William Cladley

The Game Room William Cladley

Randy James is 38, single, and plays video games in his parents' garage. In the 80s, he would have been labelled a loser, but the year is 2030, his parents are dead, and his garage is located on the outskirts of a massive fracking field known as the Energy Corridor. The Corridor started off as a few isolated drilling sites in the 2000s, but has grown into a massive, high-tech city of energy that, like an insatiable metallic organism, has consumed the rural hinterlands of the Rust Belt. Randy has spent his adult life comfortably ignoring the environmental catastrophe that exists just beyond his doorstep-instead choosing to focus his energies on expanding his massive collection of retro video games. But a chance meeting with a young college girl forces him to make a choice: Does he pursue a love that will lead him into a confrontation with the brutal security apparatus that controls the Corridor? Or does he chase the final, "holy grail" game consoles that will complete his collection? THE GAME ROOM is both a sustained meditation on video game nostalgia and a frightening vision of the future-one in which there are no restrictions on technology, surveillance, and profits. It asks provocative questions about the fate of retro gaming culture and explores the role of love, redemption, and self-expression in an era of social and political decay.