IV. VIDEO GAMES

Note: Unless a distinction
is made, my use of the term “video
games” includes arcade, home console, PC, Mac, and/or massively
multiplayer online games (MMOGs).

PART I

~THE EARLY DAYS

Let us harken back to
1958. William Higinbotham of the U.S. Department of Energy’s
Brookhaven National Laboratory was interested in designing something
to enliven the otherwise static exhibits seen
by those who visited the lab. The result was one of the first video
games. Called Tennis for Two, this rudimentary game was displayed
on a five-inch-diameter oscilloscope. It looked something like this:

Then, in the early 1960s, a group of MIT students working with a
PDP-1 mainframe computer sought to devise a program that would adequately
demonstrate the machine’s capabilities. Spacewar! was born. The game
was displayed on a CRT and used graphics comprised solely of ASCII
text characters.

For those of you who may be curious, a playable version of the original
Spacewar! can be found at http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/spacewar/.
It runs as a Java applet on a PDP-1 emulator.

These early accomplishments
were subsequently refined and enhanced, and the very first arcade
video game was released in 1971 by Nutting
Associates. Based on Spacewar!, it was called Computer
Space. Housed
in a snazzy futuristic-looking molded fiberglass cabinet (which even
came in metal flake colors!), it consisted of a “brain box” and
a front control panel, with an ordinary 13″ black and white
TV set as a monitor. Twenty-five cents yielded a minute or two of
gameplay.

For you trivia buffs, the sculpted Computer
Space cabinet appears
in several scenes in the 1973 movie Soylent Green, as does a shot
of a modified version of the game in action as Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young)
plays it in an early scene. You can also catch a partial glimpse
of a yellow Computer Space cabinet in 1975’s Jaws, in a brief video
arcade sequence midway through the film. Pertinent still shots from
both films can be found at http://www.mameworld.net/movies/.

The two creators of Computer
Space, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney,
went on to establish Atari the following year. Shortly thereafter,
the arcade version of Pong was born. Progress was definitely being
made.

~THE FIRST CONTROVERSY

1976 saw the appearance
of an arcade game called Death Race, inspired by the Roger Corman
film Death Race 2000. Gameplay consisted of car-driving
players running over as many stick-figure “gremlins” as
possible. When killed, each gremlin would let out a shriek and be
replaced by a cross. The rudimentary graphics were anything but realistic,
but that didn’t stop protests concerning the game’s premise.

Death Race was condemned by the National Safety Council. 60
Minutes did a story on it. There was general uproar. And the game was pulled
from the market.

The public’s memory must have been short-lived, however. The arcade
game Warrior, released two years later in 1978, had players killing
opponents with swords. Nary a sound of protest was heard.

And how about 1981’s Donkey
Kong? Here we have Jumpman (later to
become Mario) attempting to rescue his girlfriend from the clutches
of a big gorilla named Donkey Kong (DK). As Jumpman tries to ascend
to the top of a series of girders, elevators, and conveyor belts,
he must avoid the barrels, fireballs, and various other items being
flung at him by DK. If Jumpman is unlucky, he dies. If he’s fortunate,
he’s able to remove rivets from the structure beneath DK, sending
DK falling head-first into some scaffolding.

Then there’s Donkey
Kong‘s 1983 sequel, Mario Brothers. In this
one, Mario and his brother Luigi must kill a variety of nasties by
kicking them. They also have to deal with the hazards of falling
icicles and fireballs of assorted colors. The brothers can either
work in tandem to defeat mutual enemies, or they can compete by trying
to set each other up to be killed.

Do I hear an uproar over all of this violence? Um, nope. The Death
Race hand-wringers remained silent. Perhaps they had decided that
cartoonish violence wasn’t so bad after all.

~A BRIEF FORAY INTO CARTOON AND TELEVISION VIOLENCE…

Has anyone ever noticed how much violence there is in Roadrunner cartoons? Moreover, each time Wyle E. Coyote is blown up, pushed
off a cliff, run over by a train, etc., he reappears in the next
frame, relatively unscathed.

I love Roadrunner cartoons. I watched a lot of ’em when I was growing
up. I’ve never — not once — tried to drop a safe on somebody’s
head. But even if I had, I would have done so without the expectation
that my target would get up and walk away after having been squished.

Now, there are those who would argue that by virtue of their interactivity,
video games are more likely to have an impact on behavior than are
passive activities such as watching television shows and cartoons.
This would seem to be a logical position, but my research has revealed
a lack of consensus. I invite you to have a look at representative
opinions from both sides of the aisle.

A 2003 article entitled The
Effects of Television Violence reflects
the following:

“Over a thousand academic studies have been completed, with
remarkably consistent results: media violence makes our kids more
aggressive, less patient, and more fearful of the world around them.
Watching violence desensitizes children to actual acts of violence.
This is true even of cartoon violence, especially the “senseless
mayhem” variety found in cartoon classics such as Tom & Jerry.

“Basically, what
these studies indicate is that violent media images tend to make
us all just a bit more aggressive and impatient.
The effect is more dramatic on children, who mentally process media
violence the same way they would actual violence — and can be traumatized
by exposure to excessively violent scenes…While the effect on a
given individual may or may not be critical, the cumulative effect
on our society is dramatic.”

Hmmm. Having watched so many Roadrunner cartoons as a kid, I guess
I’m lucky I never dropped a safe on someone’s head (not yet, anyway).

In contrast, let’s look
at the article Violent Media is Good for Kids by comic book author
Gerard Jones — who, along with psychologist
Melanie Moore (who works with urban teens and is a consultant to
public schools and local governments) spent three years researching “the
ways in which children use violent stories to meet their emotional
and developmental needs.”

Jones quotes Dr. Moore:

“‘Fear, greed, power-hunger,
rage: these are aspects of our selves that we try not to experience
in our lives but often want,
even need, to experience vicariously through the stories of others.
Children need violent entertainment in order to explore the inescapable
feelings that they’ve been taught to deny, and to integrate those
feelings into a more whole, more complex, more resilient selfhood.'”

Of their research, Jones states:

“At its most fundamental
level, what we call ‘creative violence’ — head-bonking cartoons,
bloody videogames, playground karate, toy
guns — gives children a tool to master their rage…The world is
uncontrollable and incomprehensible; mastering it is a terrifying,
enraging task. Rage can be an energizing emotion, a shot of courage
to push us to resist greater threats, take more control, than we
ever thought we could. But rage is also the emotion our culture distrusts
the most. Most of us are taught early on to fear our own. Through
immersion in imaginary combat and identification with a violent protagonist,
children engage the rage they’ve stifled, come to fear it less, and
become more capable of utilizing it against life’s challenges.”

Hmmm. I guess I’m lucky I watched a lot of Roadrunner cartoons as
a kid, because it’s kept me from dropping a safe on someone’s head
(so far, anyway).

Remember V-Chip legislation (allowing parents to block unacceptable
television programming) and the establishment of television ratings?
Well, among the Congressional findings mentioned in that legislation
(which is part of the Telecommunicatons Act of 1996) is this:

“Studies have shown
that children exposed to violent video programming at a young age
have a higher tendency for violent and
aggressive behavior later in life than children not so exposed, and
that children exposed to violent video programming are prone to assume
that acts of violence are acceptable behavior.”

The above statement is eerily similar what we’ll be hearing shortly
in reference to video games. We’ll be seeing more dichotomy of thought,
too.

~A SHORT TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

I was born and raised in Miami. Back in 1977, before I fled the
city, I saw one of the first trials televised in Florida. It was
a murder trial. Ironically, television was used as a defense in the
proceedings.

On June 3, 1977, 15-year-old Ronny Zamora (along with a 14-year-old
accomplice) broke into his 83-year-old neighbor’s house, killed her,
stole $400.00, and high-tailed it to Disney World in her car. Zamora
was apprehended and charged with first-degree murder.

Ellis Rubin, his attorney,
claimed that Zamora was a victim of “television
intoxication.” Rubin claimed that watching crime shows on TV
had rendered Zamora incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and
reality. The cop show Kojak was cited in particular.

This defense was unsuccessful, however, and Zamora — who was Costa
Rican — was found guilty. He spent 27 years in prison. In 2004,
at age 42, he was paroled and deported to Costa Rica in accordance
with federal law regarding felons who are not U.S. citizens.

Now, I do have a reason for recounting this tale. Attorney Rubin,
when interviewed upon Zamora’s parole, said that considering the
studies that have since linked television violence to real-world
violence, Zamora never would have been found guilty of first-degree
murder today. Makes ya wonder, don’t it?

PART II

~TECHNOLOGY GOES FORTH AND MULTIPLIES

In the years following the release of Donkey
Kong and Mario Brothers,
technological advances yielded such things as greatly improved home
video gaming systems (including Atari’s cartridge-based system),
trackball controllers, microprocessors, and arcade games such as
Space Invaders and Asteroids.

The 1980s and early 1990s saw development of laser-disk technology,
the first 3-D games, still more game console refinements, Pac-Man,
and the wildly popular Tetris for PC.

In 1987, LucasArts (the game division of which was then known as
Lucasfilm Games) blazed the trail to the point-and-click interface
that’s so familiar to adventure gamers today. The company also released
an adventure game, Maniac Mansion (IBM, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore
64, Apple II, NES), built with the SCUMM (Script Creation Utility
for Maniac Mansion) engine. This engine was the basis for all LucasArts
adventures that followed.

Lucasfilm Games had produced its first adventure game the previous
year, in 1986. Based on the motion picture Labyrinth (starring David
Bowie, directed by the late Jim Henson, and executive-produced by
Lucas), the game — called Labyrinth: The Computer Game (Commodore
64, Apple II) — was released concurrently with the film.

According to an “early history” page
in the LucasArts website:

“Technologically,
Labyrinth was ahead of its time. A unique, pre-SCUMM ‘slot machine’
text interface was developed to drive the
game. Instead of typing in commands as most adventures of the day
required, the player would choose a noun and a verb from vertical
strips of words to instruct the game on what to do next.”

Gee, not much controversy so far, is there? Nope. But then, in 1992,
came…

~MORTAL KOMBAT, AND A VISIT FROM THE FEDS

A fighting game released in arcade, home console, and PC platforms,
Mortal Kombat (Midway Games) offered graphic violence the likes of
which had never been seen before in a video game. For example, players
could rip out a character’s heart or tear a character’s head off
with the spinal cord still attached to it. All such acts were accompanied
by copious amounts of blood spurting and splattering every which
way.

Further, technology had advanced to the point where live action
could be integrated into scenes of virtual brutality, lending even
more authenticity to the proceedings. That’s certainly a far cry
from a hungry little cartoon head gobbling up cartoon dots in a cartoon
maze. The realism of Mortal Kombat‘s violence definitely struck a
nerve.

At this point in the annals of computer gaming, no attempt had been
made to regulate home or arcade versions of violent or otherwise
objectionable games. So when Mortal Kombat burst upon the scene,
everything was more or less up for grabs.

