjoy playing?” GamePro (November 1990): 123.

66 “This One’s for Dad, Too,” EGM 1, No. 2 (August 1989): 83.

126 both the adult and kid that I am.”67 A grandparent wrote to Nintendo Power with a similar sentiment, “I think the time has come to confess all. Whoever said Nintendo is for kids is right, but let’s not forget the Grandpas and Grandmas.”68 A 1989 Kemco-Seika advertisement for the NES titles Shadowgate and Desert Commander addressed the

“closeted” adult game enthusiast:

Sure it can be pretty embarrassing. Everyone else is asleep. You quietly slip out of bed, tip-toe into the family room and gently insert the awaiting cartridge. When just as you’re about to zap your zillionth alien onto another astral plane—flash!— the lights go on…You’re busted. Caught red-handed and red-faced, playing yet another juvenile, one-dimensional video game. However, the advertising copy also offered relief from the embarrassment of being outed as a game enthusiast, reassuring adult players:

Well blush no more. Never again will you have to hide your passion for video game excitement and entertainment. Never again will you find yourself lamely justifying a game designed to be played by eight year olds. If you’re a closeted Nintendo fanatic playing behind closed doors, step out and step up to Kemco- Seika’s Shadowgate and Desert Commander. Because hey—you don’t have to be a kid to play.69 One letter writer to Video Games & Computer Entertainment attempted to justify adult and family gameplay, challenging the notion of video games as exclusively children’s play: “[O]lder humans enjoy video gaming just as much as the kids.” However, the

67 “Introducing Nintendo Power Critics Circle of 100!” Nintendo Power (May/June 1989): 73.

68 “Grandparent Power,” Nintendo Power 1, No. 2 (September/October 1988): 96.

69 “Introducing Two Nintendo Games for the Kid in All of Us,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (November 1989): 11.

127 author lamented, “It’s just too bad that video games are synonymous with children’s toys.” The writer went on to advocate for the Universal Appeal:

These high-tech games bring out the challenge-seeking and competition side in us all. Who would have ever dreamed fifteen years ago that we’d all be sitting around the ol’ family TV set with a set of small hand controllers, trying to best each others’ little people? It’s great and I truly appreciate the fact that we live in an age of such sophisticated electronic entertainment, possible in the comfort of our own home.70 Closeted or not, reports from industry representatives and journalists suggested that they were aware of a growing adult gaming presence. A 1989 demographic study conducted by third-party game developer Konami reported 44% of players were adults.

“[L]ots of kids have to compete with mom and dad to get time with the Nintendo,” a writer for GamePro commented on the report, “The only consolation, parents don’t score as high and kids can beat them most of the time…if mom and dad will just stop playing so the kids can get a chance.”71 One mother asked GamePro to print more strategy guides, adding, “I know this sounds crazy, but my husband and I are getting hooked on video games also and we really need the hints so we can beat the children.”72 A comic from the July/August 1988 issue of Nintendo Power depicted a competition over who had access to the NES, presenting the adolescent Nintendo mascot Nester calling the

Nintendo Tip Line while his father plays his NES in the background. Nester laments to

70 Jon Williams, “Older Readers Write,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (December 1989): 18.

71 “Who’s Playing Video Games?” GamePro (December 1989): 80.

72 The Pattison Family of Honolulu, HI, “And Still More Letters About Tips and Tricks,” GamePro (June 1990): 14.

128 the off-panel game counselor, “Help! Please tell me how I can get my NES back from my father. He’s glued to the set.”73

Despite descriptions of the unskilled or closeted adult gamers, there remained a less scandalous outlet for the grown-up game enthusiast: computer gaming. While the

Crash laid waste to the American video game landscape, a new market of computer- exclusive games rapidly filled the void. In the aftermath of the Crash, Activision transitioned to computer games. Meanwhile, other PC-oriented game studios, such as

Sierra and , entered the gaming landscape. With the evolution in computer hardware, computer games gradually became more distinct from the consoles in terms of content, complexity, and age demographic by the late 1980s. In addition to arcade ports, computer systems became the medium through which players could play more complex genres than the simple action-adventures and shooters of the consoles, including roleplaying games such as Ultima and Kings Quest, flight simulators, and military-based strategy games. “Can a computer make you cry?” an early Electronic Arts ad inquired, encouraging readers to consider video games as a medium for artistic expression in addition to entertainment. Unlike the video counterparts, advertisements for computer games often depicted adult users (examples: F-19 Stealth Fighter, M1 Tank Platoon, and

Railroad Empire) as the targeted audience.74

73 Nintendo Power (July/August 1988): 53.

74 “Tonight Jim Quigley will fly over the Persian Gulf, become invisible, blow away two enemy MiGs, and win the Medal of Honor, Video Games & Computer Entertainment (December 1989), 189; “Tonight John Roland led sixteen men into battle, survived an artillery barrage, toasted eight Soviet tanks, and saved Europe,” Video Games &

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Computers became the medium for more complex technical games and a venue for more advanced simulations than those on dedicated consoles. “Authenticated by

Vietnam pilots who flew in the Linebacker Campaign of 1972, you won’t find any other simulation so like the real thing,” an advertisement for the computer flight simulator

Flight of the Intruder promised.75 An article from the May 1989 issue of Video Games &

Computer Entertainment addressed the demographic disparity between computer and video game users:

The average age of today’s computer-game audience is 32. The typical arcade- goer is about 12. As a result of this gap, coin-op creators stress different elements than computer game developers. Arcade games are built around action, visual excitement and a hint of strategic challenge. Computer games are more cerebral. Few depend exclusively on joystick manipulation, because most users no longer have a teenager’s reflexes. Most computer games take longer to learn and have a long play life.76 It also became common to see video game advertisements boasting technical prowess by making comparisons to computers. “Until now you needed a computer to play an as advanced as II,” read one 1990 Sega Genesis ad.77 A

Computer Entertainment (December 1989), 191; “You’ve bridged mighty rivers and tunneled majestic mountains,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (March 1990), 31.

75 “In 1972, an elite air corps flew over Vietnam,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (August 1990): 115.

76 Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz, “Bringing the Arcade Home,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (May 1989): 58. 77 “Until now you needed a computer to play an adventure game as advanced as Phantasy Star II,” GamePro (March 1990): 43-44.

130 print ad for the NES port of Sierra’s Ultima boasted “Video Games Grow Up!”78 In her

1989 review of Nobunaga’s Ambition, Video Games & Computer Entertainment writer

Joyce Worley made specific mention of the NES title’s complexity, comparing it to that of contemporary computer games:

Until this year, games for the Nintendo Entertainment System always featured high-action hand-eye coordination games for younger players. Play style often reflected [Super] Mario [Bros.] inspiration. Heavy-think games, deemed more appropriate for older users, were considered inappropriate for NESers, where the average gamer is much younger than the average computerist. The Koei introduction [of Nobunaga’s Ambition] is viewed as an attempt to attract more sophisticated gamers to the NES.79 In some advertising, the computer system became the bridge between the adult world of computer simulations and the youthful, action-oriented environment of the video game system. An advertisement for computer developer Microplay that appeared in the

March 1990 issue of Video Games & Computer Entertainment presented the computer as a generational gathering point. (Fig. 2.6) The advertisement presented readers with two scenes shown side-by-side. The image on the left is a page out of Norman Rockwell or a scene from Leave it to Beaver: a fresh-faced son watches his sweater-clad, pipe-in-mouth father operate a model railroad set in front of a 1950s backdrop, complete with

Washington Senators pennant on the wall. On the right is the presumed modern equivalent: a father and son in more contemporary attire play a computer game. In contrast to the prior image, where the son was distant, vicariously observing his father,

78 “Video Games Grow Up,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1989): 49.

79 Joyce Worley, “NES Goes to War,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (December 1989): 22.

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Figure 2.6: Microplay ad depicting computer games as the successor to the model railroad for father-son bonding. Video Games & Computer Entertainment (March 1990): 69.

132 the modern son sits next to his father, both on the edge of their seats as they lean toward the monitor. With smiling faces, rapt in the graphics of the unseen screen, the two are clearly playing together, although the father is depicted handling the controls.

Meanwhile, in the background, the model trains sit on a shelf, symbolically replaced by computer games as the new father-son leisure activity. The caption below the images reinforces this transition: “Suddenly…An American Tradition” promising, “From now on, every generation will be a Microplay generation.”80 In this “fable of abundance,” to borrow an expression from historian T.J. Jackson Lears, there is no generational tension, nor is there any technological anxiety.81

Further blurring the line between adult and adolescent players was the advent of a new species of video game user: the “video game counselor.” Their arrival reflected the changing valuation of player skill away from high numeric scores alone and toward the completion of multi-leveled games. As this preference grew, game companies began to promote teams of experts whose job it was to help players through games. In 1988,

Nintendo established the Nintendo Tip Line, a hotline proclaimed in Nintendo Power as the “Powerline to the Pros.” Players stymied by a challenging section of a game could call a number and be put in touch with an expert player whose job was to help talk them through the beguiling obstacle for a fee. “NES specialists have all the answers” one

80 “Suddenly…An American Tradition,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (March 1990): 69.

81 T.J. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

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Nintendo Power writer reassured readers.82 Computer game developer Sierra created a dedicated twenty-four-hour hint line to handle calls from stumped players.83 A high volume of callers to FCI's customer service line forced the Nintendo licensee to create a separate line exclusively for game-related calls.84

The game counselor played a prominent role in Nintendo’s marketing. Rather than feature game developers, aside from the stray mention of “Mr. Miyamoto” (Shigeru

Miyamoto, creator of the Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and Legend of Zelda series), the pages of Nintendo Power gave game counselors the center stage in the years following the Crash. Beginning with the November/December 1988 issue, game counselors appeared in a regular section of Nintendo Power titled “Counselor’s Corner,” offering brief profiles, including how long each had been with the company as well as their favorite games. The counselor achieved a celebrity status in the pages of Nintendo

Power, and at least one reader wrote to the magazine asking for the counselors’ autographs in the November/December 1989 issue.85

Nintendo game counselors represented a complication in Nintendo’s targeted advertising toward young boys. Here was normalized, “un-closeted” adult gameplay in

82 “Counselor’s Corner,” Nintendo Power (November/December 1988): 48-51. 83 “Sierra Hint Line Goes Round-the-Clock,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (January 1990): 20.

84 “FCI Drops 800 Line, Starts Newsletter,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (January 1990): 18.

85 Donald L. Hubbard, “Fame at Nintendo,” Nintendo Power (November/December 1989): 6.

134 the form of industry-mediated experts who instructed child players. An illustration of this child player-adult expert dichotomy appeared in the regular Nintendo Power cartoon

Howard and Nester. First appearing in the debut issue of Nintendo Power (July/August

1988), Howard & Nester was a semi-regular comic strip that ran through June 1991. The redheaded adolescent Nester served as the gaming everyman, a stand-in for Nintendo’s targeted demographic. Opposite Nester was Howard, the embodiment of the Nintendo game counselor. Modeled and named after Nintendo Power editor Howard Phillips, the smiling, bow-tied adult Howard served as a foil to Nester’s antics through Nintendo’s software library. Each issue focused around a different game in the Nintendo library wherein the headstrong Nester flaunted his video skills in the game title de jour only to have his strategies frequently backfire. When they did, Howard stepped in to dispense expert advice on conquering the game’s challenges. On the surface, Nester frequently dismissed Howard’s advice, usually to his misfortune; however, issues often ended with

Nester expressing admiration for Howard's abilities. The antics of Howard and Nester represented Nintendo’s attempt to facilitate trust in their appointed experts (and encourage their users to brave the expensive fees for calling a 900 number). And those experts were, in contrast to the skill deficient or closeted grown-up players, capable, adult experts.

Computer and video game advertisements continued to emphasize gameplay as a masculine experience through the late 1980s. In the "Microplay generation" advertisement discussed above, the computer game is an extension of a technical- oriented, and predominantly male, pastime of model railroads. The father and son play in

135 the recreation room, free of mothers or sisters. In the same way, much of video game marketing and content produced during the late 1980s focused directly on boys. The predominant genres on the Nintendo Entertainment System and competing systems, shooter gamers and action-adventure titles, reinforced aggression and violent solutions to digital problems, characteristics traditionally associated with masculinity.

Further, digital representations of player characters were more overtly gendered than their pre-Crash predecessors. With the improvements in graphical capabilities came the ability for game systems to present more identifiably humanoid avatars than those seen before the Crash. It was generally easier from a technical standpoint for games on systems such as the Atari Video Computer System, Mattel Intellivision, and Colecovision to represent the player's avatar as nonhumanoid: a spaceship (Asteroids, Yar's Revenge,

UFO), a tank (), a plane (Barnstorming, Chopper Command), a racecar (Pole

Position). Even when there were humanoid characters in earlier titles, they tended to be more abstract, as in the case of Berzerk or Pitfall, or cartoonish, as in the case of Donkey

Kong or Mario Bros. By the late 1980s, systems such as the NES, Sega Master System,

Genesis, and Turbografx-16 could display more detailed, easily definable characters. As a result, many games of this period utilized humanoid figures, figures who were overwhelmingly male.

A common trope of shooters developed during this period was the ultra-masculine , featuring bulging muscles, and wielding heavy weaponry. These characters, the counterpart to the action heroes that predominated blockbuster films of the

1980s (Commando, Die Hard, Rambo, License to Kill), transcended theme, appearing in

136 military shooters (, Bad Dudes, Bionic Commando, Code Name: Viper, Metal

Gear), martial arts titles (, Kung Fu) and urban brawlers (River City

Ransom, NARC, Double Dragon), science fiction shooters (Abadox), and fantasy adventures (Demon Sword, The Legend of Zelda, ). In a 1989 Video

Games & Computer Entertainment review for , writer Christie Hewlett lamented how the “cute games” genre, commonplace on arcade and consoles prior to the

Crash, had given way to more violent, action-oriented titles: “There are hardly any ‘cute’ games anymore. Whatever happened to the days of Pac-Man, Q-Bert, Frogger, and

Donkey Kong? It seems that we’re inundated with nothing but commandos, karate men, and killer robots in video games these days.”86 Another writer complained that “just about every video game is a slicing, jumping, and ducking contest in which the hero must travel through many dark lands, vanquishing the enemy as he goes.”87

These characters, appearing on box art, magazine ads, and within the games themselves, facilitated an association between video gameplay and cartoon-like hyper- masculinity. The print advertisement for the game adaptation of Mary Shelley’s

Frankenstein portrayed the heroic Dr. Frankenstein cradling a prone, scantily-clad woman in his arms. A print ad for Double Dragon II: The Revenge depicted protagonists

Jimmy and Billy Lee fighting back enemies while damsel Marion, dressed in skimpy,

86 Christie Hewlett, “Bubble Bobble,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (July 1989): 34.

87 Emphasis added. Clayton Walnum, “Rastan,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (January 1990): 26.

137 torn clothes, tightly clutches Billy. The same artwork appeared on the game's packaging.88 Advertising content for console games further connected video gameplay with masculinity. One advertisement for the SNK title dared players to, “Try it. If you’re man enough.”89 Few were as explicit as a 1989 Nintendo

Power article for the NES adventure game Kid Icarus which declared, “By scoring many points, [protagonist] can become a man.”90 Game advertisements frequently depicted male characters in aggressive, powerful roles and marginalizing women, reinforcing video gameplay as an assertion of heteronormative, male power fantasy.

As the relationship between adult and youth game players became more muddled, the relationship between video games and female players became more restrictive. As in the first programmable boom of the early 1980s, observers commented on the influx of women and girls to the video game hobby as a novelty. Several of the counselors featured in Nintendo Power were women. One video game counselor insisted in a 1989 interview

88 Despite the Damsel trope in the game's promotional artwork, the game's narrative relies on a revenge plot. According to the manual for Double Dragon II: The Revenge, which elaborates upon the game's plot, Marion has been killed by a group of thugs known as the Black Shadow Warriors. This is an example of a trope dubbed "Women in " or "fridging." Coined by author Gail Simone, the term describes a narrative device in which a male protagonist is motivated to action by the death of a woman, usually a wife or girlfriend. See: Gail Simone, Women in Refrigerators, accessed May 29, 2018, http://www.lby3.com/wir/. Anita Sarkeesian, "#2 Women in Refrigerators (Tropes vs. Women in Video Games), YouTube, April 6, 2011, accessed May 29, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DInYaHVSLr8.

89 Emphasis added. “Atari 7800 Ikari Warriors,” GamePro (October 1990): 87.

90 Emphasis added. “Nintendo Power Tells All!” Nintendo Power (November/December 1989): 33.

138 for Electronic Gaming Monthly there was “a growing trend of women and girls playing the games.”91 While the proliferation of “cute games” during the early eighties appears to have represented an attempt to attract more women and girls to video games, new design tropes in the late eighties appeared to marginalize female players and normalize video gameplay as male, despite comments to the contrary.

Among the most widely discussed of these tropes among industry observers and media scholars then and now is the "Damsel in Distress." According to media scholar

Anita Sarkeesian, “the Damsel in Distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must then be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.”92 The damsel took shape in video games as the driving force behind a game’s narrative: a woman, usually a princess, maiden, or the protagonist’s girlfriend, is kidnapped by a villain and it is up to the player to assume the role of a hero charged with rescuing her. Much has been written on the damsel trope, and this work does not attempt to expand on that subject, except to observe the proliferation of damsels in games following the Crash. This motif was certainly not unique to the video game medium, dating back to antiquity as far back as Homer’s Iliad. Damsel narratives also appeared on occasion in games released prior to the Crash including Donkey Kong and Smurf Rescue.

91 “The Face Behind the Phone Lines,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 5 (December 1989): 82.

92 Anita Sarkeesian, “Damsel in Distress (Part 1) Tropes vs Women,” Feminist Frequency, March 7, 2013, accessed May 17, 2016, https://feministfrequency.com/2013/03/07/damsel-in-distress-part-1/.

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However, the trope appeared in the post-Crash games of the late 1980s with significant regularity. While there were occasionally male “damsels,” such as in Bloody Wolf, Bad

Dudes (both of which involved rescuing the President), and the NES adventure

StarTropics, damsels were overwhelmingly female. While commonly associated in historical memory with Nintendo, especially in the Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of

Zelda series, damsels were also in need of rescuing on the consoles of Nintendo’s competitors—the Turbografx-16 and Sega’s Master System and Genesis—as well as in contemporary arcade titles.

Games featured quests involving rescuing a damsel with such frequency, the trope rapidly became a shorthand for video games as a medium. While promoting the

TurboGrafx-16 in an interview for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Ken Wirt, system manufacturer NEC’s assistant vice president, commented on what made for a quality console and gaming experience:

The point is not the number of bits, but the entertainments [sic] value of the system. The biggest component of value in game play is graphics. Why? Because games are about fantasy—about fighting the good fight, driving the fast car, or rescuing the pretty Princess. The more real the fantasy is, the more entertaining.93 An article for the Capcom arcade game Buster Bros. described the title as unconventional

“because there are no dark forces threatening the world or princesses in need of rescue…”94 A writer for EGM made a similar assertion for the NES title Bayou Billy:

93 Emphasis added. “Behind the Screens,” EGM, Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 1989): 49.

94 Donn Nauert, “Buster Bros.,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (May 1990): 74

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“Another Prince saves the Princess game, only with a very odd twist.”95 The trope appeared in a comic from the syndicated newspaper comic series The Far Side. In an

October 15, 1990, cartoon titled “Hopeful Parents,” cartoonist Gary Larson portrayed a mother and father proudly observing their young son from a distance while he sits playing video games in front of the television set. While they watch, a thought bubble appears over their heads depicting a “Help Wanted” section of a newspaper offering high-asking salaries for “Nintendo experts.” Among the various calls was one asking applicants “Can you save the princess?”

By the late 1980s, even male journalists covering the industry began to dismiss the trope as clichéd. In a review of the NES game Kickle Cubicle, which tasked the player with rescuing not one but four damsels, Chris Bieniek of Video Games & Computer

Entertainment described the trope as “the oldest plot device in the history of video gaming, and it doesn’t give you much motivation.”96 One critic observed in a review for the NES title Milon’s Secret Castle, “[N]owadays it seems that every video game has a rescue-a-member-of-the-royal-family scenario” with princesses comprising the majority of those kidnapped royals.97 In a preview for the Sega Genesis shooter Phelios, one

GamePro writer commented, “Yet another lovely creature has been snatched by an evil

95 “Preview ’89,” Electronic Gaming Monthly 1989 Preview Guide (1988): 27.

96 Chris Bieniek, “Kickle Cubicle,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (October 1990): 50.

97 Clayton Walnum, “Milon’s Secret Castle,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (May 1989): 28.

141 monster….”98 In a review of Wizards and Warriors, a fantasy game for the NES, another disillusioned critic wrote, “Once again, a princess has been kidnapped and locked inside a mighty castle by an evil wizard. And again, you, as a brave knight, must battle untold horrors to rescue her. Though the story line is old and tired, the game is certainly not.”99

During a review of the NES adaptation of Tom Sawyer, whose source material was bereft of a damsel rescue, critic David Plotkin quipped the eponymous hero’s “goal is to rescue his princess, er, girlfriend, Becky Thatcher, from the evil king, uh, wizard, uh villain

Injun Joe (see what I mean about originality?).”100 Maurice Molyneaux of Video Games

& Computer Entertainment laid thinly-veiled criticism of the trope’s pervasiveness in a review of the Game Boy adaptation of LJN’s Spiderman: “Spiderman’s mission is to rescue Mary Jane (gee, a damsel in distress, what an original concept!) from a gaggle of costumed supervillains and their thugs.”101 Clayton Walnum, in a review for the Sega

Master System title Rastan, complained of the proliferation of damsels in video games, writing, “It seems that these days, virtually every video game is based on the kidnapping of someone’s daughter, sister, or girlfriend (Why is it always the females that get kidnapped? I’d think a king would command the highest ransom.)” An exasperated Andy

98 Maid Marion, “Genesis Preview: Phelios,” GamePro (November 1990): 100.

99 Emphasis added. David Plotkin, “Wizards and Warriors,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (May 1989): 30.

100 David Plotkin, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (December 1989): 105.

101 Maurice Molyneaux, “Game Boy Grab Bag,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (August 1990): 54.

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Eddy wrote in the March/April 1989 issue of Video Games & Computer Entertainment,

“If I see another game that involves a kidnapped princess, queen, king, or other royal family member, I’ll scream.”102

Some video game plots challenged or subverted the Damsel trope. The NES game

Metroid is one early example of subverting players’ expectations regarding the avatar’s gender. The game manual for the science fiction-themed adventure game described protagonist , a bounty hunter whose identity is concealed under a futuristic suit of armor, with masculine pronouns:

The space hunter chosen for this mission is Samus Aran. He is the greatest of all the space hunters and has successfully completed numerous missions that everybody thought were absolutely impossible. He is a cyborg: his entire body has been surgically strengthened with robotics, giving him superpowers. Even the space pirates fear his space suit, which can absorb any enemy’s power. But his true form is shrouded in mystery.103 However, players who completed Metroid and reached its ending screen discovered

Samus was a woman under the armor. On the other hand, another reading of Metroid is that the masculinized, armored Samus, who acts as the player avatar, seeks to unlock the feminine Samus at the end of the game; in this respect, Samus is both rescuer and

102 Clayton Walnum, “Rastan,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (January 1990): 26. Andy Eddy, “Letter from the Editor,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (March/April 1989): 6.

103 Nintendo of America, Metroid Instruction Booklet (Nintendo of America, 1989), accessed July 23, 2017, http://www.metroid-database.com/m1/m1_manual.pdf.

143 damsel.104 Another exception was the American Sammy adventure title Arkista’s Ring.

According to a review in Video Games & Computer Entertainment: “One of the most notable differences between Arkista’s Ring and most adventure/quest games is that the main character is a female elf named Christine.” However, the critic made sure to qualify,

“To its credit, the game doesn’t make a big deal about this issue, except for the status

[pause] screen, which helpfully lists Christine’s vital statistics (‘Sex: Female’—gee thanks).”105 Several games featured female characters as heroes in promotional materials; more often, female protagonists frequently appeared alongside male heroes, especially in titles with multiple characters such as Sega’s Phantasy Star and , Square's fantasy roleplaying game , the adventure Sword of Sodan, and

Tengen’s unlicensed console adaptation of Gauntlet, rather than on their own.106 The space shooter Hybris allowed players to choose between a male or female character.

However, this choice was purely symbolic as the player’s avatar was a spaceship regardless of gender.107

104 Later titles in the Metroid franchise rewarded players for speed runs (games finished under a certain time limit) or 100% runs (games where the player acquires all items) with Samus in varying stages of undress from her power armor.

105 Chris Bienick, “Arkista’s Ring,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (May 1990): 32.

106 R. Bradley Andrews, “Battle for control of your kingdom…Sword of Sodan,” Electronic Gaming Monthly 1989 Preview Guide (1988), 60.

107 R. Bradley Andrews, “Blow the Aliens Away…Hybris,” Electronic Gaming Monthly 1989 Preview Guide (1988), 57.

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Among game journalists, the most vocal criticisms of the depiction of women in video games appeared in Video Games & Computer Entertainment. In a review for

Target: Renegade, Howard H. Wen criticized the game’s treatment of women, focusing on the combat-oriented brawler’s depiction of female enemies, noting, “Target:

Renegade’s portrayal of your player attacking these ladies…is, frankly, quite disturbing.

It adds fuel to the fire of the snowballing sentiment that video games are nothing but violent and sexist.”108 In an editorial from the July 1990 issue, the writers took the industry to task for the state of depictions of women, arguing game manufacturers were effectively limiting their market by marginalizing potential female players:

We’ve been receiving complaints here at Video Games & Computer Entertainment for a while about the lack of games designed with a female gamer in mind. This seems especially true recently. Most video games are redundant punch-and-kick contests or fly-and-shoot battles; not much exists for the fairer sex to get interested in. Pac-Man, Bubble Bobble, even Centipede and Millipede, to an extent, were hits with the ladies. Where are the relatively nonviolent, and imaginative, games now? And sorry, Tecmo’s Bad News Baseball, with the ‘Girls Mode’—which is accompanied by little hearts—isn’t what we had in mind in the way of game software for females. Sure, the current female game market isn’t that large a segment to concentrate on, but maybe changing strategy would make a difference in the number of female gamers out there. What do you say, software publishers?109 In a later issue, Video Games & Computer Entertainment published the results of an informal survey of its readers, noting the demographic breakdown of users. Glimpsing at this particular subset of the video game community at this particular point in time, the

108 Howard H. Wen, “Target: Renegade,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (July 1990): 44.

109 “Yeah and Nay,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (July 1990): 92.

145 writers at Video Games & Computer Entertainment concluded computer gaming tended to offer a more appealing option to women and girls interested in gaming than their console counterparts. According to Arnie Katz, “Most analysts explain female preference for computer games in terms of the greater richness and depth of entertainment software.

Another factor is that most women don’t especially like martial-arts and military-combat contests, two of the hottest video-game categories.”110

The proliferation of the Damsel trope and the depiction of hyper-masculinized heroes in action/adventure games reinforced video gameplay as a masculine, heteronormative pastime and perpetuated stereotyped gender roles. Games of this type asserted gender distinctions through design, with adolescent males as the implicit a priori game user. By presenting women in subservient or sexualized roles alongside aggressive male figures, they reinforced the notion of home video games as for a male audience, asserting female characters as victims to be avenged or prizes to be won. The propagation of these tropes did not necessarily mean that women and girls were not playing video games. However, video games as a medium in the late 1980s was bereft of characters or properties designed to resonate with female players or attract their consumer dollars, further reinforcing the idea that video gameplay was boy's play.

110 Arnie Katz, “The 1990 Gamers’ Poll: Part Two – What Computer Gamers Like—and what they play,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (October 1990): 126-128.

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“Playing with Power” and “Doing What Nintendon’t”: Game Users During the “Console War” Entering the 1990s, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the best- selling game system in the United States. However, fellow Japanese manufacturer Sega sought to unseat Nintendo as the major player in the game industry. In 1990, Sega hired former Mattel executive Tom Kalinske as CEO of Sega of America. Kalinske oversaw a dramatic shift in the company’s marketing of their 16-bit system, the Sega Genesis. Sega of America’s marketing positioned the system as an edgier alternative to Nintendo products. Their new corporate mascot——represented the new marketing philosophy: Sonic’s debut game, Sonic the Hedgehog, which came bundled with the system beginning in 1991, had a faster pace than Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., and Sega marketed Sonic’s personality as more energetic and edgier than Mario. The company also lowered the price of the Genesis from $189 to $149 to undercut Nintendo.

On the heels of Sega’s new aggressive marketing strategy, Nintendo released its 16-bit successor to the NES—the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES or Super

NES)—in 1991. Despite the graphical improvement and an equally aggressive counter- marketing campaign, Nintendo’s dominance over the American market gradually eroded.

While the Super Nintendo managed to eventually outsell the Genesis, Sega managed to significantly close the gap and end Nintendo’s hegemony over the American console market.111 What game enthusiasts later called the “Console War” had begun.

111 Kent The Ultimate History of Video Games, 423-434. See also: Blake J. Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation (New York: HarperCollins, 2014). The end of Nintendo’s dominance of the American market during

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As with home gaming in the post-Crash years, marketing strategies in the early

1990s emphasized video gaming as an insular community of young male players. The primary demographic shift of the period rested in the player’s age: whereas Nintendo focused on adolescent boys as the core video game audience, Sega focused on the slightly older teenaged male audience, and Sega’s eventual inroads into the market forced

Nintendo to adjust to cater to these older boys, emphasizing games that rewarded strength, power, aggression, and violence. As in the latter half of the 1980s, action- oriented games—genres known in the industry as “adventures,” “shooters,” and

“fighters”—were the prevailing titles on most home consoles in the early 1990s.

Advertisers developed commercials to appeal directly to teenaged boys, suggesting excitement through rapid electric guitar riffs and quick cuts between gameplay footage.

Marketing for both Sega and Nintendo products sought to cultivate a loyal community of regular customers by ads spotlighting console-exclusive games or touting the superior technical capabilities of one system over another. “Genesis does what Nintendon’t,” declared an early slogan for the Sega Genesis system.

Another predominant theme of video game marketing was an appeal to technical prowess. During the seventies, with an audience with a limited understanding of the technical aspects of computer systems, advertisers shaped the capabilities of game hardware in terms of gaming-related features: number of players, color display, sound

the early 1990s is the core focus of Dominic Arsenault’s history of the Super Nintendo. Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware.

148 output, number of game variations, and the like. However, by the nineties the technical rhetoric had shifted toward computing power, and, in doing so, implicitly coded video game consumption as masculine. Technical sophistication is a trope advertisers have frequently utilized to appeal to male consumers. Focusing on a car’s horsepower, a computer’s processing speed, or even a razor’s advanced design creates implicit associations between the advertised product and definitions of masculinity that include strength, power, virility, or specialized technical skill.112 Beginning in the 1990s, Sega,

Nintendo, and other console and game manufacturers framed their products in terms of technical superiority: the strongest processor speed or superior graphics, color display, or sound. “The first and only game powered by the Super FX microchip,” proclaimed a

1993 ad for Star Fox for the Super NES. “That’s 24 megs worth of weapons, worlds, and weirdos...in Nintendo’s biggest game ever,” explained an ad for Super Metroid for the

SNES.113 Sega marketed the “Blast Processing” strength of the Genesis as what made it superior to the Super Nintendo. In one commercial, a TV set displaying footage of several Genesis games appeared on the rear of a dragster speeding by a stalling, run-

112 For example, see: Ruth Oldenziel, “Boys and Their Toys: The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild, 1930-1968,” Technology and Culture 38, No. 1 (January 1997): 60- 96; Matthew Weinstein, “Computer Advertising and the Construction of Gender,” in Education/Technology/Power: Educational Computing as a Social Practice, eds. Michael W. Apple and Hank Bromley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 85- 102; G. Bruce Retallack, “Razors, Shaving and Gender Construction: An Inquiry into the Material Culture of Shaving,” Material Culture Review 49: 1 (1999), accessed August 26, 2019, https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17782.

113 “Star Fox SNES Commercial,” YouTube, accessed June 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkFHSVqjDmQ; “Super Metroid Commercial (High Quality),” YouTube, accessed June 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrACWQvzHw.

149 down truck with a TV set displaying Nintendo’s Super .114 Sega commercials for the portable system focused upon the unit’s color graphics as opposed to the monochrome display of Nintendo’s Game Boy. One Game Gear ad took place in an

Orwellian dystopia, wherein teenaged boys stand in line to obtain a Game Boy. “It swept the country like a plague,” explains a narrator, “Thousands of helpless teenagers trapped in a dull, drab world of colorless video games.” Suddenly, a boy enters, holding a Game

Gear over his head. “Color?” one of the people in the queue asks. “But there is hope.

Introducing Game Gear from Sega. The full-color portable video game system that separates the men from the boys.”115

Moreover, video game commercials frequently depicted gaming as a solitary activity, one that boys performed away from the rest of the family. During the 1970s and into the early 1980s, advertisements for games and systems frequently portrayed gameplay as an experience for the whole family. Family circle imagery—the members of the family gathered around the television set—appeared in television and print advertisements for such systems as the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari 2600. However, commercials for games and systems of the early 1990s often depicted teenage boys playing alone either in the living room/family room/recreation room or on a secondary television set in the boy’s bedroom.

114 “Genesis Ad,” YouTube, accessed March 8, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7SlPTarOD4.

115 “Sega Commercials, 1991-1993,” YouTube, accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIBmBy9APaU.

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Other family members, when they appeared at all, frequently acted as an outside force disrupting the user’s game time. For example, in a 1991 commercial for Final

Fantasy II, a teen plays the game on his Super Nintendo in his bedroom, while his father stands outside his window, knocking to be let back into the house. Changing seasons outside the window behind the father—falling leaves, a snowstorm—indicate the significant passing of time, reinforcing the ad’s overall message about the length of time it takes to complete the game and how absorbing it is.116 In a 1992 ad for the , a light gun peripheral for the Sega Genesis, a boy wields the Menacer alone in his living room, using furniture for cover as he shoots enemies on the TV screen. His virtual shooting gallery is interrupted by his aunt, who bursts into the living room demanding a kiss.117 In one commercial for Star Wars for the Nintendo Entertainment System, released in the U.S. in 1991, the ad opens with three members of the nuclear family—mother, father, and daughter—in the living room when Imperial stormtroopers burst through the front door accompanied by Star Wars antagonist Darth Vader. “The boy,” one stormtrooper demands, “where is he?” Meanwhile, two boys, possibly brothers or friends, play the NES in a room upstairs. Vader makes his way to the closed door of the bedroom while the mother stands in front of the door to block his way. Meanwhile, the boys have presumably beaten the game, as Vader writhes, turns to static, and explodes. The relieved mother bursts through the door, to which the boys turn to her and say, “Mom, have you

116 “Final Fantasy II commercial (US),” YouTube, accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQTU3nv3b_I.

117 “Sega Genesis Terminator 2 and Menacer Commercial,” YouTube, accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPjO7cfCnn4.

151 ever heard of knocking?” “Star Wars,” the narrator declares, “a force stronger than your parents.”118

Marketing during the 1990s also excised the home game system from the domestic space. Home system marketing of the 1970s sought to integrate the video game system into the established milieu of the middle-class suburban household. Games encased in faux wood paneling allowed systems to fit seamlessly into the space alongside furniture and wood-grained cabinets of TV sets. However, numerous commercials for games and systems in the early 1990s depicted users playing games away from the familiar settings of the home. In one Super Nintendo commercial, a teenage boy, played by a young Paul Rudd, enters an abandoned building, where the Super NES awaits with gameplay footage projected on a large wall.119 Commercials for several different games took place in empty rooms, unfurnished save for a TV set with game console attached and a seat. Others avoided showing the system at all, instead relying on live action scenes representing footage from the games themselves.

By obscuring or eliminating household scenes in their commercials, advertisers separated the experience of playing video games from the domestic, feminized space of the household and reinforced the established coding of gameplay as an activity for boys.

Video games became a way for boys to escape from their families. In his analysis of pre-

118 “NES – Star Wars Commercial,” YouTube, accessed March 8, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXwArIioc-o.

119 “Super Nintendo Commercial,” YouTube, June 27, 2012, accessed September 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBFw93V3Rg.

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Crash video gameplay, Michael Newman viewed the solo male game experience as an extension of the decline of unsupervised outdoor play for suburban boys. In the wake of panics over kidnappings and “stranger danger,” boys found themselves increasingly confined to supervised spaces within the home. Video gameplay, according to Newman, filled the void left by this “islanding of childhood”:

Video games emerged just as middle-class families curtailed the freedom of their sons to venture off on their own, and those sons substituted the mediated adventures of for earlier experiences of outdoor exploration and discovery. Video games participated in the “islanding” of childhood, as kids were confined in the security of the domestic sphere, protected from the perceived threats of a morally corrupt society.120 Advertisements for home video game systems of the 1990s promoted mediated adventures in a world populated by boys. Away from the rest of the family, away from parental supervision and the interference of mothers and siblings, gamers were free to assert their virtual masculinity: rescuing princesses, defeating enemy goons, scoring the winning touchdown, and beating opponents into submission.

Conclusion

While game marketing continued to present home video gameplay as a suburban middle-class pastime, by the end of the 1980s, video games had been cemented as boy's play. The transition of the eighties between the Atari-dominated early decade and the

Nintendo-dominated later decade brought about the erosion of the Universal Appeal in favor of a more direct focus on boys. While avenues remained for adult play, particularly for men through computer gaming or as "closeted" game enthusiasts or professional,

120 Newman, Atari Age, 107.

153 industry-sanctioned counsellors, the video game environment of the late 1980s was increasingly exclusionary to women. These changes in video game marketing had a profound impact on the medium. The focus on boys influenced the industry's focus on certain genres over others (such as the predominance of first-person shooters over puzzle games), the development and proliferation of certain types of player characters, the visual depiction of male and female characters, and popularity of certain narrative tropes (such as the "Damsel") over others. Video games also emerged from the decade as a distinct user identity; however, the "gamer" was significant not just as a unique subculture but as associated with a male subculture. These changes over the course of the 1980s and early

1990s also brought video games as a medium in direct conflict with moral activists concerned over the depiction of women and the medium's potentially negative influences on children, a subject that will be covered in a later chapter.

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Chapter 3: “THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE COMPUTERS:” THE FALL AND RISE OF THE HOME VIDEO GAME SYSTEM, 1982-1985 During the early eighties, the home video game market achieved meteoric levels of commercial success and cultural influence. Manufacturers shipped over 13 million systems and more than 97 million games. By 1981, Atari, maker of both coin-operated games and the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), was the fastest-growing company in

American history, and it was surpassed by game developer Activision a year later.1 Major toy manufacturers such as Mattel, Coleco, and Milton Bradley competed with new game hardware and software firms for player attention and consumer dollars. America's video game obsession extended beyond the arcade and television screen. In addition to gobbling up quarters, popular arcade games such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Pole

Position, and Q-Bert inspired an explosion of licensed merchandise, including t-shirts, breakfast cereals, Saturday morning cartoon shows, and (ironically) board games. In

1982, novelty music duo Buckner & Garcia reached as high as number nine on the

“Billboard Top 100” charts with their single "Pac-Man Fever," followed by an of game-themed songs devoted to such popular arcade titles as Donkey Kong (“Do the

Donkey Kong”), Frogger (“Froggy’s Lament”), Centipede (“Ode to a Centipede”),

1 Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1986, 106th Annual Edition (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1985), 770; Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 227.

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Mousetrap (“Mousetrap”), Asteroids (“Hyperspace”), and Berzerk (“Goin’ Berzerk”).

Video games entered the political lexicon as a cadre of Washington politicians interested in greater investment in growth industries earned the nickname "Atari Democrats."2 The

U.S. Department of Defense commissioned Atari to adapt the tank simulator Battlezone for military training. Hollywood capitalized on the medium’s sudden popularity with game-related films such as (1982), Wargames (1983), and The Last Starfighter

(1984).

However, by 1985 the American home video game market had all but collapsed, a period dubbed “the Great Video Game Crash” or simply “the Crash” by industry historians and game enthusiasts.3 Console manufacturers such as Mattel, Coleco, and

North American Philips (NAP) abandoned the market; most game development firms failed. Corporate fan club newsletters such as Atari Age, Activisions, and Odyssey2

Adventure as well as independent game magazines including Electronic Games, Video

Games, and Joystik ceased publication. Systems and game cartridges crowded store bargain bins and clearance racks. In 1984, Warner Communications Inc., Atari’s parent company, broke apart the once-mighty game firm, selling it off piece by piece.

Most game histories frame the Crash as a brief and sudden changing of the guard, using it as a convenient transition of a market dominated by American manufacturers

2 Leslie Wayne, "Designing a New Economics for the 'Atari Democrats,'" New York Times, September 26, 1982.

3 Other names for the period include "the Great Videogame Shake-Out of 1983," the "Big Shake-Out," or the "Shake-Out." "Software Preview," Electronic Games 2 No. 12 (February 1984): 22.

156 such as Atari, Mattel and Coleco in the early 1980s to one controlled primarily by

Japanese companies such as Nintendo and Sega by the late 1980s and early 1990s.

However, there is little close attention to the years around the Crash or the methods manufacturers employed to save themselves. This study attempts to fill the gap between the “Atari Age” and the “RenNESsaince,” to borrow terms from historians Michael

Newman and Dominic Arsenault, respectively, by examining in detail the industry’s activities between 1982 and 1985. This account deviates from earlier studies by attempting to understand those years through the marketing and business decisions of the major manufacturers as well as commentaries from popular news outlets and the various corporate and third-party publications in the emerging body of “games journalism.” An array of sources such as hardware, software, promotional material, and magazines and newsletters also reveal how various industry players attempted to stave off the Crash or, at the very least, minimize its effects.

