I thought that focusing on the gameboy as the primary way in which Americans played Tetris was a bit weird… After we got an NES when I was kid, my dad would get home from work in the morning, and play some Tetris until it was time to take us to school… But yeah, it most certainly existed prior to the popularity of nintendo, but certainly, it got a boost from being on that platform… I would say that first the atari and then nintendo certainly expanded the market for gaming outside of people who had computers (which was certainly not my family in the 80s - I never encountered a computer until… probably HS?).
Yeah, this also struck me as… ugh. I’m sure that Lady Izdihar would have something to say about that claim…
But just in general, it’s always good to keep in mind that films are not necessarily (and in fact are often not) good history, especially on popular culture history. They are very much usually about glorifying industry, rather than getting at any kind of truth. This is especially true with regards to films about bands or musical movements. Even music docs aren’t often giving us any critical insight… Doesn’t mean that they can’t be enjoyable, but I just hope that people keep in mind how flawed these can be about historical narratives.
Lady Izdihar would have something to say about that claim…
There’s a lot of problems with her claim (that we are only hearing the voices of the biased people who “chose” to live in the West rather than the majority who were presumably happy in the USSR). Many of the people who have told us their stories (like Solzhenitsyn) didn’t “choose” to live in the West – they were forcibly deported and stripped of their Soviet citizenship. And secondly you could make the same claim about other totalitarian regimes – most people didn’t flee the Nazi regime. Does that mean the stories of refugees from it are biased and we should read stories of people who benefited from the system instead?
They got into the conference game as a lot of hobbyists in various disciplines do. For example, a retrocomputing podcast that I listen to started an expo, as did a pinball forum that I read.
For PA, it’s been a license to print money. They have a huge hardcore fan base who doesn’t care what they say about whom as long as they keep making comics about video games. They’re now so wealthy that they don’t care what anyone says about how they use their platform. As is always the case, money concentrates the worst aspects of peoples’ personalities. Those guys were dicks before they got rich but now they are unstoppable and their fan base is virulent.
Sadly it’s also one of those things that good people refuse to give up because they like the conferences. By all accounts they are very good conferences. Many of my friends go every year. They do not stop going when I tell them of the bigotry of those guys because they have the luxury of not caring about it. Same as it ever was.
I’ll look into Severance, seems like a lot of mutants agree on that one.
[ETA: I just did. That’s a production design I can relate to, in several ways. One of the most elegant hells I have seen so far. I like it.]
Talking about the post-CCCP stuff. I am currently in the midst of the second Slow Horses season, and while it isn’t as much fun as the first season, Lamb is giving Smiley a run for his money.
I don’t know if this is just attention bias, but I have the feeling that quite a lot of stuff during the last years re-started telling stories about how the 80s cold war is influencing more recent events, directly.
And then, there’s the nostalgia part of it, too. Like in that PEZ story dramatisation. And, I strongly assume, here in the Tetris context. Well, I’ll be damned, but it is fun to watch 80s stuff. But actually, really remembering it is more terrifying than any episode of Stranger Things.