I remember seeing TV commercials
for Mortal Kombat when it was first released. To be honest, I thought
the game looked sort of…um…well…forgive
me…silly. But then, I’ve always had a rather bizarre imagination,
and I’ve been gobbling up horror/sci-fi/fantasy films and books since
I was a little kid. By 1992, I suppose I was pretty much accustomed
to blood, guts, and disembodied spinal cords. The gore in Mortal
Kombat didn’t look at all believable to me.

Although an effort had
been made to tone down the bloodshed in some of the home versions
of Mortal Kombat, there was still so much public outrage that
in 1993, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) convened hearings to examine the
issue. The result was the Video Game Ratings Act of 1994, a piece of draft
legislation that fueled the gaming industry’s first attempt at self-regulation.
The industry was given a one-year period in which to put an effective ratings
system in place, or the federal government would move ahead with its legislation
and do it for them. Once again, the spectre of government regulation had
reared its head.

~ENTER THE ESA/ESRB

In response to this maneuver, the Entertainment Software Association
(then known as the Interactive Digital Software Association) created
the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) for the purpose of
developing viable ratings for video games. The result consisted of
both rating symbols pertaining to age-appropriateness, and content
descriptors reflecting game elements that contributed to the rating
or that might be of interest to consumers.

The original ESRB ratings were as follows:

Early Childhood (EC) – Age 3+
Kids to Adults (K-A) – Age 6+
Teen (T) – Age 13+
Mature (M) – Age 17+
Adults Only (AO) – Age 18+
Rating Pending (RP) – Rating not yet assigned

ESRB content descriptors are too numerous to mention here; you’ll
find a list of current ones at http://www.esrb.org/esrbratings_guide.asp.
Note that both descriptors and ratings have gone through some changes
since originally formulated in 1994.

On January 1, 1998, the
Kids to Adults (K-A) rating was replaced by Everyone (E). Further,
an additional ESRB designation was developed
when MMOGs became popular. In these types of games, participants
can shape and influence content, making ESRB content descriptors
impossible. Instead, the software packaging and website are supposed
to carry a notice that “Game Experience May Change During Online
Play.” (A section on MMOGs appears later in this article, where
we’ll see that unfortunately, this notice is rarely displayed.)

In a press release dated
March 2, 2005, the ESRB announced yet another new rating category:
E10+. Its purpose is “to help consumers
more easily differentiate between games that have content appropriate
for the whole family and games that are suitable for ages 10 and
above…Game titles that carry the E10+ rating might contain moderate
amounts of cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or
minimal suggestive themes. Games appropriate for all ages will continue
to receive an E (Everyone) rating.”

Side note: While researching another part of this article, I discovered
that games can be rated E-10+ by the ESRB and contain such things
as unqualified Suggestive Themes and Violence.

Another side note: Actually,
according to the ESRB Game Rating & Descriptor
Guide, the “E” rating does not indicate suitability for
all ages, if one takes that description literally. In the Guide,
it reads “suitable for ages 6 and older.” Even the “EC” (Early
Childhood) rating doesn’t reflect suitability for all ages, but rather “suitable
for ages 3 or older.” Yeah — I’m ridiculously picky, aren’t
I?

Unfortunately, things don’t always progress as the ESRB has indicated
above. For instance, many games carry no content descriptors. I found
page after page of such games via ratings searches on the ESRB site.
I’m in possession of some of these games and can confirm that no
descriptors appear on the packaging. I’ll be saying more about this
later.

To compound the confusion, although the ESRB has changed its ratings
and descriptors lists several times, some sites that provide full
rating/descriptor information still reflect old ones. None of the
listings I looked at on other sites carried dates, so folks encountering
them without having visited the ESRB site could very well think that
such listings are current. This makes me wonder why sites don’t simply
link back to the ESRB ratings page rather than republish ratings
on their own sites

BTW, in the course of researching this article, I emailed the ESRB
with some questions about the ratings system. I sent three messages
over the course of a four-week period via the ESRB Game Ratings Consumer
Online Hotline web page. I sent the first one without disclosing
I was writing an article; however, I did mention that fact in both
the second and third messages. None of my inquiries was ever answered,
although if anyone from the ESRB sees this article, I suspect I may
hear something from them…

~ABOUT THE ESRB RATING PROCESS AND SCOPE OF AUTHORITY

Some of you may not know this, but ESRB raters don’t actually play
the games they rate. Instead, game footage is submitted by the publisher
and viewed independently by three raters who recommend a rating and
content descriptors. If there’s a consensus of opinion, the rating
becomes official. If not, the game may be reviewed by other raters
until a consensus is reached.

Prior to a game’s official release, its packaging is supposed to
be reviewed to insure that its display of the assigned rating conforms
with ESRB standards. At this point, the game might actually be played
by an ESRB game expert in order to confirm the validity of the rating.
This is a random process, however, and many games submitted to the
ESRB are never played by anyone.

Furthermore, while the ESRB has authority to impose penalties if
it discovers that a publisher has not disclosed material in a game
that could affect its rating (see GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS HITS
THE FAN, later in this article), the ESRB has no power to enforce
its own ratings at the retail level. Moreover, participation in the
ratings system by both publishers and retailers is strictly voluntary.
Sound familiar?

As far as I’m concerned, the ESRB’s lack of power seriously undermines
the effectiveness of its ratings system. At point of sale, ratings
become meaningless without enforcement.

Certain retailers do partner with the ESRB in the areas of point-of-sale
ratings displays and store policy signage (for those retailers having
internal controls in place concerning the sale of inappropriate games
to children, and not all of them do). Participation in this kind
of partnership as well as the formulation of store policy is also
voluntary.

So, who does have the power to penalize retailers for disregarding
ESRB ratings? Well actually, no one — unless a retailer is located
in an area that has enforceable laws on the books concerning the
issue. And as we shall see, such laws typically collide with the
First Amendment and, if passed, are generally struck down as unconstitutional
on appeal.

Consequently, it’s possible for publishers and retailers to openly
sell inappropriate games to children, secure in the knowledge that
they will not be penalized for doing so. I’ll be saying a lot more
about this later.

Again, I’m struck by a parallel. Remember the Motion Picture Production
Code? When adopted in 1930, it carried no legal authority and violators
were not penalized. Hence, it was not taken seriously. The motion
picture industry only started paying attention in 1934, after the
formation of the Production Code Administration which required films
to carry the administration’s seal of approval before they could
be released, and called for a $25,000 fine for violators.

As we shall discover, the lack of penalties imposed on publishers
and retailers for the sale of inappropriate video games to minors
has resulted in many of them not taking the issue seriously. Now,
I think game developers should be free to express themselves in any
way they’d like, and publishers and retailers should be accorded
the same freedom. I certainly don’t feel that anyone’s First Amendment
rights should be trampled on. But considering the wording of the
First Amendment, I see no guarantee of a right to be heard, particularly
by everyone — although the court system has accorded this right
to the First Amendment in a majority of cases concerning laws to
restrict the sale of violent video games to minors. But I’m getting
ahead of myself, here. I’ll be saying a lot more about this later,
as well.

Getting back to the issue at hand, the ESRB ratings system was firmly
in place in 1994 and satisfied the federal government that the industry
was capable of keeping itself under control. Unfortunately, some
of the worst violence was yet to come.

PART III

~FIRST-PERSON SHOOTERS ARE BORN

At this point, let’s back up a bit. In 1991, Wolfenstein
3D (commonly
referred to as Wolf 3D) had been released by id Software. It had
taken its title from Muse Software’s earlier Castle Wolfenstein and
Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, both released for Atari 800 and Commodore
64 machines in 1983 and 1984, respectively. It was followed by such
sequels as Spear of Destiny (1992) from FormGen, Inc., and Return
to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)/Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (2003),
both from Activision.

From the very beginning,
Wolfenstein games have featured Hitler,
Nazis, and the like. As a point of interest, both Return to Castle
Wolfenstein and Wolf 3D are banned in Germany. Additionally, the
official site for Return to Castle Wolfenstein contains the following
paragraph, in both English and German:

“Important note for
German users – Disclaimer: You are about to enter the Castle Wolfenstein
website. The following pages may
have content that is forbidden by law in Germany. Activision Germany
GmbH is not responsible for the content of the following pages. By
entering this site you approve having read this disclaimer.”

The law in question is found in Germany’s Criminal
Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB), Special Part, Chapter One, Title
Three, Section 86a. It forbids
the use of Nazi symbols.

Anyway, Wolf 3D broke new ground in a couple of key areas. Not only
was it the original FPS game, it was successfully marketed online
as shareware, paving the way for today’s game demos, previews, and
evaluation versions.

In December 1993, id Software
hit even bigger pay dirt with a first-person shooter called DOOM,
also marketed as shareware. It spawned an entire
DOOM franchise. The latest installment, DOOM 3,
was released for PC in August 2004.

In 1996, taking advantage of such technological advances as dynamic
light sources and textured 3-D architecture, id Software released
Quake. Representing the final id title to be released as shareware,
it was followed by Quake II and III. Moreover, the Quake engine forever
changed the face of gaming.

1998 saw the release of Rockstar Games’ Grand
Theft Auto, which
— as Wolf 3D, DOOM and Quake had done — spawned a franchise, with
the latest entry being the nefarious Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,
released in 2004/2005.

All of the above titles have been wildly successful. They also feature
blood, gore, violence, strong language and/or sexual content. Considering
these games’ popularity, it seems that a lot of gamers must favor
such elements.

~FPS GAMES: FROM VIRTUAL TO ACTUAL REALITY?

In the late 1990s there was an appalling series of school shootings,
all perpetrated by students. (Unfortunately, the shootings didn’t
stop there. I’ll be discussing two recent, tragic school shootings
— one that occurred in March 2005 and another that happened in November
2005 — later in this article.) The level of violence was shocking.
And violent video games — namely first-person shooters — were seen
as having caused or at least contributed to these rampages.

In October 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham started his day by fatally
stabbing his mother, then went to Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi,
where he shot nine classmates — two of them fatally. Woodham is
reported to have been into playing first-person shooters.

In December 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, a student at Heath
High School in Paducah, Kentucky, took five rifles and a handgun
to school, where he proceeded to kill three students and wound five
more. It’s said that Carneal was obsessed with first-person shooters,
particularly Mortal Kombat, Quake, and DOOM.

In commenting on the Paducah shootings, retired U.S. Army lieutenant
colonel Dave Grossman has said the following:

“…[p]oint-and-shoot
video games have the same effect as military training techniques
used to break down a soldier’s aversion to killing.
These games, however…are more powerful than military training games.
Therefore, the United States Marines has now bought a version of
this ‘Doom’ to train their soldiers.”

In March 1998, Andrew Golden, age 11, and Mitchell Johnson, age
13, took assorted rifles and handguns to Westside Middle School in
Jonesboro, Arkansas. While Johnson waited outside, Golden entered
the school, pulled a fire alarm, then rejoined Johnson. As students
vacated the premises in response to the alarm, Golden and Johnson
opened fire. When it was over, four students and one teacher were
dead, and nine students and a teacher had been injured.

On a spring evening in May 1998, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel shot and
killed his parents; the next day, he went to Thurston High School
in Springfield, Oregon, where he was a freshman, and opened fire
in the crowded cafeteria with a .22 semiautomatic rifle and a 9mm
handgun. By the time he was finished, two more people — fellow students
— were dead, and more than 20 others were injured.

