Violence in Video Games: From the Eyes of the People Who Make Them

The video game industry got it's start in the late 1970s. Since then, it has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry that has soared in popularity in the ensuing decades since it's inception.

Early on, video game titles such as Pac-Man, Pong, and Donkey Kong helped to cultivate a popularity for video games among young people. Even from this beginning phase, video goes drew the ire of parents and parents groups. An example of this would be in 1976 with a game called Death Race, which was an arcade game where the objective was to run over gremlins, and when the player did so, a tombstone would appear signifying the death of that gremlin. Despite being a primitive arcade game, this is considered by historians as the first major video game controversy, and parents took their wrath to this game. Due to the public outcry, the game was eventually taken off the market by the manufacturer; a win for parents and parent groups in what would be prove to be a long and eventful history of ever increasing violence seen in video games.

Things would ramp up big time in the 1990s, where titles such as Mortal Kombat and Doom would shock parents with it's hyper realistic violence and use of guns. The issue got so big in fact that there was even a congressional meeting regarding violence in video games in 1993. These congressional meetings would eventually culminate in the formation of the ESRB, which is a self-regulatory organization that assigns ratings to video games based on their content. This organization is very similar to the MPAA for movies. The controversies only grew as the 90's continued. The Grand Theft Auto series proved to be one of the most controversial game franchises to ever be made. The late 90's also saw the Columbine Massacre in Colorado which claimed the lives of 13 high school students. The massacre was partly blamed on violent video games such as Doom, and this seemed to be the last straw for several US lawmakers, as many politicians in Washington brought fourth measures and bills to limit or even outright ban the sale of violent video games to minors. One of the most vocal opponents to violent video games was democratic senator Joe Liberman from Connecticut. He led congressional hearings against the video game industry from 1993 to 1994. The end result of these hearings was the formation of the previously mentioned ESRB.

Now all this history leads us to one thing. How does the video game industry itself feel about all the negative backlash that video games receive on behalf of their violence. Well, they pretty much feel the same way as the people who make violent movies. The video game industry argues that they create these games with mature audiences in mind, and it is not up to them who plays their games, they argue that it is up to the discretion of the parents. They feel like it is an unfair proposition for them to be regulated by the government, because they feel like it sets a bad precedent for the government to regulate all creative content. To tell you the truth, it is a fair point. I'm not so sure I would be too comfortable living in an America where the government decided what does and what doesn't make it out to the masses, even of they have the best intentions in mind. To the video game companies, the content that they put in their video games, violent or not, should be protected speech and not be subject to censorship by any government entity.

Sources
“A Timeline of Video Game Controversies.” National Coalition Against Censorship, 3 Oct. 2022, ncac.org/resource/a-timeline-of-video-game-controversies. 

Ciolek, Johnathan. “Press Start to Begin: A Journey through Video Game Censorship.” Digital Commons at Buffalo State, digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/srcc-sp21-psychsocsci/12/. Accessed 28 Nov. 2023. 


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