Addressing these sources reveals a hitherto unexplored narrative. As the commercial value of games declined, hardware and software manufacturers attempted to transition away from home gaming devices toward home computer systems, which had emerged as a potentially viable alternative. Console manufacturers initially developed computing peripherals for existing game consoles, including keyboard attachments, modems, printers, and even compatible programming languages. However, they eventually shifted to creating new computer systems in hopes of supplanting video games entirely. Meanwhile, game journalists at corporate newsletters, such as Atari Age,

Activisions, and Odyssey2 Adventure, and specialty game magazines had vested interests

157 in the continued success of the medium and thus had an incentive to reassure readers of the staying power of video games. Initially, they asserted the sudden market downturn was merely a crowded market correcting itself, clearing out the weaker companies from the stronger, better-managed ones, and promising higher-quality games would win out in the end. However, as the market continued to sour, claiming companies and publications alike, commentaries gradually shifted toward easing readers’ transition from dedicated video gaming to computer gaming. None of these measures proved successful, and by

1984 most of the major players were gone. In 1985, with the release of the Nintendo

Entertainment System, Nintendo broke away from the focus on computing, reasserting it was primarily a game system. Examining these narratives reveals the lengths the major players in the industry were willing to go to maintain their commercial viability: saving the video game industry may have meant jettisoning video games in the process.

However, while this chapter is primarily a business history, a brief note on consumers is in order. The Crash likely had minimal impact on most consumers. Those who were not closely following the market through industry magazines or the mainstream business press were likely unaware of the market collapse, aside perhaps from falling hardware and software prices. In fact, with significantly marked-down prices, it probably made video gaming more accessible to a broader economic demographic, allowing more consumers to buy into the hobby. This greater consumer exposure is a possible explanation for the market’s resurgence following the release of the NES in 1985-6.

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Chasing the Chuck Wagon: The Rise and Fall of Home Video Games

In 1979, four disaffected Atari programmers—, , Allen

Miller, and —left the Sunnyvale studio to form their own independent game company: Activision. Changes in corporate culture following the firm’s sale to

Warner Communications in 1977 and Atari’s refusal to allow programmers to receive credit or royalties for their work were the key reasons for their departure. Programmers saw no additional financial incentives regardless of how well Atari’s products sold, and games did not include developer credits in promotional materials, manuals, packaging or the games themselves. As a result, it became commonplace for programmers to sneak their names or initials into a game’s code, accessible to players if they performed a series of tasks. For example, if a player brought an otherwise innocuous white square to a certain room in the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) version of Adventure, they could see the message “Created by Warren Robinett” in glowing letters. Robinett’s

“,” as such hidden secrets came to be known, was far from the only attempt by

Atari programmers to surreptitiously insert their name into a game, and hidden credits appeared in Carnival, Defender, Missile Command, and Yars’ Revenge. Atari initially attempted to crush Activision through litigation, suing the nascent company for copyright and patent infringement in 1980. However, the suit was eventually dismissed, and

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Activision became the first non-Atari firm to develop games for the VCS and the industry’s first “third-party” developer.4

The battle over Activision marked a turning point in the American home video game industry. Aspiring firms looking to capitalize on the medium’s success could now enter the market without having to design and market a new game system; rather they could create games for existing units, especially the best-selling Atari Video Computer

System. Activision’s successful legal battle with Atari also inspired other disgruntled

Atari programmers to leave the company and form their own studios. New third-party developers included Imagic, , , U.S. Games, and Games by Apollo.

Established toy and media companies also created games divisions to develop software for the Atari system. CBS formed Columbia Games and marketed a series of sports titles.

20th Century Fox answered with “Games of the Century.” Competing console manufacturers also sought to capitalize on the growing VCS software library. Mattel, makers of the rival Intellivision, introduced the “M-Network,” series of VCS-compatible games. Coleco brazenly developed “Module 1,” an add-on component for the

ColecoVision game system that allowed the unit to play Atari games.5 A similar product,

4 Jeffrey Fleming, “The History of Activision,” Gamasutra, July 30, 2007, accessed October 30, 2018, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/129961/the_history_of_activision.php.

5 Atari sued Coleco over Module 1 in 1983, citing patent infringement, in a case that was later settled out of court. "Coleco, Atari Cross Swords," Electronic Games 1, No. 14 (April 1983): 10.

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"The Game Loader," created by Protecto Enterprises of Barrington, IL, allowed for VCS emulation on a Commodore VIC-20 computer.6

An arms race for third-party games ensued as publishers scrambled to secure the rights to develop electronic adaptations of familiar licensed brands. Toy firm Parker

Bros., the most prolific in this regard, obtained the rights to create games for such products as , the Star Wars and franchises, and J.R.R.

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings; the company also developed the home version of the frog-based street-crossing arcade hit Frogger. Other companies scrambled for home licenses. Coleco entered an arrangement with Nintendo to bundle a home version of the coin-operated hit Donkey Kong with ColecoVision systems. Not to be outdone, Atari secured multi-million dollar deals for games based on the blockbuster films Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial as well as the exclusive home rights to the smash hit Pac-Man. Reportedly, Atari spent roughly $20 million just to get the rights to

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.7 Games appeared based on consumer brands and corporate mascots ranging from Pepsi Invader, a Coca-Cola-branded Space Invaders clone with the titular invaders replaced by the letters P-E-P-S-I; to Kool-Aid Man, a game based on the

Kool-Aid mascot; to Chase the Chuck Wagon, based on the chuck wagon from a series of

6 “(Fantastic!!) VIC-20 Computer Will Play Atari Games Cartridges When You Plug in Our Game Loader!” Electronic Games 1, No. 11 (January 1983): 111.

7 Kathryn Harris, “Ouch! E.T. Fares Poorly as Video Game,” New York Times, March 21, 1983.

161 commercials for Purina dog food. Other firms sought quick success through clones or unauthorized adaptations of popular games, such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

The proliferation of third-party titles initially proved beneficial to Atari as many of the new competitors developed games predominantly, if not exclusively, for the VCS.

Atari, in turn, marketed the system on its robust software library. A two-page advertisement for the VCS that appeared in the June 1982 issue of Electronic Games depicted the system flanked on all sides by images from various first and third-party games with the matter-of-fact slogan “Atari makes more home games than anyone.”8 By the middle of 1982, Atari controlled roughly seventy-five percent of the American video game market and had generated over $1 billion in revenue.

Atari’s success attracted other aspirants to the home console market, and numerous companies developed competing systems. At least four game units entered the market in 1982 alone: Emerson Radio’s ; , a semi-portable vector graphics based system released by General Consumer Electronics; and the ColecoVision, released by former Telstar manufacturer Coleco. Atari also released a technologically superior successor to the Video Computer System, named the Atari 5200 after the designation number of its processor (following its release, Atari began referring to the

VCS by its processor number, the Atari 2600). In addition to challenging the dominance of the 2600, these new systems competed with Atari rivals Mattel (Intellivision), North

8 “Atari makes more games than anyone,” Electronic Games 1, No. 4 (June 1982): 2-3.

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American Philips (Odyssey2), and Astrocade (new owners of the Bally Home Computer

System) for retail space and consumer dollars.

Amid this frantic jockeying, observers described the market as rapidly approaching oversaturation. Market correction and the culling of weaker game companies became common themes among game journalists. “No doubt, with the ridiculous number of new companies suddenly reaching for video’s brass ring,” Video Games editor Steve

Bloom noted in the October 1982 issue, “there are bound to be several casualties on the horizon. Yet why should this wealth of competition spell disaster for the companies that do know what they’re doing?”9 "As a greater and greater number of games continue to compete for limited space," Bill Kunkel warned of the coin-operated business in the

December 1982 issue of Electronic Games, "only the genuinely strong titles are surviving."10 Electronic Games editor Arnie Katz predicted 1983 would bring the demise of several weaker console and game companies, writing in a January 1983 editorial, "At least two of the eight current major videogame systems will disappear, along with at least a few of the companies which have entered the software side of the business." However, he still predicted game sales to continue their climb in spite of an apparently imminent culling of the market.11 Even as sales began to falter, Anne Krueger of Video Games

9 Steve Bloom, “Hyperspace,” Video Games 1, No. 2 (October 1982): 9.

10 Bill Kunkel, "1982—The Year in Coin-Ops," Electronic Games 1, No. 10 (December 1982): 96.

11 Arnie Katz, "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," Electronic Games 1, No. 11 (January 1983): 6.

163 remained optimistic, observing in an October 1983 article, “It’s even safe (but not nice) to say that saturation and obsolescence probably do loom in the dedicated video game future. But it’s a long way off and, rest assured, video game software and hardware makers aren’t giving up ship.”12 Despite these reassurances, the crowded market must have been daunting for the average consumer: “How many versions of star-this and star- that, or gobble-up-this and gobble-up-that, can you have?” one exasperated department store shopper asked a Wall Street Journal reporter in June 1982.13

Ironically, the greatest shock to the industry came from Atari itself. Despite dominating the home market in 1982, the company suffered a series of costly blunders and setbacks; some were products of market oversaturation while others appeared self- inflicted. For example, Atari invested significant capital protecting its hegemony. To stand out from growing competitors, Atari’s advertising budget skyrocketed in 1982, with accounts reporting Atari doubling or tripling marketing expenditures from the previous year. Atari also tried out-stocking its opponents, increasing game production and flooding retailers with more unique titles. In the wake of increased competition and overproduction, both Atari’s cartridge and coin-operated sales declined through the year.14 As other companies shipped stock to retailers, stores increasingly sent Atari

12 Anne Krueger, “For Your Eyes Only,” Video Games 2, No. 1 (October 1983): 30.

13 Laura Landro, “Atari Fiercely Tries to Protect Its Share of Video-Game Sales,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 1982.

14 Laura Landro, “Atari Fiercely Tries to Protect Its Share of Video-Game Sales,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 1982; George Lazarus, “Atari Aims for Stars with T.V. Marketing,” Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1982.

164 products back to the company, creating overstocks of unsold products. Atari eventually shipped truckloads of unsold Atari products to Alamogordo, NM, dumping them in a landfill outside of town.15 Atari also attacked competitors through litigation, and throughout 1982, the company was embroiled in lawsuits. On January 8, 1982, Atari sued

Odyssey2 manufacturer North American Philips, alleging the company’s Pac-Man derivative K.C. Munchkin infringed on Atari’s exclusive home rights to Pac-Man. On

October 11, Atari sued computer manufacturer Commodore, arguing their VIC-20 controller too closely resembled the VCS joystick. On November 29, they sued third- party developer Imagic for copyright infringement on the grounds the company’s Demon

Attack was too similar to the Centuri arcade game Phoenix, for which Atari held the home rights. On December 8, Atari sued Coleco over the ColecoVision’s Module 1 adapter, citing patent infringement. In response, Coleco counter-sued for unfair business practices.16 Other companies sued Atari; in June, Astrocade, makers of the system of the

15 Marian McQuiddy, “City to Atari: ‘E.T.’ Trash Go Home,” Alamogordo (NM) Daily News, September 27, 1983; Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 240. In 2014, archaeologists and a crew unearthed the dumped Atari products. Atari: Game Over, directed by Zak Penn (2014; Culver City, CA; Fuel Entertainment USA, 2014), digital distribution. 16 “Atari, Inc. v. North Amerian Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607 (7th Cir. 1982),” Justia, accessed December 12, 2018, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/672/607/331150/; “Atari Gains in Patent Case,” New York Times, November 9, 1982; “Atari Sues Imagic On Copyright Issue,” New York Times, November 30, 1982; “Coleco Industries is Sued by Atari,” New York Times, December 9, 1982. Andrew Pollack, “Game Turns Serious at Atari,” New York Times, December 19, 1982.

165 same name, sued Atari and computer manufacturer Commodore, citing patent infringement.17

In addition to oversaturation and costly lawsuits, Atari suffered a series of business failures in 1982. Among the largest missteps was the Atari 5200. Dubbed the

“Supersystem,” Atari marketed the VCS successor on its superior graphical and sound capabilities and its accurate recreation of arcade titles. However, the system failed to register the commercial impact of its predecessor. Critics cited inferior controls and consumer reluctance to sacrifice existing 2600 libraries to invest in an entirely new system as some of the key reasons for the 5200’s demise. The eventual release of an adapter that allowed the 5200 to play 2600 titles did little to sway consumer opinion or alter the 5200’s fortunes, and Atari ultimately discontinued the system in 1983.18 The

VCS adaptation of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, hamstrung by an abbreviated six-week development cycle as Atari rushed to get it on shelves by the 1982 holiday season, garnered a poor reception among critics and consumers despite a $5 million advertising campaign. "Atari's attempt to capitalize on [E.T.’s] name value is an insult to arcaders," wrote one Electronic Games critic in an April 1983 article, adding, "Save your time and money. And if E.T. does call home, please don't tell him about this."19 Raiders of the Lost

17 Barry Bayer, “Astrocade Sues Commodore and Atari,” Infoworld (June 28, 1982): 1; "Atari and Commodore Suit," Arcadian 4, No. 8 (June 11, 1982): 75.

18 Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 229-230; "Consumer Beat," Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (October 1984): 12.

19 "E.T." Electronic Games 1, No. 14 (April 1983): 37-38. George Lazarus, “Atari Aims for Stars with T.V. Marketing,” Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1982.

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Ark for the VCS proved another expensive failure for Atari. Despite selling over one million copies, Atari’s home version of Pac-Man fell significantly below expectations.

Anticipating consumers would purchase a 2600 just to play Pac-Man, the company manufactured 12 million cartridges, more games than Atari had sold VCS systems up to that point.20

Atari’s poor showing in 1982 trickled up to parent company Warner

Communications, Inc., forcing the company to scale back its quarterly earnings estimates.

On December 8, 1982, Warner announced performance was “substantially below previous expectations,” and predicted a ten to fifteen percent gain over the previous year.

While this still meant profits for Warner, this estimate was significantly lower than what

Warner had previously promised its shareholders. By comparison, during the second quarter of 1982, Warner’s profits had risen 60 percent and reports leading up to

December painted rosy images of future record gains.21 The announcement surprised analysts and outraged investors. The company’s stock price tumbled, falling nearly seventeen points in a manner of hours.22 Stockholders filed at least three lawsuits against

20 Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 227-228

21 “Earnings of Warner Communications Rose 60% in 2nd Quarter,” Wall Street Journal, July 14, 1982; Kathryn Harris, “Warner to Post Drop in Profits, Cites Atari,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1982. Reports cited declining cartridge sales and the failure of the 5200 as the main causes of Atari’s decline.

22 They could have potentially been even lower, but Warner delayed trading until after the midday announcement. Michael Millenson, “Fuzzy profit picture hits video game stocks,” Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1982.

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Warner, accusing the company of deliberately withholding its financial information.

Atari’s sudden decline appeared to shake confidence in the continued viability, and profitability, of video games.23

Warner’s sudden plunge reverberated through the industry; several retailers, computer manufacturers, and rival video game companies suffered similar losses on Wall

Street. In a two-day period, December 8 and 9, 1982, Coleco’s stock fell by over 25 percent. Mattel’s dropped eight percent on December 8, and the company pulled its stocks from the New York Stock Exchange the following day to shield from further losses. The Intellivision manufacturer delivered a further blow to the market when it announced that it would post a quarterly loss.24 The following week, Imagic postponed plans to take the company public, citing “the unsettled market conditions.” “To the horror of investors in video game and retailing stocks,” Gary Putka of the Wall Street Journal commented the day after Warner’s stock plunge, “yesterday was the day that Warner

Communications stole Christmas.”25 A further blow to Warner came a week later when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an investigation into Atari

23 Andrew Pollack, “Game Turns Serious at Atari,” New York Times, December 19, 1982; Al Delugach, “Warner Stock Drops in Wake of Atari Report,” New York Times, December 28, 1982.

24 Michael Millenson, “Fuzzy profit picture hits video game stocks,” Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1982; Kathryn Harris, “Game Makers’ Stocks Take Another Tumble,” Wall Street Journal, December 10, 1982; “Imagic, Inc. to Delay Offer Due to Market’s ‘Unsettled Condition,” Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1982.

25 Gary Putka, “Warner Communications Sends Host of Stocks Tumbling with Its Reduced Earnings Estimate,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1982.

168 executives and Dennis D. Groth, Atari’s president and vice president, respectively, for insider trading. Reportedly, Kassar and Groth unloaded thousands of shares in Warner stock in the days leading up to the December 8 announcement.26

Several additional blows struck the industry during the following weeks. On

December 30, Astrocade, makers of the console of the same name, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; the announcement was the culmination of a failed $10 million advertising campaign that left the company, as one observer described in a November 1982 Chicago

Tribune article, “basically insolvent with a negative net worth of $1 million.”27 In early

1983, third-party developers U.S. Games and Games by Apollo ceased operations.

Oversupply gradually exacted a toll on retailers, and, as the year progressed, stores slashed prices on hardware and software to clear shelves.

Game journalists attempted to put a positive spin on the sudden upheaval. The departures of Astrocade, U.S. Games, and Games by Apollo appeared to confirm earlier predictions of market correction. Roger C. Sharpe, who succeeded Steve Bloom as editor of Video Games, commented in a July 1983 editorial that the industry “is going through a healthy period of weeding out the proverbial from the chaff.”28 Video Games

26 Alexander R. Hammer, “Warner Reports Atari Insider Case: Warner Stock Case,” New York Times, December 24, 1982; Atari execs sold shares before the bad news hit,” Chicago Tribune, December 24, 1982.

27 Dan Dorfman, “Video Game Death Could Put Supplier on Ice,” Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1982; "Latest Astrocade News," Arcadian 5, No. 3 (January 14, 1983): 45.

28 Roger C. Sharpe, “Hyperspace,” Video Games 1, No. 10 (July 1983): 6.

169 writer Ted Salamone made a similar assessment in the April 1984 issue: “In actuality...this shakeup which is still underway is just a healthy sign of a good capitalist economy reacting to the laws of supply and demand.” Arnie Katz made a similar appeal to the will of the market in an editorial in Electronic Games the following month: "Any fast-growing business attracts fly-by-night and under-financed companies that are looking for a quick score. Those who don't achieve instant success often end up moving on to, hopefully, greener pastures."29

Magazine contributors also reassured readers of the medium’s staying power regardless of market instability. Joystik editor Doug Mahugh encouraged readers to take solace in the impact video games imprinted on American popular culture:

[T]he video game industry has finally matured, and it never would have happened without all the hype. Two years ago, most people thought video games meant either Asteroids or Space Invaders. Now, even a nonplayer can usually rattle off the names of a dozen current games, and terms like maze space, , track ball, and raster-scan have worked their way into the common American vocabulary. All of the trend-talkers and fad-followers unwittingly educated the public about the world of video gaming….30 According to Salamone, the market downturn represented the development of more discerning video game consumers, who would be selective in their purchases, “Once consumers became more selective, the producers had no choice but to create better offerings, or die trying.” Other writers echoed his sentiments. “Quality has become the

29 Arnie Katz, "Dedicated Followers of Fashion,” Electronic Games 2, No. 8 (May 1984): 6.

30 Doug Mahugh, , Joystik 1, No. 6 (July 1983): 2.

170 watch-word at most of the firms which hope to continue making money in the cartridge business,” observed a writer for Electronic Games in the February 1984 issue, “There simply isn’t a broad audience for games which don’t deliver something new, so expect major manufacturers to concentrate on preparing a handful of real knock-your-socks-off titles rather than putting out a large selection of decent, but unspectacular, games.”31 Katz cautioned readers to be judicious about the games they buy: "The important thing for the consumer, of course, is to learn to separate the really first-rate games from the less satisfactory ones before plunking down $20-$50 for a cartridge." He later observed the decline in the market was advantageous to consumers because, with marked-down prices, video games were becoming economically accessible to a wider audience:

“Many...arcaders simply couldn't afford a videogame or computer system...until now.

Look for a mass influx of such gamers."32

Video Game Systems “Sprout Keyboards”

Despite press reassurances of a market correcting itself and increasingly discerning customers, numerous hardware and software manufacturers rapidly viewed the

Crash as a sign to transition to a new market: computers. The American industry was also in a period of rapid growth during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prior

31 “Software Preview,” Electronic Games 2, No. 12 (February 1984): 22-29.

32 Ted Salamone, “The Trends and Transformation of Home Video ‘84,” Video Games 2, No. 7 (April 1984): 66-9; “Software Preview,” Electronic Games 2, No. 12 (Feb. 1984): 22-29; Arnie Katz, "Is There a Games Glut?" Electronic Games 1, No. 17 (July 1983): 6; Arnie Katz, "The Decline and Fall...of Prices," Electronic Games 2, No. 8 (October 1983): 6.

171 to 1977, computer manufacturers had favored specialized audiences, directing early computers, such as the Altair 8800 and Apple 1, and programmable personal calculators, such as the HP-65, at technically inclined hobbyists or those who used computing devices for work purposes. However, the of the late seventies increasingly focused on a broader mass audience. 1977, the same year Atari debuted the Video

Computer System, marked the American release of the first three mass-marketed computer systems: the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Tandy TRS-80. The Apple

II, despite being the most expensive of the three, proved the best-selling, and Apple’s sudden success attracted other competitors to the computer market, including Xerox,

Commodore, , and IBM.33

The growth of the computer market proved tantalizing to game manufacturers reeling from the Crash, and between 1982 and 1983, they focused greater attention on reconceptualizing gaming products relative to computers. Gary Moscovitz, Director of

Marketing for Mattel, predicted in early 1983 the new year would bring a general shift away from dedicated game systems toward all-in-one computer systems: “At the end of

1983, there will no longer be video games—only machines…This is the year of transition

33 Computer historian Paul Ceruzzi attributed the Apple II’s success to its broad appeal among hobbyists, business owners, and lay consumers. The system was “open bus,” relatively easy for hobbyist users to modify to suit personal needs. The unit also allowed for a diverse software library, including business programs such as the VisiCalc spreadsheet manager and various games, available through an additional 5 ¼" drive. The system’s nonthreatening name and familiar design, deliberately modeled after an electric typewriter, also made the Apple II accessible to general consumers. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 263-268.

172 between video games and computer systems—its [sic] becoming one continuum.” A

Commodore representative put the situation more bluntly, telling a Wall Street Journal reporter in February 1983, “Any video game that doesn’t sprout a keyboard and learn to speak BASIC is going to be in dire peril.”34

The relationship between computers and home game systems had fluctuated throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Marketing for early 1970s game systems, such as the Odyssey series, Coleco Telstar, and various Pong adaptations, downplayed computing elements in favor of emphasizing entertainment and fostering connections to existing forms of middle-class family leisure such as playing board games or watching

TV. However, by the late seventies, several early programmable game manufacturers situated their systems at the crux between both the gaming and emerging computer markets, prompting a brief foray into “modular” hardware: consoles that could deliver advanced gaming as well as computing functions. Two such early modular systems were the Bally Professional Arcade and the Mattel Intellivision. Released in 1978 and 1979, respectively, Bally and Mattel marketed their systems as advanced gaming machines capable of expansion into computer systems. The Arcade came bundled with a version of the BASIC programming language (Bally BASIC) and advertisements promised the imminent release of a and modem. However, the key focal point of Bally’s Arcade marketing was an expansion module known in advance press materials as the “Add-On”

34 Anne Krueger, “Mattel Intellivision II: The Step Beyond,” Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 37; Laura Landro, "Living Room War: Video Game Firms Take on Computer Invaders," Wall Street Journal, February 9, 1983.

173 or “Add-Under.” The Add-On was to include a full-sized QWERTY keyboard, expanded memory, and cassette-based portable data storage. Early ads for the Intellivision heralded a similar expansion unit known as the Keyboard Component: the game system (the

“Master Component”) was to fit into the Keyboard Component to convert the

Intellivision into a full-fledged computer complete with keyboard and cassette storage.

(Fig. 3.1) Mattel also promised a line of software for exercise, language instruction, and home financing, including Conversational Spanish, Jack LaLanne’s Physical

Conditioning, Stock Analysis, and Family Financial Planning. “Have you ever wanted to learn a foreign language? Or design your own exercise program? Ever wished you had professional stock analysis? Or computing help for your personal finances?” inquired a

1980 Intellivision catalog, “Soon there will be a simple way to have these things and more. A way so revolutionary, it can change your family's life.”35 In a similar move catering toward the nascent computer market, North American Philips designed the

Odyssey2, dubbed the “mainframe” in advertising copy following its 1979 release, with a built-in keyboard. Among the system’s early software offerings was Computer Intro, a rudimentary programming tutorial that included a detailed manual designed to teach users simple programming concepts.36 Atari’s decision to name their programmable game system the “Video Computer System” suggests an interest in cultivating a positive

35 Intellivision: Intelligent Television (Mattel Electronics, 1980), Intellivision Lives, accessed November 2, 2018, http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/media/80brochure.shtml.

36 “Computer Intro: A Beginner’s Guide to Computing Technology,” Ozyr’s Odyssey2 Adventure, accessed November 2, 2018, http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2comput.html.

174

Figure 3.1: Mattel Intellivision and Keyboard Component. Image Credit: Daniel McConnell via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Intellivision_-_trojandan_14871699_- _white_background.jpg), accessed May 26, 2019, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). No changes made.

175 association between the programmable game system and the emerging computer systems of the time.

However, by the early eighties, the commercial upsurge of video games appeared to diminish manufacturers’ interest in modular hardware, and video game marketing increasingly focused on gameplay over other computing functions. Mattel and Astrocade, which purchased the rights to the Arcade from Bally in 1980, downplayed computing in favor of gaming and shelved their expansion units.37 As for the Odyssey2, despite the full-sized keyboard, the Computer Intro program, and the slogan “The excitement of a game. The mind of a computer,” the North American Philips (NAP) system possessed limited computing features. The most noteworthy computing function was the ability for players to customize their own levels in the game K.C. Munchkin. An article in the March

1982 issue of Electronic Games predicted an eventual convergence between video games and computers; however, the author cited manufacturers’ reluctance to commit resources to the nascent computer revolution, writing, “For the present, videogame manufacturers remain unsure as to whether the average American is ready to buddy up to a computer.”

Roger C. Sharpe of Video Games observed following the 1983 Summer Consumer

Electronics Show, “Interestingly, the resulting trends have indicated a definite switch over to personal computers,” yet he was quick to caution readers, “game playing systems aren’t dead by any stretch of the imagination.”38 Meanwhile, game journalists demarcated

37 Both eventually received limited releases and are highly sought after among collectors.

38 Roger C. Sharpe, “Hyperspace,” Video Games 2, No. 1 (November 1983): 6.

176 clear distinctions for their readers between game systems and computers. While the two shared similar components, magazine writers asserted the two were not the same. Joystik writer Danny Goodman counseled readers in an April 1983 article that video game systems were computers that could only play games:

Picking a video game over a computer is much like choosing a specialist instead of a general practitioner to cure your hunger for video games. The specialist has everything you could possibly need for that specific interest area, while the G.P. may have to make compromises to be all things to all people. Face it—game systems are designed specifically to play games, not to figure your taxes, handle your investments, and so on.39 Journalists also noted the lack of user programmability in video games as what separated them from computers. Writer Jerry Willis noted: “If you can’t program the device yourself, it isn’t a computer. That means a video game player is not a computer because the programs are all canned.” He elaborated in another article from Video Games,

“Mattel’s Intellivision, for example, uses the same 6502 microprocessor chip that the

Atari 800 and 400 computers do. The Intellivision, however, can’t be programmed by the user. You must use programs written by someone else. It’s a very good video game machine, but it’s not a computer—because you don’t have the option of programming it yourself.”40 Commenting on the Atari VCS, one writer for Electronic Games was quick to point out, despite the name, the system was not a computer: "The 'Video Computer

39 Danny Goodman, “Game Systems vs. Computers: Whose Side Are You On,” Joystik 1, No. 5 (April 1983): 54-55.

40 Jerry Willis, “Welcome to the Computer Age,” Video Games 2, No. 2 (November 1983): 40; Jerry Willis, “Well Equipped,” Video Games 1, No. 5 (February 1983): 49.

177

System'...is misnamed. The 2600 isn't a computer, simply a microprocessor designed for moving objects and creating colors."41

However, with the industry’s growing financial troubles in 1983, video game companies paid renewed attention to computers. As home video game sales rose to $3.8 million in 1982, the American computer market had also expanded into a multimillion- dollar industry. By 1982, observers separated microcomputers into two categories, distinguished by technical capabilities, cost, and target audience. On the one end were comparatively sophisticated devices designed for advanced computing functions, such as finance, recordkeeping, and programming. This growing line of “personal computers,” as technology journalists described them, were generally too expensive for lay users, costing between $1000 and $3000, and targeted the business and corporate worlds. Among the largest competitors in the market were the Apple II series, the IBM PC

(released in 1981), and numerous “IBM compatible” devices capable of running IBM PC software. On the opposite end of the technical and cost spectrum were “home computers,” low-cost computers directed a lay consumer audience. Home computers offered limited computer functions, such as gameplay and introductory programming, and generally cost under $400. In terms of technical prowess and capabilities, they were comparable to home video game systems. Many offered game cartridge and controller support, and advertisements positioned them as multifunctional alternatives to game systems. "Why buy just a video game from Atari or Intellivision," actor William Shatner

41 The Game Doctor, “Q&A,” Electronic Games 2, No. 8 (October 1983): 116.

178 asked audiences in one Commodore commercial, "Invest in the wonder computer of the

1980s for under $300: the Commodore VIC-20."42 Among the home computer aspirants in the early eighties were Texas Instruments’ TI 99/4A, the Timex 1000, and the

Commodore VIC-20. Atari also targeted the home computer market with the Atari 400 and 800 computers. In January 1983, Time magazine named the computer as “Machine of the Year.”

The home computer market’s growth enticed game manufacturers, and several companies either developed computing elements for existing systems or shifted toward developing computer hardware or software. William Grubb, president of Imagic, observed, "No one adequately anticipated the magnitude of the industry change in recent months. The expected merger of videogames and home computer industries was seen in the distance—and it's all happening now!"43 The fortunes of Mattel’s and North

American Philips’ next-generation systems—Intellivision III and Odyssey3, respectively—illustrated the sudden shift away from dedicated game systems to computers. NAP unveiled the Odyssey3, the proposed successor to the Odyssey2, at the

January 1983 Winter Consumer Electronics Show. (Fig. 3.2) NAP developed the

Odyssey3 to compete more directly with home computing systems, and the proposed

42 "Players Guide to Microcomputers," Electronic Games 2, No. 10 (December 1983): 95; "Commodore Vic-20 Commercial," YouTube, accessed April 8, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUEI7mm8M7Q.

43 "Imagic Changes Publishing Course," Electronic Games 2, No. 9 (November 1983): 10.

179 system boasted sixteen kilobytes of random-access memory (RAM), a built-in full-sized keyboard, and modem support for rudimentary on-line services.44 Further incentivizing the transition for existing Odyssey customers, the company also promised backwards compatibility with the Odyssey2, allowing the new system to play Odyssey2 cartridges.

In a 1983 interview for Video Games, North American Philips Vice President Jerry

Michaelson described the new system as a bridge for consumers from video games to computers:

Odyssey3 is intended as a system that can serve as a basic game terminals [sic], but with capabilities to give it a high degree of importance to parents who don’t want their child to be left behind in the computer age…[O]ur advertising will ease youngsters and their parents into the newer system by continuing to emphasize "the keyboard is the key" [a slogan of Odyssey2]—the key to greater video game challenge, interactivity and programmability.45 Mattel, meanwhile, unveiled the next-generation successor to the Intellivision—

Intellivision III—at the same show, initially intending the system for a Christmas 1983 release. In addition to expanded graphical and sound capabilities, the new Intellivision was to include wireless controllers and a voice synthesizer system. However, both the

Intellivision III and Odyssey3 were conspicuously absent from the Summer Consumer

Electronics Show six months later. By July 1983, Mattel had shelved the Intellivision III

44 “Today’s Videogame Systems: An Overview of the Six Most Popular Machines,” Electronic Games: 1983 Software Encyclopedia (New York: Reece Communications, 1983), 10. 45 Suzan Prince, “Odyssey3 Command Center: Once More With Feeling,” Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 45-7.

180 in favor of a new computer system, called Aquarius.46 Philips, meanwhile, unceremoniously discontinued the Odyssey3 to focus more directly on software.47

Coleco made a similar transition from video games to computers. Coleco released the

ColecoVision in 1982, marketing the system on its faithful graphical and sound recreation of popular arcade games under the slogan “We bring the arcade experience home.” However, as the year progressed, the company gradually emphasized the system as modular, at one point promising a memory expansion unit to convert the ColecoVision into a full-fledged computer. One 1982 print ad described the system as “a great game system that’s expandable into a great computer system.”48 “If you own ColecoVision,” a narrator explained in a 1983 commercial, “you already own a powerful, state-of-the art computer.” However, by the end of the year, Coleco’s focus had shifted from the

ColecoVision to its own home computer: Adam. Initially intended for an August 1983 release, the Adam came bundled with a full keyboard and printer as well as ColecoVision cartridge compatibility.49 Games released beginning in 1983 listed compatibility with both ColecoVision and Adam on their packaging, encouraging ColecoVision consumers to bring their library along with their transition to computers.50

46 "Videogame Preview '83," Electronic Games 1, No. 15 (May 1983): 24.

47 Suzan Prince, “Developers Forge Ahead,” Video Games 1, No. 1 (October 1983): 34-5. 48 “This is ColecoVision: the Arcade Quality Video Game System,” Electronic Games 1, No. 9 (November 1982): 3.

49 "Coleco Unveils Adam," Electronic Games 2, No. 9 (November 1983): 10.

50 As Coleco shifted to the Adam one sardonic ColecoVision player commented on previous add-ons promised for the system, "They must be taking lessons from

181

Figure 3.2: The Odyssey3 “Command Center.” Image Source: Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 45.

Intellivision, announcing new products months ahead, then not delivering." George M. Knochel, “The Supergame Cancelled,” Electronic Games 2, No. 9 (November 1983): 28.

182

Other companies followed suit. In late 1983, Atari announced the launch of

Atarisoft, a line of adaptations of several popular Atari arcade titles for their home computers as well as for rival systems ColecoVision and Intellivision.51 Atari Age, the company’s fan club magazine, began running articles introducing readers to computing concepts with the July/August 1982 issue. Atari also launched a computer-oriented fan magazine: Atari Connection.52 In 1984, the company suspended plans to release the Atari

7800, the successor to the failed Atari 5200, in favor of focusing on its growing library of home computers. Activision also transitioned from console games to computer games. In the Fall 1983 volume of Activisions, the final issue of Activision’s fan club newsletter, the editors announced the creation of a new computer-oriented fan club: the Activision

Home Computer Club.53 By 1984, dedicated game systems had all but vacated the consumer electronics environment. An article from the May 1984 issue of Electronic

Games advised readers, "Don't expect new videogame systems [because] there's little market for such devices, and the R&D departments are focusing strictly on computers."54

51 Steve Morgenstern, “Atarisoft—Atari Hots for Money Systems,” Atari Age 2, No. 5 (March /April 1984): 11.

52 Steve Morgenstern, “Inside Your Atari VCS,” Atari Age 1, No. 2 (July/August 1982): 2-19; Steve Morgenstern, “Inside Your Atari VCS Game Cartridge,” Atari Age 1, No. 3 (September/October 1982): 2.

53 “Announcing the Activision Home Computer Club,” Activisions 7 (Fall 1983): 9

54 "Software Preview," Electronic Games 2, No. 5 (May 1984): 22.

183

While hardware manufacturers shifted toward computers, existing systems began to “sprout keyboards.” In 1983, Atari introduced a keyboard peripheral for the VCS, initially dubbed “My First Computer” and later renamed “The Graduate.” Described by

Atari Age writer Steve Morgenstern as “a complete introductory computer system,” the attachment connected to the system via its cartridge slot and reportedly came with a full- sized keyboard, 8K RAM, and Microsoft BASIC.55 Mattel also developed a redesigned version of Intellivision. The “Intellivision II” aesthetically resembled a computer, replacing the faux wood grain aesthetic of the original Intellivision with a sleek, white plastic design. Mattel also promised keyboard compatibility and cassette-based portable storage.56 (Fig. 3.3) Vectrex manufacturer General Consumer Electronics announced plans to develop a similar expansion module to give the Vectrex a full keyboard, 16K

RAM and ROM, BASIC, and a floppy disk drive.57 Meanwhile, computers and computer peripherals dominated the Summer 1983 Consumer Electronics Show. Coleco and Mattel unveiled the Adam and Aquarius computer systems to replace the ColecoVision and

Intellivision, respectively. Atari also first demonstrated “The Graduate” at the Summer

1983 CES. (Fig. 3.4) Reporting from the convention, Video Games editor Roger C.

55 Steve Morgenstern, “Fall Introduction Planned for Revolutionary Device,” Atari Age 2, No. 1 (May/June 1983): 11; Mark Brownstein, “Atari 2600 Keyboard: All in the Family,” Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 39-40; Mark Brownstein, “Survival of the Fittest,” Video Games 2, No. 1 (October 1983): 37.

56 Anne Krueger, “Mattel Intellivision II: One Step Beyond,” Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 36-38.

57 Anne Krueger, “A Movable Feast,” Video Games 1, No. 10 (July 1983): 74-77.

184

Sharpe commented, “Pure video game systems have, admittedly fallen from the spotlight although their impact can still be felt as manufacturers attempt to offer increased capabilities and a range of add-ons providing more computer-like functions.”58

Along with computers, several companies attempted to establish footholds in the nascent telecommunications industry. During the 1983 Summer CES Atari distributed brochures promoting “AtariTel,” also known as “Project Falcon.” Writers for Atari Age described

AtariTel as a new division of Atari, vaguely describing the development of “a new dramatically capable home network for voice communications, communications management, appliance control, security and environmental control.”59 Reports circulated of arrangements between video game manufacturers and cable television providers to develop on-demand game services. In 1984, rumors circulated of Activision and Atari entering a partnership for such a product. A similar deal came from Coleco and AT&T.

Mattel, meanwhile, unveiled Play Cable, a cable-based subscription service where users could download Intellivision games via a cable connection, a precursor to on-line based game download services such as Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network of the .

There was also Games Network, a download-based game service that attached to the

58 Roger C. Sharpe, “Electrifying Sights: A Close Look at the Consumer Electronics Show,” Video Games 1, No. 12 (September 1983): 45-6. 59 Steve Morgenstern, “The Mystery Continues,” Atari Age 2, No. 2 (July/August 1983): 7.

185

Figure 3.3: Mattel Intellivision II, with cassette player, keyboard, and a VCS emulator attachment. Image Source: Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 36.

186

Figure 3.4: Atari’s proposed keyboard attachment for the Video Computer System. Image Source: Video Games 1, No. 9 (June 1983): 39.

187

Atari 2600 via a device called “The Window.” The subscription-based service allowed access to a library of on-demand games that changed every month.60

As the industry transitioned from video to computer systems, manufacturers such as Atari and Coleco shifted the video game system to a narrower consumer demographic: pre-school-aged children. As the company focused more on its line of computers, Atari marketed the resilient 2600 as a game system for young children as older players graduated to home computers and PCs. “And what will happen to the old 2600 as Dad and Mom and their teenage progeny enter the real [realm?] of Supergaming?” the writers of Video Games commented in a 1984 article on the rise of what they derisively called

“kideo” games, “Quite possibly it will be passed on to little brother and sister. Hence, a new pre-teen audience for the 2600, an audience with its own special needs and interests.”61 In February 1983, Atari launched the “Kid’s Library” with titles such as Big

Bird’s Egg Catch, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Snoopy and the Red Baron for the youth audience.62 That same year, Atari released an enlarged 5”x7” keypad-based controller with oversized buttons designed to accommodate small hands less dexterous than the typical dedicated game user. (Fig 3.5) Coleco made a similar shift toward younger children with the 1983 release of the Gemini system, an authorized recreation of

60 Mary Claire Blakeman, “Tuning Into Video Games,” Video Games 2, No. 8 (May 1984): 15. 61 Dan Persons, “Young At Heart: Playing the Field with Children’s Video Games,” Video Games 2, No. 8 (May 1984): 32.

62 Robert Greenberger, “Cartoons, Comics, Muppets, and Puppets Come Home,” Video Games 1, No. 8 (May 1983): 26.

188

Figure 3.5: The Atari 2600 “Kid’s Controller” with an overlay for Oscar’s Trash Race. From the author’s personal collection.

189 the 2600 for which the company paid Atari an undisclosed amount in licensing fees. In addition to playing VCS games, among its other features was the “KIDVID” sound module, an attachment designed to play games exclusively targeting an early childhood audience. According to a report from the January 1984 issue of Video Games: “Coleco will not be releasing any adult games in the Sound Module series, and is aiming the games they are making for the three to seven-year-old group; a group the company feels has been practically ignored by the video game market.”63

For game journalists observing the industry turmoil, the narrative gradually shifted from market correction to the end of the home video game market entirely, and numerous commentators proclaimed the demise of dedicated game consoles in favor of computers. David U. Stuart predicted in the January 1983 issue of Joystik: “Many industry experts predict that within a few years home computers will become very inexpensive and versatile, ‘game only’ systems as we know them will probably disappear.”64 Reporting from the Summer 1983 Consumer Electronics Show, Video

Games writer Anne Krueger observed, “It wasn’t the death of video games that was seen at CES, but the merging and evolution of a new market.”65 Mark Brownstein added,

“Judging from the show, it seems obvious that the future belongs to the computers.”66

63 Mike Sittnick, “Coleco’s Gemini: The Dual Purpose Game System,” Video Games 2, No. 4 (January 1984): 6. 64 David U. Stuart, “Future Waves,” Joystik 1, No. 4 (January 1983): 8.