Although neither Golden, Johnson, nor Kinkel appear to have been
influenced by specific video games, all were characterized as having
been desensitized to violence and its consequences by popular culture
and the entertainment industry.

Then came the bloodbath that ignited full-blown moral panic and
societal outrage over violent video games…

~DOOMED

In April 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado murdered 12 of their classmates and one teacher, injured
more than 20 others, then took their own lives. In the investigation
that followed, it was learned that the two killers, Eric Harris,
age 18, and Dylan Klebold, age 17, were heavily into first-person
shooters — particularly DOOM. Harris had even created custom levels
for the game that included more destructive weaponry, unlimited ammunition,
and targets incapable of defending themselves.

The investigation also
revealed that Harris and Klebold had intended to kill a lot more
people than they actually did. They had planted two 20-lb. propane
bombs in the school’s first-floor cafeteria, both rigged to go off at lunchtime.
The bombs had been powerful enough to destroy both the cafeteria and the
library
directly above it — but something went wrong, and neither one detonated.
Had they blown, they could have claimed over 400 lives.

When Harris and Klebold
realized that something had gone wrong with the cafeteria bombs,
they opened fire outside the school. Armed with a 9mm semi-automatic
handgun, a 9mm semi-automatic carbine rifle, and two sawed-off shotguns,
they
targeted students who had been eating lunch close to one of the building’s
entrances. Then they went inside and started shooting indiscriminately at
anyone they saw.

As their rampage continued,
they began tossing out pipe bombs. Some went off; some didn’t.
One exploded later as an attempt was made to defuse it.
Additional
incendiary devices were subsequently discovered in the school parking lot.

The killing spree had
started at approximately 11:19 AM. It was over at approximately
11:37 AM, with two exceptions. Shortly after 12 noon, Harris
and Klebold
committed suicide. In the space of 40-45 minutes, 15 people had been
murdered and over
20 had been injured.

In the wake of such profound
violence (and the enormity of the violence that had been planned),
there were those who claimed that Harris and
Klebold —
both of whom were old enough by ESRB standards to have purchased DOOM — had learned how to perpetrate the Columbine bloodbath by obsessively
playing
the
game.

At this juncture, I feel I must point out a few things. All perpetrators
involved in the violent incidents I’ve just recounted allegedly had
mental and/or emotional problems. Further, they were thought to have
all been on antidepressants (more about such drugs later in this
article). It’s also said that they exhibited warning signs of what
was to come that were missed by parents, authorities, and other adults.
Harris and Klebold had planned their massacre for a solid year and
no one had noticed. In videotapes made before the carnage, they laughed
about how easy it had been to fool people.

On August 21, 1999, Dr. Stuart Fishoff presented a talk at the Annual
Convention of the American Psychological Association entitled
Psychology’s Quixotic Quest For the Media-Violence Connection. In it, he offered
the following:

“Because of our belief
in the media-violence connection, we are primed to search for the
usual suspects. What movies did the
trigger men at Columbine High School, Harris and Klebold, see before
they mounted their assault? What were their favorite TV shows and
video games and music genres? They saw The Matrix or Basketball
Diaries?
They own Mortal Kombat? They listen to gangsta’ rap. Bam! That’s
the answer. The media did it. The fact that they were Neo-Nazis,
had arrest records, were on prescriptive drugs, and were treated
by counselors for their anger and aggressiveness somehow, for many,
got lost in the shuffle of feet looking for easy answers — media
answers.

“I believe the roots
of social violence lie in our social values about what’s important
in life, what sustains us as a culture…I
believe we need to pay more than lip service when we say our children
are our future and then buy their quiet and quiet their demands for
parenting with credit cards, cell phones or electronic baby or child
sitters like televisions, computers and internet access. Conceiving
children can be a mindless biological act; parenting is always a
mindful, psychological commitment. Too often we see people embrace
the first and abandon the second.”

At this point, I’m struck by another parallel. Remember what was
pointed out about Dr. Wertham’s study of the effects of crime and
horror comics on juveniles? It was said by some that all of his subjects
were delinquent juveniles, most of whom read those kinds of comic
books, so he had wrongly concluded that such comic books must cause
juvenile delinquency. In the incidents of school violence I’ve just
mentioned, the perpetrators were into video games and other media
that was violent. But does this necessarily establish a direct cause-and-effect
relationship? What about the kids who play violent video games, see
violent movies, etc. and are never adversely effected?

Whatever the cause(s), I remember thinking to myself back when these
shootings were happening how drastically things had changed since
I’d been in high school. I may have thought school more-or-less sucked
when I was a teenager, but I never had to risk my life to go there.

And I’ll tell you something else: researching this series of killings
gave me some nasty jolts. As if what I’d remembered wasn’t bad enough,
I learned gruesome details that I hadn’t known before. These events
seem utterly unthinkable to me. Yet they really did happen — and
do happen, still.

~COLUMBINE: A JARRING POSTSCRIPT

Now, let me make it clear that I consider what happened at Columbine
to have been a tragedy all the way around, for victims as well as
survivors. I invite you to draw your own conclusions about the following.

On May 17, 2004 — over five years after the shootings — FOXNews.com
published an Associated Press story captioned Klebolds Say They
Don’t Need Forgiveness. This is how it starts:

“In their first interview
since the Columbine High School massacre, the parents of one of
the killers said they feel no need be forgiven
and didn’t realize their son was beyond hope until after he was dead.

“‘Dylan (Klebold)
did not do this because of the way he was raised,’ Susan Klebold
told columnist David Brooks in Saturday’s
editions of The New York Times. ‘He did it in contradiction to the
way he was raised.'”

The article goes on to
say that the Klebolds don’t want forgiveness because they don’t
feel they’ve done anything that warrants forgiving,
and despite the fact that both Klebold and Harris “were in a
juvenile diversion program for breaking into a van and stealing tools
and other items in January 1998,” they hadn’t known the extent
to which their son was in trouble.

According to Tom Klebold,
Dylan’s father: “He was hopeless.
We didn’t realize it until after the end.”

The article continues: “The
Klebolds said their son was set off by the ‘toxic culture’ of the
school, where athletes were worshipped
and bullying was tolerated…Jefferson County Public Schools officials
have consistently denied that bullying was tolerated or that athletes
received special treatment.”

According to Brian Rohrbough,
whose son Daniel was killed by Klebold and Harris: “This was
murder. In my opinion, what went on in their home led to Columbine.”

Wayne and Kathy Harris (the parents of Eric Harris) have never commented
publicly on the killings.

~A BRIEF EXCURSION INTO VIOLENCE IN NON-SCHOOL SETTINGS

On December 30, 2001,
a patron of a cybercafé in Garden Grove
California that featured such games as Quake III and Half-Life:
Counterstrike stepped outside and put a screwdriver through the skull of another
boy, killing him.

This prompted the City
of Garden Grove to pass a municipal ordinance requiring, among
other things, the installation of surveillance cameras
in all 21 of the city’s cybercafés. This was appealed, but
the California Court of Appeals for the Fourth District upheld the
ordinance. For further details, see Can a City Require Surveillance
Cameras in Cybercafes? at http://practice.findlaw.com/cyberlaw-0304.html.

Also, some of you may have heard about a shooting on February 13,
2005 at a Best Buy at the Hudson Valley Mall in Kingston, NY. Fortunately,
no one was killed, although two people were injured.

The shooter, 24-year-old
Robert Bonelli, “seemed to have a
‘lurid fascination’ with the April 20, 1999 attack by two Columbine
High School seniors.” Authorities were shocked by the amount
of Columbine memorabilia they discovered in Bonelli’s possession.

So let’s see…Harris and Klebold allegedly had an unhealthy interest
in video games, and Bonelli allegedly had an unhealthy interest in
Harris and Klebold. I wonder what’s next? Maybe I shouldn’t ask.

PART IV

~LITIGATION, ANYONE?

In the years following Columbine, many lawsuits were filed by the
victims’ families. Defendants ranged from the Jefferson County (Colorado)
Sheriff’s Department to the Jefferson County School District to at
least 25 entertainment companies.

One of the biggest lawsuits, filed in 2001 against id Software,
Activision, GT Interactive Software, Time Warner Inc. (now AOL Time
Warner), Nintendo, Sega, and Sony Computer Entertainment of America,
among others, sought $5 billion in punitive damages and claimed the
following:

“Absent the combination of extremely violent video games and
these boys’ incredibly deep involvement, use of and addiction to
these games and the boys’ basic personalities, these murders and
this massacre would not have occurred.” It went on to name specific
games such as Mortal Kombat (Midway Games), Nightmare
Creatures (Kalisto
Entertainment/Activision Publishing), DOOM (id Software), Resident
Evil (Capcom Entertainment), Final Fantasy (Square Co., Ltd.), Quake (id Software), and Redneck
Rampage (Xatrix Entertainment/Interplay
Entertainment).

On March 5, 2002, the
case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock, who “rejected
the plaintiffs’ claim that video games should not be protected
by the First Amendment, ruling that
a decision against the game makers would have a chilling effect on
free speech.”

Most of the other Columbine lawsuits were dismissed as well, many
of them on First Amendment grounds. I’ll be saying more about the
First Amendment a little later.

~HERE COME THE FEDS…AGAIN

The Columbine massacre resulted in a redoubling of efforts to combat
the perceived destructive influence of violent video games. It also
acted as a catalyst for more federal investigation. The result was
a Senate Judiciary Committee Report entitled Children, Violence,
and the Media: A Report for Parents and Policy Makers, published
September 14, 1999. Its recommendations included a joint study by
the Federal Trade Commission/U.S. Attorney General concerning the
marketing of violent entertainment to children, and it provided for
a study by the National Institutes of Health regarding the impact
of violent video games on children. The report mentions DOOM, Quake,
Resident Evil 2 (Capcom Entertainment), and a few lesser-known ultra-violent
games by name.

The Senate’s report also
noted differences in the ratings systems of various entertainment
media and called for the development of
a universal system of ratings for television, movies, video games,
music, and the Internet. Additionally, the report contained a summary
of a law that sought to address juvenile violence and its underlying
causes entitled the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability
and Rehabilitation Act of 1999 (the “Juvenile Justice Act”).

Side note: As I write this, over six years have elapsed since the
release of the above-referenced report, and it doesn’t appear that
a universal system of ratings has ever been put in place.

In September 2000, the Federal Trade Commission released the report
Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children, which addresses both
rating systems and marketing practices of the motion picture, music,
and electronic game industries. The report emphasizes the importance
of self-regulation in view of these industries’ First Amendment protections.
(Note: As we shall see, figures from this 2000 report that are favorable
to the ESRB will continue to be quoted by that organization in subsequent
years, up to and including December 2005. I’ll be pointing out these
instances as the article progresses.)

At the time, only the game industry had mandated both age- and content-based
ratings as well as marketing and advertising standards, all via the
ESRB. Of the three rating systems examined by the FTC in the year
2000, video game ratings were the most comprehensive.

