Shop rats, Widiots and gamers: propaganda of the dangers of video games in the 80s

This picture from the Jackson Sun newspaper on August 4, 1980 contains a hint of the Space Invaders game and the harmful "getting used to it"

Haters of video games. If you think that they are rampant now, then you are simply not enough years old to remember the censure and disgust that we gamers of the 80s had to deal with because of such simple games as Pac-Man on arcade machines .

Today, video games are familiar, and when they are everywhere and around the clock, it’s hard to imagine that in the 80s there was a time when people sincerely despised video games and other advanced technologies - however, believe me, the fight on this front was serious. I believe that people of the same spirit, if not the same generation that cursed television, rock and roll and Elvis in the 50s, tried to ban slot machines and video games in the 80s. Well, even if this is not so, then at least they had a similar level of ignorance.


“Are we raising a generation of Widiots?”

Despite the fact that I experienced and saw it all with my own eyes in the 80s, and also, due to my age, managed to enjoy the wave of insanely obsessed with video games at its peak, I still am amazed at the contempt of some people of that time, and not only for video games , but also to the gamers themselves.

Perhaps the adults were simply jealous of the fact that we were the first generation in whose life recruitment into the army did not intrude; the first to become independent from parents at a very young age, and the first to rush headlong into the computer age with open arms, without looking back. I do not know. But something was clearly wrong. In the 70s and early 80s, there was some kind of gap between adults and children, but because of what it was, no one understood. Working adults raised us independent, and before the age of 12 weaned from relying on them, and therefore they were as much a mystery to us as we were to them.


The scary image of Pac-Man forms the first letter of the word chomp, “champ”

For a while I did not know about this active hatred of video games and slot machines halls - these new interest clubs, lit by light and filled with a soothing buzz - and I barely noticed that rejection in the eyes of adults watching us in despair, while I was in excitement I changed dollars for quarters in the store 7-11. I was too young to know what resentment looked like, but at least I knew how to recognize disappointment. And this look was almost every adult in the halls of slot machines or nearby, with the exception of their employees. Disappointment. And it was not just a generation gap. It was a vast ocean separating two continents of understanding.

Therefore, we tried to hide interest in arcade games from adults, especially from people at the age of parents and grandparents, or from “devout” people so that they would not rebuke or punish us. At that time, newspapers, from which most adults learned the latest news, from 1981 began to fill up with propaganda against video games. Even the US general surgeon [something like the chief state sanitary doctor / approx. trans.] Everett Coop, an ultra-conservative who was very popular in the Reagan era and therefore able to influence public opinion, called video games “dangerous” in the fall of 1982. This caused a massive wave of articles in the morning newspapers, condemning video games, bombarding readers with daily doses of fear of “electronic monsters” devouring the moral of their children. The abundance of such articles,following the statements of Coop, is amazing.


Kup-man - a caricature of Everett Coop
“Video games can be dangerous to the health of young people. People are increasingly beginning to understand the harmful effects of video games on the mental and physical health of children and adolescents. There is nothing constructive in games. Only eliminate, kill, destroy. ”

So, if you knew how to play Asteroids perfectly, you had to learn even better to lie with regards to some things, especially how much time and money you spend on arcade games. And heavy metal was also banned. If you listened to Judas Priest and played video games, you were practically considered the offspring of Satan.

However, despite all this negative perception of new technologies, drawings from the 80s scolding video games left an interesting impression of an era in which parents, until paranoia, were afraid not only of what they knew about video games, but of what they thought that games are done with their children. These neurotic and often evil images make it clear how widespread fear was, and why coalitions of conservatives began to form since 1981, seeking to ban or restrict the use of video games in the halls of slot machines. This fear alone allowed some states to very quickly strangle slot machines in the bud almost immediately after they appeared. There was only one meeting in the city hall with the mayor. For this, fairly simple methods were used:

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Pac-Man , . The Philadelphia Enquirer, 20 1982

I have no data on how many arcades were closed in 1981, 1982 or even 1983. But only on the basis of the largest number of articles on this topic that I find in the archives of newspapers, it is obvious to me that this stream of negativity has affected thousands of rooms. I will always remember one sad Saturday of the spring of 1983, when my friends and I went to eat pizza and play Pac-Man at our favorite place at the intersection of 82nd Street and Stark in Portland, Oregon. Just a week ago, we sat there with our favorite Pac-Man cocktails, ate pizza and drank cola from those red plastic cups that are no longer available. My best friend Janey then set a personal record in the game. We all encouraged her and promised each other to catch up with her. However, this time we found that the hall was closed and empty, and on the door, despite this,there was still an announcement about the tournament at Stargate next week. The institution has disappeared. And very fast.

In less than a year, all the arcade halls on 82nd Portland Street were closed, all six. Some are due to the fact that their owners are tired of losing money on entertainment with fading popularity. But most were closed due to inconsistency with decrees, mainly due to the fact that minors were present during school hours. This trend has spread throughout America in the manner of the virus. In many states, the era of slot machine halls has ended faster than it began. In others, it miraculously existed until the 90s and even further. In this, a great role was played by geography and politics regarding business.



The symbolism of anti-game cartoons often implies that people playing arcade games lose control of their own lives and themselves. They were suspected of being subjected to brainwashing, reprogramming, that they were idiots with a weak will, playing video games, or “vidiots” spending their lives behind “monster machines”, and believed that they were psychologically and morally no different from heroin addicts or addicts . Some considered them lost souls. No one needs people. The garbage on the surface of the golden pond of an idyllic American dream. Obviously, all these people were wrong - look how much amazing things happened during a long journey from PONG to virtual reality.

When I was 13, the idea of ​​playing a game with a person from Tokyo, at the same time, on the same platform, while communicating with him in real time, was beyond the possibilities. We could not even imagine this. We lived in a world of phones with disk dialers and no video cameras. Now we play with people on universal platforms using consoles or PCs, choosing them ourselves. It takes a couple of seconds to connect with another player. We are no longer those gamers who fell into a small group of “suckers” in a small slot machine hall in a small city, who are in captivity of games limited to one, maximum two players. Today we can change each other’s game reality with the help of our characters, respond to each other’s game environment, damage and heal each other’s game characters. We can make friends, enemies, sometimes fall in love.Today, the whole world serves us as a playground. We are no longer just a fleeting subculture, popping quarters in the slot for coins, looking for a safe haven where we could poke our battered ship. We arrived. We are here.


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The reprogrammed eye was a common way, and it could be seen again and again, until 1984. From the article “Pac-Man Addict Recognition,” The Tribune, January 4, 1983


It’s hard to imagine that this caricature is not from a 14th-century edition; three psychiatrists at Duke University said that “passion for video games” comes from a fear of marriage and intimate relationships. Asbury Press, April 24, 1983


The player is portrayed as if a car had taken everything human from him. The Akron Beacon Journal, October 9, 1983 A


kaleidoscope in the eyes of a child suggests that his brain has been reprogrammed. The Courier Journal, February 17, 1984