65 Anne Krueger, “For Your Eyes Only,” Video Games 2, No. 1 (October 1983): 30.

66 Emphasis added. Mark Brownstein, “Survival of the Fittest,” Video Games 2, No. 1 (October 1983): 37.

190

"Videogames aren't going to die," editor Arnie Katz reassured Electronic Games readers in the May 1984 issue, "they will continue to improve and mutate into the super computer simulations of tomorrow." However, less than a year later he felt comfortable declaring,

“The Computer Gaming Age has superseded the Videogaming Era and this change has fundamentally altered the nature of home arcading.”67 “Over the past year or so,” Mark

Brownstein of Video Games commented in an August 1983 article, “the home video game and gamer have begun to mature. The once-satisfactory Atari VCS and Odyssey units no longer provide the resolution or complexity which many increasingly sophisticated players now demand.”68 In the coverage leading up to the Winter 1985

CES, one writer for Electronic Games commented the predominance of computer games over dedicated game systems at the show, “reflect[s] the passing of the Videogame Era and the dawning of the Computer Game Age.”69 In response, publications sought to facilitate consumers’ transition from video games to computers. To keep up with the rapidly shifting market, both company-produced and independent specialty game magazines presented themselves as computer consumer advocates, educating the public to make informed computer purchases. Electronic Games and Video Games gradually

67 Arnie Katz, "Dedicated Followers of Fashion," Electronic Games 2, No. 5 (May 1984): 6; Arnie Katz, “The Story Behind the Cover,” Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (October 1984): 6.

68 Mark Browntein, “Hit Parade: Computer Games on Review,” Video Games 1, No. 11 (August 1983): 57.

69 Emphasis added. “EG’s Fourth Annual Fall Software Preview,” Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (Oct. 1984): 33.

191 devoted more space to consumer guides and introductions to basic computing concepts.

Other publications released reviews of home computers and tutorials on computing terminology.70 Conversely, materials devoted to home game systems moved to the back pages.

Mario’s Hammer Falls: The Collapse of the American Home Video Game Market

Manufacturers’ aggressive shift in favor of computers ultimately failed to reverse the fortunes of the American video game industry despite the support of journalists.

Much of the fault resided in the home computer market itself, which by 1983 proved just as volatile as the video game market, as evidenced by the fortunes of Texas Instruments

(TI). Formerly known as a manufacturer of semiconductors and calculators, TI entered the low-cost computer industry in 1982 with the TI 99/4A. Its initial $400 asking price placed it in a competitive position with rival Commodore, another former competitor in the business and maker of the similarly-priced Commodore VIC-20. Following the release of the TI 99/4A, Commodore launched an aggressive price war, repeatedly offering rebates and slashing the price of the VIC-20 to undercut its competitors.71 Texas

70 "Players Guide to Microcomputers," Electronic Games 2, No. 10 (December 1983): 89-100. Jerry Willis, “Well Equipped,” Video Games 1, No. 4 (February 1983): 31-33. Video Games introduced a new section devoted to computers--"Computer Corner”--with the August 1983 issue (Vol. 1, No. 11).

71 One New York Times article characterized the price war as Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel exacting revenge on Texas Instruments. According to the article, in 1975 Commodore had reached an agreement for TI (then a manufacturer of computer chips) to supply Commodore with chips for their line of calculators only for TI to undercut them with their own calculator line. David E. Sanger, “Two Standouts in Electronics,” New York Times, August 1, 1983.

192

Instruments and other aspirants such as Timex (maker of the Timex 1000) and Atari followed suit while increasing production, flooding retailers and warehouses to keep up with rising demand. By 1983, repeated price cuts threatened the market value of home computer systems. One Wall Street Journal writer described the TI 99/4A in June 1983 as “close to a profit margin,” and falling costs threatened a crash similar to what befell calculators and Pong-style game machines several years prior.72 The price war and increasing market oversaturation drew comparisons to the faltering home video game market with Andrew Pollack of the New York Times describing the former as “a battle in which all sides kill one another off and no one is left standing.”73

Casualties mounted by the end of 1983. Despite holding between fifteen and twenty percent of the home market, Texas Instruments posted multimillion-dollar losses through the first three quarters of 1983. To make matters worse, the company discovered a design flaw in the TI 99/4A wherein the system’s power adapter was prone to electrical shorts that could blow out the system’s capacitor, forcing the company to pull the computer from the market for about a month while they resolved the issue, which reportedly cost the company $50 million.74 All the while, Commodore kept lowering the cost of the VIC-20, exerting further pressure on its competitors to keep up. At the

72 David Stipp and G. Christian Hall, “Texas Instruments’ Problems Show Pitfalls of Home-Computer Market,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 1983. 73 Andrew Pollack, “Retreat Set by Texas Instruments,” New York Times, October 29, 1983.

74 “Texas Instruments Sees Flaw Costing $50 Million Pre-Tax,” Wall Street Journal, March 2, 1983; “$50 million TI computer defect,” Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1983.

193

Summer 1983 Consumer Electronics Show, Commodore announced a price cut for the company’s follow up to the VIC-20—the —from $360 to $199. “TI might as well have shuttered their booth,” a conference attendee told a Los Angeles Times reporter following the price cut. In a two-day period, June 13-14, 1983, Texas

Instruments’ stock plunged 32%. Reminiscent of Warner’s stock collapse the previous

December, TI’s stock dive reverberated to other computer manufacturers, and Coleco,

Atari, and Commodore posted losses on Wall Street.75 In a desperate attempt to remain competitive, Texas Instruments cut the price of the TI 99/4A to $100 and announced plans for a higher-end computer to compete with the IBM PC. However, after repeated delays and more financial losses, the company abandoned the computer market in

October 1983.76

Other home computer manufacturers faced similar misfortunes. Mattel’s Aquarius appeared doomed from the start. Mattel released the computer system in June 1983 amid the computer price war, and the system failed to gain a foothold in the cutthroat computer market or reverse the company’s fortunes. Mattel abandoned the Aquarius in October and sold the rights to the system to Radofin Electronics on January 12, 1984.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, between 1982 and 1983, Mattel’s net worth

75 Kathryn Harris, “25% Loss of TI Computer Stock Stirs Industry,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1983; “Most Computer Stocks Show Drops,” New York Times, June 14, 1983.

76 Charles Storch, “Texas Instruments quits home computer mart,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1983.

194 fell from $291.4 million to $26.7 million.77 Atari initially slashed the prices of the Atari

400, 600, and 800 computers to keep pace with Commodore and Texas Instruments.

However, following the departure of TI, the company slowly raised its prices to recoup losses. This placed Atari’s line of computers in an economically disadvantageous position: too expensive to compete with Commodore’s frequent price cuts and too technologically inferior to compete with the likes of the Apple II and IBM PC. Industry reports noted Atari never saw a profit from computers; according to a New York Times report, Atari’s Computer Division lost $25-$50 million in 1982 alone, and mounting losses in the game market exacerbated their misfortunes in home computers.78 Financial troubles eventually reached even Commodore, and by the end of 1984, the company reported a 93.6% decline in sales.79

The proved another ill-fated computer. Retailing for $600 and bundled with a printer and disk drive, Coleco positioned Adam as a bridge between higher-end personal computers and low-cost home computers. However, the Adam faced

77 “Mattel Sells Rights For the Marketing of Aquarius Computer,” Wall Street Journal, January 12, 1984.

78 Andrew Pollack, “Game Turns Serious at Atari,” New York Times, December 19, 1982; Peter McWilliams, “Personal Computers: IBM’s PCjr fares well in disk-to-disk comparison with its main competitors,” Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1983.

79 Andrew Pollack, “Computer Maker Net Falls 93.6%,” New York Times, January 29, 1985. Making matters worse for Commodore, the Commodore-64 suffered from high failure rates. An October 28, 1983, article in the Wall Street Journal reported a 15-30% failure rate poised to jeopardize the company’s market dominance. Dennis Kneale, “Commodore Hits Production Snags In Its Hot-Selling Home Computer,” Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1983.

195 numerous setbacks following its June 4, 1983, announcement at the Summer CES.

Mainframe computer manufacturer Logical Business Machines sued Coleco, arguing

Coleco’s computer created brand confusion with LBM’s Adam mainframe.80 The Federal

Communications Commission delayed Adam’s approval for commercial sale, forcing

Coleco to push back the system’s initial release date. A technical flaw in the Adam’s word processing software further delayed the computer, and technical issues forced several redesigns.81 Coleco delayed the system’s release, from August 31, 1983, to late

October.82 Delays soured retailers, who cancelled orders. To make matters worse, Adam faced numerous technical issues following its release, including program bugs and problems with the printer and disk drive.83 The system relied on magnetic tape for data storage, which was susceptible to erasure if left in the Adam after it was turned off or if it came in contact with the TV-set based monitor, the printer, or the computer case itself.

80 “Claim to a Name Puts Coleco in Conflict with California Firm,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 1983; “Coleco Industries Sued Over Trademark Right,” Wall Street Journal, June 16, 1983. The two companies reached an agreement in July 1983 “Coleco Ends Dispute With Logical Business On ‘Adam’ Trademark,” Wall Street Journal, July 14, 1983.

81 Bob Davis, “Coleco Industries Will Delay Shipments of Adam Computers,” Wall Street Journal, August 17, 1983; Adam finally received FCC approval in late September 1983 “Coleco Clears Problems with Adam’s Software,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 1983. “Coleco Industries Gets FCC Certification For Home Computer,” Wall Street Journal, September 23, 1983.

82 “Coleco Adam Units Are Shipped; Firm to Post Lower Net,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 1983.

83 Dan Dorfman, “Analyst Adamant on Coleco: It Has Serious Problems,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1984; Richard O’Reilly, “The Adam Has Some Serious Flaws,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1984.

196

Reports circulated of hundreds of returns during its first month on the market, and financial losses mounted through the 1983 holiday season and into the following year.84

Aside from individual corporate misfortunes and declining profit margins, home computers faced another obstacle: consumers were slow to buy them. One obstacle was cost. Fluctuating prices led some to hold out for a better deal on a computer. However, low costs appeared to cut both ways in the eyes of business reporters. On the one hand, they attracted consumers interested in getting a computer but concerned about the expense. On the other hand, when prices became too low it gave the appearance the machines were poor quality. Los Angeles Times writer Thomas Rosenstiel observed in a

November 1983 article: “Indeed, some analysts believe that too low a price could harm home-computer sales because consumers might equate lower price with lower quality.

‘Raising prices can give products a premium image,’ said Kenneth Lim, an analyst with

Dataquest Inc., a San Jose-based market research firm.”85 Concerns about failure rates, as befell Commodore, Texas Instruments, and Coleco, also did little to assuage consumer concerns over quality. Moreover, despite lowering prices, a 1984 U.S. Census report

84 Bob Davis, “Hundreds of Coleco’s Adams Are Returned As Defective; Firm Blames User Manuals,” Wall Street Journal, November 30, 1983; Dan Dorfman, “Analyst Adamant on Coleco: It Has Serious Problems,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1984; Richard O’Reilly, “The Adam Has Some Serious Flaws,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1984.

85 Thomas B. Rosenstiel, “Coleco, Atari to Boost Dealer Prices,” Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1983.

197 observed while computer usage was increasing, demographics showed that computer ownership was found predominantly in white and affluent households.86

Advertisers also struggled to convince consumers of the practical need to buy a computer. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a computer with spreadsheet software to balance budgets when one could do it with a pad and pencil? Why invest in word processing that required new technical knowledge when an electronic typewriter could already handle the job? If it was solely for playing games, there were plenty of home game systems capable of doing just that, many of which cost under $100 by 1983 as retailers sought to clear overstock. Aside from corporate computer users and hobbyists, most average consumers were not interested in programming. “The major problem with home computers so far,” Christine Winter of the Chicago Tribune observed in a 1983 review of the Coleco Adam, “simply has been that there is not very much you can do with them once you get one. Most of us simply don’t want to learn a whole new science, much less a new language, to take advantage of these electronic wonders.”87 Commenting on computers’ slow penetration into the lay consumer market, one video game critic observed in 1989:

For some reason, people did not rush right out to spend a thousand bucks on a machine that could store receipts. They could balance their checkbook with a fifty-cent pen and a five-buck calculator, thank you, and the mass market has

86 Robert Kominski, Computer Use in the United States: 1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), accessed December 23, 2018, https://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/computer/p23-155/p23-155.pdf.

87 Christine Winter, “Coleco’s Adam is worth the wait,” Chicago Tribune, October 10, 1983.

198

proved surprisingly resistant to learning foreign languages…Basically the hardware manufacturers have never presented the American public with a viable reason for buying a computer and until they do, the growth rate will continue to be sluggish.88 According to reports from the U.S. Census, despite over $1 billion spent on advertising between 1984 and 1985, only 8.2% of American households owned a computer. Not only had companies failed to expand the personal computer user base, the market had shrunk.

A 1987 U.S. Census report marked a decline of nearly 2 million computers shipped to retailers between 1984 and 1986, from 5 million units to 3.075 million.89 Layoffs spread through the major players in the industry, including Mattel, Atari, and Texas

Instruments.90

A mass exodus from consumer electronics ensued; between 1984 and 1985, most of the major players in the game industry either abandoned the market or folded. Media competitors closed their video game divisions: 20th Century Fox shut down Games of the

Century as of November 8, 1983, while North American Philips abandoned the Odyssey2 and withdrew from the market, reportedly to develop a home computer, dubbed

88 Phil Lewis and “The Game Doctor,” “Question and Answer,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (March/April 1989): 78.

89 Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1989, 109th Annual Edition (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1989), 551-552; Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1988, 108th Annual Edition (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office), 730; Kominski, Computer Use in the United States, 9. 90 "Mattel Cuts Staff Again," Electronic Games 2, No. 10 (December 1983): 12; "Tremendous Industry Layoffs," Electronic Games 2, No. 10 (December 1983): 14.

199

“Operation Leapfrog,” which ultimately never saw a commercial release.91 Vectrex distributors Milton Bradley discontinued its semi-portable game system and withdrew to the safer haven of toys in 1984, as did Mattel, which dissolved the consumer electronics division. Astrocade emerged from bankruptcy in March 1984 hoping to sell the former

Bally Professional Arcade on the European market only to fold entirely later that year, followed soon after by parent company Nitron, Inc. Prior to the Winter 1985 Consumer

Electronics Show, Coleco decommissioned both the ColecoVision and Adam, selling the remaining supply of both systems before abandoning the market.92 By the end of 1984, the majority of third-party developers were gone. One notable exception was Activision, which survived by shifting to computer games, although not before losing a reported $3-

$5 million in the process.93

Warner’s sale of Atari’s consumer electronics division marked the symbolic end of the programmable video game market. On July 2, 1984, a reeling Warner—reportedly, the company lost $425 million during the previous quarter alone—broke apart Atari and sold the once-mighty home division, including the rights to the VCS and Atari’s computer line, to former Commodore president Jack Tramiel for $240 million.94 Prior to

91 Roger C. Sharpe, “Another One Bites the Dust,” Video Games 2, No. 5 (February 1984): 15; “Odyssey Exits Videogaming,” Electronic Games 2, No. 12 (Feb. 1984): 8.

92 “Adam Drops Out,” Electronic Games 3, No. 4 (April 1985): 18.

93 Perry Greenberg, “Video Game Blues,” Video Games 2, No. 8 (May 1984): 4.

94 Dennis Kneale and John Marcom, Jr., “Warner Agrees to Sell Most of Atari Unit,” Wall Street Journal, July 3, 1984; “Ex-Commodore Pres. Tramiel Buys Atari,” Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (Oct. 1984): 14.

200 his ousting from Commodore in January 1984, Tramiel had been the chief architect of the company’s low-cost computer strategy, including the aggressive price war with Texas

Instruments. By purchasing Atari, he sought to challenge his former company in the home computer market, rebranding Atari as a manufacturer of budget computers under the new slogan “Power without the price.” As for My First Computer/The Graduate,

Atari unceremoniously discontinued the computer add-on for the 2600, citing high costs.95 The new company magazine, Atari Explorer, devoted space for computer games but rebranded them as “entertainment software.” When a reader sent a letter requesting game strategies, the editor warned in the January/February 1988 issue, “Better be careful or people will begin to think Atari computers are game machines.”96 Tramiel also rapidly liquidated assets and slashed costs, even holding massive fire sales where he sold filing cabinets full of design documents and other Atari corporate materials. Whatever was not sold was lost, destroyed, or secreted away by former Atari employees, making research difficult for future historians.97

95 “2600 Keyboard Postponed,” Atari Age 2, No. 3 (September/October 1983): 14; Dan Persons and Perry Greenberg, “The Sleeping Giant Awakes,” Video Games 2, No. 4 (January 1984): 64. 96 “Game Strategies,” Atari Explorer 8, No. 1 (January/February 1988): 7.

97 John Anderson, “Where Games Go to Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis, Part 1,” Gamasutra (January 27, 2011), accessed June 29, 2016, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134641/where_games_go_to_sleep_the_game_. php?page=2.

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The misfortunes in the American home market exacted a similar toll on the game journalism business. The manufacturer-developed fan club newsletters were the first casualties. In 1983, Activisions, Odyssey2 Adventure, and Intellivision Game Club News ceased publication; Imagic’s Numb Thumb News ended the same year after a mere two issues. Atari folded Atari Age following the March/April 1984 issue. Between 1983 and

1984 Joystick, Video Games, and numerous others scaled back publication and eventually folded. By summer 1984, only Electronic Games remained, boasting in the November

1984 issue, “We were the first magazine to cover electronic gaming exclusively, and now we’re the only publication ‘still standing.’”98 However, their coverage of video games comprised a significantly smaller portion of the magazine’s copy in favor of computer coverage. Beginning with the May 1985 issue, Electronic Games restructured with a new editor and a new name: Computer Entertainment. Following the transition, the magazine no longer published video game reviews, focusing exclusively on the home computer market. It was not enough to save the magazine, and Computer Entertainment released only two issues before ceasing publication later that year.

From “Family Computer” to “Entertainment System”: Nintendo and the Rise of the Gaming Machines In 1985, in the aftermath of the Crash, a new challenger entered the American home console market: Nintendo. Founded in Kyoto, Japan, in 1889 as a manufacturer of

“hanafuda” and Western playing cards, Nintendo branched out into other business

98 “Q&A,” Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (November 1984): 85.

202 ventures beginning in the 1950s.99 Under the direction of president and chairman Hiroshi

Yamauchi, who took over control of the company in 1949, Nintendo dabbled in several consumer markets through the 1950s and 1960s, including a taxi service, a brand of instant rice, and a chain of “love hotels,” before entering the toy market in 1966 with

“,” an expandable arm toy. The company entered the electronic game industry in the early seventies with a series of light gun-based games followed by a deal with

Magnavox to develop a Japanese adaptation of the Odyssey series. In 1983, Nintendo launched its first programmable game system: the Famicom, its name a portmanteau of

“Family Computer.” The system was a breakaway hit in Japan, selling over 500,000 units in its first two months, and Nintendo made plans to export the Famicom to the United

States. At that point, Nintendo had established a foothold in America through arcade games, such as Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., and Popeye, as well as Game & Watch, a series of handheld LCD (liquid crystal display) games first released in 1980.100 Initially, the company attempted to reach a deal with Atari to develop a licensed version of the

99 Hanafuda, from the Japanese for “flower cards,” date back to the 17th century and originated as adaptations of Western playing cards, which were first introduced by the Portuguese. A deck consists of forty-eight cards separated into twelve distinct suits with each suit indicated by a unique flower associated with a month of the year. As with their Western counterparts, they were often used for gambling, and there are several different games that utilize the cards. Amy Tikkanen, “Hanafuda,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed March 7, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/hanafuda.

100 Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 279-280.

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Famicom for the American and European markets; however, negotiations failed and

Nintendo ultimately chose to export the Famicom independently.101

Nintendo unveiled its first Western adaptation of the Famicom at the January

1985 Winter Consumer Electronics Show. The system, dubbed the Advanced Video

System (AVS) borrowed many of the aesthetic and marketing tactics of its ill-fated

American console and computer counterparts. With its silver-gray color scheme and slanted design, AVS aesthetically resembled contemporary home computers and

“supersystems,” such as the Atari 5200 and TI 99/4A. (Fig. 3.6) “The AVS,” Nathan

Altice observed in his recent history of the Famicom, “was an inspired sample of 1980s futurist industrial design, prompted by Nintendo of America’s request that designer

Lance Barr make the U.S. version of the [Famicom] ‘high tech sleek yet accessible,’ more computer than toy.”102 The console’s proposed accessories furthered the design decision to make a more “computerized” version of the “Family Computer.” Among the peripherals displayed at the convention or disseminated through promotional material were a cassette player for portable storage and a full-sized keyboard reminiscent of the

Adam, Aquarius, or the Commodore 64. The system was to also come with wireless controllers and have a musical keyboard attachment.

101 Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 281-285; Altice, I Am Error, 16.

102 Altice, I Am Error, 85. Altice later added Barr’s design of the AVS deliberately resembled a stereo system.

204

Figure 3.6: Nintendo Advanced Video System on display at the Nintendo World Store, New York City. Included in the display are the cassette storage system (left), wireless controllers (bottom), light gun (bottom right) and joystick (right). Image Credit: Russell Bernice via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nintendo_AVS_display_case_(high_angle).jpg CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en. No changes made.

205

Nintendo’s early marketing of the AVS emphasized sophistication. The copy of the promotional brochure distributed to attendees at the Winter 1985 Consumer

Electronics Show focused on the system’s advanced graphics and diverse range of functions beyond games: “It’s the first system that’s delivered on the promise of exciting graphics, with images that actually appear three dimensional. It’s the first system designed to fit in with other fine audio and video components. It’s the first system that allows play of music as well as games. It’s the first system that’s more than a toy.”

Nintendo’s marketing concluded it was “the first home video entertainment system that’s really worth buying.” The system’s very name reflected the emphasis of console manufacturers on presenting their products as all-in-one devices beyond simple gaming machines, a strategy that placed the AVS alongside other attempted home computer and modular game systems.103

However, convention attendees, who were primarily retailers and other electronics firms, appeared apathetic to Nintendo’s new home system. Amid closing game studios, a crowded home computer market, and the shift toward computing components and systems, Nintendo’s latest entry into the flagging market drew a tepid response. Covering the Winter 1985 CES, a correspondent for Electronic Games expressed surprise over Nintendo demonstrating a video game system in a market that had rapidly deteriorated: “Considering the videogame market in America had virtually

103 These materials come from promotional brochures disseminated by former Nintendo Power editor Howard Philips, who published scans of AVS materials on his page on August 28, 2012, see: https://bit.ly/2EGchpj and https://bit.ly/2EM3lQi, accessed December 23, 2018.

206 disappeared, this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo’s part.”104 “No one cared about the ,” journalist David Sheff observed in his , “and they hated the keyboard—a turnoff to kids, industry executives believed (parents were irrelevant). The AVS had all the problems not only of the video-game business but of computers too. No one would touch it.”105 The poor reception to the Advanced Video

System prompted Nintendo to alter the design and marketing strategy for the American

Famicon. At the Summer 1985 CES five months later, Nintendo unveiled a system whose design resembled a VCR rather than a computer system. (Fig. 3.7) Its sleek aesthetic was replaced by a boxy gray unit with an enclosed cartridge slot that received games as a

VCR or 8-track player received tapes. Gone were the keyboard and cassette storage peripherals, replaced by ROB, a toy robot peripheral that interacted with specific

Nintendo games. The system’s new name reflected a shift away from advanced computing toward a more specific focus on play: the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Nintendo released the system in a limited test market in the Greater New York City area during the 1985 holiday season followed by a nationwide release the following year.

In defiance of the AVS marketing and to assuage retailers, who had faced significant losses due to unsold or severely discounted video game products during the

Crash, Nintendo conceptualized its “entertainment system” as a children’s toy, and ROB

104 “Nintendo’s Final Solution,” Electronic Games 3, No. 2 (March 1985): 8.

105 Sheff, Game Over, 162.

207

Figure 3.7: The Nintendo Entertainment System, released by Nintendo in 1985 and 1986, with controller. From the author’s personal collection.

208 represented the transition from computers to toys. Short for Robotic Operating Buddy,

ROB acted as an automated second player, receiving light signals projected from the television screen to photosensitive lenses in the peripheral’s eyes. These signals sent commands to ROB that caused it to press controller buttons or perform other simple tasks corresponding to action on the game screen.106 ROB was largely an act of economic necessity. Its inclusion with the NES bundle allowed Nintendo to present the system to retailers as a children’s toy that happened to come with a video game console. A

November 1985 Macy’s department store advertisement displayed a nearly full-page image of ROB, with a significantly smaller image of the NES, the “Zapper” light gun, and several games in the lower right corner. “Finally, a creature who thrives on video more than your kids!” proclaimed the ad’s copy, focusing more heavily on ROB’s programmability than on the game system with which it came packaged.107 This separated the NES from the earlier hybrid video game-computer systems of the previous generation. In a similar effort to appeal to the toy market, fellow Japanese game manufacturer Sega partnered with American toy company Tonka to distribute the Master

System to US audiences in 1986.

Nintendo’s system proved an instant hit, selling 1.9 million units during its first year. That figure climbed precipitously throughout the remainder of the decade; by 1990,

Nintendo had sold nearly 30 million units and controlled roughly ninety percent of the

106 For more on the mechanics of ROB, see Altice, I Am Error, 94-104.

107 “Video Robots,” New York Times, November 17, 1985.

209 market.108 Nintendo’s success attracted a new cohort of hardware manufacturers to the

American market. In 1986, fellow Japanese game manufacturer Sega released the Sega

Master System, followed by the Sega Genesis in 1989. In 1989, Japanese electronics manufacturer NEC partnered with American games firm Hudson Soft to release the

Turbografx-16. Jack Tramiel’s Atari Corp. re-entered the home console business in 1986 with the release of the Atari 7800, successor to the 2600 and 5200, which the company had shelved during the Crash. New third-party developers such as Capcom, SNK,

Konami, Rare, and LJN joined several surviving pre-Crash companies including Data

East, , and Activision to create new games for the resurgent game industry. To prevent a recurrence of market oversaturation, Nintendo imposed strict restrictions on third-party manufacturers, limiting the number of titles they could release per year and demanding sole control over cartridge manufacturing. To enforce compliance, Nintendo developed a lockout chip for the NES that blocked unauthorized cartridges.109 The new

108 Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, 346-347, 360.

109 Altice, I Am Error, 89-94, Casey O’Donnell, “The Nintendo Entertainment System and the 10NES Chip: Carving the Video Game Industry in Silicon,” Games and Culture 6, No. 1 (August 2010): 83-100. The lockout chip and Nintendo’s production restrictions did not eliminate unauthorized production. The most brazen attempt to bypass Nintendo’s restrictions came from Atari Games. A segment of Atari retained by Warner following the Tramiel sale, the company went by Atari Games to avoid confusion with Tramiel’s Atari Corp. In 1986. after several failed attempts to reverse-engineer the lockout chip, Atari approached the U.S. Copyright Office for a reproduction, falsely claiming the company needed access in preparation for an impending lawsuit. Atari released its unauthorized games under the “” brand and sued Nintendo for unfair business practices in December 1988. Nintendo countersued for breach of contract and patent and trademark infringement, a case Nintendo eventually won. Altice, I Am Error, 92-93. Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc., 975 F.2d 832 (Fed. Cir. 1992), accessed December 23, 2018, https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/cases/5103.

210 popularity of home video games also brought a resurgence of third-party magazines, including GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), and Video Games & Computer

Entertainment.

Nintendo’s ascendance ended discussions of computers supplanting the video game system. While journalists and manufacturers alluded to the release of computing peripherals for home systems through the late 1980s, few computer devices ultimately reached store shelves. Following the 1989 release of the Sega Genesis, Sega promised a modem peripheral and on-line gaming service. Reminiscent of the Atari “Play Cable” service, “Tele-Genesis” reportedly provided users with online access to Sega games; however, the unit never appeared on American shelves.110 Rumors circulated in advance of the 1989 release of Nintendo’s handheld Game Boy system that it would be able to connect to a specialized modem, allowing for access to stock information among other uses, but this peripheral also failed to materialize.111 Nintendo of America also filed a patent for a disk drive for the NES, a Western adaptation of a similar peripheral for the

Famicom known as the . However, the unit never saw production.112 Atari’s XE computer was one possible exception. An Electronic Gaming

110 Steve Harris, “16-Bit System Preview,” EGM 1, No. 2 (August 1989): 37; “Tele- Genesis: The Future of Video Games,” EGM 1, No. 3 (September 1989): 67. A cable- based variation of the services eventually appeared in December 1994 under the name “.”

111 Andy Eddy, “Portable Gaming Grows Up,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (June 1989): 18.

112 Altice cited Nintendo’s concerns over piracy as the primary reason for the disk drive’s demise. Altice, I Am Error, 90.

211

Monthly critic mused in the December 1989 issue, “The XE System remains in an identity crisis (Is it a game system? Is it a computer? Is it a game system? Is it a computer…).”113

Conclusion

Conceptually, the home video game system came full circle through the 1980s, transitioning over the course of the decade from entertainment system to computer system and back again. At the beginning of the decade, both manufacturers and observers in the specialty gaming press emphasized video games as distinct from the rapidly- expanding computer market, demonstrating while video games shared technical similarities to home and personal computers, they were a distinct entity designed exclusively for gameplay. As the game market soured, several game developers attempted to piggyback into computers by making their hardware “sprout keyboards and learn to speak BASIC” or designing computer systems to supplant their gaming devices.

However, the computer market proved as volatile as the home game market and many companies failed to survive the transition. Nintendo’s success in the late eighties with the

Nintendo Entertainment System placed the focus back on game consoles as primarily game playing devices. By the end of the decade, the future once again belonged to the video games.

113 Andy Eddy, “Portable Gaming Grows Up,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (June 1989): 18.

212

The transition back to video games as toys had long-lasting consequences.

Features offered and marketed on systems during the early 1990s and beyond placed gameplay as the central purpose of a game system. Even as consoles took on other options beside gameplay, these features tended toward entertainment—online play, streaming video services, music playback, and the like—over practical computer functions such as programming or data entry. Moreover, marketing video games as toys helped cement the idea of video games as primarily for children. This in turn created an environment where observers concerned over the ramifications of new electronic technology could frame video games as potentially dangerous toys, a subject that came to a head in Congress in late 1993.

213

Chapter 4:

BITS, BYTES, AND BUGS: VIDEO GAME HOBBYISTS AND THE BALLY ASTROCADE, 1978-1986 The types of user experiences described and promoted in commercial game marketing or in the pages of corporate or independent magazines and newsletters during the 1970s and 1980s framed video game fandom as consumption. Producers developed games and systems for sale, which consumers bought and used in ways prescribed by their original designers. However, producers have never held absolute control over how users consume their products. Developing alongside the emerging “gamer” fandom of the late seventies and early eighties was a small but dedicated subculture of technically- oriented game hobbyists who tinkered with game hardware and software to suit their own purposes.

Over the years, video game “hacking” has assumed numerous forms. Some users open systems, cartridges, and peripherals to manipulate their internal components, augmenting their equipment with new features or using them in ways never envisioned or intended by their initial producers. Users can also hack a system’s software or a game’s code, exploring unused game elements or modifying (“modding”) existing games to create new features or even designing entirely new experiences. Others use elements of a game or system’s hardware or software to create their own original “homebrew” programs. Homebrew, hacker, and modding communities blur traditional lines between

214 producers and consumers, simultaneously occupying both roles and challenging industry- prescribed notions of the boundaries of video game usage.

Popular narratives of the history of video games tend to favor accounts of the corporate side of game development, emphasizing the role of mainstream hardware and software firms over technically-oriented grassroots hobbyists. However, as the market for video games developed and expanded, a secondary layer of production emerged among the players themselves. At times game manufacturers have encouraged these practices, offering development tools or releasing a game’s source code into the public domain.

Sometimes they even offer jobs to amateur developers. At other times, game manufacturers have taken measures to curtail unauthorized usage of their products. They have discouraged opening game equipment by design by obscuring screws or utilizing proprietary fasteners; employing lockout chips to bar unofficial programs; threatening to deny access to certain game features or even suing would-be grassroots programmers and hackers. These methods have helped game companies establish strict boundaries of

“acceptable” and “unacceptable” usage. Examining the role of homebrewers, hackers, modders, and the various subcultures of video game hardware and software manipulation and modification adds a new level of complexity to the history of video games, one that demonstrates a complicated relationship between players and developers. Sociologist

Steve Woolgar described an object’s initial design as a period of producers “scripting” the user, where manufacturers create producer-sanctioned avenues of usage. However,

215 hacker communities represent users “flipping the script,” devising ideas of consumption and identity that suit their own needs.1

Video game hobbyists are generally associated with the popularization of the internet, which allowed basement hackers and amateur hardware tinkerers a global forum to swap advice and tutorials and flaunt their technical accomplishments. In fact, their activities date back to the early decades of the commercial video game industry. In the pastime’s early years, game hobbyists acted on the periphery of the developing “gamer” fandom negotiated through TV and print ads and in the pages of corporate fan club publications and independent specialty magazines. In many respects, game hobbyists predated the “gamer,” tracing their lineage back to earlier technical-oriented middle-class hobbies, including HAM radio operators, model rocketry and railroad enthusiasts, and amateur mechanics. However, their most direct antecedents were the emerging grassroots computer hacker clubs of the 1970s. This chapter will focus on the earliest known game hobbyist community, examining the ways they perceived themselves, their relationship to the mainstream video game industry, and their place within a larger context of leisure and hobbies enjoyed by American suburban men.

This chapter examines a subculture of fans of a game system generally referred today as the Bally Astrocade. (Fig. 4.1) First released in 1978, the system went by several names throughout its commercial lifespan: Bally Home Library Computer, Bally

1 Steve Woolgar, “Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials,” in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology, and Domination, ed. John Law (New York: Routledge, 1991), 57-99.

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Professional Arcade, Bally Home Computer System, and Astrocade. Most game histories view it as a footnote, if it is mentioned at all, one of many failed ventures during the glut of game systems during the industry’s commercial boom in the early eighties. It also never garnered the kind of cultural and nostalgic appeal of contemporary systems such as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Nevertheless, the system attracted a small, dedicated cohort of amateur programmers and tinkerers who developed and distributed programs, devised methods to manipulate the

Arcade’s hardware, and established networks of communication and technical and educational support for other users. The user community, known at times as the “BUGs”

(short for “Bally User Group”), “Arcadians,” or “Astrocade Underground,” cultivated an active relationship with the console's mainstream producers—Bally and

Astrovision/Astrocade—eventually acting as a source of technical and marketing support.

They created new software, beta-tested programs, and even demonstrated new hardware and software at industry conventions such as the Consumer Electronics Show. Moreover, as the system changed hands between companies and experienced lulls in content, they periodically assumed roles typically reserved for manufacturers, including hardware and software support, quality control, marketing, and distribution. Some used the system as an entry point into the video game market, developing commercial third-party hardware and software for the system. Members discussed their usage in numerous local and nationally circulated newsletters, including Arcadian, Cursor/BASIC Express, and the

Michigan Astrobugs Newsletter. Many of their materials have been meticulously collected, catalogued, and digitized by fans, who have published them online along with

217

Figure 4.1: The Bally Computer System, a variant of the Bally Professional Arcade, originally released by Bally Manufacturing Company in 1978. From the author’s personal collection.

218 advertisements, product catalogs, press releases, interviews and other valuable resources related to the system through the fan site Bally Alley.2

Examining the content of their newsletters reveals a subculture that shared many similarities with contemporary scientific, mechanical, and technical hobbies of the postwar decades such as computer hacker groups, HAM radio operators, and do-it- yourself (DIY) enthusiasts. Contributors to Arcadian, Cursor, and other newsletters tended to be well-educated, economically privileged, and overwhelmingly male.3 As with other suburban male hobbyist groups, they formed their own local and national fraternal clubs, sharing information via in-person meetings or mail or telephone correspondence. Moreover, they were an extension of the growing “homebrew” and

“hacker” computer culture that emerged with the release of more affordable programmable computer systems in the early 1970s. The motivations behind their usage often reflected larger sentiments about male leisure in the postwar years: productive leisure time that focused on artisanship and man’s command over machinery.

This chapter is divided into three sections. The first provides a business history of the Bally Astrocade, examining its development and marketing and its relationship to larger trends in the “programmable” home video game and emerging microcomputer markets of the late seventies and early eighties. Bally and later Astrovision/Astrocade

2 Bally Alley, accessed August 30, 2019, http://balleyalley.com.

3 Newsletters did not explicitly state the racial demographics of the readership and user base. However, given the costs associated with computer ownership of the time and the necessary amount of both free space within the home and available free time, it is likely the majority of Astrocade community members were white.

219 envisioned their product as a bridge between video gaming and home computing.

However, various internal and external forces undermined the system’s commercial success, leaving the system to a small but dedicated niche audience. The second section contextualizes the emergence of the “Astrocade Underground” with two larger trends in middle-class male leisure: the development of a subculture of computer “hackers” and the popularization of technical-oriented leisure activities in the postwar years. The emergence of economically accessible hardware, an increasingly user-friendly programming language in BASIC, and the proliferation of technical hobbies such as

HAM radios and model railroads fostered an environment where suburban men spent their expanding disposable income and free time working with machinery and tools.

Finally, this chapter will examine the activities and motivations of the BUGs themselves as told primarily through fan-created hobbyist newsletters. The Bally user community was the first, but by no means the last video game hacker community. Examining its history offers a unique glimpse into an important, albeit comparatively small, subculture of video game fans told from the perspective of the users themselves.

“The Home Entertainment Sensation”: A History of the Bally Astrocade

The system was originally released by Bally Manufacturing Company. Known in the early seventies as a manufacturer of coin-operated devices, especially pinball and casino gaming, Bally was also an early player in the emerging commercial video game industry. Prior to founding Atari, Pong creators Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn initially approached Bally with their electronic tennis game, and in 1973 Bally secured a license from Atari to release its own Pong adaptation: Winner. Following Winner’s release, rival

220 manufacturer Allied Leisure sued Bally, arguing Winner infringed on the company’s own

Pong derivative—Tennis Tourney—in arguably the first video game related lawsuit.4 It was far from the last involving Bally. In 1974, Bally, alongside Atari and Allied Leisure, were defendants in a suit filed by Odyssey manufacturer Magnavox on the grounds that any ball-and-paddle tennis-style electronic game infringed on patents held by Magnavox and engineer Ralph Baer. The parties eventually settled and agreed to pay licensing fees to Magnavox.

During the early 1970s, Bally outsourced pinball and electronic game development to a Wisconsin-based technical firm called Dave Nutting Associates (DNA).

Founder Dave Nutting was also a notable actor in the early games market. He and his brother, Bill, had released , Bushnell and Ted Dabney’s ill-fated predecessor to Pong. Nutting’s first project for Bally was , an adaptation of a

Japanese game called Western Gun. Gun Fight pitted two players as gunslingers in a

Wild West showdown. The game released in 1975 to respectable sales and DNA followed their success with several other coin-operated titles such as the submarine combat games Sea Wolf (1976) and Sea Wolf II (1978), Amazing Maze (1976), and Tornado Baseball (1976).5

4 According to William K. Ford, Bally-Midway had secured a license from Atari to develop their Pong variation, agreeing to pay Atari “a royalty of $31.00 per unit.” Ford, “Copy Game for High Score,” 17.

5 For a full list of games by Dave Nutting Associates, see: “Dave Nutting Associates, Inc.” Moby Games, accessed May 2, 2019, https://www.mobygames.com/company/dave- nutting-associates-inc.

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By the mid-seventies Bally sought to expand their gaming business from public amusements to home video games. Around 1976 the company established a consumer electronics division and called upon Dave Nutting Associates to develop a home console.

Developed by DNA engineers Jeff Fredericksen and Jamie Fenton, the system ran on the

Z-80, a widely-distributed 1.8 MHz microprocessor designed by the American specialty chip manufacturer Zilog, and included 4K RAM (random access memory), 8K ROM

(read only memory), and the capacity to display 256 colors, up to four at a time, when hooked up through a television set. The unit came pre-loaded with four programs: Gun

Fight; Checkmate, a two-player game where players created lines of light to trap each other, akin to the light cycles in the 1982 film Tron; Scribbles, a simple drawing program; and a calculator. Additional programs were available via removable cassette- shaped cartridges that users inserted into a spring-loaded cartridge slot on the front of the unit (Fig. 4.2). Adjacent to the cartridge slot was a 24-key alphanumeric keypad for data input. Some software came packaged with overlay cards that fit over the keypad for specific functions. A 50-pin connection port for hardware expansion appeared on the rear of the system along with four controller ports. The controllers resembled a pistol handle and included a trigger button and small joystick located on the top. This joystick could be moved in eight directions and had a knob that could be turned nearly three-hundred sixty degrees. Early marketing dubbed the system the Bally Home Library Computer; however, upon its release in mid-1978, Bally renamed the system the Bally Professional

Arcade.

222

Figure 4.2: Bally Home Library Computer games, such as the 1979 pinball game Bally Pin, ran on cartridges that resembled audio cassette tapes in size and shape. Image Source: anglophile, eBay, accessed August 26, 2019, https://ebay.to/2ZffNCF.

223

Marketing for the Home Library Computer/Professional Arcade positioned the system between both the home video game and emerging consumer computer markets.

Bally and Joseph Sugarman and Associates (&A), a Chicago-based mail order firm that handled early marketing and distribution, utilized tropes common among contemporary game systems such as the various electronic tennis games of the early seventies and newer “programmable” systems such as the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES) and Atari Video Computer System (VCS). The system’s components were housed in a cabinet with a faux walnut finish. The “Videocade” cartridges bore a striking resemblance to cassette tapes, and a rack on the top of the system for storing cartridges made the Arcade resemble a stereo tape deck. A December 1978 ad from a Fair Lawn,

NJ, electronics store described the Bally system as “The Perfect Holiday Gift that gives hours of fun and excitement as well as ‘togetherness.’”6 Advertisements emphasized the system was both a high-end game system as well as an educational tool. JS&A’s 1978 product catalog promised a forthcoming line of educational games, including Bingo

Math, Speed Math, Letter Match, Spell & Score, and Crosswords. A September 1977 advertisement in Scientific American boasted the system’s arithmetic cartridge was a collaborative project between Bally designers and “psychologists” who attested the game would help improve math grades.7

6 “The Perfect Holiday Gift,” New York Times, December 22, 1978.

