Welcome to the Danger Zone (World in Action)
Harmless entertainment or hidden danger? The effect of home video games - or "kiddie cocaine" - on children.
The early 1990s saw a surge in popularity of video games in the home, with brands such as Nintendo and Sega and their mascots Mario and Sonic becoming household names. Many of these games appealed to young children, and concerns from parents, teachers and legislators grew into a moral panic about the addictive qualities and detrimental effects of playing video games.
This edition of Granada's long-running current affairs strand World in Action captures the moral panic in full flow. With its stinging guitar and propulsive synth soundtrack and stylised footage of children playing games (shot in extreme close-up, with the television screen reflected in their glasses), the special creates the air of a conspiracy thriller, and casts video games as an invading force crossing the Atlantic from America with a "battle plan" to drain the bank accounts and disturb the children of British families.
Do violent video games stimulate aggressive behaviour? Do they stunt intellectual development? Are they making kids more antisocial? And are they exposing children to risk of epileptic seizures? World in Action explores all of these concerns in this compact 25-minute programme.
Curiously, but perhaps unsurprisingly, more weight is given to interviews with the education specialists and academic researchers who are raising these allegations, while the counter-argument is effectively undermined: its only advocates are the endearingly naive kids themselves, or the shady, white-collared spokesmen from the multinational corporations who are painted as exploiting obsession for profit.
Ultimately, the call is for greater scrutiny, regulation and awareness about games, their content, and playing responsibly - a task that would eventually fall to the BBFC and the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) rating system, as well as the British video game industry bodies UKIE and TIGA.
This would just be one of many waves of moral panic surrounding video games as it grew into its role as a major and mature form of entertainment. The likes of Doom, Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto all lay in the future, in what would become one of the defining cultural conversations of the decade.
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Pushing Buttons: Video Games on TV
How gaming turned from futuristic novelty to cultural juggernaut.
This collection captures an important step in the story of video games as an industry, art form and cultural force. While arcade machines had become a purse-draining leisure activity across the UK, the advent of the video game console in the mid-1980s mostly bypassed British households thanks to the popularity of 8-bit home computers such as the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64, which offered educational, programming and technical experiences as well as simple entertainment. That all changed in the 1990s, though, when the Japanese video game companies Nintendo and Sega cracked the UK and quickly dominated the market, making their mascots Mario and Sonic into pop-culture superstars. Their Game Boy, Super Nintendo and Mega Drive consoles prioritised pure pleasure, and legions of young fans followed their sirens’ call.
The representation of video games on the small screen charted this shift. Where crude pixellated graphics and bleep-bloop electronic sound effects had once been used as a language for communicating with young audiences in educational programmes, and computer games at large had been viewed as a novelty, nerdy or niche concern, gaming became a serious topic for television in the form of magazine and challenge shows such as Bad Influence and GamesMaster (the latter inspired by creator Jane Hewland’s own son’s obsession with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt).
Elsewhere, current affairs series sought to make sense of this new influence on the nation’s children, alternately feeding and commenting on a growing moral panic around the adverse effects of welcoming video games into our lives – concerns that, even thirty years on, still define our relationship with this thrilling, enthralling art form. Press start and play on. Let the games begin!
14 videos in this collection
1
2
Bad Influence! [07/01/93]
3
Welcome to the Danger Zone
4
Toying with the Future
5
Railway Video Games
6
Computer Game About Denis Thatcher
7
Dangerous Journey
8
Space Invader
9
Appeal For Computer Game Programmers
10
Computer Holiday
11
Computer Studies
12
Gamesmaster [31/12/92]
13
Bad Influence! [12/11/92]
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