Following up on my recent rather shallow look at how games are portrayed in the movies comes this Wired story (from nearly a month ago, I know) which takes a somewhat deeper look at how gamers are portrayed by Hollywood. The verdict?

Games have clearly jumped that generational divide. Today’s young directors are the first crew to have grown up with a Nintendo system — and gaming is no longer foreign to them.

That sounds a bit optimistic to me, but I do think we’re turning the corner. It took decades for TV shows to actually show characters watching TV. Given that, I should be grateful that movie characters are being shown playing games at all. The article even finishes with a shout out to all those nitpickers out there:

But here’s one caveat. Gamers with keen eyes will notice that Cal is using a Nintendo 64 controller — even though Mortal Kombat: Deception was not released for that platform. Apatow’s good — but even he’s not perfect.

On the same topic, reader Apar Maniar sends in this little tidbit on how international moviemakers are portraying gamers. According to Maniar, the 2004 Hindi movie Hum Tum contains “a pretty accurate description of a gamer.”

The main protaganist of the movie playing a game (EA’s Cricket 2004) in a very gamerlike fashion. They have the right kind of technical details, etc. — the character is using a Playstation 2 controller and playing a game that was released for it. Don’t forget that this is the main character in the movie who is not at all a social outcast or loner … Why is it important? Just because its media in a language that close to a billion people in this planet understand. [editted slightly for clarity]