7 JS&A National Sales Group, Products that Think, JS&A Group, 1977, Bally Alley, accessed September 27, 2019, https://ballyalley.com/ads_and_catalogs/jsa/jsa_catalog_(1977)_color.pdf.

224

Bally’s marketing also borrowed tropes from the emerging computer market. The earliest commercially available microcomputer systems targeted a technically-oriented hobbyist clientele. However, advertisers struggled to find convincing reasons for non- technically oriented consumers to buy expensive computer systems, and advertising copy of the late seventies often relied upon framing computers as seemingly magical “do all” devices capable of accomplishing any task a consumer could consider. For example, copy in a 1977 print ad for the Apple II promised the unit could accomplish virtually any task, declaring, “[]ou’ll be able to organize, index and store data on household finances, income tax, recipes, and record collections. You can learn to chart your biorhythms, balance your checking account, [and] even control your home environment. Apple II will go as far as your imagination can take it.” Another advertisement declared the Apple II had “1000s of uses, from finances to fun and games.”8 In a multi-page spread published in the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American in the fall of 1977, JS&A promised the system was capable of a wide variety of non-gaming functions. Families could use the built-in calculator to manage personal finances. Additional peripherals transformed the system into “a significant business tool,” and companies could even use the HLC to ease the workloads for larger computer systems.9

8 Emphasis added. Apple Computer Inc., “Introducing Apple II: The Home Computer That’s Ready to Work, Play, and Grow with You,” The Mac Mothership Apple Advertising and Brochure Gallery, accessed September 10, 2017, http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds2/1977IntroAppleII2.jpg; “A is for Apple,” The Mac Mothership Apple Advertising and Brochure Gallery, accessed September 10, 2017, http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds2/AisFor1.jpg.

9 JS&A Sales Group, “Get Ready,” Bally Alley, accessed May 22, 2019, http://www.ballyalley.com/ads_and_catalogs/jsa/Bally%20Home%20Library%20Compu

225

Expandability also comprised a key element of Bally’s marketing for the Home

Library Computer. Early advertisements promised additional devices, such as a printer and modem, that could attach to the system to convert it into a full-fledged computer.

However, the centerpiece of Bally’s early advertising was an expansion unit later dubbed by members of the user community as alternately the “Add-On” or “Add-Under.” First introduced in September 1977, the Add-On, which appeared in various proposed iterations and went by numerous official names over the years, was to attach to the system via the rear connection port and give the Professional Arcade a full-sized keyboard, a dual deck for portable storage, a pre-installed version of

BASIC, and a substantial memory expansion. (Fig. 4.3) According to a 1977 JS&A catalog, “With the tape decks and keyboard, the consumer will now own the equivalent of an entire computer system complete with peripherals, storage, and memory.”10 The system was one of several game consoles released in the late seventies and early eighties marketed as capable of expanding into a full-fledged computer system, a small cohort of game systems the emerging specialty games press dubbed “modular” hardware. A comparable unit was Mattel’s Intellivision system, which was to have a similar expansion unit known as the “Keyboard Component.” Bally’s expansion unit was initially scheduled for a 1978 release and retail for around $500, a price that made it significantly more

ter%20Ad%20(Scientific%20American)/Bally%20Home%20Library%20Computer%20 Ad%20(JS+A)(Scientific%20American)(Sept%201977).pdf.

10 JS&A National Sales Group, Products that Think (JS&A Group, 1977), Bally Alley, accessed May 22, 2019, http://www.ballyalley.com/ads_and_catalogs/jsa/jsa_catalog_(1977)_color.pdf.

226

Figure 4.3: Bally Home Library Computer attached to the Add-On component from a 1978 product catalog. JS&A National Sales Group, “Products that Think,” BallyAlley, accessed December 21, 2018, http://ballyalley.com/ads_and_catalogs/jsa/jsa_catalog_(1978)_b-w.pdf.

227 affordable than the Apple II and competitive with other computer systems such as the

Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80.

However, the Bally Professional Arcade never achieved widespread financial success. Several internal and external factors ultimately doomed the system. The Federal

Communications Commission (FCC) was slow to approve the system for commercial sale, which pushed the Bally system’s release date past the potentially lucrative 1977 holiday shopping season into the middle of the following year. As delays mounted, distributor JS&A faced a growing backlog of unfilled orders. “You’ve no doubt realized that practically the entire Bally program has been delayed,” an exasperated William

Mitchell, JS&A’s Group Marketing Director confided in a letter to customers in late

1978, “We clearly made a mistake by offering the basic unit in advance of seeing an actual production model. And quite frankly, we’ve never experienced a backorder problem like the one we’ve had with this unit.”11 Delays also plagued the Add-On component. Bally demonstrated a version of the expansion unit, now called the Bally

Programming Keyboard, at the Winter 1979 Consumer Electronics Show, a semi-annual convention of the consumer electronics industry. However, further Federal

Communications Commission approval issues pushed back its release, and Bally suspended production indefinitely after Texas Instruments filed a petition against the

FCC to change its approval procedures for home electronics.12

11 Arcadian 1, No. 1 (November 6, 1978): 2-3.

12 Arcadian 1, No. 3 (January 13, 1979): 17; Arcadian 1, No. 4 (February 19, 1979): 23; Arcadian 1, No. 7 (June 15, 1979): 54. The FCC granted the petition from Texas

228

To make matters worse, early adopters soon discovered the system suffered from a high failure rate. The system’s lacked adequate ventilation, making it prone to overheating. Prolonged usage put the Bally system at risk of picture distortion and eventual total hardware failure. Playing it on a carpeted surface, a common feature of suburban living rooms, apparently placed the unit at even greater risk. Bob Fabris, editor of Arcadian, a newsletter devoted to the Professional Arcade, commented on the system’s hardware problems in the November 29, 1979, issue:

Machine acting up? Most of us have had problems of intermittent failure, garbage on the screen, keypad or controller malfunction, etc. Bally has set up a number of service centers around the country, primarily, to take care of their commercial arcade units, and most problems are solved by a simple swap of units. New units didn’t always work and so some subscribers have had 5, 6, or 7 units before they got a good one. I’m on #3 myself.13 Even as late as 2019, Adam Trionfo, developer of Bally Alley, the last extant user group for the Bally Astrocade, warned novice Bally users of the overheating risk in no uncertain terms, explaining on his website, “Do not use your Astrocade on a rug or any surface that does not allow the unit to ventilate, for this will kill your Astrocade. DEAD. It is not a question of if, but when this will happen. Take this advice to heart—it is quite true.

Allow that baby to breathe!”14 Irate consumers rapidly inundated JS&A with nonworking units. After the company ended its partnership with Bally in 1979, JS&A liquidated its

Instruments later that year; however, by then interest on the part of Bally in releasing the expansion unit had all but evaporated. Arcadian 1, No. 10 (September 31, 1979): 84.

13 Arcadian 2, No. 1 (November 29, 1979): 8.

14 Adam Trionfo, “Heat Warning to All Astrocade Users,” Bally Alley, accessed June 19, 2017, http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/heat_warning.html.

229 remaining stock of Bally systems, including hosting a "Broken Bally" sale where the company offered non-working systems for two cents apiece.15

Hardware issues and delays aside, the Bally system proved inadequate in both the computer and video game markets. As a video game system, its $299 retail price made it one of the most expensive on the market. Despite Bally’s presence in the coin-operated games industry, the system had a limited software library. From a technical standpoint, the Professional Arcade was a powerful system, especially compared to the Atari Video

Computer System, the best-selling unit of the period. However, the VCS sold for $100 less than the Bally and had a more robust software library, between Atari’s cache of hit games and home adaptations of popular arcade titles such as the 1978 smash hit Space

Invaders. The VCS was also more widely accessible to consumers. A distribution deal with Sears put VCS units in a nationwide retail chain; meanwhile, the Professional

Arcade was initially only available through mail order and through some specialty hobby shops. On top of these issues were the system’s numerous delays and technical faults.

The Professional Arcade also failed to make an impact on the computer market.

Despite its comparatively low cost, the Bally system lacked many of the out-of-the-box features of its competitors. When it launched it was more a game system than computer system. Shoppers interested in a computer for business purposes, programming, or data entry were generally better served with a device with more software options and a full-

15 JS&A Group, “Haste Makes Waste,” Bally Alley, accessed September 10, 2017, http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/jsa/jsa-retraction_letter.pdf. Distribution for the Bally system later shifted to other firms, including Montgomery Ward and S&W Distributing. Arcadian 2, No. 6 (April 25, 1980): 47.

230 sized keyboard than the Bally’s limited library and cumbersome keypad. A comparable example is the TRS-80. Designed by the Tandy Corporation and distributed through

Radio Shack, the company’s electronic hobbyist store chain, the TRS-80 ran on the Z80, the same microprocessor as the Bally Professional Arcade. It sold for twice the cost of the

Bally system, $600 as opposed to $300. However, the TRS-80 came packaged with 4K

RAM, a full-sized keyboard, a pre-installed version of BASIC, and a video monitor.

Early ads promised the Bally would also have 4K; however, in practice users found the system only had 1.8K of usable memory. The full-sized keyboard of the TRS-80 and other comparable machines was significantly less awkward to use and more familiar to consumers accustomed to typewriters. The Arcade may have been a technical equal to the

TRS-80 with the promised memory expansion unit; however, the additional hardware negated the Bally’s cost advantage, inflating the cost of the Professional Arcade to $200-

$325 more than Tandy’s computer.16 The TRS-80 also ultimately had more available software than the Bally.

In 1979, with financial losses mounting, Bally moved to jettison its consumer electronics division. Reportedly, the company had lost $10 million during its brief foray into home computing and video gaming.17 “Bally execs said there was no future in home

16 Bob Fabris, editor of the user newsletter Arcadian, commented to his dismay in the July 1980 issue, “As a computer, the Bally has a very small usable memory size. We were very surprised to find that there was only 1.8K of RAM readily available—it was touted at 4K” Arcadian 2, No. 9 (July 28, 1980): 77.

17 Van Burnham, Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, 1971-1984 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), 168.

231 computing,” system engineer Jeff Frederiksen recalled in a 2011 interview, adding,

“probably their biggest blunder.”18 Bally shifted priorities back to coin-operated and casino gaming. In 1979, the company opened Bally’s Park Place Hotel and Casino in

Atlantic City, NJ, which had legalized gambling in 1976. At the January 1980 Winter

Consumer Electronics Show, Fidelity Electronics, Ltd., a manufacturer of electronic board games, tentatively announced it would buy Bally’s entire consumer electronics division, including the rights to the Professional Arcade, for an undisclosed amount.

However, Fidelity withdrew its offer three months later when both sides failed to reach an agreement.19 Bally secured a second buyer prior to the Summer CES later that year, and in May 1980 the company sold the consumer electronics division to Astrovision, Inc., for $2.3 million.20 Founded in 1977 by a pair of computer programmers named John

Powers and Joe Miller under the name Authorship Resource Inc. (ARI), the Columbus,

OH, based Astrovision had originally developed software for the Cybervision, a short- lived series of computers sold by Montgomery Ward.21

18 Jeff Frederiksen, interviewed by Paul Thacker of Bally Alley, September 29, 2011, accessed October 2, 2017, http://www.ballyalley.com/ballyalley/interviews/Jeff_Frederiksen_Interview.txt.

19 Arcadian 2, No. 3 (January 15, 1980): 19; “Winter Consumer Electronics Show,” Cursor 1, No. 2 (February 1980): 9; Arcadian 2, No. 5 (March 24, 1980): 37.

20 “Bally Mfg. May License Firm to Make, Sell Games,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 1980; Dan Dorfman, “Video Game Death Could Put Supplier on Ice,” Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1982; Arcadian 2, No. 10 (September 17, 1980): 106; “Astrovision Acquires Bally Consumer Products Division,” Cursor 2, No. 2 (August 1980): 57;

21 Arcadian 3, No. 1 (November 6, 1980): 2-3. For a brief history of ARI, see: Matt Powers, “The History of a Forgotten Computer—Part 1,” Gamasutra (April 25, 2014),

232

With their purchase of the system, briefly renamed the Bally Home Computer

System, Astrovision sought to capitalize on the rapidly growing programmable video game market. Astrovision vice president Ray George boasted to a Chicago Tribune reporter in October 1981 he felt Bally made a “giant blunder” in selling the rights to the system. He claimed Astrovision had earned between $12 and $15 million in sales through

1981 and predicted sales would skyrocket to $100 million in the following year. “You’ve probably never heard of Astrovision, Inc., and there’s no reason you should have,” Dan

Dorfman of the Chicago Tribune wrote in an October 29, 1981, article, “Located in

Columbus, OH, it’s a mere 14 ½ months old, privately owned, and its sales last year were just over $1 million. But its investment implications—based on the company’s business—are enormous.”22

After a comparatively quiet 1981, 1982 proved an ambitious year for Astrovision.

In March, Astrovision entered an agreement with engineering firm Nitron, Inc., to manufacture the system’s hardware and software; reportedly, Nitron was to manufacture

$32 million worth of systems, cartridges, and accessories through 1982 and $76 million

accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MattPowers/20140425/215846/The_History_of_a_Forg otten_Computer__PART_1.php; Matt Powers, “The History of a Forgotten Computer: Part 2,” Gamasutra (May 4, 2014), accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MattPowers/20140504/215899/The_History_of_a_Forg otten_Computer__PART_2.php.

22 Dan Dorfman, “Home Video Games May Be the Hottest Growth Business,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1981.

233 worth of products in 1983.23 Following a dispute with an adult-oriented video company of the same name, Astrovision changed both the name of the company and the game system to Astrocade. In May, the newly-christened Astrocade secured a $3 million investment from Quaker , reportedly in the hopes that the company would acquire

Astrocade outright and enter the rapidly escalating home console competition.24 During the Summer 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, Astrocade filed suit against Atari and

Commodore, citing patent infringement.25 In July, Astrocade also entered an agreement with Cable Applications Inc., a cable television firm based in Basking Ridge, NJ, to design a cable-based on-demand video game service similar to Mattel’s abortive “Play

Cable” line for the Intellivision.26

In addition to litigation, Astrocade took direct aim at Atari through an ambitious

$10 million advertising campaign that the company launched in February 1982.27 Its slogan was “Astrocade Gives You More,” and promotional material focused on the system as an arcade quality game system with the potential to expand into a full computer

23 “Nitron Signs Accord to Supply Video Gear to Astrovision, Inc.,” Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1982.

24 Dan Dorfman, “Video Game Death Could Put Supplier on Ice,” Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1982.

25 Barry Bayer, “Astrocade Sues Commodore and Atari,” Infoworld (June 28, 1982): 1; "Atari and Commodore Suit," Arcadian 4, No. 8 (June 11, 1982): 75.

26 “Business in Brief: Two Firms Signed a Pact to Supply Cable TV Video Games,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1982.

27 “Astrovision Enters Video Space Wars,” Leisure Time Electronics (February 1982): 50; Arcadian 4, No. 4 (January 22, 1982): 36.

234 system. A 1982 promotional video developed for retailers portrayed Astrocade as a superior alternative to the Atari Video Computer System. The video opened with an image of Atari’s Video Computer System. The system vanished, leaving only a black silhouette upon which various streaks of light appeared to reveal various features of the

Astrocade. “If you took one of America’s leading video games,” a narrator explained,

“and added three built-in games, four-player capability, a three-octave music synthesizer, two-hundred-fifty-six color variations, a built-in calculator, and the BASIC program, making it a personal home computer, you have Astrocade: the Professional Arcade.” The video promised “a never-ending library of coin-op quality games” and displayed footage from games in the Astrocade library, including The Incredible Wizard (a home adaptation of the Bally-Midway arcade game ), Space Fortress (a science-fiction shooter directly inspired by Star Wars where a player defends “a lonely outpost in a galaxy far, far away” from waves of spaceships), Galactic Invasion (an unofficial adaptation of the space shooter ), as well as Astrocade BASIC. As the promotional film concluded, the narrator declared, “This year, look forward to more excitement, more challenges, and more fun from Astrocade: the home entertainment sensation.”28

To the delight of the system’s small cadre of fans, Astrovision also announced plans to release the Add-On component Bally had failed to deliver. The company unveiled an early version—the ZGRASS-32 Computer Keyboard—at the Winter 1981

Consumer Electronics Show. Reportedly, the ZGRASS-32, named after the ZGRASS

28 “Astrocade Promotional Video (Circa 1982),” YouTube, accessed May 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=rLLMkv699Ac.

235 graphics language on which it ran, would include a full-sized keyboard and expand the system’s memory to a mammoth 32K RAM. Later reports scaled back the memory expansion to a competitive 16K.29 With no release in sight, Astrovision teased a 1982 release date of the Add-On, now named the ZGRASS 100, at the January 1982 Winter

CES. The announcement triggered skepticism among attendees familiar with the unit’s tumultuous past. Myron Berger, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune noted, “Although

Astrovision…is promising an add-on computer keyboard attachment, the rocky road this video game has trod leads me to take a wait-and-see attitude.”30 Reportedly, the expansion was to sell for $600, double the cost of the Professional Arcade itself and at the higher end of home computer costs for the time.

However, despite the company’s lofty aspirations, by the end of 1982 Astrocade was on the brink of collapse. Numerous promised software titles never reached store shelves, neither did the ZGRASS 100. In October 1982, Astrocade cancelled its Pac-Man clone, Munchie, amid fears of a lawsuit from Atari.31 The company was also in

29 Arcadian 3, No. 4 (February 7, 1981): 41; George Moses and Brett Billbrey, “Michigan Bally Users’ Group gets a look at Zgrass-32 ‘add-under’ for the Arcade!” Arcadian 3, No. 6 (April 15, 1981): 64-5; Fred Cornett, “Dreams Come True,” Cursor 2, No. 4 (November/December 1980): 73; “Vocalize?” Arcadian 3, No. 9 (July 9, 1981): 91

30 Arcadian 4, No. 4 (January 22, 1982): 33; David Crook, “A Glimpse of Electronics Wonderland,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1982; Myron Berger, “A Home Computer Kills Two Birds with One Stone: Work and Play,” Chicago Tribune, January 3, 1982.

31 Atari held the exclusive rights to develop a home version of the arcade hit. On March 18, 1982, Atari successfully sued rival North American Philips over the company’s Pac- Man derivative, K.C. Munchkin for the Odyssey2, forcing Philips to pull the title from shelves.”Video Game Ruling,” New York Times, March 19, 1982; “Atari v. Astrocade?” Video Games (October 1982): 17.

236 significant debt; by October, Astrocade owed $3 million to Quaker Oats and an additional

$2 million to Nitron. Dan Dorfman of the Chicago Tribune, who one year earlier had described Astrocade as a company with massive growth potential, painted a much bleaker picture of the company in an October 14, 1982, report, describing Astrocade as “basically insolvent with a negative net worth of about $1 million.” He went on to describe a company deeply in debt, desperate for capital, and rapidly approaching bankruptcy:

“[S]ources very close to the management of Astrocade, which is in hock for about $11 million, tell me that the nearly 2 ½-year-old company could be forced into bankruptcy in the next 45 days if it fails to get a fresh and sizable injection of new capital to finance the business.”32 By the end of the month, Astrocade’s manufacturer Nitron, Inc., in an effort to recoup losses, acquired a controlling interest in the company for an undisclosed amount of stock. It was not enough to save the faltering Astrocade, which filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 30, 1982, arguably the first casualty in the imminent implosion of the American home video game market.33

Astrocade managed to emerge from bankruptcy on March 14, 1984, with plans to export the Astrocade system to the international market. However, in the fifteen months it took the company to get its financial house in order, the American video game market had almost entirely collapsed thanks to the combination of overproduction and

32 Dan Dorfman, “Video Game Death Could Put Supplier on Ice,” Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1982.

33 “Nitron in Talks to Buy Video-Game Company,” Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1982; “Briefs,” New York Times, October 20, 1982; Arcadian 5, No. 1 (November 5, 1982): 2; "Latest Astrocade News," Arcadian 5, No. 3 (January 14, 1983): 45.

237 mismanagement, especially by industry leader Atari, that led to a sudden decline of the market value of video games. In its wake, most of the major players in the industry either shifted to other ventures such as toys or home computers or folded entirely. Astrocade proved unable to weather the market storm. A pessimistic Mike Prosise, an amateur game critic for Astrocade newsletter Arcadian, warned his fellow Arcade enthusiasts in an

October 1984 article that the company’s future looked bleak: “Even today the future of

Astrocade remains uncertain, and in the light of the current state of the home video-game computer industry, do not be surprised if you never see another cartridge from the

Astrocade people again.”34 His prediction proved accurate, and Astrocade officially folded later that year, followed by Nitron, which began liquidating assets in November

1984 and placed their Cupertino, CA, facilities up for auction on March 22, 1985.35

While some Astrocade fans held out hope for another company to swoop in and buy the rights to the system, no corporate savior came to save what had once been the Astrocade,

Home Computer System, Professional Arcade, and Home Library Computer.

Hackers, Hobbyists, and Wumpus Hunters: Computer Hacking and the Rise of Male Suburban Leisure Despite the system’s technical foibles, numerous manufacturing delays, and mismanagement or apathy from its corporate owners, the Bally/Astrocade system attracted a small, but dedicated, group of hobbyists interested in devising grassroots

34 Mike Prosise, “The Game Player,” Arcadian 6, No. 11/12 (October 31, 1984): 117.

35 “Auction Sales,” San Jose (CA) Mercury News, March 13, 1985, Bally Alley, accessed September 27, 2019, https://ballyalley.com/documentation/nitron/nitron- auction_announcement.pdf.

238 programs and tinkering with its hardware. These Bally users were one of several grassroots hacker groups that emerged during the 1970s. Early home computer hobbyists were the product of three cultural and technological trends that culminated in the seventies: the development of inexpensive computing devices, the creation of more broadly accessible programming languages, and the proliferation of suburban middle- class hobby communities during the first half of the twentieth century.

The earliest computer user communities developed on university campuses, the only places people had access to mainframe computers during the fifties and sixties.

Among the earliest hobbyist computer groups was the “Signals and Power” subcommittee of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC). “Signals and Power” members gravitated to model railroads with an interest in designing, maintaining, and operating the electrical systems on which the model trains ran. In 1954, they expanded their interests to computers when MIT received its first mainframe computer—an IBM

704—and TMRC members reserved time on the machine, designing programs and devising hardware modifications during late-night programming sessions. According to folklore, it was members of the TMRC who first coined the term “hacking” to describe their activities.36 By the 1970s, university computers became more widely accessible to the student body and the local public. However, as computer historian Kevin Driscoll observed, if an aspiring computer hobbyist lacked access to a university machine, they

36 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Publishing Co., 1984), 17-38.

239 probably only experienced computers through the pages of hobbyist publications or a growing body of computer-themed science fiction.37

By the early seventies, new developments in consumer electronics dramatically expanded hobbyist exposure to computing hardware. Calculators were among the earliest home computing devices to enter American homes. Commercial calculators date back to the 1950s. However, beginning in the early seventies several firms began marketing calculators to a mass consumer audience. Early mass-marketed calculators included the

Bowmar Brain (Bowmar, 1971), the HP-35 (Hewlett Packard, 1972), and HP-45

(Hewlett-Packard, 1973); these and similar devices could perform complex mathematical functions and sold for under $400. Their high cost (adjusted to inflation, $400 in 1974 translates to roughly $2200 in 2019) limited their audience to a relatively affluent clientele. However, they placed more computing hardware within the reach of the average consumer than had previous devices, and economies of scale dramatically drove down the cost of calculators through the decade.

Among early home calculators, the HP-65 was the earliest mass-produced calculator that was also programmable. An expensive unit even for its time, the HP-65 sold for $795 following its release in 1974. Marketed by Hewlett Packard as a “personal computer,” arguably the earliest consumer device to be marketed as such, the HP-65 allowed users to program up to one hundred lines of commands that could be stored on removable magnetic cards. The system’s high cost meant most HP-65 consumers bought

37 Kevin Driscoll, “Professional Work for Nothing: Software Commercialization and ‘An Open Letter to Hobbyists,” Information and Culture 50, No. 2 (2015): 259-260.

240 it for professional use; however, some users took advantage of the unit’s programming capabilities to design their own rudimentary software. For the first time, aspiring programmers did not need to rely on time-sharing on a communal computer. Rather, they had a personal device for their own needs. As computer historian Paul Ceruzzi has observed, a key advantage of the HP-65 was, unlike mainframe computers, the HP-65

“was a personal machine—one could take it home at night.”38 Amateur HP-65 hobbyists formed their own clubs and grassroots publications, sharing their knowledge and discoveries with other users. The largest of these user groups was the aptly-named HP-65

Users’ Club, founded by amateur programmer Richard Nelson in 1974. The Users’ Club shared tutorials and articles through the 65 Notes newsletter.39

While amateur programmers explored their HP-65 calculators, several companies sought to bring computers out of the research labs, business firms, and academia and into

American homes. The most commercially successful of the early microcomputers was the

Altair 8800. Designed by engineer Ed Roberts and sold by MITS (Micro Instrumentation

Telemetry Systems) of Albuquerque, NM, the Altair 8800 first appeared as the cover story of the December 1974 issue of the hobbyist magazine Popular Electronics. MITS sold the Altair via mail order in two versions: a pre-assembled unit for $695 or as a do-it- yourself kit for $400. The device’s capabilities were extremely limited. Its 256 bytes of

38 Paul Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, Second Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 215.

39 In 1978, the user group expanded their focus beyond the HP-65 to include programming on later HP calculators under the name PPC, short for “Pocket Personal Calculators.” Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 213-217.

241 memory could not store the file that comprises this dissertation, and all data was lost whenever it was turned off. It was also far from user friendly: interfacing with the device involved manipulating cumbersome switches and a series of red lights comprised the system’s only output. Nevertheless, aspiring computer owners flooded MITS with orders, and the company struggled to keep pace with the demand.

Ceruzzi attributed two key factors to Altair’s success. First, it was a significantly cheaper point of entry into computers than the mainframe computers at universities and research labs, which in any case were not available to ordinary hobbyists. Altair’s other appealing attribute was its expandability. MITS designed Altair as an “open bus” system, with two additional expansion slots where users could install their own personal augmentations to the system’s limited features. Unlike later computer developers, MITS did not restrict users to proprietary hardware, leaving them the freedom to install whatever they felt for whatever purposes they wished. A cottage industry of Altair- adapted equipment emerged, and users had the creative freedom do whatever they wanted within the capabilities of the hardware. As Ceruzzi explained in his History of Personal

Computing, “Marketing the computer as a bare-bones kit allowed a way for thousands of people to bootstrap their way into the computer age, at a pace that they, not a computer company, could control.”40 Amateur computer users flocked to Altair, and local and national Altair hobbyist clubs proliferated through the seventies; the largest was the

California-based Homebrew Computer Club (HCC), which held its first meeting on

40 Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 229.

242

March 5, 1975. By 1977, Jim Warren, editor of the hobbyist newsletter Dr. Dobb’s

Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia, estimated there were between 160 and 200 local computer clubs operating in the United States.41

Another important factor in the emergence of hobbyist computing was the proliferation of BASIC. Developed in 1964 by Dartmouth mathematicians John G.

Kemeny and Thomas E. Kutz, BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction

Code) was initially intended as a comparatively simple language for novice programmers.

Unlike the numeric-based machine and assembly languages, BASIC utilized commands in simple English (e.g. GOTO, DELETE, PRINT, RUN). Experienced programmers generally avoided BASIC as running programs developed in the language required using a compiler, which converted the code back into machine language, an action viewed by some as an unnecessary extra step that cost precious memory. However, BASIC’s comparative simplicity made it appealing for newcomers.42 Numerous dialects emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, several of which took up relatively little memory, making them ideal for emerging hobbyist computers. MITS released an official adaptation of

BASIC for the Altair in 1975, and Altair BASIC was the first commercial success for developers Bill Gates and Paul Allen and their new company: Micro-Soft.43

41 Jim Warren, “Personal Computing—An Overview for Computer Professionals,” NCC Proceedings 46 (1977): 493-498.

42 This is not to say it is easy to program in BASIC. Debugging, especially in long programs, can be an infuriating endeavor as the programmer needs to check for errors line by line.

43 Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 232-236.

243

However, another factor unforeseen by MITS and Micro-Soft secured Altair

BASIC’s popularity in the computer hobbyist community: piracy. Sometime during

MITS’s 1975 demonstration tour, someone managed to secure a paper tape copy of an early version of Altair BASIC, and before long unauthorized versions of Altair BASIC circulated through hobbyist communities, much to the chagrin of Micro-Soft. Cost was likely a contributing factor in Altair BASIC piracy. As Kevin Driscoll observed, Altair offered Altair BASIC bundled with the purchase of the system for $75. However, MITS charged $500 for Altair BASIC alone, effectively financially punishing anyone who wanted BASIC but already owned an Altair. The comparably high price of Altair BASIC clearly fostered resentment among members of the Altair hobbyist community and likely inspired more than a few Altair hackers to use pirated copies rather than buy MITS’s official version.44 Gates fired back at the circulation of guerilla Altair BASIC copies in an

“Open Letter to Hobbyists” printed in the February 3, 1976, issue of Computer Notes,

Altair’s official newsletter. His “Open Letter” was later circulated in other newsletters as well as Forbes magazine. Gates called attention to the obvious numerical discrepancy between hobbyists using Altair BASIC versus the royalties Micro-Soft was receiving:

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

44 Driscoll, “Professional Work for Nothing,” 262-3.

244

Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.45 Nevertheless, few appeared to heed Gates’ excoriation of software pirates (or his calls for them to mail compensation to Micro-Soft), and unauthorized BASIC adaptations proliferated among the homebrew computer community. Whether purchased or passed along for free, the distribution of BASIC dialects on the Altair and other computer systems facilitated an environment for amateur programmers to learn about computers and share their work with other liked-minded hobbyists.

During the postwar decades, computer programming became increasingly coded as masculine. In his history of programming and computer science as vocational and academic fields, Nathan Ensmenger observed the field’s evolution from one predominated by women to one by men. During the , programming was generally perceived as menial clerical work, primarily done by female secretaries whose job it was to enter calculations performed by male scientists and mathematicians. However, it did not take long to realize there was much more to programming than data entry. Mainframe computers such as the University of Pennsylvania’s ENIAC proved temperamental, requiring constant maintenance and oversight to ensure they ran properly. As computer usage increased in the postwar years so did the demand for programmers, forcing organizations and businesses to conceptualize programmers as skilled workers rather than secretaries. Hiring tests measured ideal programmers as a blend of seemingly paradoxical

45 Emphasis added. William Henry Gates III, “An Open Letter to Hobbyists,” February 3, 1976, accessed November 3, 2017, http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html.

245 skills—artistic creativity, problem solving, technical prowess—skills male hiring managers at technical firms associated with masculinity. As a result, the “computer boys” rapidly supplanted the “ENIAC girls” as the ideal computer programmer, thus cultivating an image of programmers as creative, technically brilliant albeit eccentric men that has persisted to the present day.46

In this respect, the emergence of computer hobbyists can best be understood in the context of other male-dominated technical-oriented hobbies during the same period.

Leisure pastimes for middle-class men had undergone significant changes between the late nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries. Male leisure in the Victorian era frequently involved men gathering in spaces outside the home, such as social clubs and fraternal organizations. However, during the twentieth century, male leisure increasingly took place within the domestic space, and many homebound middle-class male pastimes increasingly involved technical equipment and machinery. Early automobile owners were often driven to amateur auto repair out of necessity, as temperamental early cars combined with roads ill-suited for auto travel forced them to learn how to keep their machines in working order. Automobile tinkering eventually became a hobby in its own right. The earliest home radio owners were hobbyists who tinkered with and modified radio receivers to detect faraway signals; it was not until the 1920 and 1930s that radio marketing targeted middle-class women and dissuaded amateur radio repair. By the

46 This perception of eccentric men is a likely predecessor of modern perceptions of adult male game users as socially maladjusted. Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 27- 82.

246

1920s, perceptions of home repair shifted from activities outsourced to professionals to something male homeowners did on their own in their burgeoning free time. These activities emphasized artisanal skill, self-reliance, and a sense of mastery over machinery.47

Scientific and mechanical hobby participation increased dramatically after World

War II. Rising wages and decreasing work hours gave middle-class men increased access to disposable income and free time. The suburban housing boom gave American men increased access to usable space for leisure activities: basements, garages, and outdoor toolsheds offered places for men to set up personal workshops. Increased automobile ownership begat homes with garages that could double as workspaces. These spaces allowed middle-class suburban men to create what historian Steven M. Gelber described as “spheres of domestic masculinity” within the home: male-dominated spaces situated away from the rest of the family, where the family would be free of disruptive noise or fumes and hobbyist men would be free from oversight.48 According to historian Kristen

Haring, by the 1950s there were at least a hundred thousand active amateur radio

47 See: Steven M. Gelber, “Do-It-Yourself: Constructing, Repairing, and Maintaining Domestic Masculinity,” American Quarterly 49, No. 1 (March 1997): 66-112; Carlat, “A Cleanser for the Mind,” 115-137.

48 Gelber, “Do-It-Yourself,” 73, 77. See also: Haring, “The ‘Freer Men of Ham Radio,” 751-760; Maines, “’Stings and Bangs’: Amateur Science and Gender n Twentieth-Century Living Spaces,” Icon 19 (2013): 33-51.

247 operators; the figure doubled by the 1960s.49 American households spent billions on power tools and supplies for home repair in the postwar decades.50

Hobbies allowed men to assert their masculinity within the traditionally feminized domestic space of the household. They provided a counterbalance to passive television viewing, which contemporary critics described as emasculating, through practical, purpose-driven activities.51 “Do-it-yourself” home repair allowed husbands to concretely express their roles as keepers and protectors of the homestead. Amateur radio helped prepare men for technical jobs in the professional world. Model railroad sets allowed for expressions of both creativity and technical prowess, potentially offsetting the dehumanizing aspects of the white-collar working world. The Cold War and the nuclear arms and space races also lent a patriotic undercurrent and a sense of political urgency to male hobby participation. In his study of home repair, Gelber noted working with tools and machinery provided opportunities for men to harken back to pre-industrial notions of artisanship through a personal mastery over tools: “[D]o-it-yourself can be thought of as a reassertion of traditional direct male control of the physical environment through the use of heavy tools in a way that evoked pre-industrial manual competence.”52 Clubs

49 Kristen Haring, “The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio: How a Technical Hobby Provided Social and Spatial Distance,” Technology & Culture 4, No. 4 (October 2003): 735.

50 Gelber, “Do-It-Yourself,” 97-99.

51 Haring, “The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio,” 738.

52 Gelber, “Do-It-Yourself,” 68.

248 became an extension of earlier male-dominated fraternal organizations and offered environments for male bonding and comradery.

Computer and video game hackers in the 1970s and these other hobbyist groups enjoyed considerable overlap in membership. Demographically, they often attracted the same types of people as those who took part in HAM radio, home repair, and other similar activities. Computer hackers tended to be fairly well-educated and possessed both disposable income to invest in expensive technical equipment as well as sufficient free time. For those who lacked access to a university-based computer system, hobbyist magazines and newsletters for other pastimes they enjoyed were often their first exposure to computers. Indeed, early computer groups were often offshoots of other types of clubs; the Tech Model Railroad Club is one obvious example. MITS, short for Micro-

Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, was originally founded as a maker of telemetry systems for model rocketry, and the company’s Altair 8800 first appeared in the hobbyist magazine Popular Electronics.

Early home computer users frequently used their devices for designing and playing games. In a presentation at the 1977 National Computer Conference of the

Association for Computer Machinery, Dr. Dobb’s editor Jim Warren observed the majority of users in the nascent home computer scene used their computers

“unquestionably for the purpose of playing games.”53 Many early programmers often applied or refined their skills by designing games, dating back to the early years of the

53 Warren, “Personal Computing,” 496.

249

Tech Model Railroad Club. One notable game, frequently reported in many popular game histories as one of the earliest known computer games, is Spacewar!, a science-fiction themed dogfighting game created by Steve “Slug” Russell. Russell, a former Dartmouth engineering student, developed the initial version of Spacewar! between 1961 and 1962 to be run on MIT’s PDP-1 mainframe computer. Inspired by the works of pulp science fiction author E.E. “Doc” Smith and his Skylark series, Spacewar! pit two players in the role of spaceships locked in an interstellar dogfight. Spacewar! rapidly gained popularity among hackers and players at MIT and programmers gradually exported it to other PDP-

1 systems across the country or devised their own adaptations of Russell’s design. The game also inspired two of the earliest coin-operated video games: (1971), designed by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, and Computer Space (1971), designed by Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, their first failed attempt before the commercial success of Pong.54 Other early computer games included Mouse in a Maze, where players navigated a mouse through a maze in search of cheese (or, in a more adult- oriented version, martinis); Lunar Lander (1969), where players managed the trajectory of a lander toward the lunar surface; and Hunt the Wumpus (Gregory Wob, 1972/1973), a virtual “hide-and-seek” game where players searched for a monster hidden in a hexagonal

54 Levy, Hackers, 50-69. Alexander Smith, “One, Two, Three, Four I Declare a Space War,” They Create Worlds: The Innovators Who Shaped the Video Game Industry and the Writers Who Shaped Their Stories, August 7, 2014, accessed September 11, 2017, https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/one-two-three-four-i-declare-a- space-war/.

250 grid. Users either attempted to sell them commercially or distributed them among themselves for free.

For early programmers, game design served both entertainment and practical purposes. While the Tech Model Railroad Club and other on-campus computer clubs partook in playing mainframe games such as Spacewar! and Hunt the Wumpus for relaxation and enjoyment, games also acted as problem-solving exercises to expand programmers’ technical knowledge. Early computer games, such as adaptations of chess, checkers, and tic-tac-toe, often acted as proofs of concept or demonstrations of the technical capabilities of computer systems. As video game historian Michael Z. Newman observed, this was the case even of Spacewar!, which, in addition to being a science fiction computer game, demonstrated the PDP-1’s capacity for visual display and processing functions in real time. Spacewar! and other games were also often collaborative projects where various users made their own additions and modifications.

After Russell’s initial development of the game in 1962, he shared his results with other members of the Tech Model Railroad Club, who gradually made alterations to his design.

One added wormholes that could transport the ships to random parts of the board.

Another user superimposed a background of stars based on actual stellar maps. Another created a sun at the center of the screen; the sun exerted its own gravitational pull, drawing in ships that ventured too close. Still another devised rudimentary controllers to replace the PDP-1’s system of switches, which players complained were uncomfortable and awkward to use. Professional development provided a means of legitimizing computer game design, an otherwise trivial practice on such sophisticated (and

251 expensive) machinery, as teaching aspiring programmers the skills they would need to take part in more “serious” computer work they would experience in the professional world.55

While game design was tacitly acknowledged in the computing community, if not outright encouraged, this was not the case in the developing video game industry. Despite the advent of “programmable” game systems in the late seventies and early eighties, producers and game magazine writers often discouraged users from devising their own programs or tinkering with their consoles. Newsletters and magazines cautioned users to leave designing games to the professionals employed by Atari, Mattel, North American

Philips, and the like. This did not prevent some players from trying anyway; Jeff Gaydos, editor of Odyssey2 Adventure, the official organ of North American Philips’ Odyssey2, received enough amateur game ideas and designs from readers he felt the need to ask them to stop. “We appreciate the thought,” Gaydos wrote in a 1982 issue, “Trouble is, we don’t have the staff to sort through the technical information that you send us—the detailed explanations and the drawings.”56 The July/August 1982 issue of Atari Age included an introduction to the internal components of the Atari Video Computer System; however, the author was quick to remind readers not to explore the inner workings of the system on their own: “Haven’t you always wanted to open up your Atari Video Computer

System (VCS) console and see what goes on inside? Don’t do it—there are delicate

55 Newman, Atari Age, 122-126.

56 Jeff Gaydos, “Gray Matter,” Odyssey2 Adventure 1, No. 3 (Summer 1982): 2.

252 electronic parts inside!”57 The closest Atari came to endorsing hardware modification came in the January/February 1983 issue of Atari Age, which included a tutorial explaining how to reverse the button and joystick layout and redirect the wires on a VCS controller to make it more comfortable for left-handed players.58

Efforts to curtail grassroots hardware and software modification continued after the Crash. Nintendo designed the Nintendo Entertainment System with a lockout chip to prevent the use of unlicensed games on the system. The chip acted as a security clearance for cartridges, allowing those officially licensed by Nintendo to run while “locking out” unauthorized software.59 Nintendo also employed proprietary screws and fasteners on its hardware and game cartridges, further discouraging players from opening their equipment. In 1990, Nintendo sued Galoob, manufacturers of the “Game Genie,” an unlicensed NES peripheral that allowed users to input game-modifying codes.60 Articles in third-party magazines denounced copying and distributing games, widespread in the computer community, as piracy. When an Electronic Games reader wrote to the magazine about whether it was possible to copy cassette-based games, editor Arnie Katz

57 Emphasis added. Steve Morgenstern, “Inside Your Atari VCS,” Atari Age 1, No. 2 (July/August 1982): 2, 19.

58 Steve Morgenstern, “Make Your Own Left-Handed Joystick,” Atari Age 1, No. 5 (January/February 1983): 4.

59 Casey O’Donnell, “The Nintendo Entertainment System and the 10NES Chip: Carving the Video Game Industry in Silicone,” Games and Culture 6, No. 1 (January 2011): 83- 100. 60 Tobar the 8-Man, “Hands on with the Galoob Game Genie,” GamePro 1, No. 14 (September 1990): 18.

