Hollywood's worst at portraying games/gamers.

[Anathrax]

Note: Search came up with nothing on this. Please let me know if there is another topic/this one is in the wrong section.

We've all seen CSI's stupid fox chase in that online game. We've all facepalmed at the stupidness of that. There is worse however. I want that worse.(apologies, can't find the link)

Mine has to be... the movie Gamer. It's so infuratingly PISS I can't unleash my anger now. Will
write on this more tomorrow.

 

[tippy2k2]

This is just a generic thing I see in a lot of game-related things (Scrubs did both of these but I've seen this in plnety of other things). It's not horrible but I always get a chuckle...

A. They are playing a popular game that doesn't have the correct sounds (Scrubs had Halo on the show but generic game sounds).

B. The controller isn't on while they're playing

OH! Also, my favorite scene ever!


I'm going to force you to tell me what's wrong with this scene...shouldn't be too hard

EDIT: Since I keep getting quotes about it (not that I mind of course , it is indeed the fact that the kids are playing Final Fantasy 8, a single player game.

 

[DoPo]

Not specific to video games, but the "Dungeons and Dragons is evil" craze and the resulting movies were pretty facepalm-worthy. I'm looking at you, Mazes and Monsters.

Don't just look at it, the actual D&D movies were...OK, I'll say it like this - the first one was bad. Maybe tolerable, if you had booze and snacks, as well as friends to mock it but tolerable is where it's at. The other two were worse each time. The last one looks like somebody just shot some LARPers. No...wait, that's actually badmouthing the LARPers - I've seen LARPs that were filmed by players and still looked better plus they had better effects than that movie.

But I haven't seen Gamer. And aside from those police shows that seem to be technophobic, I don't think I've seen many other notable cases of games or gamers portrayal. Movie adaptations of games don't count as "portrayal", I think, so I don't know what else to contribute.

 

[Anathrax]

Movie adaptations of games don't count as "portrayal", I think, so I don't know what else to contribute.

Well, DoPo do you have any clues on what I should rename this thread to?

Also this thread shouldn't be confined to movies. There are series that have stupid ways in which they show a "game".(CSI Miami's absurd GTA thingy for example.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

The movie "Gamer" must be pretty hard to top. A 600-pound naked guy in a dark room, haven't cleaned in days, eating cheetos which the crumbs all over himself and touching himself.

Not to mention he's disabled. I hate "Gamer" with every fibre of my being.

Other than that, I can't think of a single movie that portrays the medium in a good light, except maybe Wreck-It Ralph or the Tron flicks. Gamers and hackers are usually lumped in the same morass of poorly researched clichés and tropes, anyway. You'll see "beta testers" working from home and with a controller in hand on a domestic console as opposed to a dev kit, just like hackers never use their mouse or anything like a cell phone or a regular phone line, nuh-uh.

If you're lucky, you end up with a weird-ass gore-ified take on "Running Man" for the late eighties and early nineties crowd, like "Brainscan". Even then, the end result feels like a particularly cut-rate Sierra adventure game, complete with the expected lack of familiarity with the medium.

<youtube=slSBrUMiJdg>

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

If it's any consolation, I've been writing a book that shows both the great and bad things about the gaming community. Think of it as a mix of Tron and Kingdom Hearts (Or Wreck-It Ralph maybe?) And I'm writing it in script form side by side so it can easily be adapted into a movie. I've always wanted to see a great way of signifying the gaming community and its culture in a way that's more interesting than just watching someone "playing" video games.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well there was that episode of CSI: New York I think it was where the one woman had the "High Score" in every MMO ever.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Well there was that episode of CSI: New York I think it was where the one woman had the "High Score" in every MMO ever.

I think that was NCIS actually, and I'm willing to forgive them because they have the decency to not take themselves seriously.

 

[Schadrach]

Not specific to video games, but the "Dungeons and Dragons is evil" craze and the resulting movies were pretty facepalm-worthy. I'm looking at you, Mazes and Monsters.

It took me forever to get a copy of that to show some friends, who didn't believe such a thing existed, or who it starred.

I just wish I could get a small stack of copies of the "Dark Dungeons" tract by Jack Chick -- that's a D&D = statnism classic.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well there was that episode of CSI: New York I think it was where the one woman had the "High Score" in every MMO ever.

I think that was NCIS actually, and I'm willing to forgive them because they have the decency to not take themselves seriously.

Was it? I don't know. Although I've never really watched NCIS so I doubt it. On the other hand I did see that clip in an article talking about the portrayal of technology in the media so you could be right.

 

[Schadrach]

The movie "Gamer" must be pretty hard to top. A 600-pound naked guy in a dark room, haven't cleaned in days, eating cheetos which the crumbs all over himself and touching himself.

Not to mention he's disabled. I hate "Gamer" with every fibre of my being.

Other than that, I can't think of a single movie that portrays the medium in a good light, except maybe Wreck-It Ralph or the Tron flicks. Gamers and hackers are usually lumped in the same morass of poorly researched clichés and tropes, anyway. You'll see "beta testers" working from home and with a controller in hand on a domestic console as opposed to a dev kit, just like hackers never use their mouse or anything like a cell phone or a regular phone line, nuh-uh.

If you're lucky, you end up with a weird-ass gore-ified take on "Running Man" for the late eighties and early nineties crowd, like "Brainscan". Even then, the end result feels like a particularly cut-rate Sierra adventure game, complete with the expected lack of familiarity with the medium.

<youtube=slSBrUMiJdg>

Ooh, evil gaming horror. If you want to go that route, there was also a flick called Arcade ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106302/ ) that's just plain wrong.

Or that series VR5 that, to it's benefit, was at least exceptionally trippy.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I'm going to force you to tell me what's wrong with this scene...shouldn't be too hard

We can't even blame EA for the multiplayer here.

OT: The film Gamer.

The movie "Gamer" must be pretty hard to top. A 600-pound naked guy in a dark room, haven't cleaned in days, eating cheetos which the crumbs all over himself and touching himself.

That scene insulted every fibre of my being, and the very notion that some people see gamers like that makes me sick.

 

[Longstreet]

Am i too late to jump on the Gamer bandwagon?

No? Good...

GAMER! That movie was terrible.

 

[teebeeohh]

Well the main character in house of cards plays killzone to relax in the evening and his wife is kinda embaressed. And while I initially thought he was using the wrong buttons my friend pointed out you can configure the controller that way. This show also has a character answer to the question "how many games does he have for that?" With everything. This becomes funny because they are talking about the vita.
So overall, they do all right. And gamer sucked big hairy balls

 

[an annoyed writer]

The movie "Gamer" must be pretty hard to top. A 600-pound naked guy in a dark room, haven't cleaned in days, eating cheetos which the crumbs all over himself and touching himself.

*Shudders

That was probably the most insulting scene ever. I'm not the fittest person in the world, but compared to that I'm a goddamn olympian athlete, and I'm pretty sure most of us gamers fit that. I very rarely meet people in excess of 300 pounds, and even then they're as fucking tall as Halo's Spartans.