VGFlicks: WarGames (Part 1)

Today, we’re covering one of the big ones.

I think I can spot a Polybius cabinet in there.

In the early 1980s, we can’t actually say that video games were still in their infancy period. Arcades had been around since the late 70s, but home consoles were becoming prevalent as well. To the point where so many companies threw their hat in that ring and saturated the market with so many home consoles that the video game market crashed, but that's not today's topic. Video games were slowly growing into pop culture as well; sure, they were seen as “kid stuff”, but they were slowly making a name for themselves across the population.

Video games, this new form of media, intrigued and puzzled, and in some cases, horrified. Moral guardians were quick to vilify them. And yet, they already fascinated the other forms of media. Hollywood took note and was quick to produce features about them. Video game movies began popping up in the early years of 1980, with the first fiction feature-length video game movie being TRON, released in 1982.

A contender for the second place would be WarGames, released on June 3rd, 1983 to theaters. How big was the impact of this one on pop culture? If you’ve ever heard the line “The only winning move is not to play” (and you most likely have, as it’s been referenced in plenty of media, including by Marvel Studios), then you already know this film’s most iconic line.

I look at this film like I should respect it, like it’s an Elder of video game culture. And I’m all in for this ride. So, for everyone who hasn’t seen it, let’s jump in.

Setting: The Cold War

The story starts as two engineers arrive at a modest house during a blizzard. This is a disguise for a United States intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base, and these are two agents coming in for the night shift, replacing the day guys. They settle inside their bunker deep underground for the shift, but don’t get time to mellow much as they soon receive a message from the military. Not just any message; a launch order. Their long authorization process ensues, precautions requiring several steps in order to reach the point of actually launching a weapon that can kill millions of people in one fell swoop. Yet, when it comes to the final step of turning a key, one of the two men finds himself unable to do it.

Shit got real fast.

McKittrick's idea comes from a genuine place of
concern, but us in teh 21st century say "No!
Bad idea, very bad idea!"

As we learn in the next scenes, this was a launch simulation. Cut to the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) mountain complex in Cheyenne, Colorado. In a meeting with high-ranking army officials, Dr. John McKittrick (portrayed by Dabney Coleman) says that of all the tests, 22% of bases failed to launch. Probably due to that pesky thing called morals, I wager. McKittrick tries to argue that North America would be safer if the system was automated, so that there is not a moment of hesitation if the United States must strike back against incoming missiles. McKittrick attempts to prove his point further by taking the officials to the computer room of the complex, a visit that ends with the reveal of the simulation machine in the complex. The WOPR (War Operation Plan Response)’s entire raison d’être is to create various simulations, the eponymous WarGames, and to execute them in order to figure out the best responses to any and all possible scenarios. McKittrick gets told that the President will be told to make a decision on the matter of automating the launch of missiles. (Later, we see that the President has chosen to go ahead with McKittrick's idea, as the equipment in the secret base from the previous paragraph is seen being replaced by machines.)

This movie still feels relevant today. The topic of automation is always around, especially as technology evolved and we started putting more and more responsibilities and functions on computers and systems. Domotics, anyone? And yet, at the same time, this movie couldn’t have been done at any other time than during the 1980s. For everything we love about that decade, we tend to forget that it was politically heavy. The Cold War loomed as Western democracies and their communist opponents found themselves in an arms race that kept reaching new heights, with each adding to their own arsenal of nuclear bombs. I obviously won’t get into all the details, as I’m no historian and there would be far too much ground to cover. Only imagine it like this: There was a time in human history where the entire population of the world lived under the looming threat of a third World War that would be fought with these ever-growing arsenals of bombs, ensuring a quick, mutually assured destruction of all sides, including those unaffiliated in the conflict.

This thing's a whopper.

I personally don’t know much about the topic, as I was born in 1992 and the Cold War is generally agreed to have ended in December 1991. My father, however, does remember a time where it was normal to live in constant fear of the possibility of the world ending swiftly and abruptly because the powers that be decided to toss a nuke. And we can’t exactly claim that we’re free from that fear nowadays, as there are enough atomic bombs in existence right now to blow the planet up several hundred times over, and all it could take is one particularly unhinged person becoming the leader of a country housing some of these weapons. We’re all lucky to be alive, we’ve come close to complete annihilation way too often for comfort.

Accurately-portrayed hacking?

Of course he's playing Galaga.

Cut to Seattle, where we meet our protagonist: David Lightman, 17yo student, arcade game enthusiast, and amateur hacker. It’s weird to see Matthew Broderick this young. Full disclaimer, I never thought he was all that interesting of an actor – maybe it’s a (perhaps erroneous) impression I have that he got typecast into playing awkward characters. Still, in this one, I felt he defended his role pretty well. David is first shown playing Galaga at the local arcade, seeing time run out and hurrying to school. He arrives late to biology class, and is handed a test with a big fat F on it. His classmate Jennifer Mack (portrayed by Ally Sheedy) receives a similar paper after answering wrongly to an answer a question from the teacher. Then David makes a joke at the teacher’s expense over the next question, and is promptly sent to the principal’s office.