253 explained copying software, a common practice in computing circles, hurt both players and the industry itself, writing in the November 1983 issue:

In answer to your question, what you’re talking about is video piracy. Not only is it illegal, but it deprives software designers and manufacturers alike of the fair profits they deserve for taking the time to put out these games. If the companies don’t make a profit, they won’t be around to manufacture any more videogames. Software pirates hurt not only the people who make games, but they also hurt the people who play them.61 The content disseminated in company-produced magazines and product packaging as well as independent magazines such as Electronic Games and Video Games & Computer

Entertainment focused primarily on top-down consumption as the acceptable means of video game usage. In this respect, the Bally Astrocade and its user community proved an exception, sharing more in common with computer hobbyists than with the emerging

“gamer” fandom.

The “Astrocade Underground”

Considering the system’s comparatively high cost, limited distribution, technical problems, and corporate mismanagement or apathy one might wonder why anyone bothered with the Bally Astrocade. However, despite its flaws, the system did possess some elements that made it attractive to certain consumers, and critical reception at the time was generally positive. On a technical level, the Bally Astrocade was one of the most powerful game consoles on the market. In his November 1982 review, Danny

Goodman of Joystik wrote, “Creative geniuses will be attracted to Astrocade’s high-res graphics and music generation cartridges.” An article in the November 1983 issue of

61 “How to Pirate Videogames,” Electronic Games 2, No. 9 (November 1983): 26.

254

Electronic Games described the Astrocade as “the single most awesome piece of hardware ever introduced within the videogame industry” and “the ideal gaming machine.” Critics also praised its controllers, which one Electronic Games writer described as “the best available as standard issue” in a 1983 consumer guide, adding,

“The ability to combine the rotational movement of the joystick turns games that would be glorified Pongs on other systems into genuine electronic simulations found here.”62

The Bally Professional Arcade was also the only game system of its time to allow users to program in BASIC. This combined with its low cost compared to contemporary computer systems such as the TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the hope of expanded capabilities through the Add-On component and other proposed accessories made it attractive for people interested in finding a point of entry into the computer age.

One such person was Bob Fabris of San Jose, CA, who first learned of the Bally system through one of JS&A’s full-page advertisements in the September 1977 issue of

Scientific American. Eager to tinker with a computer of his own, he became an early adopter of the Bally Professional Arcade. After weathering Bally’s shipping delays and the system’s failure rate, he created a monthly hobbyist newsletter, Arcadian, where he and other aspiring programmers could share their experiences programming in Bally

BASIC. He described himself in the pages of Arcadian as a “neophyte” to computers and encouraged readers to submit their own amateur programs and tutorials. Over the next

62 Danny Goodman, “Home Video: How Do You Choose?” Joystik 1, No. 2 (November 1982): 66-7; “Players Guide to Programmable Videogames,” Electronic Games 2, No. 9 (November 1983): 72-3; “Astrocade: The Big Comeback,” Electronic Games: 1983 Software Encyclopedia (New York: Reece Communications, 1983), 55.

255 few years, Arcadian became the focal point of the Bally hobbyist user community, running through 1985.

Other users followed Fabris’s example and formed their own local clubs and newsletters. In 1980 Michigan natives George Moses, Don Gladden, and Brett Bilbray formed the Michigan BUGs (short for “Bally user group”), later renamed the Astro-bugs after Astrocade’s acquisition of the system. The BUGs aimed for a broad appeal, attracting both game players and computer hobbyists with events and activities that appealed to both the technical and gaming enthusiast. During bimonthly meetings, the

BUGs shared homemade programs, hosted tutorial sessions, and held game tournaments.

They soon became the largest chapter of Bally users. Described by club secretary Peggy

Gladden as “a ‘clearing house’ for user groups,” the BUGs offered to send information packets on forming local chapters, as well as the contact information of known local

Arcade enthusiasts, to any interested users for a nominal fee. California native Fred

Cornett developed a newsletter to compete with Arcadian, initially called Cursor and later renamed BASIC Express.63 Cornett, who also ran a Bally user group based in Los

Angeles, also encouraged Cursor readers to solicit information from him about groups in their area. Local clubs formed across the country in such places as Cleveland, OH;

Washington, DC; Monrovia, MD; New Britain, CT; North Plainfield, NJ; Blomkest, MN;

Harvey, LA; and Albuquerque, NM, as well as at least one in Canada (the Niagara

63 Cursor’s infrequent publication became a source of contention both within the pages of Cursor and in other Bally user groups. BASIC Express abruptly folded in the middle of 1981 without informing its subscribers. Alfonso Smith, Jr. “Express Stop,” Electronic Games (November 1982).

256

Regional Bally User Group). These groups circulated their own newsletters and occasionally disseminated information, including meeting announcements and community-designed software, through Arcadian and Cursor.64

Examining newsletters such as Arcadian, Michigan Astro-Bugs Newsletter, and

Cursor/BASIC Express shows overlap between the demographics of the Bally-Astrocade user community and other contemporary computer and hobby clubs. Astrocade owners were reasonably well-educated and financially stable. The people who bought a Bally

Astrocade described themselves as early adopters of computers, which necessitated the financial means to buy one. While the system was inexpensive compared to other computers in the late seventies, it was not a cheap purchase. It also was one of the most expensive game systems on the market, and its high cost became more apparent with the aggressive home computer price war of the early eighties. Moreover, several users also owned additional computers to say nothing of investing in multiple Bally systems due to its high failure rate. Those who described their employment often came from jobs where they regularly encountered computers, such as universities and government facilities. Bob

Fabris, for example, worked as an engineer for Lockheed Missile and Space Company.

Others owned their own electronics stores and hobby shops. Several of the members of the Astrocade user community were also involved in other technical-oriented hobbies.

Fabris explained in the first issue of Arcadian that he was also a HAM radio and model

64 "User Group Corner," Arcadian 5, No. 1 (November 5, 1982): 1; “Attention All User Groups and Interested Parties!!!!” Arcadian 5, No. 4 (February 18, 1983): 65; “User Group Data,” Cursor 1, No. 2 (February 1980): 14.

257 railroad enthusiast. The enthusiasts who contributed to the newsletters were also overwhelmingly men. Few women contributed content to these newsletters, and for those who did, no records of game code or tutorials seem to survive.

As with other hobbies, computer and video game hobbyist groups offered avenues for suburban men to assert their masculinity through their technical competence. One of the most widely circulated early works on the motivations of computer hackers reflected masculinized values around computing. Published in 1984 during the popularization of home computers and the economic surge of computer companies, Hackers: Heroes of the

Computer Revolution by journalist Steven Levy focused on the rise of through the lens of the achievements of computer hacker clubs such as the Tech Model

Railroad Club and the Homebrew Computer Club and individual innovators such as

Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Apple founders and Steve

Wozniak. Based on interviews with members of hacker communities, Levy introduced what he called the “Hacker Ethic,” a system of egalitarian principles he viewed as the primary characteristics of computer hacking. The “Hacker Ethic” offered a means of explaining computer programming in masculine terms, blending technical mastery along with a sense of intellectual prowess and problem solving. From a user community standpoint, the “Hacker Ethic” combined rugged individualism with a collectivist sense of computing for the common good.65 On one hand, according to Levy, meritocracy marked the foundation of how hackers viewed themselves: individual achievement

65 Levy, Hackers, 38-49.

258 through personal technical skill, rather than formal education or career placement, was the measure of a “true” hacker. On the other hand, the “Hacker Ethic” emphasized open and unlimited access to information. Discoveries were measures of individual prowess; however, it was generally expected that those who uncovered new discoveries would share them with the rest of the community. Hackers shared their conquests with other users through local and national clubs, hobbyist conventions, and specialist newsletters and magazines, where other users adapted, scrutinized, and built upon their work.

The principles of the “Hacker Ethic” continued to resonate into present-day perceptions of computer hacking and programming. Recent histories reflect elements of the “Hacker Ethic,” shaping the historical narrative of programming largely as a profession of innovation and personal achievement. In the introduction to the 2014 edition of their history of the personal computer, Michael Swaine and Paul Frieberger described the emergence of the PC in similar egalitarian terms, describing the development of the personal computer as “a story of populist values,” adding:

The personal computer was born in a time of social ferment, when idealism ran high. Many of the people so passionate about making a personal computer reality were equally passionate about opening up the arcane technology of the computer to everyone. “Computer power to the people” was their rallying cry, and it truly was one of the forces that shaped the personal-computer era. For a time, the personal computer—a real computer in the hands of an individual, and usable and even programmable by that individual—became the center of the technological universe.66

66 Italics in original. Michael Swaine and Paul Frieberger, Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, Third Edition (Dallas, TX: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2014), xxi.

259

This argument for the presence of individualist spirit blended with a sense of communal benefit has also influenced recent scholars of video game homebrew communities. Hector

Postigo cited three motivations behind computer and video game modding: a creative outlet for artistic expression; a means of developing a greater connection to a particular game; and a possible point of entry into the mainstream games industry. Oli Sotaman built upon Postigo’s foundation, citing five motivations: extracting knowledge, challenge and self-education, creating a starting point for research, creative expression, and social interaction. Each of these motivations emphasized the importance of individual achievement and expression as well as the dissemination of knowledge to other users as key motivating factors behind hardware and software manipulation.67

The “Hacker Ethic” certainly resonated through much of the rhetoric in the

Astrocade user community. Innovation and discovery made up key elements of how the

BUGs viewed themselves. Aside from an eighteen-page "Hacker's Manual" released to a limited audience in 1979, Bally offered limited technical support for the Arcade; as a result, many users relied on each other, uncovering the system’s capabilities through trial and error and sharing their findings with other members of the community through local

67 Hector Postigo, “Of Mods and Modders: Chasing Down the Value of Fan-Based Digital Game Modifications,” Games and Culture, Vol. 2 No. 4 (October 2007), 300-313; Oli Sotaman, “When the Game is Not Enough: Motivations and Practices Among Computer Game Modding Culture,” Games and Culture Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 2010), 239- 255.

260 club meetings or newsletters.68 In newsletters they framed the exploration of the system’s capabilities as venturing through an untapped land awaiting bold pioneers and inventors.

For example, several users bemoaned the loss of certain specific features when

Astrovision released its successor to Bally BASIC—Astro-BASIC—in 1981. However, user Michael White viewed this as an opportunity for discovery, expressing his excitement in an article in the June 1983 edition of Arcadian

[N]ow that we had a machine that could tape fast enough to efficiently use file searching, we no longer had it!!! But that never stops a true pioneer and inventor. Who was it that said, “If it can be done, it has! If it can’t, it will be!”? Well, I’m ready to believe that anything can and will be done on the Arcade, given time. Things that we thought couldn’t be done are being done every day!69 Commenting on the Arcade’s capabilities as a music synthesizer, Andy Guevara wrote in

1984, “There’s a complete music processor in the ROM chips on board the Astrocade just waiting to be tapped.”70

Independent of Bally and Astrovision/Astrocade, users developed their own networks of technological instruction and support, and the Arcadian community assisted aspiring hackers’ efforts to teach themselves about computer hardware and software.

“One of the more pleasant aspects of producing this Newsletter,” Fabris wrote in the June

8, 1981, issue of Arcadian, “is experiencing the expansion of our capabilities. We are all

68 Most users gained access to the "Hacker's Manual" via Arcadian editor Bob Fabris, who offered to mail users a photocopied version for two dollars. Arcadian 1, No. 5 (March 23, 1979): 31.

69 Emphasis added. Arcadian 5, No. 8 (June 17, 1983): 125.

70 Arcadian 6, No. 4 (Feb. 23, 1984): 31.

261 learning together, and this education is one of the major reasons for the ARCADIAN.”71

Arcadian printed BASIC code for various software, encouraging readers to enter them on their own machines and try them for themselves. As users devised new methods of manipulating the Arcade’s hardware and software, some submitted tutorials documenting their methods, and several regular contributors provided articles displaying their findings and techniques. Users often offered troubleshooting for homebrew programs, submitting errors to Arcadian and Cursor. Readers interested in teaching themselves to program could use code submitted by other users as a template for their own forays into software design. "Virtually every program listed can be improved or modified," Arcadian editor

Bob Fabris informed users in the December 1980 issue of Arcadian, adding, “One designer has indicated that, for him, once the game has been made to operate to a sufficient degree of difficulty, the interest in further programming is lost and he begins to look for a new programming challenge. Now is the time for game players to take over and revise the game to suit themselves.”72 As in other contemporary hacker communities, materials submitted to newsletters were understood to be for the general good of the community. Fabris described submitting code for publication in Arcadian as “a donation for the common betterment and education of all” with no expectation of financial compensation.73

71 Arcadian 3, No. 12 (June 8, 1981): 121.

72 Arcadian 3, No. 2 (December 5, 1980): 11.

73 Arcadian 4, No. 1 (November 10, 1981): 8.

262

However, some Arcade users also viewed software development for the Arcade as a point of entry into the computing or video game industries. Bally BASIC and its successors, Astro-BASIC and Extended BASIC, along with machine language software allowed users to store data on portable cassette tapes. Users shared tapes and some developed software for commercial sale. “Third-party" Bally Astrocade developers included Esoterica, New Image, Wavemakers, L&M, and Bit Fiddlers, all of whom published advertisements in Arcadian and other newsletters. In addition to original content, these companies manufactured and sold adaptations of popular arcade games and titles for other home systems. These included Falling Stars (Super Software), a version of

Missile Command; Vindicator (Tiny Arcade), a clone of Defender; Chicken (The Bit

Fiddlers) and Road Toad (Esoterica), adaptations of Freeway and Frogger, respectively;

Monkey Jump, described by designer Mike Peace in June 1982 as "Currently the only

DONKEY KONG type game that exists for the home video gamer"; and L.T.: Little

Terrestrial (Wavemakers), a variation of the infamous ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.74 Pac-

Man derivative titles were numerous, including Pack Rat (Wavemakers), Lookout for the

Bull (Wavemakers), The Gate Escape (Wavemakers), Micro-Pac (HARD), Beep! (Tiny

Arcade), Candy Man (L&M), Mazeman (David Carson), and Nam-Cap (New Image).

Nam-Cap was unique in that it was an inversion of Pac-Man where the titular sphere spit out dots rather than ate them. (Fig. 4.4) These user-generated outlets for software rapidly

74 Arcadian 2, No. 4 (February 25, 1980): 36; "Monkey Jump," Arcadian 4, No. 8 (June 11, 1982): 84. Regarding L.T., one critic described the title as “Completely different from Atari’s hum-drum game ‘E.T.’, and 1000 times better.” Gameplay had more in common with Nintendo’s Donkey Kong than with the Atari game. Michael Prosise, “The Game Player,” Arcadian 5, No. 7 (May 6, 1983): 118.

263 became the primary source of new material for the system. Bally's initial software supply for the Arcade was limited, exacerbated by the company's dwindling interest in consumer electronics by the late seventies. Astrocade also offered a limited variety of games, but access to new software all but evaporated while the company was in bankruptcy between

1982 and 1984. As a result, the user community became the sole provider of new content for the Astrocade. In May 1983, third-party developers devised a method of storing games on Videocade cartridges rather than the cassettes commonly used in the community. As amateur Astrocade critic Mike Prosise observed, the development of homebrew cartridges "represented an important change for Astrocade owners. They hopefully would no longer have to depend on Astrocade as a sole source of cartridge games, a most significant factor since the Astrocade company was having serious difficulty surviving.” 75 Cartridges also made homebrew gameplay on Astrocade more accessible to a broader audience. They lowered technical barriers of entry to users, expanding the homebrew programmers’ potential consumer base beyond the community to less technically-inclined users. While inexpensive, cassettes were more temperamental and less durable than cartridges and they took significantly more time to load software.

75 For a summary of the third-party Astrocade cartridges, see: Mike Prosise, “The Game Player,” Arcadian 6, No. 11/12 (October 31, 1984): 117, 119.

264

Figure 4.4: An advertisement for Nam-cap, developed by New Image. Image Source: Arcadian 5, No. 3 (March 14, 1983): 81.

265

They also needed to be attached to the system through special equipment and had to be booted up through one of the Astrocade’s BASIC dialects. Meanwhile, a cartridge could be simply inserted into the system’s cartridge slot. Cartridge-based third-party software included Treasure Cove (Esoterica), Sea Devil (Esoterica), Ms. Candyman (L&M), and

Sneaky Snake (New Image). In 1981 The Bit Fiddlers developed Machine Language

Manager, a cartridge that allowed programming in machine language rather than BASIC.

Arcadian contributors also released the Astrocade-developed adaptation of Pac-Man

(Muncher/Munchie). To avoid legal reprisal from Atari, which held the exclusive home rights to Pac-Man, Arcadian distributed the game on a nondescript cartridge bearing the title “Test Programme.” While most of these companies developed content exclusively for the Arcade, at least one developed a game for the competing Atari Video Computer

System. , created by Jeff Perkins, was published in 1982 by VCS producer

Xonox. Xonox was novel among Atari developers in that it released games in pairs on a single cartridge with connectors on each end; players flipped the cartridge to the side of the desired game and inserted them into the VCS.

Homebrew development was not limited to software. Members of the community also altered and augmented the system’s hardware. Several users attempted to alleviate the Astrocade’s persistent overheating issues. One user devised a means of capturing on- screen footage from the Arcade onto a VCR. Another developed a way for the system to output sound through stereo speakers. Others found ways for the system to interface with competing home computers, such as the TRS-80 and Apple II. Still others attempted to improve the system's efficiency by developing memory-saving shortcuts or reducing data

266 transfer time between the system and portable storage devices. Some even developed new hardware including new controller designs, a speech , and a light pen. In an editorial for Cursor, members of the staff of Cursor boasted they had “learned…how to add memory, build an EPROM burner, wire up a light-pen, add a piano keyboard, add an

S-100 buss, and much much more.” Users shared these discoveries in the pages of newsletters and at fan club meetings.76

However, developing a working version of the Add-On was the most prevalent topic of discussion among members of the community. The Add-On expansion unit and the possibility of converting the system into a full-fledged computer had been key selling points for numerous Bally consumers. However, as delays mounted between Bally and

Astrovision/Astrocade, some impatient BUGs explored grassroots alternatives. Users submitted techniques to attach third-party hardware to the system, such as full-sized keyboards, cassette decks, and homemade memory expansion units.77 In the July 1979

76 Arcadian 2, No. 5 (March 24, 1980): 37; Arcadian 2, No. 7 (May 19, 1980): 65; “Sales Pitch,” Cursor 1, No. 3 (March 1980): 2; “Motherboard Modifications,” Arcadian 3, No. 7 (May 8, 1981): 72-3; Dan Koppen, “Krazy Koppen’s Heat Sink,” Arcadian 3, No. 8 (June 8, 1981): 85; Steve Walters, "I-O Switch for New Bally BASIC Cartridge," Arcadian 4, No. 2 (December 7, 1981): 16.

77 Keyboards were a common attachment among Bally users. One user devised an inventive means of attaching a keyboard through the system’s cassette interface. Arcadian 2, No. 8 (June 23, 1980): 69. Others connected additions, such as keyboards and modems, via homebrew expansion units, such as the Blue RAM Arcadian 2, No. 10 (September 17, 1980): 97. In the December 1983 issue of Arcadian, Fabris commented on the difficulty of successfully integrating a third-party keyboard for the system: “Slap on a keyboard? Well, it isn’t easy. A number of schemes have cropped up over the years to add a keyboard to the Arcade unit to supplant the keypad. Each one seems to have problems, as noone [sic] has yet published a foolproof method” “Slap on a keyboard??” Arcadian 6, No. 2 (December 22, 1983): 11.

267 issue of Arcadian, Fabris encouraged readers to seek their own versions of the Add-On and to share any discoveries with the rest of the user community:

Needless to say the whole situation is disappointing and frustrating. Fortunately, we have some people working on ways to “make our own,” and we can see a little glimmer of light…. Subscribers who are working on a keyboard, memory addition, or any other “goodie” are urged to write me so that I can build up a team to get the needed hardware built and available for us all.78 In the ensuing months, several users collaborated on a memory expansion unit dubbed

"Project One" as a potential stopgap measure while users awaited an official Add-On release. In the November 1980 issue of Arcadian, George Moses of the Michigan BUGs reported fellow user Steve Wilson "brought his own 4K memory addition he built from trashbin computer parts" to a recent meeting, gleefully adding, "It works!"79

Two commercial memory expansion projects emerged over the next several years.

The first was the Blue RAM, the end-result of "Project One," which released in June

1980. (Fig. 4.5) Developed by several Arcadian contributors and distributed by Perkins

Engineering, a small technical firm run by Michigan BUGs member John Perkins of

Boyne City, MI, the Blue RAM attached to the Arcade via the rear 50-pin connector port and expanded the system’s usable RAM to 4K; a subsequent version further expanded the memory to 16K. While it had no keyboard or cassette attachment, the Blue RAM came with a pair of expansion ports to allow users to add their own hardware. It also came with

78 Arcadian 1, No. 8 (July 20, 1979): 55.

79 Arcadian 3, No. 1 (November 6, 1980): 2.

268 a cartridge containing an expanded version of BASIC (Extended BASIC).80 Users could purchase the Blue RAM via mail order through Arcadian either as a kit for users to assemble themselves for $130 or as a preassembled unit for $170. In 1981, Alternative

Engineering of Gardiner, ME, released the VIPER System 1. A substantially larger unit than the Arcade, the VIPER was housed in a black aluminum cabinet with a walnut finish similar to the Arcade itself. As with the Blue RAM, the VIPER connected via the rear connection port in the Arcade; however, it was large enough for the system to rest atop the expansion unit. More expensive than the Blue RAM at $225, the VIPER expanded the

Bally’s RAM to 16K and ROM to 24K and came with its own version of Extended

BASIC. Alternative Engineering also sold a keyboard; however, the connection to the

VIPER also allowed compatibility with other commercial keyboards. As with the Blue

RAM, the VIPER was available via mail order through Arcadian.81 (Fig. 4.6)

All this took place within a community dominated by men. Women played a complicated role in the Bally community. There are few instances of female contributors to the various Astrocade newsletters, but it appears that most women experienced Bally homebrewing through their husbands. Men’s leisure activities during the postwar decades sometimes garnered tension with spouses. As several scholars of male hobbies have observed, activities such as amateur home and auto repair, model railroads, and HAM radio demanded dedicated spaces within the home. They took up significant physical

80 “It’s Arrived—A Star is Born,” Arcadian 2, No. 8 (June 23, 1980): 68.

81 “VIPER (Video Image Processing Equipment Rack) System,” Arcadian 3, No. 6 (April 15, 1981): 69; “Viper,” Arcadian 3, No. 8 (June 8, 1981): 89.

269

Figure 4.5: Advertisement for the Blue Ram expansion unit, developed by Perkins Engineering. Image Source: Arcadian 4, No. 5 (March 5, 1982): 47.

270

Figure 4.6: The VIPER System 1, developed by Alternative Engineering. Shown here attached to the Astrocade. Image Source: Arcadian 4, No. 4 (January 12, 1982): 43.

271 space, required potentially obtrusive and expensive equipment, and generated excessive noise or fumes, all of which could be disruptive to other members of the family. This led to the creation of spaces intended only for men within the home: toolsheds, garages, basements, “radio shacks,” and other spaces became the precursors to the modern “man cave.”82

However, computers and video game systems of the late seventies and eighties complicate the notion of dedicated masculine hobby spaces. Home computers of the early seventies such as the Altair 8800 and targeted technically-inclined consumers interested in assembling and tinkering with computer systems. By contrast, computer companies marketed their products toward a broader, non-technical audience beginning in the latter part of the decade. This caused a gradual reorientation of the computer’s place within the household from a hobby done in the basement or workshop to a household appliance or entertainment system accessible to all members of the family. A

1977 print advertisement for Apple II represented this transition. It depicted a man sitting at the kitchen table with the Apple II, managing finances while his wife intently observes while cutting tomatoes.83 (Fig. 4.7) In placing the Apple II in the kitchen, this ad symbolically brought the computer out of the basement and moved it into space

82 Gelber, “Do-It-Yourself,” 73, 77; Haring, “The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio,” 751-760; Maines, “’Stings and Bangs,’” 33-51.

83 Apple Computer Inc., “Introducing Apple II: The Home Computer That’s Ready to Work, Play, and Grow with You,” The Mac Mothership Apple Advertising and Brochure Gallery, accessed September 10, 2017, http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds2/1977IntroAppleII2.jpg.

272

Figure 4.7: A 1977 Apple II advertisement depicting the computer in a suburban kitchen. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, accessed May 26, 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_II_advertisement_Dec_1977_page_1.jp g.

273 accessible to the entire family, spaces generally controlled by women. Chapter One argued that the marketing of game systems during the seventies and early eighties situated game systems in living room spaces, accessible to all members of the family.

Moreover, game systems and many commercial computers attached to the television set.

The placement of computer and game systems within suburban living spaces created opportunities for tension. In this sense, Bally homebrewers imposed their leisure on the household, competing for game time with other members of the family who either wanted to make use of the television set or play games on the Astrocade themselves.

Moreover, technical-oriented hobbies, computer and video game hacking included, complicated notions of suburban masculine identity even as they reinforced them. These hobbies asserted stereotypically masculine identities of skill, artisanship, and technical mastery; however, participation in hobbies also involved shirking other elements stereotypically associated with masculinity. In her study of HAM radio operators, Kristen Haring observed while amateur radio communities promoted fraternity and technological prowess, they did so at the expense of men’s roles as husbands and fathers. Time spent tinkering with machinery was time away from wives and children, and Haring noted accounts of women competing with radio receiver sets for their husbands’ attention. “According to midcentury middle-class standards,” Haring wrote,

“women were the proper recipients of men’s attention within the home. A masculinity

274 based on technology offended these sensibilities by replacing women with men and machines in a devotional relationship that carried sexual overtones.”84

A similar marital tension played out in the newsletters of the Astrocade community. Pat Brady, a contributing editor to Cursor, described the spouses of male

Bally enthusiasts as members of what she called “The Forgotten Half,” a name she used as the title for a regular column on women in the BUG community. Those women who contributed articles frequently described the system as a competitor for their husbands’ attention, some going so far as to humorously compare their husbands' hobby to an affair.

As one contributor wrote in the January/February issue of Cursor:

Lately I have noticed some strange things happening. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and [my husband is] gone! In searching for him, I hear the quiet sound of the computer, but something is different about it now! When I walk into the room, he shuts it off, rewinds the tape, and seems very embarrassed! The following night when I noticed he was gone again, I approached the room where the computer is located, and could have sworn [I heard] heavy breathing, rhythmatic [sic] sounds and quiet beeping. I was too afraid to look!! I know this may sound silly, but I think my husband is becoming involved with the computer. What should I do???85 Brady encouraged fellow Bally widows to share their stories to her column adding, “If you write me, you don’t have to worry about his reading my mail, he’s too busy with you-know-what to ever check the mail.”86 “You know, if we’re not careful,” Peggy

84 Haring, “The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio,” 745.

85 Pat Brady, “The Forgotten Half,” Cursor 2, No. 5 (January/February 1981): 88-89.

86 Pat Brady, “The Forgotten Half,” Cursor 3, No. 4 (November/December 1980): 78.

275

Gladden, Astro-bugs club secretary and wife of co-founder Don Gladden, warned in the

July/August issue of BASIC Express, “we’re gonna become a slowly forgotten tribe. We’ll be allowing our husbands to be happily married to those inquisitive little machines that turn our TV room into instant arcades!”87

However, Gladden and other women offered a potential solution for members of the “Forgotten Half”: become Bally hobbyists themselves. In her semi-regular column on women in the Bally community, Gladden encouraged female readers, however few of them there were, to take the opportunity to learn programming along with their partners.

“Dear Women,” she wrote in the July/August 1981 issue of BASIC Express:

Do you feel as though your “BASIC” everyday homelife is being “ERASED” “” by “BYTE”?? Is everything getting sort-of “SUB-ROUTINE”? Has your “MEMORY” got a “CHIP” gone? Ah-ha!! Then it’s “CLEAR” that you are the wife of a Bally lover. However, that’s okay. Our men only think they can “INPUT” better!88 As Haring observed, a similar practice took place in HAM radio communities, with women forming their own clubs and auxiliary groups.89 Moreover, this narrative of women coming around to video gaming was a common trope in video game advertising in the early 1980s. As mentioned in Chapter Two, campaigns such as Atari’s “Dear Atari

Anonymous” depicted women reluctant or concerned about their family playing video

87 Peggy Gladden, “The Distaff Side,” BASIC Express, Vol. 3, No. 3 July/August 1981): 31.

88 Peggy Gladden, “The Distaff Side,” BASIC Express 3, No. 3 (July/August 1981): 31.

89 Haring, “The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio,” 749-751.

276 games only to eventually become players themselves.90 In one article in the July 1982 issue of the Michigan Astro-bugs Newsletter, Gladden described spousal participation in the Bally community as a welcome alternative to other potentially seedier pastimes in which men could take part, commenting, “I’ve…learned, that if my only competition in this world is a machine…well, I’ve got it made!”91

Members of the Bally Astrocade community cultivated an active relationship with the companies that produced the system. Arcadian editor Bob Fabris and other users frequently contacted Bally representatives directly to ascertain the status of the Add-On.

In 1978 and 1979 Bally invited Cursor and Arcadian contributors to attend the Consumer

Electronics Show, and attendees shared their experiences with the rest of the community through newsletter articles reporting from the convention. After obtaining the rights to the Bally system, Astrocade utilized the user community as a low-cost extension of its marketing arm. On October 26, 1980, Ken Charles and Rick Claghorn, Astrovision’s software manager and computer specialist, respectively, attended a meeting of the

Michigan BUGs at Tri-County Electronics in Fenton, MI. Charles and Claghorn fielded questions regarding Astrovision’s acquisition of the Bally Home Computer and the company’s future plans for the product. Afterwards, members of the user group demonstrated their homebrew software as well as the Blue RAM and played advance

90 See also: Han Schirmer, “Confessions of an Odyssey2 Addict,” Odyssey2 Adventure 1, No. 1 (Winter 1982): 9.

91 Peggy Gladden, “Women…Do We Belong Here?” Michigan Astro Bugs Newsletter (July 1982): 3.

277 copies of two new games developed by Astrovision: Grand Prix and Demolition Derby.92

Beginning in April 1981, Arcadian hosted a monthly contest that awarded a $100 prize, paid by Astrocade, to the user who submitted the best program of that month.93 Further legitimizing the user community’s influence, Astrovision packaged a copy of Astro-

BASIC, an updated version of Bally BASIC developed by Jamie Fenton, with every new system and included information on Arcadian among the system’s packaging. Members of the Arcadian and Cursor communities also assisted Astrovision at the company's CES booth for several years, where they provided hardware and software demonstrations and exhibited both materials developed by Astrocade and the homebrew community.94

Following the manufacturing agreement between Astrocade and Nitron, Astrocade invited Fabris and Michigan BUGs members Brett Bilbray and George Moses to tour

Nitron's Cupertino, CA, facilities, and the trio reported their findings in the April 1981 issue of Arcadian.95 Fabris and other contributors encouraged users to act as an extension of Astrovision/Astrocade's marketing and distribute information about the system to local

92 Arcadian 3, No. 1 (November 6, 1980): 2-3.

93 Astrocade never followed through on financing the contest and Fabris and other Arcadian contributors ultimately provided the prize money themselves.

94 Arcadian 4, No. 4 (January 22, 1982): 33. As Fabris observed in the June 1982 issue of Arcadian, "Playing Video Games is tiring. Yes, when you do it for hours at atime [sic], standing up. There were about 12 of us there manning the 9 machines they had set up in towers, each with a different game. We were showing games to dealers and retailers as the various distributors made their sales pitches," "Playing Video Games is Tiring," Arcadian 4, No. 8 (June 11, 1982): 75.

95 Arcadian 3, No. 6 (April 15, 1981): 61; "Nitron Visit," Arcadian 4, No. 12 (October 7, 1982): 116.

278 electronics retailers in an effort to boost the exposure and distribution of both the system and user-generated material.96

The company also utilized the user community for technical support and quality control. In 1981, Astrovision sent advance copies of Astrovision BASIC to homebrew community members George Moses and Tom Wood who quickly discovered a problematic glitch that caused the cartridge to randomly reset under certain conditions.

Moses also drafted the instruction manual for Astrovision BASIC.97 John Perkins of

Perkins Engineering, developer of the Blue RAM expansion unit, acted as a technical consultant for Astrocade during the development on the ZGRASS Add-On unit.98 The company also worked directly with VIPER producer Alternative Engineering on the expansion module.

Members of the BUG community expressed a sense of personal investment in the success and advancement of the system, and they saw a direct correlation between their consumption of the Arcade/Astrocade and its overall financial success. Following

Astrovision's acquisition of the rights to the Home Computer System, an excited George

Moses marveled at the potential for collaboration between Astrovision and the user community, writing in the November 1980 issue of Arcadian, “Hope springs eternal in

96 "Incentive Scheme," Arcadian 4, No. 10 (August 6, 1982): 95. 97 Arcadian 3, No. 8 (June 8, 1981): 81; "Personnel Changes," Arcadian 3, No. 9 (July 9, 1981): 91.

98 “Personnel Changes,” Arcadian 3, No. 9 (July 9, 1981): 91; Arcadian 4, No. 9 (July 6, 1982): 85.

279 the heart of man, and if there is new life for the Bally Arcade there are many of us who would love to help with suggestions, programs, and criticism to make it better.”99

Amateur critic Dave Carson, who wrote software reviews for Arcadian, warned those who would send him products to review to be mindful of their quality, advising, “I will not write about products I cannot recommend. Our goal is to promote and advance the

BALLY-ASTROCADE system, not to destroy it or anyone connected.”100 Fred Cornett issued a similar warning to contributors to Cursor: “We do not print advertisements for what we consider to be inadequate overpriced junk."101

During lapses in corporate ownership, members of the user community assumed production roles. As Bally sought to sell the rights to the Home Library Computer, first- party hardware and software production ceased. A similar lapse occurred as Astrocade and Nitron shifted in and out of bankruptcy. With Astrocade no longer releasing games, owners had to look toward third-party companies or create software themselves.

Immediately following the Astrovision sale, Fred Cornett’s The Cursor Group temporarily oversaw product orders and acted as a point of contact for potential local dealers for Bally products while Astrovision established its distribution network.102 While

Astrocade was in bankruptcy, rumors circulated that the reorganized company would

99 Arcadian 3, No. 1 (November 6, 1980): 2. 100 Emphasis added. Dave Carson, “Extended Memory Products Review,” Arcadian 5, No. 12 (October 24, 1983): 179.

101 Fred Cornett, “What’s New?” Cursor 1, No. 6 (July 1980): 41.

102 “Where Can Bally Products Be Purchased?” Cursor 2, No. 4 (November/December 1980): 74.

280 shift to a direct selling model in the form of home parties and utilize members of the user community as sales representatives, a system popularized by the “Tupperware Party.”

According to Fabris in the July 1983 issue of Arcadian, “We know that the machine virtually ‘sells itself’ if it can be actively demonstrated, so this may be a good way to make it valuable.”103 Local electronics stores, some owned by BUGs, stocked Astrocade products and acted as local suppliers and boosters of hardware and software. Some members took out advertising space in game-related magazines, such as Electronic

Games and Video Games, to raise awareness of the system.

Their efforts to keep the system alive did not go unnoticed in the larger video game community. A common theme among articles related to the Astrocade in specialty video game magazines was the community acting as the driving force behind the continued relevance of the system despite corporate mismanagement and technical setbacks. Journalist Willy Richardson of Electronic Games observed in a May 1982 article:

The founders of the early game clubs were great believers in the adage "If you want something done right, ." The first users group formed around the Bally Professional Arcade. After Bally decided to dump the home programmable supersystem they'd developed, owners found themselves adrift. Except for the few existing game cartridges, there was no software for the BPA and little promise of any developing down the line. So fans took matters into their own hands, using the Bally BASIC cartridge (which has an input slot that allows programs to be recorded onto audio cassette tape).104

103 “Yes, We Are in the Summer Doldrums,” Arcadian 5, No. 9 (July 22, 1983): 135; Don Gladden, “Astro-Chatter,” Michigan Astro Bugs Newsletter (August 1983): 4.

104 Willy Richardson, "Clubs for Gamers," Electronic Games (May 1982): 64.

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Video Games writer Ted Salamone observed in April 1984, “Showing an unmatched resiliency in the marketplace, independent firms have continued to produce BASIC and machine code games, as well as a keyboard for the Astrocade system.” However, he added, “Unfortunately, this fine equipment will never overcome its underground status.”105

Salamone was right. Despite the dedication of its users, the system never achieved more than a niche market. Inconsistent distribution, market instability, and a dearth of regular new software aside from the homebrew programs and independent third-party makers ultimately undermined the success of the Astrocade. Moreover, the constant delays and unfulfilled promises of the Add-On, the collapse of the American video game market, and the changing computer market of the 1980s ultimately shook the resolve of even the most die-hard Arcadian. Enthusiasm for the system diminished by the mid-

1980s as users moved on to other hardware or hobbyist pursuits. In an article in the

October 1984 issue of Arcadian, critic Mike Prosise observed with alarm a rapid decline in third-party software, even from mainstays in the fan community:

The number of games, both cartridge and tape, that have been released in the last six months, was zero...Granted the summer is generally slower. But there are some facts that can’t be ignored. Remember Wavemakers, the company that produces the best line of tape games? No new games for over a year. Wavemakers had been producing one new game about every two to three months. And then there’s the other “biggie,” L&M Software. Nothing from them either for a year, not since the Ms. Candyman cartridge…They, too, had been averaging about four to five new releases per year. Most recently was the announcement that Esoterica Ltd. would no longer be making the Blastdroids and Treasure Cove cartridges. Why? And whatever happened to Tiny Arcade, Edge Software, and the George

105 Ted Salamone, “The Trends and Transformations of Home Video ‘84,” Video Games 2, No. 7 (April 1984): 66-68.

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Moses Co.? All, at one time, were major producers of Astrocade games, and all of whom have not been heard from in well over two years.106 The remaining newsletters and fan club publications experienced a similar decline.

Between 1983 and 1984, the number of contributors to Arcadian dwindled as evidenced by the decline in both content and pages per issue. On October 31, 1984, Fabris announced that due to declining submissions, subscriptions, and renewals, the

September/October issue of Arcadian was to be the last. The newsletter returned for one more volume in June 1985, shifting from the previous monthly format to a quarterly, and four issues appeared over the next two years before Arcadian officially ceased publication on August 15, 1986. The Michigan Astro-bugs, citing lack of interest, held their final meeting on August 5, 1984. "Its [sic] kind of hard to keep a club going with no participation," Peggy Gladden solemnly wrote in the July 1984 issue of the club's newsletter, an issue that proved to be its last, "We can't keep going on a hope and prayer."107

Mike Prosise and others cited the general decline of the American video game industry as a likely culprit. However, it is also likely that the overall misfortunes of

Astrocade and the lack of delivery of an official Add-On component eventually took their toll on even the most dedicated members of the Astrocade Underground. By 1984, many of the major players in the video game industry had folded, abandoned video games, or

106 Mike Prosise, “The Game Player Ponders the Future By Examining the Past…” Arcadian 6, No. 11/12 (October 31, 1984): 117, 119.

107 Peggy Gladden, "Goodbye!!!" Michigan Astro Bugs Newsletter (July 1984): 1; “Astro-News,” Arcadian 7, No. 1 (June 1, 1985): 2.

283 made failed attempts to transition to home computers. Moreover, the home computer market was much more diverse in the mid-eighties than it had been in 1978 when the

Bally Professional Arcade first released. By 1984, BUGs tired of waiting for the release of the Add-On no longer had to wait. There was a plethora of units that were technically comparable or superior to the Astrocade, many of which were significantly cheaper.

Compare the Astrocade to the Commodore-64. Released in 1982, the C-64 had significantly more features than the aging Astrocade, including 64K RAM, 20K ROM, and a full-sized keyboard out of the box, for a lower price than the system and the proposed cost of the Add-On. Moreover, Commodore’s price war drove down the price of comparable home computer systems, and some sold for under $100 by the time

Astrocade emerged from bankruptcy. The frantic battle over prices nearly bankrupted several more established computer firms such as Atari and Texas Instruments; it left little chance for a less stable company such as Astrocade to succeed. One disillusioned user placed an ad in the October 1984 issue of Arcadian, offering to sell his entire collection of Arcade/Astrocade materials, including two complete systems, sixteen cassette tapes, thirty cartridges, and his full sets of back issues of Arcadian and Cursor. The title of his listing was a likely summation of many fellow users’ frustrations: “I gave up on the Add-

Under!!”108

108 “Notice: I Gave Up On the Add-Under!!” Arcadian 6, No. 11/12 (October 31, 1984): 128. “Bally Alley: The Newsletter for Astrocade Users,” accessed November 4, 2017, http://www.ballyalley.com/; “Bally Alley – Astrocade Projects,” Yahoo Groups, accessed November 4, 2017, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ballyalley/info. See also Trionfo’s , “The Bally Astrocast,” accessed November 4, 2017, https://ballyalleyastrocast.libsyn.com/.

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As a postscript, despite the system’s limitations and its unceremonious commercial end in the mid-1980s, there remain some users dedicated to hardware and software manipulation on the system. In the early 2000s, Adam Trionfo, a computer collector from Albuquerque, NM, purchased a lot of Bally Astrocade material, including games, systems, promotional material, and newsletters, that had originally belonged to

Fabris. Trionfo digitized many of these materials, sharing them on his website: Bally

Alley. He also established a Yahoo user group of the same name to act as an organizing point for a new generation of Bally Astrocade enthusiasts (this came as part of a general resurgence in interest in “classic” video and computer systems of the 1980s and 1990s).

As of this writing, classic computer and video game hobbyists, including several former members of the original Astrocade Underground continue to develop games in the system’s versions of BASIC and machine language, sharing software on the internet and discussing programming techniques through the online user group.

