Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America

Presented on February 2, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. in the Hall Building, Room 102, Georgia Tech.Dr. Michael Newman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee. He is the author of Indie: An American Film Culture (2011), Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium (2014), and the forthcoming Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America (2017). With Elana Levine, he is the co‐author of Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (2012).Runtime: 65:15 minutesDuring their decade of emergence ‐‐ from 1972, when Pong was introduced, to the height of Pac‐Man Fever in 1982 ‐‐ the new medium of video games was understood in contradictory ways. Would video games embody middle‐class legitimacy or reflect the lingering disrepute of pinball arcades? Were they a new, participatory use for television or an intensification of television’s power? Would they foster family togetherness or allow boys to escape from domesticity? Would they make the new home computer a tool for education or a potentially wasteful toy? Michael Newman charts the emergence of video games in America from ball‐and-paddle games to hits like Space Invaders and Pac‐Man, describing their relationship to other amusements and technologies and showing how they came to be identified with the middle class, youth, and masculinity