This was his plan all along. Because he knows where the principal stores his passwords, and can sneak a peek. Yeah, writing your passwords down on a paper… That was a bad idea in 1983, it’s a bad idea in 2021, yet people still do it (or worse, they still use “password” as their password. Seriously, don’t). Coming back home from school with Jennifer, he shows her some of his hacking skills by changing his F grade in biology to an A, and is about to do it for her as well until she objects. After she leaves, he does it anyway. That evening at dinner, David sees a magazine ad for ProtoVision, a company that boasts about making the next evolution of computer games, so he sets to hack into their system and see what they’re working on.

Dang, he could hack into just about any
computer with this setup.

Props to this film, most of the hacking we see is accurate for the era. David gets through using minimal information, educated guesses, a password spied on here or there, or creating backdoors. Same for dropping the phone onto an acoustic coupler to try phone numbers one by one until he finds the numbers that are associated to computers. In trickier cases, he even uses social hacking, i.e. seeking out information about the person you want to hack in order to figure passwords out more easily, since most people will use words referring to things that are close to them such as names. If a password is numbers only, it can be that person’s birthday or that of a relative or friend. That said, while it is one of the most realistic portrayals of hacking, it’s not 100% accurate as there are hacking techniques that would not make for interesting scenes, but a lot of what we’re seeing here is legit for the time period.

"Here, have a look at all the illegal activities
I'm partaking in."

The next day, Jennifer decides she does want her grade changed after all; but after admitting that he did it already, David shows her what he’s been doing. The computer has obtained a small list of functional numbers with computers, so he tries them. One is for a flight agency, which he uses to book a flight to Paris for himself and Jennifer. I didn’t know booking tickets online was possible in 1983. David then tries the next number, with a strangely unwelcoming result; few of his attempts succeed, until he asks for a list of games and gets one, which makes him believe he did hack into ProtoVision. The first is called Falken’s Maze, then he gets regular games like chess or poker, only for the list to devolve into increasingly disturbing war-themed titles from “Fighter Combat” and “Guerilla Engagement” all the way to “Global Thermonuclear War”.

David goes to hacker friends to get advice on that odd list of games. One tells him to create a backdoor pass. The other says that it looks like confidential military stuff and to not mess with it, but that if he must, then he should research that Falken’s Maze thing and see what comes up. David goes to the library – 1983 means “No Google” – and does in-depth research, discovering information on a man named Stephen Falken who created a system that teaches a machine to think; to learn from their own mistakes, in short. He tries several terms that come up during his research as passwords and none work; to top it off, the official record lists Falken as deceased, 1973. During a surprise visit from Jennifer, he goes over various details he knows about the man, including that his wife and his son Joshua died in a car crash. Thinking it’s too easy, he decides to try Joshua as a password. It works.

Falken used a private (but easily-discoverable) element of his life as password to a war game simulator? If this had been real, he would have been fired on the spot.

It’s not just a game

Yes, please, a nice game of chess.
You're talking to a teenager, OF COURSE NOT!

After having some small talk with the very advanced A.I. that replies to him, David gets this line. “Shall we play a game?” David asks to play Global Thermonuclear War, and pushes onwards in spite of the A.I. trying to convince him to play chess instead.

"Yeah, President? Code: Brown Pants".

The next screen asks him to pick a side: United States or Soviet Union. After picking the latter, he is asked to select the first strike targets. Jennifer and he agree on Las Vegas first, followed by their home city of Seattle. What they don’t know is that, over at NORAD, this simulation appears as the real deal on their screens, with everyone reacting accordingly to the threat, to the point of bumping the DEFCON level from 5 to 3. Bricks were probably shat at that moment. It escalates to telling the President about what’s going on and making sure the heads of the American government are safe. Then, as David is pulled away from the computer due to house chores, he turns off the “game”, which shuts most of the screens at NORAD.

Yep, they still think it's just a game.

Thankfully, after that happens, one technician working around the WOPR arrives, screaming that it’s all just a simulation launched from an exterior source. They did, however, detect that said ‘exterior source’ was located somewhere around Seattle, Washington.

This news story should have caused a panic
in the streets, no?

The next day, when he comes home, David sees a report on the news about the panic at the Department of Defense the night before. Realizing it’s related to the game he started, he starts destroying evidence… well, until the A.I. calls him back to continue playing. From now on, let’s call it JOSHUA, shall we? It’s gonna make things easier. JOSHUA estimates the game is to be played for yet another 52 hours. Its end goal? It wants to win. The machine calls back over and over, so in a panic, David unplugs his phone.

Yeah... it's not going well for David.

And the next day, he gets picked up by the FBI, is read his Miranda rights, and is taken to NORAD. While some officers are showing a tour group around the base, John McKittrick discusses with other high-ranking officials and the FBI about the kid. They’re very quick to pin this David Lightman as either just a prankster high-schooler or a Soviet spy. And with how little information they have (not to mention David’s story, which sounds crazy to them), it could go either way! An exasperated McKittrick decides to go talk to David who, due to the lack of a proper jail or other sort of containment for criminals in the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD center, has been locked in the infirmary.

We’ll see how this resolves in Part 2.