Conclusion

While hackers, modders, and amateur programmers comprise a small percentage of general video game users, video game homebrewing, hardware and software modification, and other user practices that deviate from the “script” determined by the initial producers demonstrate the influence game players have had in constructing their own identity as game consumers. Game developers often describe the “experience” of playing games in terms of what has been prepackaged and distributed to consumers.

However, homebrew user communities demonstrate the agency users exert in establishing their terms of use; the way they “play” with video games can deviate

285 dramatically from the rules of the game set by the initial producers. The Astrocade user community in some respects did not fit the emerging “gamer” model, rather acting as a bridge between the emerging video game and computer user bases. They represented an early example of both the blurring between video games and computers as well as the distinction of game producer and user. However, in other respects, the predominantly male users that comprised the Astrocade Underground also reinforced the bias toward video games as a male pastime. The final chapter will explore the consequences of the developing game user identity.

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Chapter 5:

“WAKE UP, MOM AND DAD, THIS ISN’T PAC-MAN ANYMORE:” THE MORAL PANIC OVER VIDEO GAMES, 1993-1994 On December 9, 1993, representatives of Sega and Nintendo, America’s two leading console manufacturers, met before members of Congress to discuss the matter of violent content in video games. From a public relations standpoint, the hearing, the first of three, was a less than positive encounter. Led by Senator Joseph Lieberman of

Connecticut, lawmakers and a panel of educators, media watchdogs, and child psychologists denounced video games as promoting violence. “Instead of enriching a child’s mind,” Lieberman declared at the outset, “these games teach a child to enjoy inflicting torture.”1 In 1994, facing the possibility of federal oversight, various game manufacturers formed the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), the first lobbying and trade organization devoted exclusively to video games in the United States, and created the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), an industry-wide ratings system that assigned a letter-based rating based on the age appropriateness of a game’s content.

1 Rating Video Games: A Parent’s Guide to Games: Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Regulation and Government Information of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, 103rd Congress, 1st sess., December 9, 1993, March 4, and July 29, 1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), 2. Hereafter referred to as “VG Hearings.”

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Scholarly analysis of the events leading to the creation of IDSA and ESRB is limited. Dominic Arensault has offered one of the more detailed recent examinations of the hearings, arguing in his history of the Super Nintendo they contributed to the end of

Nintendo’s dominance over the American home video game market. He also argues they represented a fundamental shift in the demographics of video games toward an older audience.2 Popular historians generally characterize the hearings as an overreaction by lawmakers to the perceived impact of video games, another episode in a series of panics by out-of-touch adults directed against what kids enjoy, as in the case of earlier panics over rock music and comic books. “These hearings,” Richard Stanton wrote in his Brief

History of Video Games, “were based on fundamental misunderstandings of what games were and what they allowed, which means that with hindsight it’s hard to see them as anything but slightly comical.”3 Journalist Tristan Donovan briefly addressed the relationship between the hearings and larger concerns in the United States over violence, writing in his ’s 2010 history of the industry, “The early 1990s were a time when fears about violence in society were particularly high on the US political agenda. Congress was debating whether to restrict violent TV programming and a new gun control law, the

Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, was about to be signed into law by President

Bill Clinton.”4

2 Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware, 158-160.

3 Richard Stanton, A Brief History of Video Games: From Atari to (London: Robinson, 2015), 175.

4 Donovan, Replay, 229.

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This chapter expands on the historical foundation laid by Donovan to explore the contested relationship between video games and mainstream American society in the early 1990s. The hearings’ timing, the rhetoric of critics of the medium, and the industry’s subsequent response reveal complex negotiations over video game user identity and the role of media in America. The 1993-1994 video game violence hearings can best be understood as the convergence of three overarching trends: the video game industry’s increased focus on adolescent and teenage boys as the primary user base; novel attempts to integrate video game elements, namely user interactivity, into more established forms of media, such as television and film, and, conversely, the video game industry’s response to those attempts; and growing anxieties over a perceived increase in violent crime. The hearings are best understood as a culmination of the changing discourse over the role of video games in the home and the understanding of video game user identity that began with the medium’s first appearance in the 1970s. What was once conceptualized as a welcome addition to suburban life, compatible with middle-class family values, was now a dangerous interloper that threatened the moral order of the home and the emotional and psychological wellbeing of its inhabitants.

To interpret the story behind the hearings, this chapter draws upon the concept of

“moral panic.” First introduced by sociologist Stanley Cohen, a moral panic is defined as a sudden and intense campaign or movement directed at a perceived threat to moral order. According to Cohen, these panics are waged by “moral entrepreneurs”— lawmakers, activist groups, educators, spiritual leaders, or the mass media—who direct their ire against a specific “folk devil.” Past folk devils have included the novel, comic

289 books, rock and roll music, and tabletop roleplaying games such as Dungeons and

Dragons. This “folk devil” acts as a proxy for larger societal concerns: increased violence, the bastardization of culture, destruction of childhood innocence, the decline of

“family values,” and the like. Moral panics are characterized by a sudden surge of calls by moral entrepreneurs for action to solve the alleged crisis, often through governmental or administrative means such as legislation, regulation, or censorship. According to sociologists Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda:

During the moral panic, the behavior of some of the members of society is thought to be so problematic to others, the evil they do, or are thought to do, is felt to be so wounding to the substance and fabric of the body social, that serious steps must be taken to control the behavior, punish the perpetrators, and repair the damage. The threat this evil presumably poses is felt to represent a crisis for that society: something must be done now; if steps are not taken immediately, or soon, we will suffer even graver consequences. The sentiment generated or stirred up by this threat can be referred to as a kind of fever; it can be characterized by heightened emotion, fear, dread, anxiety, hostility and a strong feeling of righteousness.5 Since the 1950s, elements of youth popular culture are common targets of moral activism.6 However, scholars of moral panics observe that the actual threat posed by the

5 Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, “Moral Panics: An Introduction,” in Chas Chritcher, ed., Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the Media (Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2006), 50. See also: Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002); John Springhall, Youth, Popular Culture, and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta Rap, 1830-1996 (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1998).

6 See: Steven Starker, Evil Influences: Crusades Against the Mass Media (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989); Patrick Brantlinger, The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Bart Beaty, Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005); Paul Lopes, Demanding Respect: The Evolution of the American Comic Book (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2008), 29-59; Chris Danielson, “Censorship Controversies in the Constitution State: A Case

290 alleged folk devil is often overstated or exaggerated; sometimes the threat is nonexistent.

As such, moral panics often reveal more about the anxieties of moral entrepreneurs than they do about any actual societal decline. In the case of video games, the moral panic was a culmination of social anxieties involving youth, delinquency, crime, and new interactive forms of media, most prominently video games.

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section is a brief history of from the mid-1970s leading up to the Congressional hearings, addressing the subjects of activist concerns against video games and the ways the industry responded to backlash. The next section places video games in the context of two novel media trends that gained popular interest in the late 1980s and early 1990s, virtual reality and , as well as a sudden panic between 1993 and 1994 over a perceived rise in violent crime. These forces came to a head on December 9, 1993, when lawmakers met with educators, child psychologists, and representatives of the game industry to discuss video games’ alleged effects on children. The third section is a detailed account of this hearing and addresses the arguments directed against video games and their relationship to larger anxieties over the potential social ramifications of novel interactive media and their alleged relationship to real world violence. The final section examines the legacy of the hearings, their relationship to earlier and later video game related moral panics and the role of the newly-minted industry rating system, the

Entertainment Software Ratings Board, in the perception of video game user identity.

Study of Moral Panic Over Dungeons and Dragons,” unpublished conference presentation, 2011, accessed November 10, 2017.

291

A brief note on periodization is in order. The bulk of the analysis will focus on the first Congressional hearing, held on December 9, 1993. It was at this hearing that moral activists aired their grievances against the video game industry and enumerated the ways they felt the modern video game industry threatened the social order. The subsequent hearings, held on March 4 and July 29, 1994, were a response to the issues raised at the first hearing and represented a shift from the fiery rhetoric of the first hearing to the development and practical implementation of the ratings system. During the March hearing, the industry introduced the IDSA and updated lawmakers on the progress for the ratings system. At the July hearing, industry representatives unveiled the ESRB, explaining the mechanisms by which games would be rated and how the ratings system would be enforced. The creation of the ESRB placated members of Congress and became the standard by which video game content is measured to this day.

“Let’s Face it—We’re Getting it from All Sides”: Video Games and Controversy, 1976-1993 The brouhaha over violent video games that culminated in Congressional hearings in 1993 and 1994 was far from the industry’s first brush with controversy. Concerns about the impact of games on the public appeared as early as the mid-1970s. The earliest panic to attract public media attention involved Death Race, a coin-operated racing game released by Exidy in 1976. An unlicensed adaptation of the 1975 cult film Death Race

2000, where racers drove through a hazard-ridden post-apocalyptic course that included running over pedestrians, Exidy's version of Death Race had players drive a dragster over humanoid-shaped “gremlins,” also known in Exidy's marketing as "monsters," to earn points. While not necessarily more violent than other games of its time given its limited

292 graphical capabilities, Death Race attracted negative media attention, including a one- hour special on the television news program 60 Minutes. The backlash likely contributed to increased public exposure and increased revenue for Exidy.7

During the fall of 1982, Custer’s Revenge, a game created by American Multiple

Industries for the Atari Video Computer System, attracted an intense backlash from activist groups, lawmakers, and Atari itself. Released in November 1982 and distributed as part of AMI’s “/Swedish Erotica” line of games, Custer’s Revenge was an erotic-themed game where players navigated a naked, erect cowboy across an - strewn desert to rape a bound Native American woman. Advanced reports on the game’s controversial content reached the press a month prior to the game’s release, and Custer’s

Revenge aroused ire from activists and the press who denounced the game for promoting racism against Native Americans and encouraging sexual violence.8 On October 15,

7 For a detailed examination of the moral panic surrounding Death Race, see Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 67-90.

8 The timing of the backlash over Custer’s Revenge is worth noting, as media attention on the game appeared around a month before the game’s release, making it possible that representatives from AMI deliberately leaked information on the game to the press in the hopes of attracting some free publicity. However, the subsequent backlash to Custer’s Revenge, and AMI’s response to it, suggest that either this was not the case or they underestimated the game’s negative response. For example, Atari sued AMI to block the game’s release, accusing AMI of attempting to misrepresent their game as an official Atari title. Moreover, AMI responded to calls to ban the game with litigation. In December 1982, AMI sued Suffolk County Councilman Philip Nolan, who introduced the bill to limit the sale of Custer’s Revenge in the Long Island county, for $10 million and sought and additional $1 million in damages from the County. The company also threatened similar legal action against Los Angeles County. Multiple protracted lawsuits, initiated by and against AMI, would likely undermine any profits Custer’s Revenge could potentially earn.

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1982, the local branch of the National Organization for Women (NOW) along with

Native American rights activists, pornography opponents, and descendants of General

George A. Custer staged a protest in front of the New York Hilton where AMI president

Stuart Keston was presenting the game at a trade convention.9 In November 1982, the

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to draft an ordinance banning the game and recommended the State of California impose a similar ban. Lawmakers in Suffolk

County, NY, filed a measure to take legal action against any games “which constitute an immediate danger to the health and safety” of its citizens, citing Custer’s Revenge as the impetus. A representative of the activist group Stop Custer’s Revenge Action Movement

(SCRAM) appeared on the February 18, 1983, episode of the national talk show

Donahue. Atari announced plans to sue AMI, on the grounds that Custer’s Revenge created negative brand associations with Atari’s products.10 The volume of negative press coupled with threats of a protracted legal battle with Atari led AMI to sell the rights to the game, and new owner GameSource, Inc., discontinued Custer’s Revenge in January

1983.11

9 Lee Margulies, “Firm Draws Flak Over X-Rated Video Games,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1982; Clyde Haberman and Laurie Johnston, “New York Day By Day,” New York Times, October 15, 1982.

10 “Atari Wants to Zap X Rated Video Games,” Chicago Tribune, October 17, 1982; “The State: Firm Fights to Stop X-Rated Video Games,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1982.

11 Lee Margulies, “Custer’s Revenge is Discontinued,” Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1983. Interestingly, GameSource did not discontinue AMI’s other two pornographic games: Beat ‘Em and Eat ‘Em and Bachelor Party.

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Despite receiving a high level of press attention, the controversies surrounding the content of Death Race and Custer’s Revenge were exceptional at the time. Public concern directed against video games during the 1980s focused mostly on the physiological effects of prolonged gameplay and the presence of teenagers in arcade spaces.12 In many respects, it was not the video games per se that drew activist concerns; rather, the spaces that games occupied drew their attention. As with earlier public spaces haunted by teens such as boardwalks and shopping malls, video arcades aroused adult concerns about childhood delinquency, truancy, crime, and a host of other potential vices in spaces without adult supervision. As a result, municipal or county governments placed restrictions on youth access to arcades. Zoning ordinances banned arcades within a certain distance from schools and limited the number of arcade cabinets that could operate at a given location. Local laws also banned minors from arcades during school hours, imposed curfews, required adult supervision, or limited the number of minors who could occupy the space at a given time. Because past coin-operated amusements, such as pinball and slot machines, had aroused associations with gambling and organized crime, local arcade laws were often expressions of these fears. For example, a Mesquite, TX, licensing ordinance required all new establishments housing coin-operated games to be screened by the city’s Chief of Police, who determined whether the proprietor harbored any “connections with criminal elements.” In 1981, the Mesquite Chief of Police denied a license to the local branch of Aladdin’s Castle, a chain of arcades owned by Bally, on the grounds the owner lacked “good character,” and the ensuing legal battle eventually

12 See also: Newman, Atari Age, 153-182; Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 91-114.

295 reached the U.S. Supreme Court.13 “Video games are under attack,” an exasperated Steve

Bloom, editor of Video Games, commented in a March 1983 editorial, “Either it’s angry community groups attempting to banish arcades, doctors with questionable resumés speculating on the games’ ill effects or Wall Street analysts predicting their usual Easter basket of gloom and doom. Let’s face it—we’re getting it from all sides.”14

Arcade owners and representatives of the coin-operated industry took various measures to counteract the negative stigma and paint arcade gaming in a more positive light. In 1982 Atari produced, “Video Games: A Public Perspective,” a short film designed to counter criticisms that games encouraged delinquency through testimonials from law enforcement officials, municipal leaders, and child psychologists who enumerated the social benefits of gameplay.15 Arcade owners rebranded their spaces as

“family fun centers.” These spaces promised fun for the whole family, offering food and wholesome entertainment in addition to games. Among the entrepreneurs to enter the family fun center business was Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. After Warner

Communications, Inc., bought out his share of Atari, Bushnell founded Pizza Time

Theater, a series of family-oriented restaurants. In addition to arcade games, Pizza Time

Theater served food and offered performances from a house band of anthropomorphic

13 “City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283 (1982), Justia, accessed November 3, 2018, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/455/283/.

14 Steve Bloom, “Hyperspace,” Video Games 1, No. 6 (March 1983): 6.

15 Atari, Inc. “Video Games: A Public Perspective,” Atari Mania, accessed November 22, 2013, http://www.atarimania.com/list_videos_atari_publisher-country-type-_6-16-B- _A.html; Ray Tilley, “Intruder Alert!” Video Games 1, No. 6 (March 1983): 26-30.

296 animatronic animals led by Chuck E. Cheese, the company mascot. The game magazine

Electronic Games ran “Arcade America,” a monthly column spotlighting a different family fun center. Each article devoted attention to one establishment’s safety measures, such as an article on Westworld of Westwood Village, CA: “Kids under 16 are banned during school hours and unaccompanied minors must leave by 9:30 P.M. No beer, drinks, drugs or food are allowed on the premises, with low-key, but uniformed guards visible to enforce Westworld’s laws.”16 These measures sought to give coin-operated game spaces an aura of respectability, and they presented the industry as taking a proactive approach against delinquency. The family fun center represented an attempt to rebrand public video gaming, as with its home counterpart, as acceptable middle-class family leisure.17

Health care professionals, concerned parents, and reporters in the popular press speculated the potential negative effects that chasing high game scores had on teens’ physiological and psychological development. Ailments associated with video gameplay included diminished attention spans, weakened eye focus, compromised immune systems due to stress, and repetitive stress injuries.18 Timothy C. McCowan, a physician at the

College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas, wrote to the New England Journal of

Medicine in 1981 complaining of a pain in his wrist, which he attributed to extensive

Space Invaders play sessions on his Atari 2600. He dubbed his malady “Space Invaders’

16 David Lustig, “Welcome to Westworld!” Electronic Games 1, No. 5 (July 1982): 59.

17 For more on the industry’s attempt to achieve respectability, see: Kocurek 101-109.

18 For a summary of the various physical ailments attributed to video games, see Sherwin Smith, “What Price Arcades?” Softline 2 (November 1982): 29.

297 wrist” and speculated the continued popularity of video games would lead to similar gaming-related diagnoses: “In view of the booming video-game industry, the possibilities, unfortunately, appear endless: ‘Asteroids’ osteoarthritis, pinball palsy, phaser felon...”19

Addiction also became a common cause of concern with some popular accounts likening arcade players to drug addicts, squandering their lunch money and eventually turning to panhandling and crime to satisfy their need for quarters to fuel their arcade fix.20 Following a November 9, 1982, lecture at the Western Psychiatric Institute and

Clinic in Pittsburgh, PA, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop commented video gameplay caused “aberrations in childhood behavior” and caused children to become addicted “body and soul,” a phrase frequently repeated by later critics. His comments quickly drew criticism among academics, the popular press, and gaming enthusiasts, and he backed away from them, releasing a statement the following day that his observations

“represented my purely personal judgment and was not based on any accumulated scientific evidence, nor does it represent the official view of the Public Health Service.”21

19 Timothy C.McCowan, “Space-Invaders Wrist,” New England Journal of Medicine 304, No. 22 (May 28, 1981): 1368.

20 Newman, Atari Age, 157-166.

21 “Around the Nation; Surgeon General Sees Danger in Video Games,” New York Times, November 10, 1982; C.W. Miranker, “Defenders strike back after video games get zapped,” Daily News (Bowling Green, KY), Nov. 10, 1982; C. Everett Koop, “Statement by Dr. E. Koop, Surgeon General,” Nov. 10, 1982, The C. Everett Koop Papers, National Library of Medicine, accessed July 10, 2013, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/QQBBCF.pdf; Arnie Katz, “The Surgeon General

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Nevertheless, Koop’s observations reflected concerns that video games contributed to addiction.

With the renewed commercial popularity of games following the Crash between

1983 and 1984 came renewed concerns about the impact of video games on players, especially on the youth. Accounts of the popularity of Nintendo examined the hold the company achieved on children, a sentiment encapsulated in the subtitle of journalist

David Sheff’s 1993 book on Nintendo: “How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry,

Captured Your Dollars and Enslaved Your Children.”22 Marsha Kinder of the University of Southern California included video games in her 1991 analysis of youth-oriented consumption. In Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games, Kinder examined the ways video games, along with other media such as cartoons and movies directed at children, specifically young boys, instructed children to become current and future consumers. This connected to the ways Nintendo associated game fandom with consumption since owning all the games and systems, subscribing to the magazines, and calling into the various tip lines became part of what defined a "gamer" in the late

1980s.23

Says…” Electronic Games 1, No. 12 (February 1983): 6; Howard Mandel, “The Great Debate,” Video Games 1, No. 6 (March 1983): 21-24, 72.

22 David Sheff, Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars and Enslaved Your Children (New York: Random House, 1993).

23 See Chapter Two; Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

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Contemporary scholars also examined video game content, namely the representations of race, gender, and violence, and the implications of these messages on young, impressionable players. Among the scholars examining this theme was Eugene

Provenzo, a professor of education at the University of Miami. In his 1991 book Video

Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo, Provenzo conducted an informal survey of video game content, ultimately concluding that video games overwhelmingly promoted violence, sexism, and racism. However, despite his conclusions, his alarmist tone and various factual inaccuracies—he repeatedly referred to the "Activision" game system even though no such system exists—undermined his overarching message.24 "Provenzo is well meaning," a reviewer for the journal Contemporary Sociology wrote of Video Kids, "but his arguments are so devoid of subtlety and grounding as to make his volume read like an extended graduate student paper."25 Nevertheless, he became a notable player in activist concerns over game content.

In the years following the Crash, various companies attempted to stave off potential criticism of their media. Nintendo required all companies that produced games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy to abide by a

24 It is possible he confused Activision, the third-party game company founded in 1980, with either ColecoVision or Astrovision, the Columbus-based company that purchased the rights to the Home Library Computer/Professional Arcade/Computer System from Bally. Either would be a stretch for his project as Coleco ceased producing video games in 1984 and Astrovision/Astrocade had been defunct since 1985.

25 Eugene Provenzo, Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Gary Alan Fine, “Video Profs,” Contemporary Sociology 21, No. 6 (November 1992): 854.

300 series of content guidelines. Among the numerous restrictions were against depictions of drug use, overt political propaganda, or religious imagery.26 Nintendo also had specific restrictions on violent content. Of the ten specific prohibitions issued by

Nintendo to their developers and licensees, four addressed violence, with prohibitions against: "Random, gratuitous, and/or excessive violence…Graphic illustration of death...Domestic violence and/or abuse...[And] Excessive force in a sports game beyond what is inherent in actual contact sports."27

Nintendo’s guidelines created distinctions between “acceptable” and

“unacceptable” forms of violence. However, the line between the two was often blurred in practice. These broad characterizations left plenty of room for interpretation. For example, the opening scene of the "beat 'em up" adventure Double Dragon, a 1987 adaptation of the Technos/Taito arcade game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, depicted a group of thugs punching a woman in the stomach and carrying her away. This would appear to depict domestic violence and/or abuse, yet this scene remained in the home video version.28 The Nintendo adaptations of the gory martial arts

26 Interestingly, Nintendo appeared to make an exception for Konami's Castlevania franchise, as crosses are one of the more iconic weapons in these vampire-slaying adventure games.

27 Luke Plunkett, “Nintendo’s War on Blood, Nazis, Religion, and Puppy Dogs,” Kotaku February 16, 2011, accessed October 26, 2018, https://kotaku.com/5761611/nintendos- war-on-blood-nazis-religion-and-puppy-dogs; J.J. McCullough, “Nintendo’s Era of Censorship,” Tanooki Site, accessed October 26, 2018, http://www.tanookisite.com/nintendo-censorship/.

28 Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 82-83.

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Mortal Kombat further illustrated this blurred distinction between acceptable and unacceptable forms of violence. In the Super Nintendo and Game Boy versions, Nintendo removed the game’s blood and gory finishing moves, the former replaced with clear

“sweat” and the latter scaled back and replaced with slightly less violent versions; however, the game still retained its core as a fighting game, allowing players to execute

(albeit bloodless) punches, kicks, and uppercuts. This ongoing negotiation about appropriate levels of violence has a long history in games. In her analysis of Death Race,

Carly Kocurek observed the backlash against the controversial racing game was not necessarily that it depicted violence per se. but that its particular depiction of violence transgressed societal notions of “acceptable” violence. According to Kocurek, games based on warfare, contact sports such as football or hockey, or even “Wild West” gunfights did not receive moralist challenge because they depicted socially-accepted forms of violence. Death Race’s depiction of vehicular homicide, by contrast, was objectionable because it deviated from acceptable social norms. 29

While Nintendo dictated content restrictions, rival Sega developed an internal ratings system. Implemented by Sega in 1993, the (VRC) was an internal ratings board wherein all games that appeared on Sega systems received one of three ratings based on age appropriateness: GA (General Audiences), MA-13 (Mature

Audiences, Parental Discretion Advised), and MA-17 (Mature Audiences).30 Sega's

29 Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 82-83.

30 Some Sega Genesis developers self-regulated before the creation of the VRC. The earliest Genesis game to bear a parental advisory was TechnoCop (Razorsoft, 1990). The

302 ratings, unlike Nintendo's content guidelines, put no specific content restrictions on developers, aside from a loose collection of restrictions, such as bans on nudity and profanity. The 3DO Company, manufacturers of the CD-based 3DO console, implemented a similar letter-based rating system. Mortal Kombat for the Genesis was one of the earliest games to receive a rating under the VRC. Its MA-13 rating rather than

MA-17 made the game available to teenagers despite its content, which became a point of contention among moral activists. Unlike the Super Nintendo version, the Genesis adaptation retained the blood and fatalities of the arcade version. However, it hid them behind a secret code, which players could enter when they started the game.

The consensus among game companies of the time placed the onus upon parents to act as monitors of video game content for their children. In 1990, Nintendo licensee

Konami introduced a new company representative, “Konami Mom,” who spoke on responsible gameplay and parental involvement. Konami also offered parents advice on game purchasing decisions and usage in a free pamphlet.31 During the 1992 holiday season, Hudson Soft, a Nintendo licensee and maker of the Turbografx-16 system, introduced a brochure campaign titled "Ten Tips for Responsible Play." Disseminated through toy stores, "Ten Tips" offered advice to parents on how to make informed

game’s packaging bore the warning, “Attention: scenes depicted can be of a violent nature, not intended for those under 12 years of age” “Razorsoft Voluntarily Labels TechnoCop Game With a Warning,” GamePro No. 17 (December 1990): 180.

31 “Konami Mom to Tour,” Video Games & Computer Entertainment (May 1990): 20; Willard Abraham, “Our Children,” Sachse Sentinel (Sachse, TX) 15, Ed. 1, June 20, 1990.

303 purchases and how to filter game content to their children. According to a report from the

Seattle Times, "The brochure's advice centers on common-sense notions such as reviewing the content of the games children ask for and being firm in setting boundaries for when children can play them."32 These measures left the responsibility of monitoring digital content to parents, who may not have played the games themselves or known about “secret codes.”

Further, manufacturers were not consistent in their dissemination of information to parents. Even the most active parent could garner little information from examining a game's packaging aside from a brief description of the game's plot and some small screenshots. As discussed in Chapter Two, much of the marketing of video games in the late 1980s relied upon creating barriers between adults and the youth audience, a practice that continued into the 1990s. An illustrative example of the disconnect between parents and youth players comes from a 1994 commercial for the Sega Genesis and Game Gear adaptations of the Disney animated film The Lion King. The commercial opens with a boy and girl sitting in the back of a car with the boy telling his clueless father he wants a

Sega Genesis or Game Gear with a copy of The Lion King, entreating him, "Don't blow it, dad." The rest of the commercial follows the father as he wanders through a toy store reciting to himself, "Sega Genesis or Game Gear." However, as he goes deeper into the store the message gets increasingly muddled, the mantra slowly changing as he passes

32 Mike Langberg, "Video Game Industry May Be Hit By Revolt From Parents," Seattle Times, December 23, 1992, accessed June 10, 2018, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19921223&slug=1531681.

304 other products in a fashion reminiscent of the game "whisper down the lane." By the time he reaches a clerk, the message has morphed from "Sega Genesis or Game Gear" to

"Mega for reindeer?" The disconnect between this hapless father and his understanding of video games is apparent. By the end, he refers to the company as

"Segi." Companies charged parents to make informed purchases; however, their marketing did not make that easy.33

“You Don’t Just Play Pac-Man, You Are Pac-Man:” Interactive Media and the “Epidemic of Violence” As video games gained popularity in the 1980s, entrepreneurs in other media took notice and sought to capitalize on gaming elements. Historian of cable television Patrick

Parsons characterized the mid-1980s as the beginning of a concerted focus toward what he described as media convergence. According to Parsons, convergence represented an attempt to reshape the television set into an all-in-one media center capable of integrating interactive game elements, film, and rudimentary online services into one single device.34

This focus on creating an all-in-one electronic device was shaped by the presence of the

American video game industry and impacted its development. Video game companies experimented with cable-based online services, such as Mattel’s PlayCable and Sega’s

Sega Channel services through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Each offered the possibility of downloadable games available through cable networks. Meanwhile, the term

33 “The Lion King-Sega Genesis/Game Gear Commercial,” YouTube, accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X7S-Bj3QnA.

34 Patrick Parsons, Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008) 582.

305

“multimedia” entered the corporate and advertising lexicon as various entrepreneurs sought to bring disparate telecommunications, media, and entertainment elements into one package.

Two media fads to emerge during this convergence period were the popularization of interactive film and the rise of virtual reality (VR) technology.

Interactive film games, better known as full-motion video (FMV) games enjoyed a sudden surge in popularity from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. FMV games involved players interacting with video clips either through scripted scenes with live actors or digital game assets interspersed with live-action or animated scenes (for example, a digitized plane flying over clips of real landscapes). These offered a significant graphical upgrade over existing games and gave the illusion of an interactive movie. The popularity of FMV games during the Crash coincided with the rise of , a novel digital media format that utilized twelve-inch diameter discs, and early interactive movie games often ran on the format. Laserdisc offered the possibility of higher quality graphics and sound than existing gaming media, such as cassettes or cartridges. Film companies also found attractive because they were easier to copy-protect than the cheaper, mass produced VHS tapes, and studios began to market films on the new format in hopes of unseating the video cassette.35 The earliest commercial laserdisc game was Astron Belt, a science-fiction themed dogfighting game released by Sega in 1982.

35 Parsons, Blue Skies, 430-432.

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However, the success of Dragon’s Lair the following year drew industry attention toward games that utilized interactive film as a potential solution to their financial troubles. Developed by , Dragon’s Lair was a medieval fantasy arcade game where players controlled the knight Dirk the Daring, who ventured through a castle to rescue the captured princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe. The game played out in a series of clips of Dirk facing various challenges, such as jumping over a chasm, dodging an enemy, or swinging on a rope. At each challenge, players received a prompt to move a joystick in one of four directions or press an action button. Entering the correct input at the appropriate time triggered a clip of Dirk successfully overcoming the obstacle. If a player failed, they witnessed Dirk meet one of several grisly ends, prompting a “Game Over” and requiring the player to enter more coins to continue.

In terms of subject matter or gameplay, Dragon’s Lair was not exceptional; fantasy adventures were endemic to the arcade. However, what separated Dragon’s Lair from its contemporaries was its striking graphics that relied on hand-drawn animated scenes. The game was directed by Don Bluth, a former Disney animator and director of the 1982 cult animated film The Secret of Nimh. Dragon’s Lair borrowed heavily from the dark fantasy aesthetic of Nimh as well as that of Disney animated films of the seventies such as Robin Hood (1973), (1977), and Pete’s Dragon (1977), all products of Bluth during his tenure at Disney. The game sold well and was the breakout arcade hit of 1983. The following year, Cinematronics released the arcade game

Space Ace, a spiritual successor to Dragon’s Lair that traded the fantasy setting for a science fiction one in the spirit of Flash Gordon or Buck Rodgers.

307

Following the sudden success of Dragon’s Lair, industry observers and game journalists viewed “laserdisc games” as a potential path to renewed success. “With all the fanfare due to the supposed messiah of coin-op,” Video Games editor Roger C. Sharpe observed in late 1983, “laserdisc technology seems the best bet to lead our industry out of the wilderness.”36 Other companies quickly answered Dragon's Lair with laserdisc-based titles of their own, including Star Rider (Williams), M.A.C.H. 3 (Mylstar), Firefox

(Atari), and Grand Prix (Taito). Some games utilized the interactive movie format of

Dragon’s Lair, while others integrated live-action elements into gameplay. Other manufacturers sought to adapt laserdisc to home consoles. RDI Video Systems developed the , a laserdisc-based system for the home market.37 Coleco was also reportedly planning to develop a laserdisc-based peripheral for their ColecoVision system but abandoned the idea when the collapse of the home console market prompted the company's departure from the industry.38

36 Roger C. Sharpe, “Hyperspace,” Video Games 2, No. 4 (January 1984): 6. For other similar articles on the rise of laserdisc games, see: Henry Cohen, “On Disc: Playing Around with Videodisc Machines,” Electronic Games 1, No. 6 (August 1982): 24-7; Sue Adamo, “Deadly Disc: Vidmax’s Interactive Video Game Puts You in the Picture,” Video Games 1, No. 8 (May 1983): 19-23; Beau Eurell, “Dragon’s Lair: Enter the Dragon,” Video Games 1, No. 10 (July 1983): 50-52.

37 “Voice-activated Laserdisc game debuts,” Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (October 1984): 10.

38 According to one Electronic Games article, “Though Coleco paid a sizeable licensing fee to acquire home rights to Dragon’s Lair, the title has yet to appear on the home screen. Coleco has previewed a ROM cartridge version and also promised a laserdisc module, but neither has materialized,” “Coin-Op Questing,” Electronic Games 2, No. 15 (October 1984): 66.

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However, laserdisc never caught on the way film and game companies had hoped.

The format failed to save the slumping coin-op market or unseat the cheaper and more reliable VHS tape. Despite the promise of improved presentation, there were several key drawbacks to laserdisc games. Cost played a large role in their failure: they were expensive for developers, machine operators, and consumers alike. Dragon's Lair took four years and cost $1.5 million to make, both exceptionally high for the time. The

Halcyon cost $2,200 and failed to achieve more than an affluent niche clientele if it was released at all. To the dismay of arcade owners and other machine renters, laserdisc games suffered high failure rates and parts were often expensive to repair or replace.

Arcade players, meanwhile, chafed at long loading times between scenes and the fifty- cent asking price, double that of traditional machines. Making matters worse for players, scripted games relied heavily on memorization and expensive trial and error. Dragon’s

Lair was an especially frustrating game for players. Button entries had to be precise with any wrong moves forcing the player to enter more money to continue. Memorization was difficult as the game randomized the scenes players experienced on any given play session. However, an experienced or lucky Dragon’s Lair player could successfully complete the game in thirteen minutes. The unchanging nature of many of the laserdisc- based games left little variety once the novelty wore off. As a result, laserdisc failed to achieve a mass appeal, and by the end of 1984 experts began to dismiss the concept of laserdisc games as a passing fad.39

39 For one such obituary for laserdisc games, see: Arnie Katz, “What’s Next for Electronic Gaming?” Electronic Games 3, No. 1 (January 1985): 35. See also: Bill

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However, the interactive movie concept did not completely subside with the death of laserdisc, and various entrepreneurs attempted to adapt the full-motion video (FMV) concept to other media formats through the reminder of the 1980s and into the early

1990s. In 1987, Axlon, one of several ventures by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell following his ousting from the company in 1978, collaborated with toy manufacturer

Hasbro to create a VHS-based game system, dubbed NEMO and later renamed Control-

Vision. The project yielded several prototype games: , a science-fiction themed first-person shooter, and Scene of the Crime, a “whodunnit” mystery game.

However, abandoned the project in 1988, citing mounting production costs. Two other contemporary VHS-based game systems were the ViewMaster Interactive Vision and the Worlds of Wonder . Both systems fared poorly on the market, due in part to their lack of gameplay variety and limited appeal. In the case of the former, the

Interactive Vision exclusively targeted a preschool-aged audience with games based on

Sesame Street and Jim Henson's The Muppets. The Action Max played primarily shooting gallery style games with an interactive light gun and relied on consumers also owning a

VCR to play game tapes. By the end of the decade, the concept shifted from VHS to CD-

ROMs, resulting in a series of CD-based game systems and peripherals. In 1991,

Odyssey2 creators North American Philips re-entered the American home video game market with the CD-i. The following year, Sega released the Sega CD, a CD-based add- on for the Genesis. Nintendo entered a deal with Sony to develop a similar attachment for

Kunkel, “Where Have All the Lasers Gone? Can This Be the End of the Road for ‘The Savior of the Arcades’?” Electronic Games 3, No. 1 (January 1985): 78-81.

310 the Super Nintendo.40 In 1993, Trip Hawkins, former head of Electronic Arts, founded the 3DO Company and released the 3DO System.

Entrepreneurs also attempted to adapt the interactive movie concept to the film industry. One such foray was I’m Your Man, which premiered at New York City’s Loews

Theater at 19th and Broadway on December 18, 1992. Developed by Controlled Entropy,

I’m Your Man was the first in a series of what company president Bob Bejan described as

“Intervision” movies. At various parts of the film, the movie would stop and prompt audiences to choose from one of three possible outcomes. Viewers voted by pressing one of three buttons on a controller attached to their seat. The film’s plot then adjusted accordingly based on the votes of the audience. Bejan encouraged multiple viewings of the same movie, asserting that no two screenings would ever be the same.41

Another notable FMV development firm of this period was .

Following the failure of the Control-Vision, several former developers founded their own company—Digital Pictures—to exclusively develop FMV games. Their president and

CEO was Tom Zito, a former rock critic and journalist, who attempted to position the company as a bridge between mainstream film and the game industry. He boasted Digital

Pictures was the first game company with deals with both the Screen Actors Guild and

40 In 1993 Nintendo abruptly ended the arrangement with Sony, and Nintendo and Sony’s CD-based peripheral, dubbed the Play Station, never went beyond a prototype. However, following the end of the company’s partnership, Sony entered the American video game market in 1994 as a direct competitor to Nintendo with their own CD-based system: the Sony PlayStation. Arsenault, Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware, 165-189.

41 William Grimes, “When The Film Audience Controls the Plot,” New York Times, January 13, 1993.

311 the Directors Guild of America, and several of the company’s games employed

Hollywood , directors, and actors. The company achieved early success with

Sewer Shark, a former Hasbro Control-Vision title that came bundled with the Sega CD.

Other games included Ground Zero: Texas, written by RoboCop Edward

Neumeier and directed by Dwight H. Little, whose previous work included Halloween

IV: The Return of Michael Myers and Marked for Death; Double Switch, starring Corey

Haim and R. Lee Ermey and directed by Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert; and Make

My Video, a series of games based on players creating their own music videos for INXS,

Kriss Kross, and Mary Mark and the Funky Bunch.

Coinciding with the rise of CD-based games was the first virtual reality fad. The idea of users interacting with computers through simulated worlds gained popularity in science fiction during the 1970s and 1980s. Among the earliest works to explore the concept was the 1969 Philip K. Dick novel Ubik, in which cryogenically frozen people inhabited a virtual world where they were uncertain what was real and what was artificial. The 1982 film Tron involved a game designer being sucked into the world of the game he created. The 1984 cyberpunk science fiction novel Neuromancer, written by William Gibson, depicted characters navigating through a virtual computer world and introduced the term “cyberspace” into the popular lexicon.

During the mid-1980s, entrepreneurs made the first attempts to bring cyberspace into American living rooms. One of the most public advocates for the concept was Jaron

Lanier. A former game developer for arcade manufacturer Exidy, Lanier left in 1984 to found his own company—VPL Research—to develop virtual reality devices for a mass

312 consumer audience. His first product was the DataGlove, an electronic glove that employed sensors to allow users to interact with computers through finger and hand movements rather than with keyboard or mouse commands.42 The DataGlove appeared on the October 1987 cover of Scientific American under the headline, “The next revolution in computers…will see power increase tenfold in 10 years while networks and advanced interfaces transform computing into a universal intellectual utility.” The boisterous Lanier quickly emerged in popular press as the de facto spokesman for the virtual reality craze; a reporter for the New York Times described him in an April 1989 article as “a guru of the artificial reality movement.”43 He was an appealing presence to tech journalists: a rotund bear of a man with long, pale-brown dreadlocks, which one reporter described as “dreadlocks of burnished gold,” Lanier attracted attention at technology conferences as much for his appearance as for his bold proclamations of the impending arrival of virtual reality technology and the imminent doom of traditional media. Lanier painted a world where people moved through virtual worlds as easily as real physical spaces; no longer observers of media, the consumers of the near future would become active participants. “In virtual reality you don’t just play Pac-Man, you are Pac-Man," he declared in a September 1990 interview for the Boston Globe, “In virtual reality you don’t just visit Epcot Center, Epcot Center comes to you. In virtual

42 He also designed his own VR headset, dubbed the EyePhone.

43 Andrew Pollack, “For Artificial Reality, Wear a Computer,” New York Times, April 10, 1989.

313 reality every person is an astronaut, every person is Donald Trump, every person is Top

Gun.”44

The VR fever rapidly spread during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Virtual reality arcade parlors sprung up across the country, including BattleTech Center, a 4,000 square foot VR arcade that opened in Chicago in September 1990. Writing for Time, film critic

Richard Corliss hailed the VR arcade for its novelty and the potential for social interaction, as opposed to the solitary experience of playing video games at home: “TV, video games and videocassettes keep folks hermited away; virtual reality gets them out of the house with a new gimmick—a twist on the lures that 50s moviemakers, faced with the challenge of TV, offered film audiences with Cinerama’s roller coaster ride, 3- spears and paddleball, [and] William Castle’s showmanship.”45 Theme parks experimented with

VR attractions, such as Universal Studios Orlando’s “Back to the Future: The Ride,” which opened in June 1993. The idea of navigating computer-generated virtual worlds also became an enticing image in science fiction in the early 1990s. Elements of virtual reality appeared in such films as The Lawnmower Man and Brainscan and the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The latter frequently utilized virtual reality as a plot device, with members of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise taking

44 Chet Raymo, “Virtual Reality is Not Enough,” Boston Globe, Sept. 10, 1990.

45 Richard Corliss, “Look! Up on the screen! It’s a galaxy! It’s a killer robot! It’s…VIRTUAL MAN!” Time 142, No. 18 (November 1, 1993): 81-3.

314 part in adventures aboard the Holodeck, the ship’s complex VR simulator which first appeared in the episode “The Big Goodbye,” which aired on January 11, 1988.46

As futurists and science fiction creators explored the implications of virtual reality, video game manufacturers sought to capitalize on the public's interest in VR.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were a series of game hardware and accessories designed based around VR technology. These were generally devices employing some novel form of interaction aside from a traditional hand-held controller; utilizing some form of haptic feedback, such as vibration, in response to in-game actions

(delivering or taking punches in a boxing game, firing lasers in a space shooter, losing a life, and the like); or resembling other commercial VR technology, such as headsets or gloves. Hardware included the Nintendo (1988), a mat on which users ran in place to simulate events in NES sports games, such as Track & Field and World Class

Track Meet. The Konami LaserScope (1991) was a headset where players played using voice commands. The Aura Interactor (1994) was a haptic feedback vest compatible with the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis that projected vibration through a set of built-in speakers. In 1995, Nintendo made explicit connections to mass-marketed virtual reality

46 It could be argued that the 1990 film Total Recall is also a virtual reality film. Based on the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale" and directed by Paul Verhoeven, Total Recall follows a bored construction worker who seeks a virtual vacation through implanted memories. As the memories are implanted, he comes to realize he is a sleeper agent sent to infiltrate a resistance group on Mars. The film leaves it ambiguous whether the action-packed romp is "real" or the product of the memory implant.

