The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World

by Steven Kent

  Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Republican of Texas) gave one of the most accusatory opening statements.

  I think we need to find the connection between our violent art and our violent culture. Modern video games are worse and more realistic than ever. An eight-year-old can sneak off into cyberspace, assume a new virtual identity, and commit ghastly acts of violence and brutality. With the touch of a button, our children can torture victims, rip out their hearts or spinal cords, and then wave the bloody debris above their heads.

  The statistics on television violence are staggering. The average American child witnesses 100,000 acts of violence and 8,000 murders on television before leaving elementary school, but if a child is playing video games, that number is multiplied and the violence is at his own hands. He pulls the trigger, he likes it, he has fun, and his score goes up. What kind of message is that?

  One of our witnesses today says that video games deliberately use the psychological techniques of desensitization used to teach soldiers how to kill in battle. The difference, he says, is that video game violence is associated with reward and pleasure, and not tempered by a respect for authority or the revulsion of war.9

  —Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Republican of Texas, United States Senate

  It was inevitable that the hearings would refer back to the tragedy at Columbine High School again and again, giving the impression that the senators held violent games and movies responsible for the killing. In interviews, however, the senators were more cautious about laying blame. “I don’t know that you could quantify that. We do know, and we now have studies showing a correlation between playing the violent video games and violent behavior, and that correlation is actually higher than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. So there is correlation, but I don’t know that you can draw that directly on the Columbine case,” Senator Brownback stated in an interview after the hearings.

  Slade Gorton, the Washington State Republican who approached Nintendo for help in saving the Mariners, also participated in the hearings. Although he pronounced scathing condemnation of the executives from entertainment conglomerates who refused to appear at the hearings, he also spoke out in Nintendo’s defense.

  Colonel Grossman yesterday on Meet the Press said that Nintendo marketed a game, or had a contract with the Army to market a game, for target purposes that is also used by children. Nintendo informs me that it does not now and never has had any contract with the Army or any Armed Service for any purpose whatsoever, and I think their response deserves to be on the record.10

  —Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington, United States Senate

  After the senators finished their opening statements, the first of two panels came onto the floor. The members of this panel included Archbishop Chaput; Jack Valenti, of the MPAA; and Dr. William Bennett, former secretary of education and drug czar in the Bush administration.

  “Exactly one week ago today, I buried the third of four Catholic teenagers shot to death at Columbine High School,” the Archbishop began. “More than 1,000 people turned out for each of the funerals.” Clearly unfamiliar with video games, the Archbishop mentioned the movie The Matrix in his brief talk. He finished by urging the senators to look at the causes, not symptoms, of our violent culture.

  The roots of violence in our culture are much more complicated than just bad rock lyrics or brutal screenplays. It is clear that the Columbine killings were planned well before The Matrix ever opened. But common sense tells us that the violence of our music, our video games, our films, and our television has to go somewhere. And it goes straight into the hearts of our children, to bear fruit in ways we cannot imagine until something like Littleton happens.11

  —Reverend Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of Denver, Colorado

  Jack Valenti, the next speaker, brought a revivalist tone to the hearings.

  … there are three pillars, and only three, which support the rostrum from which springs a child’s conduct: home and church and school. And mothers and fathers and priests and ministers and rabbis and teachers and principals have to insert in a young child’s heart and mind early on an impenetrable moral shield against which all blandishments of peers and all the enticements of the mean streets and clannish cliques and visual and oral images crack and shatter.12

  —Jack Valenti, president and CEO, Motion Picture Association of America

  … absent all that, no abolition of constitutional rights and no presidential executive order, no amount of hand-wringing and fiery advocacy and no congressional law is going to salvage that child’s conduct or locate what, in my judgment, is the missing moral core.

  Now I know that accusatory fingers point at movies. And I will accept that. Last year in America, we produced over 550 movies. And I will tell you something—when you make that many movies, some of them are going to be slovenly produced.13

  —Jack Valenti

  The final speaker on the panel, Dr. William Bennett, who, as a former drug czar, former secretary of education, author of The Book of Virtues, and codirector of Empower America, came to the hearings with an air of authority. Bennett took the discussion in a philosophical direction, calling for social responsibility on the part of movie studios and entertainment companies. After his speech, the floor was opened for discussion, much of which focused on Valenti. Senator Brownback harkened back to Valenti’s comment about “slovenly produced” movies and asked him to name examples. Valenti said that he would not do that. Brownback fired back that Valenti’s voice would add “extraordinary force” to call responsibility. “Well, I plead with you, I just plead with you, to please—our country needs your voice to clean this up and to be specific on it. We are having a terrible problem, and we really need you.”14