The FTC also discovered
that parental understanding and use of game ratings was poor; only
37% of those surveyed by the Commission “had
both heard of and had more than slight familiarity with the rating
system.” But it was also determined that parents who did use
the system found it helpful.

It was felt, however, that content descriptors didn’t go far enough.
For example, the degree of violence (or blood, gore, etc.) contained
in a particular game was not apparent.

Unfortunately, the FTC report found the game industry lacking in
the area of marketing. It was discovered, for instance, that certain
M-rated games targeted audiences under the age of 17, and certain
T-rated games were marketed to the under-13 crowd. It was further
revealed that children under 17 could easily purchase M-rated games.

The Commission concluded that the game industry needed to strengthen
regulations and impose clear sanctions for violations, as well as
improve retail compliance, more closely monitor video game advertising,
and take steps to facilitate parents’ understanding of ratings and
labels. (Note: As we’ll discover, there’s been little improvement
in several of these areas as of December 2005.)

In January 2000, before
the FTC report was issued, the ESRB had created its Advertising
Review Council (ARC) to monitor video game
ads. The Council was to “be responsible for the implementation,
administration, and enforcement of a self-regulatory system of advertising
control for the interactive entertainment software industry.” Its
objective was “to promote the highest standards of advertising
and to provide the interactive entertainment software industry with
a system of voluntary principles and guidelines that will assure
responsible, appropriate, truthful, and accurate advertising with
relation to interactive software products and services.”

Also in 2000, the U.S.
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held
a hearing on the Impact of Interactive Violence
on Children. According to the testimony of Dr. David Walsh, president
of the National Institute on Media and the Family, 90% of teens surveyed
at that time said “their parents ‘never’ check the ratings before
allowing them to buy or rent video games (another 8 percent said
their parents ‘rarely’ check the ratings).” Additionally, 89%
said “their parents ‘never’ put limits on how much time they
are allowed to play video games.” Of the 137 teens participating
in the survey, 43 were in “a special program for ‘at risk’ students,” meaning
they were more aggressive and prone to violence.

Although the above testimony acknowledged that more studies would
be needed before a definitive causal relationship could be demonstrated
between violent video games and actual aggression, it indicated that
concerns about the issue were justified.

In a statement to the
Committee, the Video Software Dealers Association emphasized parental
responsibility in determining the appropriateness
of video games and controlling how much time children spend playing
them. In testimony from the Interactive Digital Software Association
(now the Entertainment Software Association), IDSA/ESA president
Doug Lowenstein pointed out that violent video games represent only
a small fraction of all games published, and bluntly stated: “…there
is no scientific basis to argue that entering the fantasy world of
Doom in the home using a mouse causes players to gun down their friends
in the school yard.”

In 2001, the Surgeon General’s office (part of the National Institutes
of Health) released its own report entitled Youth Violence: A
Report of the Surgeon General. In Chapter 4, the following appears in a
section entitled Risk Factors by Domain:

“Little research
has been done on violence in… video games, music videos, and
the Internet…Theoretically, the influence of these interactive
media might
well be greater than that of television and films, which present a passive
form of exposure, but there are no studies to date of the effects
of exposure to these
types of media violence and violent behavior.”

Also in 2001, a hearing to examine the entertainment industry’s
efforts to curb children’s exposure to violent content was held before
the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee
on Energy and Commerce. One of the participants was Doug Lowenstein.
The following represents excerpts from his statement before the subcommittee:

“I want to start…by
dispelling the myth that most gamers are kids. In truth, 145,000,000
Americans play video games and their
average [age] is not 12, it is not 14, it is not 16. It is 28 years
old. Sixty-one percent of all game players are over 18, 35 percent
are over 35 years old, and 43 percent of them are women. (Editorial
comment: Oh yeah.)

“In short, we serve
a mass market made up of players of all ages and tastes, and their
interests in the types of games they want
to play range from sports games to puzzle games to games based on
TV shows to racing games and action and adventure games, some of
which have, in fact, violent content. (Editorial comment: At last,
someone has mentioned adventure games!)

“But an important
point to understand is that most games do not, in fact, contain
violent content. Seventy percent are rated
as appropriate for everyone ages 6 and up by a rating system that
even industry critics have acknowledged is very reliable and credible.
Last year, only 117 of the 1600 games released were rated mature
for users due to violence. And I might note that the best-seller
lists also reflect the fact that most games that are popular don’t
have violent content. Only two of the 20 best-sellers this year,
for example, are rated as mature.

“For over 7 years,
the video game industry now has been committed to effective self-regulation.
We created the highly praised Entertainment
Software Rating Board. We have implemented a sweeping advertising
code of conduct. We have distributed and produced PSAs featuring
Tiger Woods…We have distributed ratings brochures to retailers…We
have worked with retailers to prevent the sale of mature-rated games
to minors. And that’s just a partial list.

“We have lots of
problems with youth violence in this country, but I think we are
doing our part to address them.”

~OKAY, I NEED TO MOUTH OFF NOW

Please indulge me as I say a few things that have been trying to
burst out of me practically since I started writing this article.
Doug Lowenstein has already touched on some of them in a very general
way.

I absolutely love adventure games. They transport me to other worlds
and provide a respite from the strife and discord so often found
these days in this one. They require me to think. (Eek!) Sometimes,
they even teach me things. (Yow!) And this may sound weird, but I’ve
actually become rather attached to some of the characters in the
adventure games I’ve played.

This wasn’t always the case, however. Before I happened to stumble
upon and buy an adventure game at my local video game store, I knew
nothing at all about the genre (shame on me). I was familiar with
a few of the better-known titles — Myst immediately springs to mind
— but I hadn’t even known what kind of games they were, and I’d
never been motivated to discover anything else about them.

Until I got into playing it, I hadn’t even realized that the game
I’d bought was an adventure game. (What’s an adventure game?) My
purchase had been strictly impulsive, with the motivation that I
was tired of FPS and RTS games and thought the beautiful box art
looked quite soothing. The game’s world looked like a place I’d really
like to visit, and one that I’d be able to explore without worrying
about grotesque nasties trying to kill me. Well, that’s just what
it turned out to be, and I loved it. I could scarcely believe what
I’d been missing.

Now, why hadn’t I known
all that much about adventure games? For that matter, why do a
lot of people still not know very much about
adventure games? A big reason, I suspect, is that violent and/or
controversial games get all of the big coverage — after all, if
it bleeds it leads, and if it smells it sells — and I think that’s
a real shame. Media sensationalism would have the uninformed among
us (and I’d been one of ’em) believe that the only kind of video
game out there is full of violence, sex, nasty language, and/or other
anti-social behavior. Prior to my chance adventure game purchase,
when someone said “computer game” I’d think: “Ooooh!
Mayhem! Destruction! Havoc! Ruination!”

Well, now that I’ve been
properly indoctrinated, it really burns my backside that adventure
games aren’t more visible, and are seldom
mentioned by the mainstream media. I’d truly love to see critics
of violent video games at least suggest adventure games as an alternative.
But I guess the headline “Teen Plays Adventure Games, Exhibits
Well-Adjusted Behavior and Gets Good Grades” won’t sell a lot
of newspapers, magazines, or whatever — and sales are where it’s
at, right? Or perhaps such critics aren’t aware that adventure games
even exist. Who knows?

Whatever the case, let me do my part right now. Adventure
games, adventure games, adventure games, adventure games. ADVENTURE
GAMES.
Okay, I’m finished with my rant.

~BACK TO THE FEDS…AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

2003 saw the introduction
of a bill to amend Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Called the Protect
Children from Video Game Sex and Violence
Act of 2003, (HR 669), its purpose was the prohibition of sale or
rental of adult video games to minors (the definition of which is “a
person age 17 or younger”). According to the Bill Status and
Summary page, the last major action on the bill is reflected as having
taken place on 3/11/2003. It reads: “Referred to House subcommittee.
Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland
Security.” (This is the subcommittee currently having jurisdiction
over Title 18–Crimes and Criminal Procedure.) The bill has been
languishing there ever since.

Many states, counties, etc. have been trying to legislate similar
restrictions for years. But even when successful, such laws have
typically been overturned on appeal on the grounds that video games
are constitutionally protected as free speech.

Now, just so we’re all on the same page at this point, here is the
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Amendments 1-10 being known
as the Bill of Rights):

“Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging
the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

As a point of interest, let’s refer back to the Protect
Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003. Using the prevailing
judicial interpretation that video games are constitutionally protected,
it seems to me that an act such as this could never be passed without
violating the First Amendment. (I’ll be saying more about this sort
of thing later.)

Be that as it may, the
relationship between the First Amendment and video games has been
a rather tumultuous one so far. In 2000,
for instance, Indianapolis passed a law banning the sale of violent
video games to minors. But at the federal level, according to Adam
Thierer of the Cato Institute, it was “struck down as an unconstitutional
restriction of protected speech.”

A federal lawsuit alleging negligence, product liability, and violation
of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act,
filed against Meow Media, Inc. and assorted other entertainment companies
by parents of the three students killed by Michael Carneal, was dismissed
by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at
Paducah on several grounds, including an interpretation that the
First Amendment applies to video games. The suit had specifically
cited the previously mentioned DOOM, Quake, Redneck
Rampage, Nightmare
Creatures, Final Fantasy, and Resident Evil, joined by Castle
Wolfenstein (Muse Software) and Mech Warrior (Dynamix, Inc./Activision Publishing).

Miami lawyer Jack Thompson,
who represented some of the plaintiffs in the above cause of action,
is quoted as having said, “We
need a nuclear war against these people.” Gee, that’s not a
violent sentiment, is it? I’ll be saying a lot more about Mr. Thompson
shortly.

In 2001, the case was appealed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, where it was again dismissed on First Amendment and various
other grounds. The decision was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme
Court, which refused to hear the case.

In an April 24, 2001 interview,
John DeCamp, the attorney who had filed the aforementioned $5 billion
Columbine suit, “emphasized
that the videogame industry is not protected under the First Amendment.” He
went on to say: “We know absolutely that the video industry
marketing these systems designed to train children to be instant,
unthinking, purely reactive killing machines, will defend on the
basis of the First Amendment right to offer entertainment under Free
Speech concepts. We are absolutely ready for this defense, and I
believe we will shatter this myth and obtain court-ordered sanctions
and safeguards for the future, to prevent an entire industry from
stealing the minds of our children to turn them into trained killing
automata.”

I have a question. Why would the video game industry want to turn
kids into killing machines? I mean, what would the payoff be? World
domination, perhaps? And again, the impression is given here that
all video games are violent, and that there are hordes of out-of-control,
killer children running around.

Another federal lawsuit — this one in 2002 — challenged the constitutionality
of a St. Louis County ordinance prohibiting the sale/rental of violent
video games to minors without parental consent. The U.S. District
Court for the Eastern District of Missouri upheld the ordinance,
ruling that video games are not protected by the First Amendment.
But when the decision was appealed in 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Eighth Circuit reversed the lower court’s ruling, stating
that video games are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.
(Follow the bouncing amendment…)

In May of 2003, Washington State passed a law prohibiting the sale
of video games featuring violence against police officers to children
under 17. Games featuring violence against non-police officers weren’t
included. (Editorial comment: I hope you’ll pardon me, but I don’t
think this makes a whole lot of sense.) The law was appealed and
struck down on First Amendment grounds by U.S. District Judge (Western
District of Washington) Robert S. Lasnik.

