Long out of print until it was republished late last year by the British firm Jonathan Cape, Martin Amis’ 1982 book, “Invasion of the Space Invaders,” is a rather fascinating look at a medium in its infancy – and a reminder that video games, as an art form, remain rather difficult to critique.
The incongruity between the author and his subject material is striking. Amis, son of the brilliant novelist Kingsley and a renowned writer in his own right, was already in his 30s when “Invasion of the Space Invaders” was published. The observer of polite (and impolite) society set his sights on the blinking, beeping boxes that sprouted up across the British Isles and beyond in part, it seems, because his amusements had turned into a vice.
“At night, the mind of the wretched invadee is a cratered battlefield, bussed by whining missiles, stalked by bristling aliens,” Amis writes of his troubling new addiction. “Your work starts to suffer. So does your health. So does your pocket. The lies increase in frequency and daring. Feelings of self-disgust assail you. Anyone who has ever tangled with a drink or drugs problem will know how the interior monologue goes.”
One gets the sense that Amis was writing to exorcise the demon games, to get them out of his system entirely. The first third or so of the book reads a bit like a piece of New Journalism, one filled with scared straight stories about kids, little kids, trading sexual favors for enough money to play Space Invaders for a few minutes. Or the 12-year-old Japanese boy who took a shotgun to the bank and stuck it up to acquire coins to feed the beast. There’s a sense of moral panic that will be familiar to anyone who has lived through one of the occasional video-game-inspired freakouts (I’m old enough to remember when Mortal Kombat was going to inspire a whole generation of murderers), combined with a sort of self-flagellation – and honest fascination about what makes games, and gamers, tic.
“Some experts think that it is good for children to be good at Space Invaders, especially if they aren’t good at anything else,” Amis writes. “‘This mastery experience is very important,’ burbles Sherry Turkle of MIT. One of the most bizarre arguments put forward on the Invaders’ behalf is that no video addict can afford to buy any drugs. He has spent all his money on Space Invaders instead. Yes, but the same could be said if he spent all his money on hand-grenades or ringside seats at bear-baiting bouts.”
The latter portion of “Invasion of the Space Invaders” is, more or less, a guide to the games popular in arcades at the time. Space Invaders, of course, but also Missile Command, Pacman, Defender, Donkey Kong and many more. The guide to gameplay is fascinating to read as criticism, because there’s really nothing to critique. He advises readers to “be sparing in your use of Wraparound Avenue” while playing Pacman and to “always try to confront Mutants at the top of the screen” in the middle of a game of Defender. The graphics of Tempest, according to Amis, “are an obvious tribute to the ‘stargate’ passage” in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Graphics and gameplay mechanics, then as now, are of the utmost importance to the gamer; as such, Amis had unkind words for the home gaming experience, at least as it compared to the arcade. “For someone who has never played the real thing – and I suppose such people still exist: in unexplored corners of Siberia, maybe – the TV version is a perfectly adequate game. For the jaded lounge-lizards of the arcades, on the other hand …”
It strikes me that I might sound more dismissive of, and downbeat about, Amis’ book than I intend. To be clear: It is well-written, entertaining and terribly amusing. But it’s a useful reminder that video-game criticism remains an unwieldy beast. With the very rare exception of something like Tom Bissell’s “Extra Lives,” much of games writing is either pseudointellectual prattle or a mere recitation of how the game plays and how it looks. You can get a sense of both modes of writing in this amusing video, “Polygon can’t understand guns or fun.”
While that video successfully takes the politicized bores at Polygon down a peg or two, it also serves as a reminder that the most successful games criticism really hasn’t evolved much since Amis wrote his book. The games have grown infinitely more complex and increasingly immersive, but there’s often not much more to say about them than to describe how well they play – and whether one should avoid Wraparound Avenue.
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Bunch is the executive editor of, and film critic for, the Washington Free Beacon.