  Impassioned as Senator Brownback’s pleas may have been, Valenti, as the CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, was in no position to single out movies of which he did not approve. As Senator Brownback continued to question him, Valenti pointed out that the crime rate among children ages 18 and younger had been steadily dropping since 1994. “Last year, 4/100ths of 1 percent of all young people, under the age of 18, were arrested—not convicted, arrested—for a violent crime. That means that 99.59 percent of all young people in this country are not into violent crime.”15

  After rather intense discussion, Senator Brownback called in the second panel, which included Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dave Grossman, a former Army Ranger who had taught psychology at West Point and was currently teaching at the University of Arkansas, as well as consulting with law enforcement agencies and other organizations; Daphne White, executive director of a parent advocacy group called the Lion & Lamb Project; Interactive Digital Software Association president Douglas Lowenstein; and Dr. Henry Jenkins of the Media Lab at MIT.

  Outspoken and direct, Col. Grossman had become somewhat of a lightning rod in the debate about the effects of video game violence. In his testimony, he discussed how the army had employed training simulators to teach soldiers to fire their weapons during combat.

  There is a broad leap, a vast chasm, between being a healthy American citizen and being able to snuff another human being’s life out. There has to be a bridge, there has to be a gap. In World War II, we taught our soldiers to fire at bull’s eye targets. They fought well. They fought bravely. But we realized there was a flaw in our training when they came on the battlefield and they saw no bull’s eyes. And they were not able to transition from training to reality.

  Since World War II, we have introduced a wide variety of simulators. The first of those simulators were pop-up human targets. When those targets appeared in front of soldiers, they learned to fire, and fire instinctively. When real human beings popped up in front of them, they could transfer the data from that simulator.

  Today we use more advanced simulators. The law enforcement community uses a simulator that is a large-screen television with human beings on it, firing a gun that is identical to what you will see in any video arcade, except in the arcade the safet
y catch is turned off.16

  —Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dave Grossman

  In answer to the letter from Nintendo read by Senator Gorton, Colonel Grossman stated, “The Army has a device; I will bring pictures. The last time I trained on that puppy, it had a label on it that said “Nintendo.”17*

  The industry has to ask how it can market one device to the military, whoever is marketing it, and then turn around and give the same device to your children, and claim that it is harmless.

  Doom is being marketed and has been licensed to the United States Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is using it as an excellent tactical training device. How can the same device be provided indiscriminately to children over the Internet, and yet the Marine Corps continues to use this device?18

  —Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dave Grossman

  Grossman next brought up the instructional value of flight simulators, then went on to call violent games “mass-murder simulators.”19

  Now, what we have before us is a new national video game. The children are invested in racking up the new high score in a national video game. The high scorer on this game, instead of getting the three letter initials in the arcade, gets their picture on Time magazine and on every television in America. I have been predicting for close to a year now that the next major school shooting will see bombs. How could we have known that?

  Well, because if you want to get up to the upper levels in a video game and get that high body count, you have got to have instruments of mass destruction. And every video game incorporates that at the higher levels. We are scripting the children and they are carrying out the scripts.20

  —Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dave Grossman

  As he reached the end of his allotted time, Col. Grossman stated that “the willingness of children to commit” crimes was going up and up. Since 1957, he said, the assault rate in the United States had risen “seven-fold.”21 He then gave statistics for other nations.

  Grossman said that video games should be classified as firearms trainers and, as such, should be judged under the second amendment instead of the first. “And as such,” he said, “these things should be regulated, just like guns. Anybody who gives a child a gun is a criminal. Anybody who gives unrestricted access to these devices are criminals.”22

  What we call for are three things, Senator: Education and legislation and litigation. We must educate America’s parents, as a comprehensive national program, about what the AMA and the APA and the Surgeon General says about the link between violent media and violence in their children.

  Legislation: these devices that you see the ads for out there, these devices are law enforcement training devices that need to be legislated. And they are not even remotely a first amendment issue.

  And finally, litigation: Three ads here from the video game industry. One is for a joystick in a children’s magazine. When you pull the trigger, it bucks in your hand like a gun. The ad says: Psychologists say it is important to feel something when you kill.23

  —Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dave Grossman

  Keep your eyes on that Paducah case, Senator. It will be the Lexington and Concord of the culture wars. It will be the shot heard round the world, as we begin holding these individuals accountable for the toxic substance they are pouring into our children’s lives.24*

  —Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dave Grossman

  After Col. Grossman’s incendiary message, the rest of the proceedings seemed tame. Daphne White, head of the Lion & Lamb Project, echoed Senator Joseph Lieberman’s concerns that games that the Entertainment Software Rating Board had given an “M” rating, meaning they were appropriate for players ages seventeen and up, were being marketed to children. One of her strongest themes was that it was ludicrous to give games with violent or sexual content an “M” rating and then make toys based on them.