Interesting side note (and take heed, the following paragraph includes
a word that some might find objectionable):

Back when rapper Ice Cube
was still a member of NWA, the group released a song entitled Fuck
tha Police. Lyrics such as “And when I’m
finished, it’s gonna be a bloodbath of cops, dyin in LA” did
not amuse law enforcement. In response, the Fraternal Order of Police
refused to provide security at the group’s concerts. This didn’t
result in the absence of all security, mind you — just that provided
by the police. Sort of like restricting sale to minors of video games
depicting violence against cops, but remaining unconcerned about
selling minors games that show violence perpetrated against everyone
except cops.

On April 8, 2003, prior to passage of the above-referenced Washington
State law, an editorial was published by The Olympian Online. I feel
makes some valid points. For instance:

“The question is,
whose responsibility is it to keep kids away from violence? House
Bill 1009 puts the onus on retailers, making
them video police…Under the bill, any merchant who rents or sells
a violent video game to a minor — the violence has to be against
a law enforcement officer — would be subject to a $500 fine.

“There are serious
First Amendment issues with government entities that seek to police
so-called “offensive” behavior. House
Bill 1009, even in its watered down state, raises similar constitutional
concerns. But more basic, this bill shifts responsibility for raising
children from parents to video merchants. The state should not put
retailers in the role of enforcers of moral conduct.”

Many other
laws seeking to restrict the sale of violent video games have been
passed. But since video games obviously didn’t exist when the First Amendment
was written, application of the protections it affords are open to judicial
interpretation which, as we’ve already seen, can vary greatly. A majority
of the courts seem to have extended First Amendment rights to include
— in so
many words — the right of children of any age to consume violent video games
without restriction. I really, really wonder what the framers of the Constitution
would think about something like this.

Site note: On May 28, 2005, the State of Illinois succeeded in passing
legislation prohibiting the sale of violent and sexually explicit
video games to individuals under the age of 18. I’ll be going into
more detail about that and similar legislation later in this article.

On October 29, 2003, the FTC held a Workshop on Industry Self-Regulation
concerning the marketing of violent entertainment to children. One
of the participants was Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia), who
stated the following:

“It is becoming nearly
impossible to shield minors from graphic violence. Exposure to
these images is taking a toll on our society.
Now, children who — for whom we are all responsible, are seeing
acts of violence and then acting out what they see in the media and
in video games. The problem has grown so severe that lawsuits are
beginning and being filed against the creators of some of these violent
video games because children are mimicking the violence they’re watching.

“If what society,
especially the young and the immature in society, sees or hears
or reads is filled with violence, is there
not motivation associated with these images toward the wrong kinds
of behavior? We are running out of time and turning the corner on
protecting our children from media violence.

“The time has come
for an aggressive plan, not tomorrow, not next year, but today.
How many more Columbines must occur before
effective action is taken to keep violent material out of the hands
of children?”

Hmmm. I believe we’ve
just heard another example of “all video
games are violent” rhetoric. Moreover, the above statements
make it sound as though nobody cares about the issue, that nothing
is being done, and that we have a full-blown crisis on our hands,
with violent video game-playing children rampaging through the streets.

This is not to say that
I don’t think we have a problem. Just look around — we have plenty
of problems. What I do wonder about, however,
is our tendency to beat a problem over the head repeatedly with “plans,” laws,
proclamations, studies, subcommittees, theories, you name it — when
we’ve seen that none of these things improves the situation.

One thought has been running through my brain since I got into all
of this: perhaps we are approaching the violent video game issue
from the wrong direction. If it were the right direction, wouldn’t
things be getting better? You’d think so. But are things getting
better? I don’t think so.

Anyway, Doug Lowenstein of the ESA also participated in the FTC
workshop. Here are some of his comments:

“The FTC found that
83 percent of the time parents are involved in the purchase and
rental of games for their children. That’s important
to understand because what it tells you is the chances are, if a
child has Grand Theft Auto, if a 12-year-old has it, mom and dad
gave it to him. Now, you can’t indict the industry for that.

Side note: The 83% figure referenced by Lowenstein in 2003 is taken
from the September 2000 FTC Report on the Marketing of Violent
Entertainment to Children, Appendix F: Mystery Shopper Survey
and Parent-Child Survey.

Lowenstein continues: “You
may not like the game, I might not like the game, but that’s not
the point. The point is people are
making decisions at the point of sale, they’re ignoring information
that’s available to them. Maybe they’re not aware of all the information.

“With respect to
the lawsuits, it’s really a simple matter. You know, the frustrating
part about this to me is we really do agree
on the objective of having retailers not sell [inappropriate] games,
but it is absolutely crystal clear that the laws [controlling sales
of video games] are unconstitutional. That’s what the courts keep
ruling.”

Side note: The transcript of 2003 FTC workshop in which the above
statements are made, entitled Marketing Violent Entertainment
to Children: A Workshop on Industry Self-Regulation, states that 69
percent of 13 to 16-year-olds who participated in an undercover store
survey for the FTC in late 2003 were able to buy M-rated games. In
other words, 7 out of 10 kids had no problem purchasing video games
that the ESRB has deemed to be inappropriate for anyone under 17.
I just have to ask one thing, here: does this demonstrate effective
industry self-regulation?

In October 2004, the National Institutes of Health held a State-of-the-Science
Conference on Preventing Violence and Related Health-Risking
Social Behaviors in Adolescents. The following is reflected in a statement
from that conference:

“There is a long
history of research attempting to identify the effects of violence
in the media. Because television is but one
variable in a complex set of life circumstances, it has been difficult
to demonstrate long-term as opposed to short-term effects. There
is even more reason for concern now that violent video games and
music videos that exalt macho lifestyles have been added to the steady
diet of violence on television.The relationship between media and
violence is a critical area for investigation.”

Excuse me folks, but what a freakin’ tug-of-war. Is it any wonder
parents are confused? Who would have thought, while watching that
little ball being batted back and forth on that small oscilloscope
back in 1958, that we’d end up where we are now?

~MEANWHILE, IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR…

The Surgeon General’s 2001 report I referred to earlier may have
noted a lack of studies, but by that time plenty of material had
been published by public and mental health professionals concerning
the adverse effects of violent video games. Some of it was rather
alarmist. Let’s look at a few examples.

In April 2000, an article
entitled Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and
Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life was published
in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology. It examined two studies on “violent video
game effects on aggression-related variables. Study 1 found that
real-life violent video game play was positively related to aggressive
behavior and delinquency. The relation was stronger for individuals
who are characteristically aggressive and for men. Academic achievement
was negatively related to overall amount of time spent playing video
games. In Study 2, laboratory exposure to a graphically violent video
game increased aggressive thoughts and behavior. In both studies,
men had a more hostile view of the world than did women. The results
from both studies are consistent with the General Affective Aggression
Model, which predicts that exposure to violent video games will increase
aggressive behavior in both the short term (e.g., laboratory aggression)
and the long term (e.g., delinquency).” One of the authors of
this article, Dr. Craig A. Anderson, would go on to contribute to
the 2001 Surgeon General’s report cited above.

More of Dr. Anderson’s
work — an article entitled Video Games and Aggressive Behavior — is featured in a 2003 compilation of articles
published as Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America’s
Children,
edited by Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti. In it, Dr. Anderson
concludes that there are three important factors for parents and
policy-makers to consider. First, parents need to monitor the kinds
of games their children play and take steps to restrict exposure
to those that are violent. Secondly, legislation that limits access
of minors to inappropriate games is needed, as are a more effective
ratings system and a mandate to require parental permission “to
buy, rent, or play violent video games in arcades.” Lastly,
parents should limit the amount of time their children play video
games, and discuss with them the reasons certain video games are
thought to have a negative influence.

Dr. Anderson’s article
also recounts one woman’s approach to the issue of restriction: “…whenever she finds in her house a
CD-ROM video game disk that has a violent game on it, she breaks
it in half and tosses it in the trash, regardless of whether it belongs
to her son or one of her son’s friends.” This woman must have
quite a reputation.

Okay, let’s get back to
our timeline. On July 26, 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics,
American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, American Psychological Association, American Academy
of Family Physicians, and American Psychiatric Association issued
a Joint Statement on the Impact of Entertainment Violence on
Children.
Here is an excerpt:

“At this time, well
over 1000 studies – including reports from the Surgeon General’s
office, the National Institute of Mental Health,
and numerous studies conducted by leading figures within our medical
and public health organizations – our own members – point overwhelmingly
to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior
in some children. The conclusion of the public health community,
based on over 30 years of research is that viewing entertainment
violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and
behavior, particularly in children.”

The above excerpt has been widely quoted in subsequent articles
on the issue. However, the Joint Statement goes on to make other
points that are less often quoted, such as (the emphasis is mine):

“Although less research
has been done on the impact of violent interactive entertainment
(video games and other interactive media)
on young people, preliminary studies indicate that the negative impact
may be significantly more severe than that wrought by television,
movies, or music. More study is needed in this area, and we urge
that resources and attention be directed to this field.

“We in no way
mean to imply that entertainment violence is the sole, or even
necessarily
the most important factor contributing
to youth aggression, anti-social attitudes, and violence. Family
breakdown, peer influences, the availability of weapons, and numerous
other factors may all contribute to these problems. Nor are we advocating
restrictions on creative activity. The purpose of this document is
descriptive, not prescriptive: we seek to lay out a clear picture
of the pathological elements of entertainment violence. But we do
hope that by articulating and releasing the consensus of the public
health community, we may encourage greater public and parental awareness
of the harms of violent entertainment, and encourage a more honest
dialogue about what can be done to enhance the health and well-being
of America’s children.”

~SOME FINAL WORDS ABOUT THE FIRST AMENDMENT

In January 2005, a national
study entitled “The Future of the
First Amendment” was released. The project, funded by the Knight
Foundation, took two years to complete and cost $1 million. It involved
the questioning of “students, faculty and administrators at
544 high schools across the country.” The results are both surprising
and unsettling. For example:

~Seventy-five percent of high school students have no appreciation
of the First Amendment and/or admit they take it for granted.

~Fifty percent think the government can censor the Internet.

~Over thirty-three percent
think “the First Amendment goes
too far in the rights it guarantees.”

~Fewer students than adults believe in the freedom to express unpopular
opinions and to publish material without prior government approval.

Now, let’s have a look at an excerpt from an article by author Diana
West, published in Public Interest in the summer of 2004:

“The only effective
way to hog-tie the pop-culture beast may be to strip away its First
Amendment defenses — a notion that surely
qualifies as heresy in our age of First Amendment absolutism…a
little such heresy might jump-start a debate that has grown static,
moving it beyond copious cataloguing and thin calls for discretion
and understanding. Should we as a society always value free speech
over obscenity-free speech? Meanwhile, what constitutes ‘speech’
anyway? In the Missouri video-game case [note: addressed earlier
in this article], the court’s three-judge panel acknowledged that
there is a government role in supporting parents; nonetheless, it
also wrote that ‘the government cannot silence protected speech by
wrapping itself in the cloak of parental authority.’ The fact is,
when the porno-cartoon-carnage of ‘Mortal Kombat’ or ‘Grand Theft
Auto’ — video games that turn dismemberment and murder into sport
— qualifies as ‘protected speech,’ the definition of speech needs
a rewrite.”