315 equipment with the release of the Virtual Boy. Marketed as a portable system, the Virtual

Boy included a VR-style headset mounted upon a tripod.47 (Fig. 5.1)

Among the most notable gaming virtual reality hardware was the Power Glove, released in 1989 by Mattel for the Nintendo Entertainment System. (Fig. 5.2) Developed in part by VPL Research and based on the DataGlove's technology, the Power Glove was a simplified version of the DataGlove. It interacted with four sensors positioned around the television set. Each game in the Nintendo library had a unique numerical code, which the user entered onto a keypad mounted on the glove. This, in theory, allowed the user to manipulate that game's controls through a set of hand motions rather than button commands. For example, using the Power Glove for the driving game Rad Racer, the player could drive the car using a turning hand motion as though handling a steering wheel. Players playing the boxing game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out could punch with the

Power Glove to take swings at virtual opponents. The Power Glove was a prominent feature in the 1989 film The Wizard, where antagonist and Nintendo power consumer

Lucas used the Power Glove to demonstrate his gaming prowess.

Another aspiring virtual reality peripheral was Sega's Activator. Designed for the

Sega Genesis, the Activator was a set of octagonally-arranged sensors that were placed

47 It should be noted that despite its appearance, the Virtual Boy was not a VR set in the traditional sense. The headset contained two small screens, positioned side by side, to give players the illusion of playing a game in three dimensions. It was less a virtual reality equipment and more akin to the digital equivalent of a stereoscope.

316

Figure 5.1: Virtual Boy, released by Nintendo in 1995. From the author’s personal collection.

317

Figure 5.2: The Power Glove, released by Mattel in 1989. From the author’s personal collection.

318 on the floor. Users stood within the octagon, and their movements over specific sensors sent signals to the Genesis, which translated those movements into actions on the screen.

Sega primarily marketed the Activator as an enhancement to fighting games, where players' actual kicks and punches could carry over to their in-game combatants. The peripheral sold for $80 and came packaged with , a one-on-one fighting game designed to be played with the Activator (although it also accepted commands from a standard Genesis controller).

Whatever one’s stance on the ramifications of virtual reality, the VR craze of the early 1990s never materialized the way advocates hoped or critics feared. The technology suffered from numerous practical flaws. Hardware was expensive, and, despite Lanier’s omnipresence in media coverage of VR, the $9,000 pricetag for the DataGlove guaranteed a limited consumer base. In addition to cost, VR equipment proved heavy and cumbersome. A New York Times review for a New York City VR bar warned potential visitors that equipment might be too heavy for younger players.48 Heavy cables attached to equipment could get easily tangled around players as they moved, and the fact that players needed to remain stationary undermined the immersion they were to feel by exploring a virtual world. Interactive worlds projected on VR headsets could also induce nausea in some players. The elaborate virtual worlds portrayed in Neuromancer, Star

Trek, and The Lawnmower Man were still several years away, realized in concept, if not entirely in implementation, in games and massively multiplayer online

48 Dulcie Leimback, “For Children,” New York Times, Jan. 8, 1993.

319

(MMO) games of the late 1990s and early 2000s (examples: Grand Theft Auto III,

Everquest, World of Warcraft, Second Life).

The limitations endemic to virtual reality technology carried over to the various video game VR hardware. Many of the peripherals were expensive and suffered from issues with responsiveness. Few game developers integrated their various features into games; as a result, a standard generally better served the player than the sensor-based Activator, the voice-activated Laser Scope, or the motion-based Power

Glove. The Power Glove, despite its significant presence in The Wizard, had limited functionality. It had difficulty distinguishing between subtle hand movements, and it also had issues with recognizing commands, to the frustration of players. Antagonist Lucas from The Wizard provided an unintentionally-apt epitaph for the Power Glove, one that would be frequently repeated by game enthusiasts: “I love the Power Glove. It’s so bad.”

However, regardless of their practical effectiveness, the ideas that both full motion video and virtual reality promised inspired both hope for the future of media technology and apprehensions about the implications of that technology.

While entrepreneurs, game developers, filmmakers, and media observers contemplated a world of VR and interactive film, many Americans appeared to be in the grips of a panic over violence. Tracking Gallup polls, mass incarceration scholar

Theodore Chiricos observed between January 1993 and January 1994 a 400 percent increase in polled Americans who ranked violent crime as the nation's biggest issue. He also measured a 400 percent spike in media coverage of violence during that period.

Beginning in roughly May 1993, newspapers, magazines, and national and local

320 television news programs began running more stories focusing on violent crime.49 The coverage reached frenzied proportions as politicians and pundits declared America to be suffering from an "epidemic of violence." Speaking before a Senate subcommittee hearing on rap music in February 1994, Robert T.M. Philips of the American Medical

Association proclaimed violence “is pandemic in this country and is our greatest health crisis.”50 Senator William S. Cohen of Maine observed, “leaders of the health care community have begun to call violence a public health threat on a par with tuberculosis, cancer, and AIDS.”51

Accounts and commentaries on violence flooded the popular discourse. A series of assaults on tourists in Florida led US News to re-christen the Sunshine State "The State of Rage" in an October 1993 article. The October 1, 1993, abduction and murder of thirteen-year-old Polly Klaas, who was kidnapped during a slumber party in Petaluna,

CA, grabbed national attention. On December 2, Alan Winterbourne opened fire in

49 Theodore Chiricos, "Moral Panic As Ideology: Drugs, Violence, Race and Punishment in America," in Justice with Prejudice: Race and Criminal Justice in America, eds. Michael J. Lynch and E. Britt Patterson (Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston, 1996): 19, 30-31.

50 Shaping Our Responses to Violent and Demeaning Imagery in Popular Music: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session to Examine the Effects of Violent and Demeaning Imagery in Popular Music on American Youth, February 23, 1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), 15.

51 Fighting Family Violence: Responses of the Health Care System, Hearing Before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session, Bangor, Maine, June 20, 1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), 1.

321 unemployment offices in Oxnard and Ventura, CA, killing five people and injuring several others before being gunned down by police in what the Los Angeles Times described as “the bloodiest shooting spree in Ventura County history.” Five days later,

Colin Ferguson opened fire in a crowded Long Island commuter train, killing six and wounding nineteen. Television networks aired specials devoted to violent crime, drugs, gang violence, and guns, including MTV's "Generation Under the Gun" which aired on

December 9, 1993, and NBC's "America the Violent" on January 26, 1994. The cover of the December 20, 1993, issue of Time displayed a full-page image of a handgun accompanied by the headline, “ENOUGH! The massacre on a suburban New York train escalates the war over handguns.” Tom Morganthau of warned, “Guns…are everywhere, and they are being used in increasingly horrific ways.” In his weekly radio address following the Long Island shooting, President Bill Clinton observed the shooting and other incidents “has left Americans insecure on our streets, in our schools, even in our homes.”52

However, statistical data contradicted frenzied media accounts of an epidemic of violence. Tracking U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) data, Chiricos observed while media

52 Brian Duffy, “The State of Rage,” U.S. News, October 3, 1993, accessed January 17, 2014, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/931011/archive_015904.htm; “Searching for Polly,” Time 142, No. 17 (Oct. 25, 1993): 30; Julie Fields, “Gunman Kills 4, Is Slain by Police,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1993; Seth Mydans, “5 Die in Gunman’s Rampage in 2 California Cities,” New York Times, December 3, 1993; Daryl Kelley, “Winterbourne’s Mother Says Son Snapped,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1993, accessed October 19, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-11/local/me- 652_1_oxnard-unemployment-office; Seth Faison, “Suspect is Seized by Three Riders in Packed Car,” New York Times, December 8, 1993.

322 attention to violence increased significantly between 1993 and 1994, DoJ crime statistics did not reflect a proportionate spike. According to Chiricos:

[D]uring 1993, when media coverage of violent crime increased by more than 400 percent and Americans ranking crime/violence as the nation’s foremost problem also increased by more than 400 percent, the rate of violent crime…showed a decrease of 1.5 percent from the previous year. Forcible rapes declined 3.9 percent and robberies 1.9 percent. In contrast, aggravated assaults were up 0.7 percent and murders were up 3.2 percent. Even the slight increase in homicides, left the total (24,530) lower than the total rate for 1991.53 More recent statistics compiled through the Uniform Crime Statistics Reporting of the

DoJ confirm that beginning in 1990, the violent crime rate in the United States was on the decline, a trend that continued through 2004.54 The statistical data did not align with the media frenzy conjured around violence.

However, this kind of response is consistent with moral panics. According to

Goode and Ben-Yehuda, a key element of a moral panic is its disproportionality. Media panics, be they concerns about child abductions in the 1970s, satanic cults in the 1980s, or violent crime in the 1990s, are predicated upon raising awareness about a threat whose actual impact is either over-stated or non-existent. The crime panic of the early 1990s fit into this pattern, representing a call to action for a threat that was less statistically significant than activists made it out to be. Why the panic occurred when it did is still open to speculation. Chiricos suggested the media attention may have coincided with a

53 Chiricos, “Moral Panic as Ideology,” 38.

54 Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, accessed September 9, 2018, https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeTrendsInOneVar.cfm.

323 slow news cycle, with press outlets looking for a way to increase print media circulation and boost television news ratings. The panic could have also been predicated on stoking middle-class suburban white anxieties of violence, guns, gangs, and drugs, often with racially-coded associations to urban minorities, such as African Americans and Latinos.

This panic then provided a convenient excuse to impose greater “tough on crime” measures, procedures that disproportionately affected people of color.55

Whatever the origins of the panic and regardless of its validity, a host of lawmakers, media watchdogs, and other activists prescribed numerous cures for the alleged epidemic. The panic over crime allowed for hitherto the most substantial gun control legislation in American history. On November 30, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which called for stricter restrictions on handgun purchases, including a five-day waiting period pending a criminal background check. For advocates of “tough on crime” measures, the panic provided enough political capital to push through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement

Act. Signed into law on September 13, 1994, the “Crime Bill” dramatically expanded the authority of law enforcement officials. Among the numerous provisions of the 356-page bill were more resources to expand the prison system, longer sentences for violent crimes, a “three-strikes” policy for federal crimes (the third felony conviction resulted in an automatic sentence of life without parole), tougher penalties for hate crimes, an

55 Chiricos, “Moral Panic as Ideology,” 36.

324 expanded use of the death penalty, and federal restrictions on assault weapon purchases.56

State legislatures enacted similar measures at the state level, contributing to a significant increase in the country’s incarceration rate.

As Washington developed remedies for the supposed epidemic of violence, activists sought to isolate the source of the contagion. Campaigns targeted a variety of potential causes including access to guns, gang violence, unemployment, and the perceived deterioration of the American family. One activist cohort focused on violence in the media. At an October 1993 hearing on television violence, Senator John C.

Danforth of Missouri described what he called “the coarsening of America”: “[T]he fact that not only are people shooting people, children are shooting children; the collapse of the American family; the constant parade of stories of sex offences [sic] by teachers against children, and on and on it goes.”57 In October 1993, parents and law enforcement officials blamed the MTV animated series Beavis and Butt-head for a fire in Moraine,

OH, wherein five-year-old Austin Messner burned down his parents’ mobile home, killing his infant sister. In response to criticism, MTV removed all instances of fire

56 “H.R. 1025 (103rd): Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act,” Govtrack, accessed November 2, 2018, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/103/hr1025; H.R. 3355 (103rd): Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,” accessed November 2, 2018, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/103/hr3355.

57 Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, S. 1383, Children’s Protection from Violent Programming Act of 1993; S. 973, Television Report Card Act of 1993; and S. 943, Children’s Television Violence Protection Act of 1993, Hearing Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, October 10, 1993 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), 6.

325

(including Beavis’ “Fire, fire,” catchphrase), moved its time slot from 7:00PM to the less child-friendly 11:00PM, and added a disclaimer that ran before the program. After teenager Michael Shingledecker died from injuries sustained after being run over while lying down in the middle of a Polk, PA, road, critics cited the film The Program, in which characters participated in a similar act, as the inspiration. “America’s epidemic of violence in 1992 and 1993 must be brought under control,” James Quello, the newly- appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote in a statement for Congress in October 1993. Congress held hearings investigating the possible effects of violent television and rap music on October 20, 1993, and February 23, 1994, respectively.58

“You Are Profiting Off of the American Child:” The December 9, 1993, Hearing

In this environment, attention eventually shifted toward video games. On

December 1, 1993, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut held a press conference denouncing violent and sexual content in video games. Accompanied by Bob Keeshan,

58 “Cartoon on MTV Blamed for Fire,” New York Times, October 10, 1993; Joe Flint, “MTV fights fire with no fire,” Broadcasting and Cable 123, No. 42 (October 18, 1993): 22-3; Caryn James, “If Simon Says ‘Lie Down on the Road,’ Should You?” New York Times, October 24, 1993; David van Biema, “Lie Down in Darkness: Does a Death on the Highway Implicate the Entertainment Industry,” Time 142, No. 18 (November 1, 1993): 49; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, S. 1383, Children’s Protection from Violent Programming Act of 1993, 3; Shaping Our Responses to Violent and Demeaning Imagery in Popular Music: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session to Examine the Effects of Violent and Demeaning Imagery in Popular Music on American Youth, February 23, 1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995).

326 former host of the long-running children’s Captain Kangaroo, and members of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), he called for the industry to develop a regulatory system to monitor game content, threatening legislation if they did not comply. He announced a series of congressional hearings on the issue with the first scheduled for December 9, 1993.59

Lieberman targeted two games: Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Developed by

Midway and created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, Mortal Kombat was a martial arts themed fighting game where up to two players (or one player and a computer opponent) fought in a best of three matches. Boon and Tobias developed the game to compete with

Capcom’s similarly themed II. However, two key features separated

Mortal Kombat from its competitor. First, Mortal Kombat utilized digitized footage of live actors, providing characters with a higher degree of realism than the -based animated fighters of Street Fighter II. The other element that distinguished Mortal

Kombat was its depictions of blood and gore. Successful hits could trigger sprays of blood from battered opponents. At the end of a best-of-three match the game temporarily placed the losing fighter in a stunned position during which the victor could enter a specific combination of buttons. Successfully entering the combination triggered a

59 David Lightman, “Violent Image of Video Games,” Hartford Courant, December 2, 1993, accessed January 17, 2014, http://articles.courant.com/1993-12- 02/news/0000001226_1_night-trap-video-games-mortal-kombat; Deborah Ramirez and Kathy Hensley Trumbull, “Labels Proposed for Video Games Deemed Violent,” Sun Sentinel (Palm Beach, FL), December 2, 1993, accessed January 14, 2014, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1993-12-02/news/9312020284_1_mortal-kombat-video- violence-video-game.

327 finishing move, called a “Fatality,” in which the winning fighter executed the loser in one of several bloody ways. These included knocking the opponent into a pit of spikes, tearing out their still-beating heart, or ripping out their head and spinal cord. (Fig. 5.3)

The game’s shocking violence and realistic graphics resonated with players and

Mortal Kombat was the breakaway arcade hit of 1992. A sequel quickly followed, and

Midway released Mortal Kombat II, which expanded the number of characters and finishing moves, in April 1993. Later that year, third-party developer Acclaim obtained the rights to develop home adaptations, and, following a $10 million advertising campaign, Mortal Kombat appeared on the Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Super

Nintendo, and Nintendo Game Boy on “Mortal Monday,” September 13, 1993.60 Its success inspired other companies to develop competing hyper-violent fighting games, including (Rare), Primal Rage (Atari), Way of the Warrior (Naughty Dog), and Clay Fighter ().

Unlike Mortal Kombat, Lieberman’s other target, Night Trap, was not a household name. Originally intended for Hasbro and Axlon’s abortive Control-Vision system, Night Trap was a horror-themed full motion video game released by Digital

Pictures for the Sega CD in 1992. The game cast the player as an agent of a special forces team who observed attendees of a teenage slumber party while shambling, black-clad figures, called “Augers,” attempted to infiltrate the home and capture the partygoers. The

60 Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “The Amazing Video Game Boom,” Time 142, No. 13, (September 27, 1993).

328

Figure 5.3: A “Fatality” finishing move from the home adaptation of Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis. Players could access the game’s full gore effects on the Genesis version by entering a special code, a feature not included in the Super Nintendo version. Image Source: Mortal Kombat, Sega Genesis cartridge (Santa Clara, CA: Acclaim Inc., 1993). Image captured via the Kega emulator.

329

Augurs tried to drain the attendees of their blood and decant it into bottles for the enjoyment of their masters, the vampiric owners of the house. Armed with security cameras and booby traps, the player switched among cameras in eight separate rooms and set traps to capture the Augers. Each camera displayed scripted live-action scenes of the partygoers, the Augurs, or inert rooms in the house. (Fig. 5.4) Night Trap was written by

Terry McDonnell, a journalist and television writer, and directed by James Riley. The most recognizable actor in the cast was , former star of the sitcom Diff’rent

Strokes, who played a member of the special forces team secretly embedded at the party.

More campy than scary, the game’s tone was tongue-in-cheek; the name of the team—the

Sega Control Attack Team (SCAT)—encapsulated the level of maturity McDonnell targeted in his script. The game’s depiction of gore was relatively tame, especially compared to the over-the-top violence of Mortal Kombat, with blood flowing in tubes through the Augurs’ equipment, which resembled hand-held vacuum cleaners. One critic described Night Trap as “a rather amusing homage to 50s B-movies involving a deserted house, women in distress, and a bucket-load of alien from outer space.”61

Several factors made Night Trap less successful than Mortal Kombat. It initially only appeared on the Sega CD, an expensive add-on peripheral for the Sega Genesis.

Moreover, Night Trap suffered from many of the same flaws endemic to full-motion games as a whole. As with earlier games like Dragon’s Lair or , it followed pre-recorded scripted scenes, which meant the game played out the same way every time,

61 Matt Toor, “A new discipline for Sega games,” Marketing (May 27, 1993), General OneFile, accessed March 20, 2013.

330

Figure 5.4: Gameplay footage from Night Trap for the Sega CD depicting the vampiric “Augurs” shambling through the trap-laden house. Image Source: “Mega-CD Longplay [072] Night Trap,” via World of Longplays (user: /Y\ad/Y\atty), YouTube, March 31, 2002, accessed August 28, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plV5l_uKzDo.

331 leaving little variety in gameplay. A skilled player could complete Night Trap in less than forty minutes. This is no simple task, however. Despite the game’s set path, alternating between various surveillance cameras meant that players had to sort through not one but eight separate scripted movies simultaneously. Allowing too many invaders to slip through the traps resulted in an automatic “Game Over.” Making matters worse, the game relied on a security code system where players had to periodically change color codes to make sure the traps worked. The code color changed based on prompts periodically given by the characters, prompts that could easily be missed as the player shifted between cameras to deal with the Augurs. Even if a player knew where every Augur would appear and tripped all the traps, failure to save the main characters during specific sequences late in the game resulted in the player automatically losing regardless of how many invaders the player captured. As a result, success in Night Trap relied heavily on tedious memorization. It also lacked a continue or save feature so players were forced to play through the entire game again from the beginning if they received a “Game Over.” These drawbacks lead one to speculate how many players had the patience to give Night Trap more than a passing glace, and without the moralist attacks it is likely Night Trap would have faded into obscurity along with other similar FMV games.

On December 9, 1993, Lieberman convened his first of three hearings on video game content. Senators Herbert Kohl of Minnesota and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota acted as committee co-chairs. A series of panels of educators, child psychologists, and media activists were followed by representatives of Sega and Nintendo and the software and coin-operated amusement industries. The content of the first hearing was primarily

332 devoted to an airing of grievances as lawmakers and experts took the industry to task over violent and sexualized content and asserted the need for some manner of content restriction or ratings process, by legislative action if necessary.

On December 9, unlike earlier panics surrounding games, the conversation focused neither on the physical spaces games occupied nor their potential physiological effects. Rather, the issue was the medium’s potential for perpetuating violent content and the ramifications of that content for America’s youth. The question of whether video games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were a cause or symptom of social decay was a frequently repeated talking point among the lawmakers and experts assembled at the hearing. As he brought proceedings to order, Lieberman reminded the attendees of the larger panic over violence, citing several of the violent crimes that dominated newspaper headlines and hour-long television specials at the time, including the Klaas kidnapping and mass shootings in Ventura County and Long Island. Brandishing the “Justifier,” a pistol-shaped controller for the Sega CD shooting gallery game , he connected his current campaign to regulate video games with recent efforts to curtail handgun purchases through the Brady Bill. (Fig. 5.5) However, earlier controversies over video games appeared far from the minds of lawmakers and activists assembled in

Washington, DC, on December 9, 1993, as previous concerns over addiction or aberrations in childhood behavior that shaped earlier video game controversies, were never mentioned by the assembled panelists or Congressional representatives.

Lawmakers and experts argued violent content in video games desensitized youth to violence, eventually leading them to commit violent acts in real life. “Experts can debate

333 whether entertainment violence causes brutality in society or merely reflects it,” Kohl explained, “but there should be no dispute that the pervasive images of murder, mutilation and mayhem encourages our kids to view violent activity as a normal part of life, and that interactive video violence desensitizes children to the real thing.” In a prepared statement, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch reflected Kohl’s sentiments, adding that video game violence, “coarsens society and promotes acts of violence against real victims. In real life, violence has consequences that cannot be undone by pressing a reset button or inserting another quarter into a [sic] arcade game. But when children are desensitized to violence by these games, they don’t learn this until it is too late.” Marilyn

Droz of the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV), a media violence watchdog group, added violent games encouraged children to view violence as a first resort, “[A]ll our actions are undermined the moment they go to the video game and they learn that the only way to solve a problem…is to kill them off.”62

The activists assigned a unique role to video games over other forms of media, arguing the interactive nature of video gameplay made them a greater threat than traditional media, such as television or film. As far back as the early 1970s, interactivity had been a selling point among video game advertisers, when ads for the Magnavox

Odyssey, home versions of Pong, and the like emphasized how video games enhanced television and transformed family leisure into an active pastime. Activists pointed out video gaming now allowed players to take part in simulations of violent acts. Robert

62 VG Hearings, 8, 10, 23.

334

Figure 5.5: Sen. Joseph Lieberman brandishes the “Justifier” pistol at the December 9, 1993, hearing on video game violence. Image Source: CSPAN, accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.c-span.org/video/?52848-1/video-game-violence.

335

Chase of the National Education Association warned, “Electronic games, because they are active rather than passive, can do more than desensitize impressionable children to violence. They actively encourage violence as the resolution of first resort by rewarding participants for killing one’s opponents in the most grisly ways imaginable.”63

Games’ potential risk increased with the rise of full-motion video (FMV) games and virtual reality (VR). Financial barriers and technical limitations notwithstanding, the concept of fully immersive interactive worlds combined with the content of games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap proved a potentially dangerous combination. Critics expressed concerns for the future potential of games to offer even greater realism.

Lieberman, Kohl, and other assembled moral activists warned what future games could entail if there were no limits set on video game content and design. Theoretically, the same technology that could allow a person to not just play Pac-Man but become the eponymous character chasing fruit and avoiding ghosts could also allow a player to assume the role of Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat to rip out an opponent’s spine. Kohl warned that as technology improved, so did the potentially negative impact of video games: “We need to make every effort to reduce this culture of carnage, and we need to make that effort now because with interactive technology and virtual reality, these games are going to be more sophisticated and persuasive.”64 In a prepared statement, Senator

Slade Gorton of Washington warned:

63 VG Hearings, 20.

64 VG Hearings, 8.

336

It is time to look into the future and think about how these “games” are likely to be coming into our homes: over our computer monitor on the electronic highway and over our cable lines in real 3D, lifelike forms, that will be totally interactive. Kids will have more and more exposure to these games and parents will have a harder time trying to make choices and control what they see and do.65 Eugene Provenzo likened video gameplay to the “feelies,” the sensory films of Aldous

Huxley’s 1931 dystopian novel Brave New World, and warned video games represented

“the first stages in the creation of a new type of television, an interactive medium as different from traditional television as television is from radio.” To further emphasize his point, he acted out punching and kicking as though he were using Sega’s Activator.66

These arguments about the impact of an interactive visual medium assumed a priori that video games were a medium exclusively occupied by young people, ignoring the presence of adult players both in console gaming and the growing computer gaming market.67 However, activist concerns over the specific impact of video games on children reflected the industry’s concentrated focus on the youth market in the wake of the Crash.

Video games as a childhood plaything made up a significant portion of video game marketing during the late 1980s and early 1990s. As discussed in Chapter Two, much of the corporate strategy for the Nintendo Entertainment System involved cultivating a generational barrier between youth players and adults. In attempting to court retailers who had suffered significant losses when the home market soured in 1983-84, Nintendo

65 VG Hearings, 33.

66 VG Hearings, 15.

67 The growing distinction following the Crash between computer gamers as predominantly adult men versus console gaming as for young boys is explored in more detail in Chapter Two.

337 had conceptualized the NES not as a computer system but as an electronic toy, even going so far as to package the NES with an interactive toy robot. The gambit worked, and the company was able to dominate the market, with other companies following suit to compete with Nintendo. The shift to a more direct focus on youth granted the industry financial stability and renewed economic success. However, by directly targeting youth, manufacturers also opened the medium to anxiety over video games’ alleged impact on childhood development. Focusing on games as a youth-oriented market allowed moral entrepreneurs to characterize video games as dangerous toys. “We now require warning labels on toys that can potentially damage children’s bodies,” Lieberman explained in his press conference prior to the hearing, "Why not do so on a toy that can damage their minds?” Actor Bob Keeshan, who accompanied Lieberman at the press conference, added that video games “are not harmless toys. They can indeed cause great emotional and other damage to a child.”68 Regulating video games, therefore, became a consumer safety campaign to protect children from a predatory industry.

Lieberman and others characterized the video game industry as pushing violence for profit. Parker Page of the Children’s Television Resource and Education Center commented, “With the emergence of enhanced human-like graphics, video games that

68 David Lightman, “Violent Image of Video Games,” Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), December 2, 1993, accessed January 17, 2014, http://articles.courant.com/1993-12- 02/news/0000001226_1_night-trap-video-games-mortal-kombat; Deborah Ramirez and Kathy Hensley Trumbull, “Labels Proposed for Video Games Deemed Violent,” Sun Sentinel (Palm Beach, FL), December 2, 1993, accessed January 14, 2014, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1993-12-02/news/9312020284_1_mortal-kombat-video- violence-video-game; VG Hearings, 5.

338 allow young players to participate in heinous acts of cruelty, misogyny, and inhumanity should not be portrayed, regardless of profits.” Chase argued for restrictions on video game content in the interest of corporate responsibility: “I think business leaders who produce games and toys, or whatever, for children have the responsibility to ensure those games and toys enhance our society rather than tear it asunder.” However, the sharpest criticism came from Provenzo. When asked what he would tell executives at companies such as Nintendo and Sega, he took the industry to task, saying:

I would like to look at them and say, you are profiting off of the American child to an enormous degree. What are you giving back to the American child? How are you making life for children in this culture better? I don’t have much evidence of that, not much evidence of that at all. Where are the good games, where are the programs for children based out of your profits? I think they have a moral obligation. Maybe they don’t perceive that. They are making a huge amount of money. This is profitable, extraordinarily profitable. Where is that money going?69 Lieberman and other critics also emphasized sexism in their critiques of video games, focusing on both video games as a male-centric medium and depictions of violence directed against women. Droz commented that the disproportionate focus on male gamers fostered a technology achievement gap between boys and girls, effectively excluding women and girls from gameplay and computerized technology by extension.

As games increasingly appealed to boys, she found girls began to lose interest in games and computing technology, placing them at a distinct disadvantage in pursuing technology-oriented careers:

69 Emphasis added. VG Hearings, 26.

339

When computers first came out, computer video games were played with equally among boys and girls in the classroom. There was equal time. Now, there is a turning-around where it seems more boys, of course, are comfortable with the technology. Video games are geared for boys. Fifty percent of our children are losing the value of learning from the interactive techniques and technology. We are now losing another generation of women if we don’t start addressing that the video games must address the needs of all children…. Playing video games has become a macho boy thing. Girls are being trained in dressing Barbie dolls and boys are being trained in technology.70 The physical representation of violence against women in games was another element of concern at the hearing. Among the game footage presented was a clip from

Night Trap of a scantily-clad woman being captured by the Augers, a clip that also appeared during nationally-circulated news segments on the hearing. She enters a

(supposedly) empty bathroom dressed in a short nightgown. Staring into a mirror (and directly at the player), she does not notice the figures sneaking up behind her, only noticing their presence after it is too late. While the moral entrepreneurs mischaracterized

Night Trap as a game designed to capture women (capturing the black-clad invaders and protecting the home’s inhabitants is the game’s real goal), this scene encapsulated much of their anxiety over the role of women in games. The woman, staring at the player while the player looks back unobserved evokes titillation, like other media outlets catering to the straight male gaze. When she is captured, the ensuing scene evokes sexual violence: two of the figures hold her in place as a third applies the blood-sucking device to her neck as she screams. She represents both damsel and sex object, evoking concerns from the player for her plight, frustration for failing to save her and having to start the game over again, and a sense of voyeurism.

70 VG Hearings, 22.

340

Their criticisms were not without merit. During the first decade of the American video game market, while boys comprised a significant segment of the user base, advertisements for games on the Atari Video Computer System, Odyssey2, Bally

Professional Arcade, and others often cast a broad demographic net. Ads for table tennis games such as the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari Pong frequently depicted adult couples playing away from the kids. Marketing materials utilizing the family circle motif emphasized video gameplay as offering something for the whole family. Commercials for the Atari 2600 often appealed to suburban mothers as the gateway to the household.

However, following the 1983-1984 Crash and the resurgence of the home video game market, promotional material and video game content focused more directly on boys, increasingly marginalizing female players. The popular genres appearing on home systems appealed to stereotypical values associated with masculinity. These included action-adventure titles (Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super

Mario World, Super Castlevania, ), shooting games (Super Metroid, Gunstar

Heroes, Lethal Enforcers) and fighting games (Street Fighter II, King of Fighters, Mortal

Kombat, Killer Instinct). Moreover, the “Damsel in Distress” trope, in which the rescue of female characters is the primary motivation for player action, remained a common narrative device in video game stories. Heteronormative male power through the proliferation of ultra-masculine heroes and a predominance of action-oriented titles also framed video gameplay in masculine terms. Depictions of women either as damsels to be rescued or as highly-sexualized images to be desired framed women in terms of

341 heterosexual male observers/players to the marginalization or exclusion of women and girls.71

In these respects, there was no greater threat to America’s youth than Night Trap.

It became the embodiment of all the activists’ concerns: the depiction of media violence, specifically violence utilizing live actors as well as violence directed at women through the new interactive technology promised by VR and interactive film. Dorgan called Night

Trap “a sick and disgusting video game” whose objective was to “trap and kill women” and described the act of playing the game as “child abuse” in itself. “[H]ow would you like to have a teenage daughter go out on a date with someone who has just watched or played 3 hours of that game?” Droz rhetorically asked Digital Pictures.72 Numerous critics targeted Night Trap as a game designed to torture women, describing grisly scenes of helpless women captured and strung up on meat hooks or attacked by players armed with drills. Most appeared to think capturing the women at the slumber party was the game’s objective when the opposite was true. Dorgan misinterpreted the scene of the woman being captured in the bathroom by the Augurs as a gameplay objective rather than a punishment for failure, observing, “I think it’s pathetic and shameful that the

71 This dynamic also appeared in Mortal Kombat where combatant Sonya Blade is unique not only as the sole female fighter in the game but also as the only combatant whose “Fatality” move utilizes her sexuality. Whereas her male counterparts dispatch their opponents through acts of over-the-top physical violence—Kano ripping out a person’s still-beating heart, punching an opponent’s head off, Sub-Zero pulling out a fighter’s spine—or through fantastical methods— electrocuting with his lighting, Scorpion burning with his fire breath—Sonya blows a kiss to her vanquished foe, burning them alive on contact. 72 VG Hearings, 9, 22.

342 conclusion of a game like that is to grab a women [sic] with a metal hook and drill in her neck. I don’t view that as constructive entertainment.” Provenzo added, “For a child playing Sega’s Night Trap, this fantasy world includes torturing women with machines, and murdering women so their blood can be sucked and decanted into wine bottles!”73

Night Trap’s relative obscurity made it an appealing target for moral entrepreneurs. Mortal Kombat was the breakaway arcade hit of 1992, appearing everywhere people had access to coin-operated games. Beginning in 1993, the game also appeared in some form on each of the major home and portable game systems available on the market. Meanwhile, Night Trap appeared exclusively on the Sega CD, an expensive, limited-selling peripheral for the Sega Genesis. In many cases, audiences’ first exposure to Night Trap was when news reports replayed its offending scenes on television leading up to the hearings. This obscurity made Night Trap the perfect folk devil. By choosing to target Night Trap, the moral entrepreneurs were able to shape the discourse against games to suit their needs by portraying an example of a video game that had transgressed beyond the accepted boundaries of decency with little room to counter their assertions. Audiences’ limited access to Night Trap allowed activists such as

Lieberman and Dorgan to use Night Trap as a cipher through which anxieties over violence in video games could be projected. As a result, Night Trap became the quintessential “violent video game,” the embodiment of all the worst qualities critics viewed in the medium. In their eyes, it symbolized both a violent video game as well as

73 VG Hearings, 18, 31.

343 video games as a whole: the physical manifestation of a media run amok and a sinister force intent on corrupting young minds.

As in earlier instances of moral panic in the media, there was often little statistical data to support their claims about games’ perceived negative impact on the youth. The violent crime panic, despite substantial media attention, did not reflect actual crime rates.

Moreover, the assembled media critics offered little concrete data to support any measurable negative effects of gameplay. In fact, during the 1980s several scholars argued the opposite: that video games had a beneficial impact on players.74 Neither of these points deterred the moral entrepreneurs from denouncing the negative effects of game content on society, and the paucity of data to back their claims did little to impede the more vociferous critics. Parker Page of the Children’s Television Resource and

Education Center argued the lack of concrete data was proof of the insidious effect of video games: “All of this research is limited and dated. The overall trends, however, must give cause for concern as we approach virtual reality.”75 Eugene Provenzo cited a controversial 1992 study by Brandon Centerwall of the American Medical Association that cited television as a causal factor behind half the murders in America.76

74 Newman, Atari Age, 174-178.

75 VG Hearings, 12.

76 Brandon S. Centerwall, “Television and Violence: The Scale of the Problem and Where to Go from Here,” Journal of the American Medical Association 267, No. 22 (June 10, 1992): 3059-3063, accessed November 22, 2013, http://cursor.org/stories/television_and_violence.htm.

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Nevertheless, the industry mounted little resistance to their overarching assertions. According to moral panic scholars, media panics rely on moral entrepreneurs constructing a single, concentrated message, pushing away nuance or alternative interpretations. The representatives of the industry present at the hearings could have employed tactics to counter their assertions of video game violence. They could have sent sympathetic academics who could argue for the social benefits of video gameplay; the efforts to integrate electronic games into medicine, industry, and education; the impact of video games as an entry point to computing; or even video games as an emerging cultural media, all messages conveyed in years past, primarily by former industry hegemon Atari prior to the Crash.77 Other hearings on the relationship between violence and media presented multiple perspectives, including experts who challenged the notion that there was any threat in the first place. A case in point is the February 23, 1994, Congressional hearing on “gangsta rap.” While several panelists argued rap music promoted violence or misogyny, there were also experts who argued in favor of the cultural significance of rap music among minority communities; moreover, the legislators who oversaw the hearing engaged in disagreements and debate among themselves over whether rap music posed any kind of threat to the moral order.78 None of these tactics took place at the December

9th hearing.

77 See: Newman, Atari Age, 167-178; Kocurek, Coin-Operated Americans, 115-149.

78 See: Shaping Our Responses to Violent and Demeaning Imagery in Popular Music: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session to Examine the

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Instead, Nintendo and Sega sent representatives who carried the rival console developers’ marketing feud into the halls of Congress. Rather than provide a unified front against the activists’ assertions, William White and Howard Lincoln, representing Sega and Nintendo, respectively, spent most of their time with lawmakers trading barbs with each other. White pointed out Sega’s nascent rating system, the Video Game Rating

Council, and called out Nintendo’s lack of a similar system. Lincoln, meanwhile, cited

Nintendo’s internal content restrictions, adding these restrictions led to the removal of depictions of blood in Mortal Kombat and the complete absence of Night Trap from any

Nintendo platform. The game’s absence from the Nintendo lineup probably had more to do with Nintendo not having a system capable of running the full-motion video game than any content objections. However, this did not stop Lincoln from reminding the lawmakers that Night Trap only appeared on a Sega system.

Neither Lincoln nor White mounted much resistance to the moralist assertions of the negative effects of games. In fact, Lincoln conceded some video games contributed to antisocial behavior, specifically those released by Sega. An experienced lawyer, first as a

Judge Advocate General in the United States Navy and then in private practice before becoming Nintendo’s chief legal counsel, Lincoln was quickly able to deflect attention away from Nintendo, setting the moralist ire squarely on his counterpart from Sega.

White, who served as Nintendo’s Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications before taking a job in June 1993 as Sega of America’s Vice President of Marketing,

Effects of Violent and Demeaning Imagery in Popular Music on American Youth, February 23, 1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995).

346 proved significantly less adroit in the hearings than his former co-worker.79 The disparity in experience was apparent. In contrast to Lincoln, White appeared ill at ease before

Congress, stammering at times and struggling through his prepared remarks. To make matters worse for White, as the representative of the platform on which the dreaded Night

Trap could be played, he found himself in a virtually indefensible position. When he attempted to defend Night Trap, Lieberman sharply retorted, “You are going to have a long way to go to convince me that you are raising anyone’s values or reducing anyone’s inclination toward aggression, and particularly aggression toward women, by putting this on the market.”80

Lincoln took advantage of the opportunity to join Lieberman in denouncing Sega.

When White cited the average Sega user age as twenty-two, Lincoln fired back, accusing him of deliberately misleading lawmakers, “I can’t sit here and allow you to be told that somehow the whole video game business has been transformed today from children to adults. It hasn’t been, and Mr. White, who is a former Nintendo employee, knows the demographics as well as I do.”81 Even after the Hearings and in the face of possible federal regulation, representatives from both companies remained at odds with each other. Following the hearings, Lincoln issued a press release directed at Sega of America

79 “Nintendo Marketing Executive Joins Sega,” UPI Archives, June 4, 1993, accessed June 26, 2018, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/06/04/Nintendo-marketing- executive-joins-Sega/1432739166400/.

80 VG Hearings, 59.

81 VG Hearings, 62

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President Tom Kalinske, mocking Sega over its poor showing at the hearing: “Dear Tom,

Roses are red, violets are blue, so you had a bad day, boo hoo hoo. All my best,

Howard.”82 Further, the absence of outside experts as witnesses who could contest the moralist claims and the disunity of Sega and Nintendo allowed critics to monopolize the narrative: that video games encouraged violence and needed to be regulated, either by the industry or by the federal government.

“Your Mom Hates :” The Aftermath of the Hearings, their Legacy and the Impact of the ESRB The December 9, 1993, hearing and the moral panic over violence of the early

1990s represented a departure from earlier game-related panics of the seventies and eighties. It also influenced the rhetoric and nature of future concerns about video games.

First, the hearing brought the focus squarely on video game content, specifically violence. In previous panics, the rhetoric focused around addiction, juvenile delinquency, and alleged health consequences of long-term gameplay. However, the discourse raised at the hearing focused exclusively around violent and sexually-explicit content. Later public moral panics of video games tended to follow the same rhetorical pattern, targeting violence and its potential impact on children. Journalists, lawmakers and other moral entrepreneurs frequently raised discussions of video game violence in the aftermath of violent crimes, especially mass shootings. In the aftermath of the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Columbine, CO, some attempted to connect the

82 Scott Williams, “Video Game Rivals Escalate Their Battle,” Seattle Times (April 3, 1994), accessed May 24, 2019, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-04- 03/business/9404030307_1_video-game-violence-nintendo-sega-enterprises.

348 shooters’ actions to playing games with violent content such as Doom, Counter-Strike, and Grand Theft Auto III.83 Conversely, violent content was also an attractive prospect for game publishers as transgressive content could attract free publicity in the popular press and make more players interested in a particular title. For example, the marketing campaign for the 2011 sci-fi horror game Dead Space 2 involved a series of commercials involving shocked and horrified reactions to the game from older women, ending with the tagline, “Your mom hates Dead Space 2.”84

Earlier panics were also concerned with the spaces that video games occupied and the potential of the arcade as a haven for crime and truancy. In the case of the concern over Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, the overarching issue was more about video games as a form of mass media. Anxieties over both Custer’s Revenge and Death Race generally focused on limiting youth access in public spaces—restricting or removing

83 Violent content in video games is a common discussion point following mass shootings. See: Jason Schreier, “On Friday, Joe Biden Asked the Video Game Industry to Improve its Image, Kotaku, January 14, 2013, accessed October 26, 2018, https://kotaku.com/5975805/on-friday-joe-biden-asked-the-video-game-industry-to- improve-its-image; Tony Romm, “Inside Trump’s Private Meeting with the Video-Game Industry—and its Critics, Washington Post, March 8, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/08/inside-trumps-private- meeting-with-the-video-game-industry-and-its- critics/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.52f7cd879c9d.