  I have here a Duke Nukem [sic] action figure. The same game. One of these games is actually called Time to Kill. It says on it [the action figure]: Warning. Choking hazard. Small parts. Not for children under three.25

  —Daphne White, executive director, the Lion & Lamb Project

  Though she caged it in dramatic tones by comparing regulating video games with the regulation of alcohol and tobacco, White was really asking for strict enforcement of the rating system.

  The next member of the panel was Douglas Lowenstein who, as the head of the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), had the unlucky task of representing video and computer companies during the proceedings. This was a particularly unpleasant task, as Senator Brownback openly stated that one purpose of the hearings would be to humiliate entertainment company executives in the same fashion that cigarette manufacturers had been humiliated in other hearings. Brownback was disappointed, however, as all of the executives he invited chose to avoid the hearings.

  Lowenstein started his testimony by reciting IDSA data showing that 70 percent of people playing PC games and 60 percent of people playing video games were over 18 years of age. He next cited Entertainment Software Rating Board statistics showing that most games were not violent. He then brought up, as a third myth, the lack of research specifically tracking the effects of video games. Having tried to attack these points, Lowenstein proceeded to present concrete plans for how the video game industry would work to prevent future violence.

  First, we will be taking new steps to publicize and increase the visibility of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) ratings, increase parental awareness, and encourage their use.

  Second, we will explore ways to encourage retailers to enforce the ratings. While our industry has the ability to rate the product, we cannot impose policies on the retail community as to how they will manage those ratings. But our goal has been to work with retailers to put in place systems that directly or indirectly limit the ability of persons under seventeen to buy mature-rated games.

  Third, we will review our advertising code of conduct to see what steps we can take to moderate the promotion of violent ads.26

  —Douglas Lowenstein, president, Interactive Digital Software Association

  The final member of the panel was Dr. Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. Jenkins, who has spent years studying popular culture, described theories he had formulated about the role of video games in modern “boy” culture. “Far from being victims of video games,” Professor Jenkins told the senators, “Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had a complex relationship to many forms of popular culture.” Jenkins said that Klebold and Harris were “drawn to dark and brutal images, which they invested with their personal demons.” He encouraged a “national conversation” about popular culture but suggested that such conversations should not take place until the current “climate of moral panic” had subsided.27

  We are afraid of our children. We are afraid of their relations to the digital media, and we suddenly cannot avoid either. These factors may shape the policies that emerge in this discussion, but they should not.

  Banning black trench coats* and abolishing video games does not get us anywhere. These are symbols of youth alienation and rage, not the causes. And we need to get back to the causes.28

  —Dr. Henry Jenkins, director of comparative media studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Throughout the hearings, Senator Brownback used Postal as the example of irresponsible games. After Dr. Jenkins’ testimony, Brownback questioned Lowenstein about the game and was surprised to hear that the game had not sold well and the company that published it was out of business. Even after learning this information, Senator Brownback continued to try to pin down Lowenstein on questions about the availability of M-rated games to children over the Internet and whether or not Doom had been licensed to the Marine Corps. While Lowenstein offered to work with the senator to locate this information, these were areas in which he was not prepared to speak. id Software, the company that created Doom, was not a member of the IDSA, and although Lowenstein said he had read articles di
scussing the Marine Corp’s version of Doom, he claimed no personal knowledge. As to the marketing plans of individual companies, Lowenstein pledged to try and help Senator Brownback track down the information he wanted.

  The final panel to address the hearing consisted of two college professors discussing the results of research tracking the effects of media violence. The first, Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann, a professor of psychology and communications studies at the University of Michigan, discussed extensive research on media-viewing habits and applied some of the results to game playing. The second, Dr. Diane Levine, a professor of education at Boston-based Wheelock College, discussed cross-marketing efforts between TV studios and toy companies.

  In truth, though they were far more dramatic, Senator Brownback’s 1999 hearings did not have the deep impact on the video game industry that Senator Lieberman’s 1993 hearings had. This probably reflected a certain sophistication that Douglas Lowenstein and the IDSA brought to the industry. Under Lowenstein’s direction, the industry presented a unified voice and appeared to be much more anxious to cooperate.

  Not much came out of the hearings. It was a nice discussion, but I haven’t seen much follow-up. We did push for the Federal Trade Commission to do a study on whether violence is being marketed to children by entertainment companies. I think the president put some pressure on the movie industry to be a little more diligent about seeing who’s going to their R [rated] and violent movies; but that’s about all I can come up with.

  —Senator Sam Brownback

  * Purists complained that the classic machines, which included Donkey Kong, Moon Patrol, Gorf, Popeye, and Robotron 2084, had been stripped out of their original cabinets and placed in matching oak cabinets.