~I NEED TO MOUTH OFF, PART II

Let me tell you something,
folks. Whatever the motivation — and whether I agree with it or
not — I get mighty nervous when someone
talks about messing around with the Constitution. Moreover, I’m not
aware of any single, official definition of “speech” as
used in the phrase “freedom of speech.” As I’ve already
said, the judiciary has discretion in the interpretation of such
things. So whose definition of speech shall we rewrite? And, more
crucially, who shall we get to do the rewriting?

While I do disagree with
some of the more liberal interpretations of the First Amendment
by the judiciary, the primary task of the
federal court system (which is given its power by Article III of
the Constitution) is to “protect rights and liberties guaranteed
by the Constitution.” Well, this can hardly be accomplished
without constitutional interpretation. So the only way I can see
to redefine the word “speech” as used in the First Amendment
would be to amend the Constitution. Similarly, it seems to me that
limiting the power of the federal judiciary would also entail a constitutional
amendment.

Now don’t get me wrong: my heart goes out to the families and friends
of victims of senseless violence — losing someone that way must
be excruciating. And I certainly don’t deny that youth violence is
a serious problem these days.

I just don’t believe that values, morals, a sense of right and wrong,
respect for others, etc. can be legislated. It’s up to parents and
other adults to instill these kinds of things in kids. The responsibilities
of government do not extend to raising our nation’s children — nor
should they.

I do think it’s true that some people suffer from mental and/or
emotional disorders — as did the perpetrators of the school violence
I recounted earlier — that make them more susceptible to external
influences such as violent video games. Further, the kids who perpetrated
that violence had been on anti-depressants such as Prozac, Zoloft,
Luvox, and Paxil. Such drugs can have some pretty nasty side-effects
which, to my way of thinking, cannot be discounted when examining
the circumstances surrounding such violent acts. (I’ll be discussing
this issue in more detail later.)

Surely the parents of these medicated children-turned-killers had
been aware of the problems their kids had, and were cognizant of
the potentially dangerous side-effects of these drugs, right? Perhaps
not. But if the parents did know about these things, doesn’t it stand
to reason that some extra supervision would have been warranted,
in case any side-effects were manifested? Well, in my research on
school shootings, I found precious little mention of parents aside
from the ones who had been killed by their own children. Where were
the rest of them, anyway?

Maybe the legislators and other pontificators who are so quick to
blame video games for violence should take a closer look at the perpetrators’
mental/emotional condition and the potential side-effects of any
medication they may have been taking. Instead, we just seem to end
up with more laws, studies, etc., pertaining violent video games,
and nothing much changes.

PART V

~JACK THOMPSON, VIOLENT
VIDEO GAME LAWYER (“VIOLENT” REFERRING
TO THE GAMES, NOT THE LAWYER)

Remember Jack Thompson, the lawyer I mentioned previously in conjunction
with the lawsuit filed by the families of the three students killed
by Michael Carneal? Mr. Thompson has a website called StopKill.com.
Well actually, it’s just a single web page, and its the contents
tend to change.

When I first visited Thompson’s
page, he spoke of the game Manhunt (Rockstar North/Rockstar Games),
saying “This game allows you
to train yourself to kill people by placing plastic bags over their
heads while you watch them struggle while suffocating.” This
induced me to search for more information about the game (see the
next section, below).

Currently (as of December 5, 2005, anyway), Thompson’s meniton of
Manhunt on his web page has been replaced by the following:

“Take-Two Interactive
Software, Inc., through its Rockstar Games, has distributed tens
of millions of units of its Grand Theft
Auto games to kids. The FBI and Secret Service found that games like
these trained teen killers for their massacres at Columbine and other
schools like Paducah. We increasingly have a nation of ‘Manchurian
children,’ ready, willing, and able to kill.”

The page also says:

“You may be a parent
whose child is addicted to video games. You may know someone harmed
by someone addicted to violent entertainment
who copycatted that violence. The victim, whoever it is, needs help.
Jack Thompson will assist in getting that person help.”

~LET’S GO ON A MANHUNT

Okay, I’ve never played
Manhunt (from the same folks who brought us the Grand
Theft Auto series), which is rated “M” (Mature,
age 17+) for Strong Language, Blood and Gore, and Intense Violence.
I mean, I just don’t have time to play every single violent video
game out there — I’m too busy playing adventure games. But I’ve
looked at previews, read reviews and articles, visited Manhunt‘s
official website, viewed stills from the game, watched trailers,
and read forum postings. That’s quite enough, thank you. I definitely
get the picture, and it ain’t pretty.

However, I also question
the wording of a statement appearing in the above excerpt from
Thompson’s web page (the emphasis is mine): “This
game allows you to train yourself to kill people by placing plastic
bags over their heads while you watch them struggle while suffocating.” I
may be wrong, but to me, this gives the impression that Manhunt‘s
purpose is to train killers, and that the sole motivation of people
who play the game is to acquire such skills. Doesn’t this sound a
bit extreme?

I’m certainly not saying
that I have no problem at all with the nature of Manhunt, which
is categorized as a “stealth action” game.
Check out this description, taken from the official Manhunt site:

“The year’s darkest
and most terrifying videogame experience has arrived. Walk in the
shoes of James Earl Cash, a man sentenced
to death only to find himself given an unexpected and sinister reprieve.
Forced to fight and outwit hordes of bloodthirsty gang members vying
for his head on a platter. All orchestrated for pleasure and profit
by the voice of an unseen Director.

“This is a brutal
bloodsport.

“Rush to your nearest
videogame retailer now or purchase through links on this web site.”

Frankly, folks, this game sounds pretty dreadful to me.

Side note: The “unseen Director” in
Manhunt is named Starkweather — a name that may be familiar to
some of you. Think Charles Starkweather,
19, who with his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, 14, went on a grisly
killing spree in late 1957 and early 1958 that spanned five states
and left 11 people dead. Both were convicted of first-degree murder.
Starkweather was executed, and Fugate, because of her age, received
a life sentence. She was paroled in June 1976.

The story of Starkweather and Fugate has served as a basis for a
slew of motion pictures, among them 1973’s Badlands and 1994’s Natural
Born Killers. And by the way, to the best of my knowledge, neither
Starkweather nor Fugate played video games, violent or otherwise.
In fact, video games weren’t even on the market back then.

Getting back to Manhunt, a GameSpot review of the PS2 version of
the game, which was released 11/19/03 (with the Xbox and PC versions
arriving on 04/02/04), ends thusly:

“Obviously, Manhunt isn’t for the faint of heart. Like it or
not, the game pushes the envelope of video game violence and shows
you countless scenes of wholly uncensored, heavily stylized carnage.” GameSpot
goes on to award it a rating of 8.4 out of 10 (meaning “great”).
I dunno, folks…

I’ve gone into detail about Manhunt for a reason. Let us now pay
a visit to the UK…

~MR. THOMPSON TRAVELS ABROAD

Let me say at the outset that I’ve read conflicting accounts of
the following story. Everyone, however, seems to agree on one thing:
in February 2004, Warren Leblanc, 17, of Leicester, East Midlands,
UK, murdered a 14-year-old friend, Stefan Pakeerah, by stabbing him
repeatedly and beating him with a claw hammer. Leblanc subsequently
pleaded guilty to the crime.

At issue, however, was Leblanc’s motivation. Some reports claim
that he needed money to pay off a drug debt and that his motive was
robbery. But the victim’s family, as well as many others, blame Manhunt — a game with which they claimed Leblanc was obsessed.

According to a CNN article
about the case dated July 29, 2004,”Britain’s
Daily Mail…carried a front page headline: ‘Murder by Playstation’
and another saying: ‘Horror images on computer drove teenager to
kill his friend aged 14.'”

After Leblanc entered
his guilty plea in July 2004, several things came to light. According
to a BBC article dated August 4, 2004, “…Leicestershire
Police said their investigations did not uncover any links with the
game and said the motive for the murder had been robbery.”

The article goes on to
quote a spokesman for UK retailer HMV, who says, “Interest
in Manhunt has significantly increased for all
the wrong reasons. It’s flying off the shelves…People who had never
heard of the game now want to buy it.” Well, go figure.

An excellent article appearing on IGN.com, also dated August 4,
2004, provides a good summary of the situation:

“Last week 17 year-old
Warren Leblanc pleaded guillty to the crime of killing 14 year-old
Stefan Pakeerah. Leblanc was supposedly
strongly influenced by Rockstar’s Manhunt and the focus of the murder
has shifted from Leblanc to the role of violent videogames in modern
culture. UK retailer Dixons has responded to the front-page headlines
by pulling the title from their shelves. What’s next is yet to be
determined, but the mother of the victim has taken on American lawyer
Jack Thompson as her lawyer to provide counsel.”

IGN then presents a revealing interview with Mr. Thompson. I must
say that I respect the way Ed Lewis of IGN handled the interview
in the face of a rather strong attitude on Thompson’s part.

For instance, when Lewis asks Thompson if there have been any reports
showing that violent video games have more of a negative influence
on kids that do other forms of violent media such as motion pictures,
Thompson responds:

“…when the industry gets a study they commission people. We lawyers
who do litigation call those people ‘whores’ and
they, in effect, skew the results and then do the studies to get
the results. And they’re paid to do it!

“All of this stuff
I read in places like your magazine or others that say there are
no studies that suggest there’s a linkage or that
they aren’t reliable and so forth. People who say that ought to be
in the Flat Earth Society.”

Ouch. Lewis keeps his head in the face of these and other barbs,
and does a very good job of letting Thompson have his say. It’s quite
an interesting interview.

Some of the conflicting information I encountered regarding the
UK shooting has one source saying that Manhunt actually belonged
to Pakeerah; another saying no, it was Leblanc’s; and yet another
saying yes, it was Leblanc’s, but he had loaned it to Pakeerah and
it was in Pakeerah’s possession at the time of the murder. All three
statements were picked up and propagated in various online gaming
forums.

Also, several sources
reported that Thompson had filed a lawsuit on behalf of Pakeerah’s
mother seeking fifty million pounds in damages.
Thompson, however, categorically denied this, saying he was assisting
the victim’s mother “in other ways.”

Interesting side note:
Both Manhunt and Postal 2 (Whiptail Interactive/Running with Scissors)
have been banned in New Zealand by the Office of Film & Literature
Classification under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification
Act of 1993. It is illegal to sell, own, or bring these games into
the country; doing so carries penalties of fines up to $50,000 and
imprisonment for one year. The people in Wellington are serious,
folks.

~THOMPSON: HALO RATES NO HALO, NOR DOES THE U.S. DEPT. OF DEFENSE

In a July 2004 Washington
Times Op-Ed piece, Jack Thompson writes that one of 2002’s Beltway
Snipers — 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo
(aka John Lee Malvo) — had been trained to kill by John Allen Muhammed
via the XBOX game Halo Bungie/Microsoft) played in “God mode.”

