Gameology 2.0

As Laurie has mentioned, I'm in the early stages of a project on videogame typography, and as part of my research, I'm looking into early instances of particular typefaces used to invoke or refer to videogame-ness. I have a whole range of conclusions I'm prepared to draw, but for now, the research has revealed some interesting stuff that I plan to pass along periodically through the blog here. Today, I present you with an example from Video War, a piece of adolescent / young adult fiction by Stephen Manes first published in 1983.

The book is an energetic novel full of angst and rebellion, and it revolves around a group of teens organizing a political response to their parent's attempts to ban game arcades from their town. It's a response to real world campaigns to limit video game use by crusaders like PTA president Ronnie Lamm who opposed games not for their allegedly "prurient" content, but for the overall degenerate influence of videogaming and arcade culture more generally. The problem wasn't the messages they were sending, necessarily, but their addictive nature. (For more on that, here's a fascinating interview with Lamm appearing on the Macneil/Lehrer show in 1982).

Video War's story is told through the first-person narration of Elmer, whose mother initiates anti-game legislation on the local City Council. As is typical (I think) of this genre of fiction, Elmer is rebellious and distant, and videogames become a symbol of the generation gap between the kids who see the arcade as a refuge and the parents who just don't understand. My interest lies in the way Elmer tends to see his world as a video game, and imagines himself playing a video game as a way of dealing with stress (i.e. by withdrawing from the real world). So, for example, when Elmer's mom is yelling at him, Elmer imagines himself playing a game called "BIG MAMA!" which is presented in the book as an arcade game's instructions screen. It uses a game-like font and ends with:

INSERT QUARTER PRESS PLAYER #1 READY

Elmer then proceeds to "play" the game while his mother continues yelling at him.

I relate all that to set up the surprising climax of the book (no pun intendend) in which Elmer has an amorous encounter with his girlfriend Jenny, also a gamer. I can't type the whole thing without blushing, but here's a sample:

"PRESS BUTTON"

I've scanned the rest of that chapter and placed it in an image gallery if you're interested in seeing more of it.

It's weird, and kind of unsettling, but it does make sense in the context. It's also interesting to me because Manes is essentially using something like an avant-garde typographic technique to transform the book page into a graphic space that mimics the interface of an arcade game -- and he's doing so to create a sense of immediacy with a sexual act.

I don't mean to pick on the author here, he's a well respected journalist as well as an award-winning writer, and the book raises a lot of good points about free speech and activism. But even though Elmer is the good guy in this story, there's an almost pathological connection being made here between video games and sex that is sort of creepy. Elmer's claim to fame, by the way, is that he's the master of the fictional arcade game "Penetron."

Whatever we make of Video War, I'm very interested in finding any other examples from this era that use videogame typography to invoke the game interface within the body of text, so if you think of any, please let me know.