Hollywood's Depiction of Gamers Getting Better?

Wired is reporting on the Hollywood depiction of games and gamers, and how it has improved (or not) over the years. From the article: "... has Hollywood finally figured out how to realistically depict gaming culture? For years, they've been achingly bad at it. Gamers have long been accustomed to seeing incredibly weird, off-key portrayals in TV and movies. The trouble began with the first wave of TV ads for video games. They'd inevitably portray the player as a spastic in mid-seizure, flailing away on a joystick while jumping and twitching."

Comments

Reality

[TeamAwsom]

I don't know that having somebody sitting quite still staring at a screen makes for compelling viewing. Normally the only people who twitch are the ones that don't often play games. Seems to me the more you play the more zombielike you get. Maybe it is interesting in an art house kind of way but since when were hollywood interested in making art house?

I kind of enjoy the hilarity of the hollywood depiction though. I never go to see movies with this type of subject matter thinking I'm going to get a serious journey in the mystical world of gaming anyway.

For me, gaming movies hit a pinnicale when The Wizard (1989) was released.

Today's Filmmakers Grew Up With Games

[MiceHead]

I think that it became most clear to me that filmmakers "understood" video games during the scene introducing Mike Teevee in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If I caught it right, Mike was playing a modern 3D first-person shooter that looked like Doom 3; and he was playing this on something that looked like an Atari 2600.

And that, my friends, is called cannibalism. Wait -- I mean that that, my friends, seemed an intentional irony, suggesting that there were gamers in the crew. Who would slip such a reference in, but someone with a deep and possibly unhealthy appreciation of video games?
__________
www.dejobaan.com - Deep and possibly unhealthy appreciation of video games.

Redefining the community

[oskard]

I'm sure some people would agree with me when I say that Hollywood is actually redefining the general view of video gamers. For example, a good science fiction movie is almost guaranteed to have a video game released with it. Even television has ascended to such a level of 'interactive media' with shows and mini-series like Lost, which feed upon human interaction with mysterious websites to generate intrigue and hype.
 
In a sense we're playing the game before we're even buying it.