Just two kids being kids and (unintentionally) hacking into a government server. After attempting to request logon help, the prompt “help games” grants David and Jennifer (and the viewer) a formal definition of the type of games that the mysterious computer system plays: ‘GAMES’ REFERS TO MODELS, SIMULATIONS AND GAMES WHICH HAVE TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC APPLICATION. In WarGames, David Lightman, a too-cool-for-school teenager “really into” computers, stumbles upon a top-secret government computing system while searching for unreleased video games by the developer Protovision. As a cultural artifact, the movie WarGames, released in 1983 and directed by John Badham, reflects such characteristics as it explores the dichotomy between human and machine, the videogame world and “real” world. Home computers, video arcades, and the fear of total annihilation via nuclear war punctuated American culture in the 1980s.