Microsoft describes Halo as “a sci-fi shooter that takes place
on a mysterious alien ring-world. Packed with combat, Halo will have
you battling on foot, in vehicles, inside and outdoors with Alien
and Human weaponry. Your objective: to uncover Halo’s horrible secrets
and destroy mankind’s sworn enemy, the Covenant.”

Thompson also writes that
he had appeared on NBC’s Today Show two weeks before Muhammed and
Malvo were apprehended. When Matt Lauer
asked Thompson who he thought the Beltway Sniper was, he replied: “We
will find it is a teen-age boy trained on a shooter video game switched
to ‘God mode.’ ‘I am God’ on the tarot card [found near the scene
of one of the shootings] — a gamer mantra — is a clue.”

Side note: I feel that
the above blanket statement misleadingly assigns this “I am God” attribute to everyone who plays
video games. I’m very much a gamer, but to the best of my recollection
I’ve never uttered the phrase “I am God” (although I’ve
been known to say other things — many of them four-letter — when
I’m stuck on a ridiculously difficult puzzle that ends up taking
three days to solve).

In the same Op-Ed piece,
Thompson states his position that the Dept. of Defense “takes
our tax dollars and pays the video-game industry to create virtual-reality-killing
simulators — video games. DOD
then frees the industry to sell these killing simulators on the civilian
market…Kids are training themselves on simulators…to kill one
another…You think Columbine was bad? Just wait.”

Um, let’s see…does this
mean that non-violent kids who play video-games-that-are-really-trainers
end up wanting to kill each other? Or is it that kids who already
want to kill each other are training to do so using video games?
And while I’m at it, have we just heard another example of “all
video games are violent” rhetoric?

Excuse me a minute, folks. (Sound of head repeatedly banging into
wall.)

~AN ASIDE CONCERNING HALO 2…

On December 1, 2004, an article entitled Parents face tough choices
on M-rated games appeared in the Dallas Morning News. The article
presents contrasting views from parents regarding the newly released
Halo 2 for XBOX, as follows:

“‘I don’t think it’s a positive influence,’ says David Nelson,
45…who stood firm against buying the first ‘Halo’ and pre-ordering
the sequel for his son Andrew, 11.” Nelson does, however, allow
Andrew “to play it [Halo] at his friends’ houses and at Tru
Gamerz, a Dallas LAN (Local Area Network) center, which hosts ‘Halo’
and other video game contests.'” (Note: To its credit, Tru Gamerz
lets the under-17 crowd play M-rated games only with their parents’
permission.)

Nelson continues, “‘…I
like to take the long view of parenting…Some of the wildest kids
I knew in college came from very restrictive
homes. I’d rather my child feels that he can be honest and open in
telling me he played ‘Halo.’ By not coming down on him, it makes
him feel he can ask me questions about other things he doesn’t understand.'”

Well, the above is something I don’t quite understand. I have no
minor children, so maybe I’m just missing the point — but wouldn’t
it be preferable for an 11-year-old kid to be playing an M-rated
game that his or her parent doesn’t consider to be a positive influence
(but is letting the kid play anyway) at home, under supervision?
I also wonder about the mixed message a situation such as the above
may send. If a game isn’t acceptable to a parent, would it not continue
to be unacceptable no matter where it’s played?

The article goes on to
say: “[J]udging from ‘Halo 2’s’ first-day
sales of 2.4 million copies and $125 million, many more parents side
with Linda Onorato, 48…who reserved the sequel for her boys, ages
13, 15 and 18…’I’ve seen enough of ‘Halo’ to know it’s nothing
shocking,’ says Onorato, referring to the original 2001 game and
noting that she sees its story line, pitting humans against aliens,
as a war-strategy game.

“For every expert
who puts out a study linking video game violence to violence in
kids, there’s another finding no link at all. Lawmakers
are similarly divided. Bills are proposed to limit kids’ access to
violent video games, but so far, those bills have failed to hold
up against legal challenges. Which leaves it up to parents to weigh
the merits of protecting their kids from bad influences vs. isolating
them from peers by forbidding access to the games.”

Isolating them from
peers? Hmmm. I really have to wonder about a
social order that mandates the playing of violent video games as
a prerequisite for acceptance. I sure am happy I’m not a kid these
days.

~ANOTHER ASIDE: THE DEPT. OF DEFENSE

The U.S. Army actually does have an official video game. It’s an
MMOG called America’s Army – Special Forces. According to the website
there are over 5 million registered players, with over 1.34 billion
missions having been played. The game’s overview reads:

“America’s
Army is one of the five most popular PC action games played online.
It provides players with the most authentic
military experience available, from exploring the development of
Soldiers in individual and collective training to their deployment
in simulated missions in the War on Terror.”

Interestingly, although
the site reflects a “T” rating
(13+) for the game, it has no listing in the ESRB site under its
exact title. There are three listings, but two are for the title
America’s Army: Operations, both rated “T” for “Blood,
Violence,” and the other is the E-rated America’s Army: Soldiers,
which contains “Mild Language.”

The game’s online FAQ section reflects the following:

“Q: How do you keep
children under the age of 13 from having access to the game?

“A: The game CD will
only be distributed to those individuals that can prove that they
are over 13. With the game on the Internet
it is hard to control who is able to access it and we have to rely
on parents being educated about how their children are spending time
online. We have made a game that stresses values and does not condone
bad behavior.

“In addition, we’ve
added Parental Controls. Parents are able to alter and control
certain aspects of gameplay in the game. Parents
can disable all the blood in the game, enable a language filter,
disallow the ability to play as an Advanced Marksman, and limit gameplay
to only those missions which features the MILES laser-tag type play.”

Despite the game’s MMOG
status, the ESRB apparently hasn’t applied the standard language
for such games (“Game Experience May Change
During Online Play”). We’ll be delving into the issue of ratings
enforcement on MMOGs as well as games sold via the Internet a little
later.

~LAWYER JACK DOES GRAND THEFT AUTO

Late one afternoon in June 2003, two Newport, Tennessee teens (who
are also stepbrothers) grew bored playing Grand Theft Auto III. They
decided it would be fun to shoot at tractor-trailer rigs traveling
on Interstate 40 instead. So they took a couple of .22 rifles belonging
to their parents from a closet, went to a hill overlooking I-40,
and opened fire. They killed one motorist and wounded two others.

When 15-year-old William Buckner and 13-year-old Josh Buckner confessed
to the shootings, they said they hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. They
claimed that Grand Theft Auto had made them do it.

Representing the families of the victims, Jack Thompson filed a
$246 million lawsuit against Sony Entertainment, Take-Two Entertainment,
Rockstar Games and Wal-Mart, as well as the two shooters and their
parents.

Okay, I need to say a few things at this point…

Both Will and Josh had been raised in unstable environments. Further,
Will was slightly brain damaged as a result of suffering a cerebral
hemorrhage when he was only a month old. Josh, who had been diagnosed
with ADHD, was on medication.

Although Will and Josh were too young to have bought the M-rated
GTA III, they didn’t have to — Paul Buckner, Josh’s 19-year-old
stepbrother, had given it to him. It also appears that the two boys
had easy access to firearms that were kept in the house.

After Will and Josh had
taken up residence at a juvenile detention facility, Will told
his mother, “It wasn’t the game that made
us think to go out and do this. We wanted to do this. The idea was
to act out the game. But the game didn’t reprogram our minds.” He
also expressed dismay over a lawsuit having been filed against the
entertainment companies.

In commenting on Thompson’s
lawsuit, ESA’s Doug Lowenstein said this: “The notion that
they [the shooters] don’t know right from wrong, that they don’t
know that picking up a weapon and shooting
people is morally wrong and that somehow ‘a video game made me do
it’ is just ridiculous.”

~AGAIN, PLEASE DON’T GET ME WRONG…

While I do take exception to some of lawyer Thompson’s positions,
I have no problem with his contention that M-rated games should not
be marketed and/or sold to anyone under 17. As I’ve already illustrated,
this issue appears to be a major point of disagreement between the
video game industry and those who claim that M-rated games are freely
available at the retail level to gamers of any age.

However, I definitely question situations such as the one examined
above, where an M-rated game is purchased by someone who is old enough
by ESRB standards to do so, and given to two juveniles for whom such
a game was never intended (see the next section, below). How in the
world are the video game industry, legislators, the courts, and/or
the federal government supposed to control something like that? Should
adults who provide inappropriate games to kids who go on to perpetrate
violence be held culpable? If so, should they be considered accessories
and face criminal prosecution?

For me, these are serious issues that aren’t easily reconciled.
However, as I’ve previously said, I believe the bottom line is that
parents need to be responsible for their children’s proper upbringing.
In my opinion, a bunch of adults pointing after-the-fact fingers
at video games, other outside influences, and one another doesn’t
get us very far at all.

PART VI

~WHEN ADULTS BUY VIOLENT GAMES FOR CHILDREN

A lot of noise has been made about ESRB ratings being confusing
and difficult for parents to understand (more about that later).
But what about parents and other adults who are aware of a T- or
M-rated game’s content and buy it for kids anyway, as was the case
with Will and Josh Buckner?

Have a look at the following, from an online article in the Victorville
(CA) Daily Press dated April 27, 2005 and entitled SEEK AND RESTRICT
(I’m not shouting; the title is in all caps on the web page). It
concerns Californa Assembly Bill 450, which would criminalize the
sale of M-rated games to children under 17 and impose a fine of $1,000
for doing so:

“[M]any parents see
no problem in letting their children play violent games…Lamel
Jiggets, 26, allows his 6-year-old son to play
Grand Theft Auto, one of the games that advocates of AB 450 say is
the most violent on the market…’I allow him to play Grand Theft
Auto. It don’t affect him,’ Jiggets said. ‘We got movies, too. Kids
are going to be seeing violence, regardless. It should be the parents
(that are responsible). We shouldn’t blame society for our mishaps.'”

Considering the almost perpetual state-level efforts to ban the
sale of M-rated games to kids under 17, I wonder if anyone has realized
that this kind of law doesn’t address the issue of adults buying
such games and giving them to members of the under-17 crowd, thereby
rendering such legislation grossly ineffective? I mean, shouldn’t
this kind of scenario be covered somewhere, too? If the point is
to keep M-rated games away from kids under 17, shouldn’t parents
and other adults who give such games to underage kids be held at
least as accountable as retailers? If the government is going to
mandate that retailers participate in the raising of children, shouldn’t
parents and other adults be required to participate in it, too?

I concede that state laws could keep some kids from playing M-rated
games. But as we’ve seen, it takes only one or two kids to pull off
a bloodbath. So, those who claim that violent video games are a direct
cause of juvenile violence had better realize that even if laws restricting
the sale of such games to minors manage to stand, it’s not going
to stop kids from acquiring the games through other means.

Say, I have an idea. With all of the technological advances such
as GPS tracking, RFD tags, and airport screening machines that can
see through people’s clothing (grrrrrrrr), maybe someone could come
up with a way to determine the age of whoever is playing a particular
game, as well as the age of the person who bought the game and anyone
else who may have handled it from the time it was purchased to the
point it landed in inappropriate hands. Then we’d know who to go
after if a kid ever did something bad that could possibly be linked
to playing M-rated games.