84 See also: Mike Nizza, “Tying Columbine to Video Games,” New York Times, July 5, 2007, “What role might video game addiction have played in the Columbine shootings?” Daily News (New York City), April 23, 2009; Andrew Yoon, “’Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2’ Campaign Uncovered,” Engadget, January 16, 2011, accessed October 26, 2018, https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/16/your-mom-hates-dead-space-2-campaign- uncovered/.

349 games from public amusement spaces such as arcades—rather than regulating content. In calls to ban Custer’s Revenge in Los Angeles County, local lawmakers advocated for restrictions on the game, which appeared exclusively on the Atari VCS and never as an arcade cabinet, arguing inaction would open the possibility of similar games appearing in arcades in the future.85 Spatiality played little to no role in moral entrepreneurs’ rhetoric during the December 9 hearing, with no distinction made between coin-operated or home video games as separate entities. Rather, it was the medium itself that was the negative message. In so doing, they reframed the issue of video games from limiting youth exposure, something typically done through local zoning ordinances and curfews, to regulating their content, something done at a federal level. This in turn changed the scope of anti-video game activism from a local concern to a national one.

An unintended consequence of the December 9 hearing was the legitimation of earlier video games. In his 1984 work on moral panics in the mass media, Steven Starker observed a common rhetorical tactic among moral entrepreneurs is to unfavorably compare the objectionable media to earlier forms of entertainment. For example, critics of heavy metal in the 1980s compared the genre to rock & roll of the 1950s and 1960s.

This comparison has two outcomes: first, it attempts to paint the moralist target as a corruption or bastardization of the medium. However, this tactic also has the unintended consequence of legitimizing the earlier media, many of which were targets of moral activism in their own times for many of the same reasons (corrupting the youth,

85 Josh Getlin, “Ban on Game Sales to Minors Proposed,” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1982.

350 promoting social nonconformity or loose morals, encouraging delinquency, and the like).

According to Starker, there is a cyclical nature to media anxiety, where previous subjects of anxiety eventually become acceptable, even revered, in the cultural milieu as new media emerges to replace it as the target du jour:

[A]s each media threat was replaced by a new one, the older forms become even more accepted and respected. Many early movies, comics, and radio shows, for example, came to be considered classics, avidly sought by collectors and nostalgia buffs; newspapers and magazines are today part of American daily life at virtually all levels of society; the photograph and the novel have been accepted as legitimate art forms.86 The critics of Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and the like took part in a similar legitimation of “classic” video games, negatively comparing them to popular video games of the

1970s and 1980s, such as Pong and Pac-Man. Lieberman opened the hearings announcing, “The fact is that a new generation of violent video games crosses that line containing the most horrid depictions of graphic violence and sex, including particularly violence against women.” “Wake up, mom and dad, this isn’t Pac-Man anymore,”

Senator Slade Gorton declared, “Pac-Man and Pong have been replaced by Mortal

Kombat and Night Trap—games that glorify violence and show our darkest nightmares on video screens.”87 This rhetoric ignored the controversies surrounding games during the previous two decades: the earliest coin-operated games, such as Pong first appeared in adult-oriented, and male-dominated, bar and tavern spaces; Pac-Man and similar arcade games raised concerns over addiction; the rise of local video arcades aroused anxieties

86 Starker, Evil Influences, 143.

87 VG Hearings, 33.

351 that arcades were havens for juvenile delinquency; graphically violent or sexually explicit games, such as Death Race and Custer’s Revenge, triggered discussions over the limits of acceptable content in games. The moral entrepreneurs set aside these previous episodes in favor of an uncomplicated narrative: modern video games as a corruption of the medium, to the detriment of America’s youth. In so doing, they helped to legitimize earlier video games, controversial though they may have been in their own time, as acceptable parts of

American popular culture.

Moreover, unlike earlier panics over specific objectionable titles, moral activists in the early 1990s attempted to paint their new targets as a proxy for video games as a form of mass media. In the case of Custer’s Revenge and Death Race, observers denounced their shocking content; however, they tended to not take them as representative of all video games. Critics of Custer’s Revenge certainly denounced the game for its depictions of sexual violence and its racist portrayal of Native Americans; however, they generally did not call for any widespread action encompassing all games.

Media coverage of the backlash against Custer’s Revenge generally attempted to toe the line between limiting youth access and honoring free speech protection. The writer of an

October 1982 article on Custer’s Revenge in the New York Times attempted to distinguish for readers the difference between a specific type of objectionable game and games as a whole: “Video games are clearly like books and records, in that anyone should be able to publish them...No one today blames a stereo manufacturer for obscene records. But people do not yet realize that other companies besides Atari can make games to play on

Atari consoles or that a cable company might not have complete control over

352 programs.”88 However, by the time lawmakers, youth advocacy groups, and educators met in Congress in 1993, the conversation had changed from a case-by-case approach to game content to calls to a comprehensive, industry-wide focus.

When Congress resumed session in February 1994, Lieberman introduced the

Video Game Rating Act (VRA, S. 1823) with Kohl and Dorgan as co-sponsors.89 The proposed bill called for the creation of the Interactive Entertainment Rating Commission, a five-person committee to oversee the video game industry in establishing a system to regulate “violent or sexually explicit content” in their products through ratings and dissemination of information to the public. In the meantime, several American video game manufacturers formed the industry’s first dedicated trade organization: The

Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), later renamed the Entertainment

Software Association (ESA). The IDSA acted, in contrast to the in-fighting at the

December 9 hearing, as a unified front for American game manufacturers in their dealings with the federal government. Jack Heistand, Senior Vice President of Business

Development at Electronic Arts, acted as the first president of IDSA and represented the organization at subsequent congressional hearings. On March 4, 1994, Heistand, accompanied by Lincoln, introduced lawmakers to the industry’s plan to develop an

88 “The Brouhaha Over X-Rated Games,” New York Times, October 24, 1982.

89 “S. 1823 (103rd): Video Game Rating Act of 1994,” GovTrack, accessed October 26, 2018, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/103/s1823.

353 independent content-based ratings system, officially unveiling the system at a subsequent hearing held on July 29.90

The new rating system, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), acted in a similar fashion to the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings system for films. Under the system, software developers submitted footage of potentially objectionable material to the ESRB, wherein a panel evaluated the content and assigned a letter rating based on the age group it deemed appropriate for that game. Reviewers chose from one of five letter ratings: C (Children), KA (Kids to Adults, replaced in 1997 with E

[Everyone]), T (Teen), M (Mature Audiences), and A-O. (Adult’s Only). The A-O rating, equivalent to the X/NC-17 rating in film, in theory, financially disincentivized game companies from including certain levels of mature content, as retailers vowed they would not stock A-O games.91 Representatives from major retailers such as and Toys

90 The beleaguered Bill White was conspicuously absent from both hearings.

91 This has largely proven successful. According to the official website of the ESRB, as of 2018, the ratings board had issued the A-O rating to only twenty-seven games. One— , a 1998 fighting game created by Paradox Development for the Sony PlayStation—was ultimately never released after receiving the rating. Several of them also have had an M-rated commercial release, with some of the explicit content removed. These include : Magna Cum Laude (2004), Fahrenheit (2005, also known as Indigo Prophecy), and (2009). In 2005, one game—Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas—received a retroactive A-O rating (originally rated M), after information on a sex-scene inaccessible to users but left in the game's code leaked on the Internet, fueling a media controversy. Most A-O games received the rating for containing some level of sexual content, such as a certain level of nudity or sexual encounters. ”Search ESRB Ratings,” Entertainment Software Ratings Board, accessed June 10, 2018, http://www.esrb.org/ratings/search.aspx?from=home&ratings=AO+(Adults+Only).

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‘R Us promised lawmakers during the July 29 hearing that they would not carry any titles bearing the A-O rating. Since 1994, the system has expanded to include rating content present in the game’s code but inaccessible to players as well as and “born digital” games (games that have no physical media that are distributed electronically). The ESRB required the rating, accompanied by a brief description of the content, to appear on all game-related materials, such as playable media (cartridges and discs), packaging, and advertising.92 (Fig. 5.6)

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board was far from a perfect system, especially in its early years. It could only act as a barrier for the initial purchase of a game. As was the case prior to the ESRB, the industry largely left it up to parents to regulate content for their kids. An unsuspecting parent or older sibling could buy an M- rated game for an underaged player in accordance with the ratings, or a child could play that game once it was available at home. Moreover, plans for retailers to abide by the rating appeared to be slow in implementation. For example, this historian recalls his twelfth birthday in 1996 wherein he was able to buy a copy of the M-rated Mortal

92 The system applied to all retail games from September 16, 1994, onward, and the ESRB did not assign retroactive ratings, citing the high volume of existing games. For example, Night Trap for the Sega CD or 3DO did not receive a retroactive rating. However, it received an M (Mature) rating when Digital Pictures released the game on new systems, such as Sega’s in 1994. Interestingly, the “25th Anniversary Edition” released on the Nintendo Switch in 2018, received a T (Teen) rating.

355

Figure 5.6: Packaging of the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat 3 bearing the M (Mature) ESRB rating. From the author’s personal collection.

356

Kombat 3 for the Sega Genesis unsupervised and unchallenged by the clerk in the check- out aisle. Nevertheless, the ESRB successfully placated lawmakers and the Video Game

Rating Act unceremoniously died in committee.

Conclusion

The confrontation between video games and moral activists in December 1993 was the culmination of two interconnected trends. First, there were the aspirations and anxieties over rapidly changing media technology, represented by the promises (if not the implementation) of media fads such as virtual reality (VR) and full-motion video (FMV) games; those concerned with the implications of new media looked toward a perceived increase in violent crime and saw a terrifying correlation, if not causation, in the rise of

FMV games, VR, and the popularity of video games, especially among teenaged boys.

Second, the hearing was the end result of the changing discussion over what it meant to be a video game user, a multi-faceted debate between producers, users, mediators, and observers that dated back to the release of the Magnavox Odyssey and Pong two decades prior. A medium initially marketed as safe fun for the whole family had developed into one focused on entertainment and excitement for a predominantly teenaged and adolescent male “gamer” crowd. For moral entrepreneurs such as Joseph Lieberman,

Herman Kohl, Marilyn Droz, and Eugene Provenzo, catering to young boys through explicit content risked corrupting the youth and disrupting the family. Whether video games posed that threat, they and other activists were successful in controlling the discourse over games and forcing the industry to regulate itself.

357

However, a potentially unintended consequence of the new ratings system was the opportunity it created for companies to expand beyond this narrow audience. Following

1994, video game manufacturers in America could now develop games that catered to more specific audiences, using the ratings as a yardstick to measure a game’s age appropriateness: educational games for young children, sports simulations for a general audience, games designed for families, “mature” games for older audiences. The

Entertainment Software Ratings Board provided a check on any potential moral backlash: if there were objections to a game, the industry could refer to the rating, reinforcing the need for individual/parental responsibility. It also acted as a seal of quality, ensuring retailers, lawmakers, and consumers the game made it to store shelves through a specialized vetting process. Game journalist Tristan Donovan argued that the hearings,

“actually made it safer for video game developers to create violent games, not harder.”93

With the safety of the ratings system, the industry theoretically had license to develop games for a wide array of ages and genders, securing the possibility of a diversity in game audiences reminiscent of the “Universal Appeal” demonstrated in game marketing in the seventies and early 1980s. However, how quickly or easily the industry moved away from the “hardcore” subculture was an entirely different matter.

93 Donovan, Replay, 235.

358

CONCLUSION

On March 19, 2019, media conglomerate introduced the company’s first entry into the home video game market. In a presentation at the 2019 Game Developers

Conference (GDC), a conference for members of the video game industry that was also streamed online to the public, Google CEO debuted Stadia. Described as a

“data platform,” Stadia was a subscription-based service that allowed users to stream a library of games online via Google. Pichai made bold claims about the new platform’s capabilities. Reportedly, the system would allow players to stream games through phones, tablets, and PCs, without any loss of graphical or technical performance. Pichai and other speakers at the event promised Stadia would be interconnected with YouTube,

Google’s online video platform, bringing together both game users and those who viewed game-related content online. They promised that players watching YouTube videos of other people playing would be able to jump into that game via Stadia under the same parameters as what they were watching. They also would be able to play alongside their favorite YouTube celebrities during online streaming sessions, and YouTube creators would be able to develop game challenges and share them with their audience via Stadia.

One commercial promised the system would offer, “one place for all the ways we play.”1

1 “Stadia GDC Gaming Announcement,” YouTube, March 19, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUih5C5rOrA; “Stadia Connect 6.6.2019 –

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Stadia’s early promotion positioned it apart from the video game systems that had dominated the home market since the 1970s. According to Stadia engineering head Majd

Bakar, “Stadia is not constrained by the limitations of traditional console systems.

Instead, we have built a truly flexible, scalable, and modern platform that allows us to push performance beyond what was previously considered possible.” The March 19th video ended with a compilation of games presumably played through Stadia over a voiceover asserting that the data platform was more than a mere “gaming box” like competing consoles Sony PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One: “The future of gaming is not a box. It’s a place. Where we can all play. All kinds of games. Across all kinds of screens. A place that you get to instantly. With just a click. No boxes. No downloads. No limits.” According to Google, Stadia, scheduled to launch in November

2019, was intended to be the next step in the evolution of home video games.

Although Stadia has yet to be released as of this writing, Google’s marketing for their so-called “data platform” is a useful prompt for considering how public and industry perceptions of home video gaming and the artifacts through which games are played have evolved in the years since 1994. Stadia’s marketing demonstrates both the influence of the internet and how much video gaming has changed in the larger scheme of leisure in the United States. It also demonstrates how evolving understandings of the place of computerized technology inside the private household have evolved. From the early seventies through the early nineties, negotiations over the meanings associated with home

Pricing, Game Reveals, Launch, Info & More,” YouTube, June 6, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BbW6zAjL0.

360 video games and their users involved complex, and competing, interests. The aesthetic design, technical capabilities, and promotion of home video games represented manufacturers’ attempts to capitalize on larger social, cultural, and technological trends.

At the same time users constructed their own meanings behind their game usage, sometimes moving far beyond the initial intent of developers. Meanwhile retailers, competing industries, politicians, journalists in the popular and emerging gaming press, and other actors attempted to make sense of the new device invading America’s living rooms. By the 2010s, video gameplay was largely an accepted element of American leisure, and its acceptance evolved alongside changing ideas of computerized technology.

However, the relationship between computer systems and game systems as both technical devices and consumer goods remains ambiguous. During the 1970s and 1980s the relationship between the two fluctuated based on shifting consumer understandings of computerized technology and the financial fortunes of their respective markets. When game systems entered the American consumer market, most of the public had little exposure to computers outside of popular media. The aesthetic design and marketing for the Magnavox Odyssey, Tele-games Pong, and other early game consoles situated video games within the domestic space. Print copy focused on their entertainment value and their ability to recreate existing leisure experiences such as playing tennis or hockey rather than their technical prowess. Even with the release of mass-marketed home computer systems, advertisements for the Atari Video Computer System, Mattel

Intellivision, and other cartridge-based consoles of the late 1970s distanced them from contemporary computers. During the “Pac-Man Fever” years of the early 1980s,

361 manufacturers and game magazines asserted that their systems were distinct from home computers despite sharing similar internal components. When the market soured, several game systems “sprouted keyboards and learned to speak BASIC,” to paraphrase one computer industry representative, acquiring new computing accessories and features.2

When the home games market recovered with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment

System in 1985 and 1986, manufacturers reaffirmed the distinction between game machines and computers.

For the most part, these consumer electronic spheres remained distinct through the

1990s and 2000s. However, recent years have seen more overlap between games and computers. While game console manufacturers have seldom applied serious computing features such as data entry and finance management to their hardware, as they attempted during the market crash in 1983 and 1984, computer systems have gradually taken on more gaming qualities. Many blockbuster games appear both on game consoles and PCs and there is a robust PC gamer subculture within the larger gamer fan community.

Several online competitive multiplayer games offer “cross platform” play, allowing owners of different game systems to play against each other. For example, a user playing on an Xbox One can compete against someone playing the game on a computer.

One of Google’s key selling points for the Stadia is the ability to play the same game over tablets, computers, and phones. The system’s “data platform” model posits the important element of gaming is the game itself and not the medium through which it is

2 Laura Landro, "Living Room War: Video Game Firms Take on Computer Invaders," Wall Street Journal, February 9, 1983.

362 played, a key distinction from past conceptions of video gameplay. It is possible this cross-platform play experience may eventually bring an end to consoles specifically designed for gameplay. Video gaming may be reaching a point where the medium through which games are played no longer matters. This will raise important questions for future game scholars about the implications of a future of games without game consoles.

These questions arise alongside changing ideas about the relationship between game consumption and game ownership. In recent years, with the advent of the internet and the popularization of digital-based distribution, virtual game sale without the need for physical media, playing video games no longer necessarily means owning them. Game purchases can now be made either directly through game companies, such as a direct download from a studio’s website, or through virtual game marketplaces, such as

PlayStation Network’s PlayStation Store, the Microsoft Store, the Nintendo eShop, or computer game stores such as , GoG (Good Old Games), or the Humble Store.

These digital storefronts allow access to a plethora of games with no corresponding disc, cartridge, or other physical media. On the one hand, digital distribution has been a boon for small, independent developers who now have the freedom to release a title without the added financial and logistical burdens of producing discs or cartridges and distributing them to retailers. “Indie” games can rely less on broad appeal and cater game experiences to more specialized niche audiences, allowing for a more diverse user base and for games to address themes and ideas largely ignored by mainstream companies.

363

On the other hand, the virtual marketplace has also allowed large game corporations, such as Activision, , and Electronic Arts, greater centralized control over how individuals consume electronic games. Digital storefronts such as Electronic

Arts’ Origin, Valve’s Steam, Ubisoft’s Uplay, and Epic Studios’ Epic Store grant users access to a unique code or some form of digital , known in the industry as digital rights management (DRM), associated with a particular game rather than a physical copy the user owns. Each code is unique to the user who purchases it and cannot be traded, transferred, or sold among other users as was possible with physical copies. By all accounts Stadia will employ a similar model. According to the FAQ page on Google’s official Stadia site, users who cancel their online subscription will not be able to access games they claimed through Stadia until they renew their subscription.3 Corporations can also dictate specific approved avenues of game usage under penalty of losing access. For example, hacking or other software manipulation can be prohibited under game companies’ terms of service; violators can either lose access to essential elements of a game or potentially risk legal reprisal. Game consumers in 2019 increasingly face an environment where producers have divorced consumption from individual ownership.

For historians of electronic technologies, this focus on access over ownership raises serious concerns about the future historic preservation of video games. Digital distribution has made video games an increasingly ephemeral medium. Publishers stock games on online stores so long as there is financial incentive to do so. Their online

3 “Stadia FAQ,” Stadia Help, July 29, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019, https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338946?hl=en.

364 availability is at the whim of companies beholden to a game’s potential profitability rather than its potential historical or cultural value. Publishers may choose to revoke access to a game at any time for reasons including low sales; high maintenance costs; the cancellation of related properties; the appearance of a new version, as in the case of yearly sports titles such as the Madden NFL, NBA2k, and FIFA franchises; or the loss of a game’s licensing rights to another company. When these games leave corporate- controlled storefronts, there is a possibility they may vanish forever, and there are numerous instances of games disappearing from digital marketplaces, leaving access only to players fortunate enough to download a copy before its culling. This has led to a lively secondary market for used equipment that contains copies of otherwise inaccessible games. On April 29, 2015, publisher Konami removed the horror game P.T. from the

Sony PlayStation 4’s PlayStation Network. The game was a playable promotional demo for Silent Hills, a new installment in a long-running horror series; the demo gained viral popularity with numerous “Let’s Play” videos available online. However, following the cancellation of Silent Hills, Konami had no incentive to maintain the demo and removed it from online storefronts. Following its removal it could only be accessed on devices where it had already been downloaded, and Sony PlayStation 4 systems with a downloaded copy of P.T. are highly sought after by collectors and can sell for as much as

$1200 on the secondhand market (by comparison, a brand new PS4 can sell for anywhere between $260 and $300 as of this writing).4 The highly publicized removal of P.T. was

4 Nick Robinson, “How Konami accidentally made P.T. the coolest game of all time,” Polygon, May 7, 2015, accessed September 12, 2019,

365 far from the only instance of publishers making it impossible to access a game. This raises important questions about the role of centralized control over access to video games and the relationship between corporations and those interested in preserving video game history. Unless accommodations can be reached with game archives, the future preservation of video games may rest upon those who are willing to violate copyright law and potentially arouse litigation from publishers.

Google’s promotional videos emphasized the social aspects of Stadia gameplay, presenting users playing together online or in a living room or watching online “Let’s

Play” videos of other users’ play sessions on YouTube. Stadia’s advertisements portrayed a demographically diverse user base. In one clip, an elderly woman gleefully defeated a younger player in a pitched naval battle in an of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

Another showed a group of players reacting excitedly to some on-screen action in a living room. Others showed players sharing gaming experiences with YouTube celebrities: watching a “Let’s Play” video of Felix Kjellburg, also known as “PewDiePie,” or sharing a high-five with Mark Fischbach, aka “Markiplier.” These depictions of togetherness and social play were reminiscent of marketing for systems during the early years of the medium. Advertisements for the Odyssey series, Tele-games Pong, and other systems of the early 1970s portrayed families and adult couples gathered together, reinforcing video gameplay as safe, wholesome fun for the whole family. These depictions came as the nuclear family appeared beset by potentially destabilizing social, cultural, and economic

https://www.polygon.com/2015/5/7/8564283/opinion-konami-pt-removal-just-made-p-t- one-of-the-greatest-games-of-all-time.

366 forces, including recessions, rising crime, and declining marriage and birth rates. In the era of Stadia, these experiences are also safe and stabilizing; however, the fundamental difference is where companies such as Atari and Magnavox attempted to market an entirely new form of entertainment, Google is working in an environment where video gameplay, including watching and playing games, are acceptable forms of leisure.

Moreover, what had once been a private experience for families, children, or adult couples away from the public is now a blending of the public and private. “Let’s Play” videos and gaming livestreams on sites such as YouTube and allow individuals or groups to play video games for a mass audience, creating a performative aspect to playing games as well as an element of spectatorship that was not present during the early decades of the medium. Online “” competitions have also increased in popularity.

A 2016 report from tech consultants Activate, Inc., estimated over 250 million people watched video game competitions and predicted the number would double by 2020.5

Competitive gaming dates back to the early 1980s, but the audience and market for them has never been larger than it is today.

However, while Google executives promised a shared gaming experience through

Stadia, the marketing for the “data platform” was not a return to what Electronic Games

5 “Activate Tech and Media Outlook 2017,” SlideShare, October 24, 2016, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.slideshare.net/ActivateInc/think-again-tech-media- outlook-2017-67604099; “With Viewership and Revenue Booming, Esport Set to Compete with Traditional Sports,” Whitman Syracuse University, January 18, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019, https://onlinebusiness.syr.edu/blog/esports-to-compete- with-traditional-sports/.

367 editor Arnie Katz described in 1983 as the “Universal Appeal of electronic gaming.”6

Despite presenting male and female players of varying ages and ethnicities and Pichai’s assertions that Stadia was for everyone, people depicted in Stadia’s advertising clearly shared one common characteristic: they were all part of the “gamer” subculture. In the initial pitch for Stadia at the 2019 GDC, project head Phil Harrison promised an experience for “hardcore” gamers. Games presented in early promotional videos were primarily blockbuster, known in the industry as “triple A” (AAA), titles designed and marketed toward a dedicated hardcore player base. Games such as Assassin’s Creed:

Odyssey, : Youngblood, and (an online adventure shooter Google promised would come bundled with Stadia) require significant time investments and, in some cases, frequent, multiplayer interactions with other users. Their inclusion in

Stadia’s promotion implied a user experience beyond that of the “casual” player.

Promises of games presented with high graphical performance were intended to appeal to players of discerning tastes. Stadia’s physical design also appealed to the “hardcore” gamer. Its controller visually resembled controllers on competing systems such as the

Microsoft Xbox One and Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. Its underside bore the

“” (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start), a secret code that appeared in several games created by developer Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment

System during the 1980s and 1990s and a familiar sight among gamers. Indeed, Pichai introduced project head Phil Harrison at the initial unveiling of Stadia as “a great leader

6 Arnie Katz, "The Decline and Fall...of Prices," Electronic Games 2, No. 8 (October 1983): 6.

368 and a great gamer, definitely someone who knows the difference between RPGs and

NPCs.” Pichai presented Harrison and his team as “one of them” to the audience of developers and game enthusiasts watching on YouTube, and the company’s calls for graphical prowess were reminiscent of similar assertions of technical superiority from the

“Console Wars” between Nintendo and Sega during the early 1990s, all of which appealed to a specialized “gamer” audience.

There are plenty of reasons to believe this specific conception of video game user identity, one largely codified during the 1980s and 1990s, no longer accurately represents the majority of the American video game user base. The proliferation of “indie” games and the rise of tablet and phone based “mobile” games have facilitated a broader market beyond the adolescent or teenaged boy who became the stereotypical game user by the early 1990s. Among the most widely-downloaded mobile titles in 2019 are King’s puzzle game Candy Crush Saga and Niantec’s Pokémon GO. Released in 2012, Candy Crush

Saga has been downloaded over 1.34 billion times as of 2019. A 2018 report described its user base as 46 percent over the age of 35 with 58 percent of players identifying as women.7 Released in 2016, Pokémon GO, a geocaching based game where players traveled to real-world locations to capture Pokémon and battle other trainers, was the smash hit of the summer. Developer Niantec reported the game had over 1 billion unique users by December 2016, and a 2016 SurveyMonkey study reported people between the

7 Jonathan Pirc, “Mobile Gamers Still Love Candy (Crush),” Market Research, October 11, 2018, accessed August 2, 2019, http://blog.lab42.com/mobile-gamers-still-love- candy-crush/.

369 ages of 30 and 49 comprised the largest user demographic and 53 percent of all Pokémon

GO players were women.8 These figures appear to defy earlier assumptions that most game users are teenaged boys. In recent years, as video games have gained a greater foothold in American leisure, the industry has attempted to market itself beyond the

“gamer” identity it worked so hard to cultivate in the years following the industry crash in the mid-1980s. Recalling elements of the “Universal Appeal,” the current industry has re-emphasized video gaming as something everyone does. Reports published by the

Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the lobbying arm of the American video game industry, reflect these sentiments. In a 2018 report, the ESA argued the age of the average video game user was 34 years old and that adult women comprised a larger percentage of the user base than teenaged boys.9 As the market becomes larger, with more diverse games available, the subject of the future identity of video gamers will continue to be important for game scholars.

Conversely, video gaming—as an industry, a leisure activity, and a mass medium—is still coming to terms with its legacy as boys play. Many of the tropes that proliferated in the late 1980s and early 1990s—overly sexualized or victimized women

8 Mike Sonders, “Pokémon GO demographics: The evolving player mix of a smash-hit game,” Medium, December 7, 2016, accessed September 10, 2019, https://medium.com/@sm_app_intel/pok%C3%A9mon-go-demographics-the-evolving- player-mix-of-a-smash-hit-game-b9099d5527b7.

9 Entertainment Software Association, 2018 Sales, Demographic, and User Data: Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry (Entertainment Software Association, April 2018): 7, accessed August 9, 2019, https://www.theesa.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/03/ESA_EssentialFacts_2018.pdf.

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(or both) and hyper-masculine male protagonists—persisted from the 1990s through the present day. Shooters and violent action games dominate the AAA gaming market.

Despite the broad popular diffusion of computer and home video games as well as the rise of phone or tablet based mobile games, the popular culture trope of adult male players as socially-maladjusted “boy men,” to borrow a term from historian Gary Cross, persists.10 Gaming has also developed an, unfortunately, deserved reputation for fostering toxic masculinity and harassment against women. In 2014, a group of self-proclaimed

“gamers” launched a series of well-publicized attacks against female game developers, journalists, and media critics in a campaign that came to be known as #GamerGate.11

Even as the video game industry presents the medium as possessing a broad popular appeal, there still remains the legacy of the marketing and design decisions from the late

1980s and early 1990s, decisions that prioritized a player base dominated by white, heterosexual, cisgender boys. This was apparent in the moral panic over video games in

1993 that led to the industry developing an independent ratings system under threat of federal regulation. Lawmakers, child psychologists, media observers, and other moral

10 Gary Cross, Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

11 There are numerous articles on GamerGate. See, for example: Jay Hathaway, “What is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks,” Gawker, October 10, 2014, accessed August 17, 2019, https://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer- for-non-geeks-1642909080; Nick Wingfield, “Feminist Critics of Video Games facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’ Campaign,” New York Times, October 15, 2014, accessed August 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women- video-game-threats-anita-sarkeesian.html; Simon Parkin, “GamerGate: A Scandal Erupts in the Video-Game Community,” The New Yorker, October 17, 2014, accessed June 29, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gamergate-scandal-erupts-video-game- community.

371 activists at the December 9, 1993, Congressional hearing on video game violence were quick to point out the potential adverse effects video gaming could have on boys, asserting video games could encourage misogyny or acts of violence, and the ways games excluded women and girls by design.

Moralist concerns over video games persist, shaped in part by those early anxieties over video games’ potential negative influence on society. During the early

1990s lawmakers, media activists, and other concerned citizens viewed video games as gateways to violent crime. Recent concerns over mass shootings frequently lead politicians toward video games as a convenient scapegoat that draws attention away from other societal issues, such as the stigmatizing of mental illness and the proliferation of easily accessible guns and ammunition in the United States. In August 2019, several prominent Republicans in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, cited video games as a cause, utilizing rhetoric reminiscent of concerns raised over video games during the early 1990s. “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,”

Donald Trump said in a Presidential address following the shootings, “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this.”12 “We’ve always had guns, we’ve always had evil but what has changed since we’ve had this rash of shooting?” inquired Texas Lieutenant

12 Patricia Hernandez, “Trump and GOP blame recent mass shootings on video games, internet,” Polygon, August 5, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/5/20754784/el-paso-dayton-mass-shootings-trump- video-games.

372

Governor Dan Patrick on the August 5, 2019, edition of the program Fox &

Friends, “I see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill.”13

Recent critics have also raised concerns over the ways online video game communities provide safe havens and echo chambers for troubled young men who align with white supremacy and the resurgent alt-right. As writer Rumi Khan observed in a

July 9, 2019, article for Harvard Political Review, there is an overlap between elements of neo-fascist and white supremacist groups and certain online gaming communities.

Some alt-right groups have adopted elements of online gamer culture, such as inside jokes, memes, and references to certain games, as ways of identifying or enticing people who share their beliefs. Conversely, self-described gamers who harbor those beliefs have utilized gaming networks such as Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network and online forums such as 8chan, Reddit, and Discord to express racist and misogynist beliefs with other sympathetic players or organize cyberbullying or harassment campaigns against women, people of color, and LGBTQIA communities.14 For example, coordinators of the

13 Alana Rocha, “After El Paso shooting, Texas Lt. Gov. dan Patrick says video games teach young people ‘to kill,’” Texas Tribune, August 4, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.texastribune.org/2019/08/04/dan-patrick-video-games-el-paso- shooting/?utm_campaign=trib- social&utm_content=1564940254&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mediapartner.

14 For examinations of the relationship between online communities and the alt-right, see: NBC News, “How Gamers Are Facing the Rise of the Alt-Right,” YouTube, October 30, 2017, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN1P6UA7pvM; Emma Vossen, “Thoughts on Five Years of examining G@mergate: An excerpt from my PhD Dissertation,” Medium, August 16, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019, https://medium.com/@emmahvossen/thoughts-on-five-years-of-examining-g-mergate-an- excerpt-from-my-phd-dissertation-2a86f959f7cd; Emma Vossen, On the Cultural

373

August 12, 2017, “Unite the Right Rally,” a white supremacist demonstration held in

Charlottesville, VA, organized the event through Discord.15 “Alt-right leaders have long realized the reactionary potential of the hardcore gamer community, a community that is generally white, male, middle class, socially frustrated and perpetually online,” Kahn observed, noting former head of Breitbart and former Trump Chief Strategist Steve

Bannon, “perhaps the icon of the mainstream alt-right, got his start by radicalizing disgruntled World of Warcraft players.”16 The rhetoric of these groups, emboldened by the xenophobic and racist rhetoric of Trump and his supporters, also has antecedents in online harassment campaigns in the game community such as #GamerGate and attacks against media scholar Anita Sarkeesian and her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games web series in 2012 and 2014.17 The relationship between online toxicity, emboldened neo-

Inaccessibility of Gaming: Invading, Creating, and Reclaiming the Cultural Clubhouse, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, (University of Waterloo, 2018), accessed August 17, 2019, http://hdl.handle.net/10012/13649.

15 “Two Years Ago, They Marched in Charlottesville. Where Are They Now?” ADL: Fighting Hate for Good, August 8, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.adl.org/blog/two-years-ago-they-marched-in-charlottesville-where-are-they- now.

16 Rumi Kahn, “The Alt-Right as Counterculture: Memes, Video Games, and Violence,” Harvard Political Review, July 6, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019, https://harvardpolitics.com/culture/alt-right-counterculture/. For a detailed breakdown on the rhetoric of the alt-right and its relationship to video game communities, see: M. Ambedkar, “The Aesthetics of the Alt-Right,” Title, February 22, 2017, accessed September 11, 2019, http://www.title-magazine.com/2017/02/aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/.

17 On harassment against Sarkeesian, see: Steven Totilo, “She’s Not Hiding From The Hate She’s Getting For Examining Video Games. She’s Exposing It,” Kotaku, July 3, 2012, accessed September 13, 2019, https://kotaku.com/shes-not-hiding-from-the-hate- shes-getting-for-examinin-30778838; Colin Campbell, “Sarkeesian Driven Out of Home by Online Abuse and Death Threats,” Polygon, August 27, 2014, accessed June 16, 2016,

374 fascist rhetoric and violence in the wake of Trump’s election, and game communities has been and will continue to be an important subject for video game scholars and the industry itself.

On the subject of anxiety, it also remains to be seen what the future holds for the

Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) as developers increasingly focus on digital distribution over physical media. The companies comprising the mainstream

American video game industry developed the ESRB in 1994 as a check against potential future moral panics. Part of this relied on retailers as an intermediary. Games bearing the

A-O (“Adults Only”) rating would not appear in stores. Under the system, it is the responsibility of retailers and parents, not video game manufacturers, to ensure potentially objectionable content stays out of the hands of under-aged audiences.

However, the current digital distribution model completely bypasses brick-and-mortar stores. With publishers able to bypass physical distribution either by selling directly or through online game services such as Steam, Humble Store, or GoG, it will be interesting to see what, if any, enforcement power is available through the ESRB.

In fact, some developers may exploit the ESRB as a means of generating free publicity. In January 2015, the ESRB issued an A-O rating to the independent game

Hatred.18 Created by Polish developer Destructive Creations, Hatred put players in the

http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/27/6075679/sarkeesian-driven-out-of-home-by-online- abuse-and-death-threats.

18 Ben Kuchera, “Hatred given Adults Only rating in US and Canada,” Polygon, January 16, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.polygon.com/2015/1/16/7557639/hatred-esrb-ao-rating.

375 role of a nameless character who perpetrates a mass killing spree. On December 15,

2014, Valve delisted Hatred from Steam Greenlight, the company’s online store for

“Indie” games and games in development.19 The A-O rating also disqualified the game from being listed on online stores of console manufacturers Nintendo, Microsoft, and

Sony. While this could potentially inhibit sales, the ensuing controversy surrounding

Hatred gained the otherwise obscure game significant free publicity, reminiscent of earlier controversial games such as Death Race and Night Trap.20 With a broader digital marketplace where small developers can garner publicity and sales through viral attention, for some developers, the prospect of receiving an A-O rating to boost press attention and potentially sales is much more attractive than it had in a time of physical media.

Despite the ways the internet has changed or complicated early conceptions of video gaming, economic access remains an important element shaping game identity.

Google’s marketing of Stadia asserted that the system would reduce economic barriers to entry in the video game subculture. However, economic privilege has been a persistent element of game consumption, dating back to the industry’s commercial origins. Game

19 Michael McWhertor, “Mass Hatred hits Steam Greenlight, gets pulled by Valve (update),” Polygon, December 15, 2014, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/15/7396565/mass-shooter-game-hatred-steam- greenlight-pulled-by-valve. John Walker, “Valve ‘Would Not Publish’ Hatred, Deletes From Greenlight,” , December 16, 2014, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/16/hatred-removed-from-steam/.

20 Michael McWhertor, “Hatred is back on Steam Greenlight (update),” Polygon, December 16, 2014, accessed September 11, 2019, https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/16/7406713/hatred-returns-to-steam-greenlight-valve.

376 companies of the early 1970s made strong associations between video game system ownership and suburban prosperity. Advertisements for the Odyssey series, home Pong, and others situated game systems in modern living room spaces. Aesthetic embellishments such as wood finishing evoked the appearance of other staples of the middle-class living room such as wood furniture, television sets, and stereos. Even as the demographic focus shifted away from families and adults to adolescent and teenage boys in the 1980s and early 1990s, home game ownership retained elements of this connection to financial stability. True fans, as framed by Nintendo’s promotional materials in the late

1980s and early 1990s, defined their fandom through their purchasing power or that of their parents. Owning expensive game consoles and peripherals, buying a library of game cartridges, subscribing to the magazines, and calling into the tip lines all became elements of what defined a gamer. For aspiring video game fans, these elements established a price of admission for the gaming experience. Even as Google executives describe “the data center is your platform” in the case of Stadia, access depends on an individual’s access to a reliable high-speed internet connection, which is not necessarily guaranteed even in 2019, along with the ability to pay subscription fees on top of purchasing access to Stadia’s games. As it did in the 1970s, video gaming in 2019 requires some level of financial stability and access to disposable time and income.

Yet the modern video game landscape of 2019 also complicates these levels of economic privilege. On the one hand, game manufacturers have established additional financial barriers to gameplay. Many modern AAA games include their own specialized economies, adding additional components players can buy on top of the initial point of

377 purchase. Collectively known as “microtransactions,” these additional purchases include cosmetic additions, such as new character costumes or equipment designs, or those that potentially grant players willing to spend a little more for an advantage over their peers, including improved equipment or experience points to gain extra levels. Some of these additional services can be purchased deliberately or in randomized packs known in the game industry as “loot boxes.” Microtransactions and loot boxes have become controversial elements: manufacturers argue the growing cost of game production necessitate additional revenue streams beyond the initial game purchase while critics argue they add gambling elements to games that pressure players to spend to remain competitive or exploit people with addictive personalities.21

Conversely, the internet has created avenues for game users to consume game- related media with minimal financial contributions. A popular genre in the video game community is the “Let’s Play” video, where viewers watch one or a group of players go through a specific game, often while providing a running commentary. For video game enthusiasts on a fixed income, “Let’s Play” videos on platforms such as YouTube or

Twitch can be a boon for those interested in video games, as they allow them to experience a game for a fraction of the cost of buying the game, system, and any additional products or services necessary to play it themselves. One only needs a device

21 Joshua Rivera, “The Video Game Industry Can’t Go On Like This,” Kotaku, July 22, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019, https://kotaku.com/the-video-game-industry-cant-go- on-like-this-1836606033; Jim Sterling, “The Addictive Cost of Predatory Videogame Monetization (The Jimquisition),” YouTube, July 1, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019, https://youtu.be/7S-DGTBZU14.

378 that will run the video and an internet connection. In this respect, the curious can take in as little or as much of a video game as they choose. “Let’s Play” videos and gaming livestreams also offer a sense of community as viewers can share their reactions with the players and each other, experiencing the game vicariously or offering their own commentary in the video’s “Comments” section. Fans of specific games can also create and distribute media related to games, such as fan-created artwork, music, and written stories using game characters or worlds (called fan fictions or “fan fics”). These elements of game culture date back to the industry’s early decades, evidenced in user contributions to fan club and specialty game magazines and independent fandoms such as the

Astrocade Underground. “Let’s Play” videos and these outlets for creative expression also demonstrate video game consumption devoid of what some might consider an essential element of a game: actual gameplay. These issues will raise interesting questions for future scholars, who will need to address the idea of gaming without gameplay.

Home video games in the twenty-first century raise different, challenging questions than those of the medium’s origins in the postwar years. However, these current issues of ownership, user identity, and the meanings of video game consumption were shaped by the early years of their commercial presence in the United States. The first two decades of the American video game industry were a formative period in the social construction of the home video game as technological device, consumer good, and cultural concept. Producers, consumers, mediators and a bevy of non-users, anti-users and other non-industry actors offered complex, at times contradictory, interpretations of

379 what it meant to own and consume video games. These various players presented numerous interpretations of home video gaming: video games enhanced television viewing; they stabilized and reinforced the family unit; they promoted education and were a bulwark against juvenile delinquency; they were a gateway to computers; they excluded various groups from the “computer revolution;” they fostered addiction, violence, and criminality; they disrupted the household; they encouraged violence against women. Likewise, the video gaming audience underwent constant negotiation among producers, cultural observers, and the users themselves. During the industry’s first two decades, video games were for all ages; they were children’s toys; they were sophisticated entertainment for adults; they were for people interested in getting involved in computers; they were solely for boys; they could potentially be for girls. The stereotypical male “gamer” prevalent in popular culture to this day was only one possible interpretation of video game usage, and his evolution came about in the midst of larger attempts to make sense of video games as technological device, leisure activity, and cultural media. These negotiations took place over the backdrop of complex discussions over the changing shape of middle-class leisure, perceptions of the state of the American family, and changing cultural ideas of the role of computers in American life. These ideas reflected changing ideas of the state of middle-class Americans’ perceptions of technology, modernity, and leisure. They also demonstrated Americans’ hopes and fears of the present and future implications of societal and technological change. While the male “gamer” emerged as the predominant identity associated with video game usage, his

380 ascendance was not a foregone conclusion. Moreover, recent trends prove that his preeminence is far from permanent.

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