Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America

Text Exploration

Chapter 1: Good Clean Fun: The Origins of the Video Arcade

In the first chapter of the book Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America, Michael Newman explores the historical grounding of video games in dirty and objectional parts of society. While we view gaming as a largely home-centric activity, the roots of video gaming can be tracked through video arcades in a mall, back through stand-alone arcades, into taverns and bars, and even as far back as peep-shows and Vaudreuil. Each phase of gaming refined the edges of gaming culture, and then fell into criticism of its own; Newman explains that “the history of public coin-operated amusement is largely one of wanting legitimacy and struggling for respectability.”

Early arcades in the 1890s were either free or positioned as “penny arcades,” providing men with many physical pay-to-play attractions like shooting rifles or punching bags. Additional activities were sexual in nature, and attendees could view flipbook-style videos of women undressing. The arcade games were cheap, and the venues dark, smoke-filled and hosting questionable clientele, and so even the earliest glimpses of gaming were contextualized as culturally negative. Pinball emerged during the Depression as a quick and inexpensive way for people to find a glimpse of fun, and these games inherited the negative reputation. These “pin games” were controlled by mobsters, reinforcing the relationship between paid gaming and undesirable elements; this also created a link between video gaming and gambling—with an “association between pin games and crime rackets” clearly developed by the 1930s.

With only a brief reference to gaming in the 50s, Newman then jumps to the 1970s. Pinball had established itself firmly in taverns and bars, and the association between gaming and adult activities was reinforced by The Who’s Tommy. While gaming lost its connection to organized crime, it retained a clear connection to “the romantic outlaw character in the style of James Dean.” This was a view of masculinity, working-class, and risk-taking.

Newman then shows the movement of video games from the tavern, into dedicated arcades, and then into shopping malls. With each move, the game is normalized into the context, but then whitewashed into a feeling of safety and suburbia. Shopping malls were a particularly strong backdrop for clean gaming, as a mall was a place for “suburbanization of leisure” full of “wholesome fun.” A logical next step for gaming, then, was for it to embody its own dedicated space for that wholesome fun, and arcades took on their own venues. The places of gaming “were not merely game rooms; they were family fun centers.” In malls and gaming centers, the context and goal was clean, safe, and organized.

In 1979, Space Invaders became one of the first enormous hits to push gaming from an activity for children to an activity of cultural note. It became a pop phenomenon, and again raised social concerns, this time of addiction; video games were called “infectious inventions,” with teenagers spending hours working to master the game.

Newman ends the chapter Good Clean Fun: The Origins of the Video Arcade by briefly mentioning the jump from the arcade to the home, which was “a way to bring the arcade and its noisy, boisterous thrills into the safety of the familiar family space.” This is the bookend of gaming as public and with associations to crime, alcohol, and addiction, moving to a clean, family-friendly activity.

Chapter 2: Don’t watch TV tonight. Play It!

In the second chapter of Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America, Newman argues that video games in the home partially inherited the framing of the delivery tool—the television—but were purposefully positioned as interactive rather than passive tools. In popular media, passive television consumption was characterized as lazy or irresponsible, and the television was continually described as a brainwashing one-way delivery system for state or corporation approved media. Video games, however, had interactivity, and consumers were positioned as having control over the contents of the experience. This positioning was driven aggressively by marketing campaigns for the various platforms, and was echoed by reviews and popular discussions of the new use of a television set.

Television watching is largely a passive and consumptive activity, and in the 70s, viewers had three channels to select from. Cable television provided more choices, but was still one directional. The introduction of video game consoles into the home did not actually extend that selection criteria very broadly, as consumers were still limited to playing only the games that were available to them. In terms of selection-criteria-as-interactivity, video games and television were equal. But interactivity through play was perceived as very different. Playing something required engagement and leaning in, and media and marketing materials showed that play as a community activity with participation from the whole family. Newman is repetitive in showing examples of the way marketing campaigns from IntelliVision and Atari pushed this sense of family togetherness, although this particular nuance is not that different from how televisions were presented (a beautiful family all spending time together.)

Newman includes a number of examples of critiques providing negative commentary about television watching and positive commentary about video game playing, but generally does not call attention to the eliteist nature of those critiques. The audience of television likely did not read the technology critics in The New York Times, nor would they be surprised to find that they watched, on average, six hours of television a day (and they likely would not find that a problem, either.) Millions of video game units were sold, but it’s unclear if they were actually used, and additional detail about television consumption habits during this period would help Newman make a case that the cultural commentary was representative of actual behavior and not glass-house thinking. Newman does offer one example as an exception, describing how Sociologist David Sudnow came to love playing Atari, but had to go buy a TV because “he is intellectually above television.”

Little conclusion is offered in this chapter. It serves to effectively tie television to video games and separate consumption from interactivity, but beyond that, the chapter plays a limited role in showing the larger history of video game pervasiveness.

Chapter 3: Space Invaders: Masculine Play in the Media Room

In this chapter, the author illustrates by example how changes in the physical space of the home, media, and advertising led to a male-dominated genre of video games. In the 70s, homes began to include game rooms, rumpus rooms, and family rooms—spaces dedicated to gaming (both video games and physical games). This helped to solidify the home as a “space of companionate leisure to include all of the family.” George Nelson is quoted as encouraging such a room (in his case, a “room without a name”) that could be transformed into a space for family, and he then names his room without a name; he calls it the “family room.” This family room then came to house all digital electronics. The author notes, however, that naming a room a “rumpus” room signals that it is to be used for being messy and active, rather than formal and tidy.