Or, maybe a teeny camera
could be devised that could be hidden in computer monitors, game
consoles, portable gaming devices, etc.,
and “smart” optical drives could be developed that could
sense the rating of game software. That way, when the camera “saw” a
kid under 17 playing an M-rated game, a silent alarm could be triggered
to alert police that a crime is in progress (despite the fact that
there are no laws prohibiting the under-17 crowd from playng M-rated
games), and they could descend on the player (and any adults who
happen to be in the area), and throw ’em all in jail.

Maybe some of the above has already been implemented. Perhaps you’re
being watched by your monitor right now.

Yes, the above is dripping with sarcasm, but I’m using it to make
a point. I really do think that if someone wants something badly
enough, he or she will find a way to get it. Look at how Prohibition
(1920-1933), mandated by the 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
(also known as the Volstead Act), gave rise to speakeasies, bootlegging,
and a very lucrative business for organized crime.

Despite the illegality of alcohol during Prohibition, the demand
for it remained strong and people kept drinking. Ultimately, the
Volstead Act was a failure. It was repealed in 1933 via the 21st
Amendment.

This brings something to mind that I’d like to throw in for no particular
reason. When I was a little kid, The Untouchables, starring the late
Robert Stack as Elliot Ness, was a very popular TV series. At the
time, it also happened to be the most violent show on television.
I watched it regularly for four years, but I didn’t end up working
for the FBI, nor did I join organized crime or ever feel the need
to carry a Thompson (and no, I don’t mean Jack Thompson) submachine
gun.

Considering the way some people have characterized the effects of
media violence on kids, however, it seems that between watching The
Untouchables and Roadrunner cartoons, I should currently be serving
a life sentence in prison.

~ARE WE RAISING VIOLENT, BRAINWASHED ZOMBIES?

In February 2000, Helga
LaRouche of the Schiller Institute gave a speech entitled The
Mark of the Beast – America’s Children Are
In Mortal Danger, in which one of the topics is “the cult of
Pokémon.” In Pokémon games, according to Ms. LaRouche, “you
can attack your opponent either through fire–you throw fire at them–or
electricity, lightning, or you destroy them through seismic shock,
and eventually you outdo your opponent. It’s totally mechanistic;
there is no way to influence this game, other than this mechanistic
pushing of the buttons. No creativity. No cognition…Now as everybody
knows, the minds of children are completely impressionable, because
children learn primarily through imitation and through play. But
what is there here to imitate? Aggression. And what is completely
lacking? Love, compassion, joy, beauty…in Pokémon, there
is no discovery, there is no hypothesis, no creativity, no soul,
no cognition. Pokémon is the Dream-Eater which sucks the soul
out of the child and turns it into a potential little killing machine.”

She goes on to say, “Don’t worry about guns, because Pokémon-trained
kids will kill you with fire, lightning, electricity, or anything
else. And the more Internet connections to schools we have, if there
are no fundamental changes in the education system, the more little
monsters you will have…”

Daikatana from Ion Storm (Deus
Ex, Anachronox), released in 2000,
is also specifically mentioned in Ms. Larouche’s talk. She says:

“…Daikatana supposedly
gives a new dimension of realism, taking advantage of the roaring
processing speed of computers and
powerful three-dimensional graphics, accelerator cards…The computer
screen replaces your field of vision and you believe that you are
actually creeping around a corner, afraid the enemy is lying in wait.
You feel your pulse quicken. When the monster jumps out, real adrenalin
roars thorough your body. Everything is so lifelike, you can almost
feel the wet blood.”

At this point, I can’t resist getting into some irony. As you may
have discerned, I’m big on irony. Read on…

~DAIKATANA

The creation of Daikatana was supposed to have taken seven months but dragged on for three
years. When it was finally released in April
2000, it didn’t fare too well with critics. According to the UK’s
Ferrago Ltd., “Daikatana received an unprecedented critical
mauling and consequently sunk without a trace at retail. The Dallas
office of Ion Storm was soon to close down.” (Note: The Dallas
office did close in 2001.)

I’ve read enough reviews of Daikatana to know that all of them weren’t
bad. But because the game had taken so long to finish, it looked
somewhat dated when compared to other new releases that had been
created using more up-to-date engines (an enhanced Quake 2 engine
was used for Daikatana). The game also had quite a few bugs.

According to Game Revolution’s
less-than-favorable review, “The
action is repetitive, and thanks to lousy AI, gets old really fast.
The level design is blocky, inconsistent, un-detailed and often squandering
the potential of the setting. Graphically, Daikatana is the ugly
duckling of Quake 2‘s children. Using that venerable engine, with
only a few nips and tucks…Daikatana screams 1997 with fire and
passion. Characters have low polygon counts, animation is stunningly
awful…For the most part, texturing is very repetitive…The overall
appearance is, needless to say, less than impressive.”

I’m not pointing out Daikatana‘s
shortcomings because I’m a mean old thing, but to illustrate a
point. Does the above sound like a
game “where everything is so lifelike you can almost feel the
wet blood?” I freely admit that I haven’t played Daikatana.
But I don’t think Ms. LaRouche has, either.

Now, let’s fast-forward
to the present — where Ion Storm no longer exists, anywhere. According
to the above-referenced Ferrago story
(dated February 13, 2005), “Ion Storm’s last remaining outpost
in Austin, Texas was abandoned yesterday, according to a press release
from its parent company Eidos.” (Note: That’s the UK-based game-publishing
giant Eidos Interactive, which bankrolled the development of Daikatana and other Ion Storm games.)

Members of the Just
Adventure Forum didn’t waste any time starting
a discussion thread about Ion Storm’s demise. You can read what everyone
had to say at:
http://www.justadventure.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1108068902/14.

For anyone who might be interested, Geoff Keighley’s Behind
the Games series for GameSpot includes an intriguing (albeit lengthy)
look at the creation of Daikatana entitled Knee Deep
in a Dream: The Story of Daikatana (located at http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/p9_01.html).
I found it absolutely fascinating.

Daikatana is still being
sold, by the way, and I picked up an interesting tidbit during
my research of the game. Let me preface it by saying
that Daikatana is rated “M” (Mature, age 17+) for Animated
Violence, and Animated Blood and Gore (with one exception, which
I’ll get to in a minute). In the game’s README file, veteran designer
John Romero (DOOM, Quake, and the driving force behind the creation
of Daikatana) writes the following:

“Since Daikatana is a game for big, big boys (and girls), you should be ready to
face-down horrible monsters, track down an evil
scientist through time, learn how to efficiently control your sidekick
buddies, and generally prepare yourself for extreme action and massive
mayhem.”

A game for big, big
boys and girls? I don’t know about you, but
this doesn’t sound like something one would say to gamers who are
over 17 years old to me. Hmmm. Perhaps Mr. Romero was engaging in
some irony of his own…

Okay, now here comes some
real irony, accompanied by a potentially confusing kick in the
pants for anyone who is trying to understand
ESRB ratings. In late 2000, Kemko (a Japanese developer/publisher
owned by Kotobuki System) released a version of Daikatana ported
to Game Boy Color consoles. But wait — this one is rated “Everyone” (age
6 and above). Huh??

Well, according to a GameSpot
review, it seems that the entire game was reworked: “Unlike
the laughable PC and N64 releases, the Game Boy Color Daikatana
is not a 3D first-person shooter. Instead,
it’s a top-down-perspective dungeon crawler with action-RPG elements,
and it’s a fun one at that.”

So here we have the results of a search of the ESRB site for the
title Daikatana (talk about double takes):

(1) Eidos Interactive
(Publisher), Nintendo 64 (Platform), Rated M (17+) for Animated
Blood & Gore, Animated Violence
(2) Kotobuki System (Publisher), Nintendo 64 (Platform), Rated M
(17+) for Animated Blood & Gore, Animated Violence
(3) Kotobuki System (Publisher), Game Boy Color (Platform), Rated E (6+) for
Mild Animated Violence

I find it interesting
that as of December 5, 2005, the PC version isn’t even mentioned
by the ESRB. Yet I have a Moby Games image of
the front of the PC-version box up on my monitor right now (see http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/john-romeros-daikatana/cover-art/gameCoverId,12400/),
and I can clearly see an “M” Rating. When I flip the box
over (see http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/john-romeros-daikatana/cover-art/gameCoverId,12401/),
I see the word “Mature” followed by content descriptors “Animated
Violence, Animated Blood & Gore.” I wonder why the ESRB
site doesn’t reflect this??

Well, whatever the reason, I can sure go off on a tangent. Let’s
move along quickly now, before I accidentally start knocking my head
into another wall…

~MORE FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR

In its Fall 2000 issue,
21st Century Science and Technology magazine published an article
entitled PROGRAMMED TO KILL – Video Games, Drugs,
and The “New Violence.” Referring to Columbine, it says “…Littleton
was only the most notorious of at least eight similar such incidents
carried out by child killers, ‘Manchurian Children,’ [a term also
used by Jack Thompson] who learned their deadly skills from video
games, and their scenarios from Hollywood.” It goes on to also
refer to “Manchurian Children” as “Nintendo Killers.”

In a 2001 paper entitled Video
Games and the Elusive Search for their Effects on Children: An
Assessment of Twenty Years of Research,
James D. Ivory presents the most even-handed treatment of the video
game violence issue that I’ve come across so far. In exploring various
studies, Ivory finds that results are often at odds with each other.
He states:

“While the topic
is a well-researched and widely debated issue in both scholarly
work and public discussion, studies of the possible
negative effects of video games are so contradictory along all fronts
that it is impossible to make an unequivocal, unanimously supported
claim for or against the existence of far-ranging negative media
effects on children.”

The paper goes on to quote Annie Lang, a researcher on children
and the media:

“‘The problem is
societal. We all need to come together on this issue because like
it or not, there will always be the one person
who walks a thin line and just needs a nudge in a society brimming
with violent messages and guns at easy access.'”

Mr. Ivory notes that even
as the public voices concern over violent video games, “manufacturers
have stood firm in their denial that video games negatively affect
children, and some have claimed
that increased regulation jeopardizes their First Amendment rights…While
research has failed to provide firm conclusions on how best to guide
the video game industry’s production and regulation, attitudes remain
quite polarized.”

In an article entitled Studies
Show Violent Videos Damage Brain,
in the December 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, author
Don Phau says the following:

“Recently released medical studies indicate that violent video
games damage the brain, possibly permanently. Video games may be
more dangerous to your health than cigarettes or alcohol. This national
scandal has been covered for the benefit of the $10 billion-a-year
video-game industry, of which violent games rated “M,” for
Mature, are the fastest-growing segment. Approximately 20 million
Americans, many under 18, play these “M” games. The studies,
many years in the making, show that repeated playing of violent video
games ‘desensitizes’ the activities of the brain involved in reasoning
and planning, while activating those functions that respond to violence.
The studies include scientific data indicating that these games may
actually cause destructive behavior.”

As if I didn’t incur enough brain damage in the ’60s. Damn.

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