The author makes a notable jump from the family room to “boy culture,” and argues that by the early 1980s, video games in the home were become masculinized. A large part of this shift can be attributed to the way game companies built and advertised their games. Games were focused on war, invasion, cowboys and outlaws, and all portrayed men and boys as protagonists on the game boxes and in marketing.

These two points—that the home changed to support video games in a unique room, and that games became designed and advertised almost exclusively to boys—is then repeated exhaustively throughout the text. The 44-page chapter is relentless in making the same two claims (and little more), and as both claims are objective and generally sensible, it’s unclear whom the author feels they need to convince. A more concise description would afford more room in the text for an exploration of the game development itself, particularly focusing on the strategic product design and selection. Why did the industry select the various topics, such as cowboys or space investigation? The graphics in the 80s were obscure enough that they could be construed as anything, and so the positioning of the titles was likely pulled from some sort of market analysis or context of other media (such as movies, television, comics, or records.) Interviewing executives or designers at the various companies would be more difficult than simply making observations, but would add depth to the otherwise base notes of young boys being overly featured and targeted.

Chapter 4: Video Games as Computers, Computers as Toys

In this chapter, the author describes the next step in the convergence of home, television, and video games—the introduction of the portable computer into the home. Computing was first presented as a business tool, but when computers began including visual outputs instead of relay or text-based outputs, emphasis was shifted towards computing-as-play. Interspersed with continued but unrelated references to computing as a male-dominated topic, the author repeatedly makes the same case, to exhaustion: that, as video games overlapped with computers, they transferred their gaming identity.

The author then spends nearly 30 pages making another simple and non-controversial claim: that home computing became synonymous with gaming, and then transitioned into being viewed as part gaming and part utility; advertising increasingly positioned home computing as an all-encompassing tool, useful throughout the day and for a variety of activities.

It’s unfortunate how redundant and thin this text is. Each chapter is essentially one or two thoughts, repeated over and over and over. I expected to learn, track a new perspective, or at least experience nostalgia; instead, I’m just frustrated. I’ll work through the last two chapters, but I anticipate more of the same. It would be much more effective for the author to simply include advertisements from the time period.

Chapter 5: Video Kids Endangered and Improved

In this chapter, the author discusses how the growth of gaming was interpreted, discussed, and attacked by popular culture. As gaming became well-established, it attracted more consideration and critique from the popular media, local political figures (such as municipal governments and educators), and from researchers.

The author spends three pages explaining that the trope of “trouble in River City,” referencing The Music Man, indicated the grass-roots, populist concern with something new entering something more conservative and established. This is described as a “moral panic,” which is then clarified and defined as “an expression of concerns over changing family dynamics as women entered the workforce and children’s unsupervised leisure time seemed to be a problem in relation to emerging sexual roles in the family.” This moral panic extended into a concern of physical problems, “squandered lunch money,” and the fostering of negative and aggressive emotions in teenagers. This became amplified when figures like the US Surgeon General indicated that games were addictive.

The author then references a different way of framing this trouble and panic: through the eyes of a “moral entrepreneur,” which is a “prominent citizen” who is “no mere ordinary members of the community [and] they claim superior knowledge and powers of judgment.” The author misses the irony, given the outcry he continually claim over the gendered nature of gaming and the way he brushes aside blue-collar perspectives.

The second half of the chapter focuses on the emergent forces that positioned gaming not as an end in itself, but as a way to open intellectual doors for children, preparing them for a computerized future and encouraging them to find curiosity in computing. This is presented by the author as an intellectual activity, as compared to the irrational hysteria surrounding addiction. He explains that “the tensions between concerned local citizens and intellectually engaged advocated of video games can be seen quite clearly in one moment in particular,” which is a symposium of researchers at Harvard. This does make the distinction clear, but again, the author seems to miss some irony of making a clear divide between the people actually using the games (the ignorant) and the people discussing them (the informed.)

The author ends the chapter with references to the introduction of gaming into Hollywood, through titles like WarGames, which shifted a gamer to a hero. This, then, has been a pathway from addict to intellectual to protagonist.

Chapter 6: Pac-Man Fever

Pac-Man itself is presented as a fun, easy to play game. Again, the author references the gendered nature of Pac-Man (made obvious by the inclusion of Ms. Pac-Man), and again, the author makes the same points over and over, although with a slightly more balanced perspective—women are quoted as describing that they enjoyed the game, and it’s noted that the game became a favorite for many women and girls.

The author claims that Pac-Man “marks a culmination… it’s fair to say, the medium of video games has closed off much of its flexibility of meanings.” This is historically untrue; games continue to emerge and evolve, and of course culture continues to respond to them. The panic described in chapter 5 becomes even more frenzied as Tipper Gore made it her token political issue, and internet gaming has completely altered the perception of gaming as a collision of multiple forms of media converging. Games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were centerpieces for advertising, movies, and collaborative (four-player) gaming coming together. A book certainly needs an ending, but the claim that the author has concluded the investigation in naïve.