A History of Video Game Controversy 354
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Sex, violence, animal cruelty, and scandalous pixels -- GameSpot has posted an in-depth feature examining the history of controversy in the video game industry. The feature examines several "major offenders" dating back as far as Death Race in the arcades up through more recent games like Grand Theft Auto III and Manhunt. Also included in the feature is coverage of the so-called "retail rogues" (games controversial enough that they were pulled from the shelves), as well as a docket of game-industry lawsuits and a look at the lighter side of game controversy. Who wants to bet that that the use-confiscated-drugs-for-short-term-benefit gameplay of Midway's upcoming NARC will make the cut in future articles about video game controversy?"
What?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Blue Max (Score:5, Interesting)
Only effect the ban had was that every youth absolutely had to copy the game.
What about the old... (Score:5, Interesting)
They took siezed my cardboard box!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
You mean like the gubbemint's use-confiscated-"alledged drug assests"-as-revenue-enhancement-for-short-term-ben ifit is contreversial?
Been there, done that (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone say:
Fallout 2
Any game with 'stim pack' such devices
Mind you, having the cool jitters can actually add depth and understanding to the drug usage, and hopefully become so sick and tired of the jittering controller or the blured screen that they actually get steared away from drugs. But that's not news so the first time someone gets high and blames NARC, you'll see headlines from here to Baghdad!
Re:Pulling Games (Score:1, Interesting)
(Especially kids like my little cousin, who got nightmares from the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz
What folks need to realize.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bitching "what about the children!?" is pointless. There are plenty of age appropriate games out there, Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot are still about.
But, there now exists a generation of adults who grew up on video games. They aren't kids stuff anymore.
The latest big budget kill-fest video game should be measured against the yardstick of the latest big-budget R-rated movie, not the latest disney flick. Compare it to HBO, not Nickelodeon.
A 20 year old gets the jokes and satire in the GTA3 series. An 8 year old doesnt. Games are rated for a reason. Time for some personal and parental responsibility.
That is all.
uh (Score:4, Interesting)
while we're at it, let's sue mcdonalds for making us fat [cnn.com], sue microsoft for making us dumb [slashdot.org], and other stupid lawsuits [power-of-attorneys.com]
i do like this article though, it has a different prospective, it said night trap's goal was to 'save the teen girls' not kill them. i've seen worse movies, but nobody dares question the effects of hollywood.
No, it's only shock value.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Blue Max (Score:3, Interesting)
Syndicate (the original) (Score:5, Interesting)
Syndicate was another memorable game, one of the first to allow mass carnage and easy access to fire.
Violence is A-OK! (Score:4, Interesting)
You can get away with near infinite violence in the media in the US.
You can get away with far less in terms of nudity. I mean look, we had a little breast flash on national television a little while ago, and everyone went agog. From what I have been told, europeans have far less tolerance for violence, and more tolerance for nudity.
Re:It's all in parenting (Score:5, Interesting)
If nothing else, the games have taught me the limitations and information a spec sheet could not. Theif flashes a
My parents never taught me about death. I learned my ways of sacrificing animals and fighting from the Old Testament of the Bible.
SP --- Finding evil in all things, just to keep it fair.
Re:More violence doesn't mean better (Score:1, Interesting)
One that is never mentioned (Score:5, Interesting)
Take Doom and Colombine for example. Instead of blaming the teachers for letting those kids be teased everyday, or blaming the kids themselves for venting their frustrations in an unacceptable manner (ie shooting up the place) the media and the parents had to blame doom. Does anyone really think if doom wasn't around those kids wouldn't have shot the place up anyway?
Re:Optionally (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine's older sister would buy anything for her kids, who were like 10 and 5 at the time. Although the older one got his pellet gun taken away because he kept shooting out the car and house windows. But the younger one got to keep his, since he was mostly good with it. But they certainly get all the violent video games they want. Why? Because otherwise they wouldn't like her. Last time she wouldn't because they didn't have the money, the 5 year old said "I hate you!" so she bought it. When she wouldn't get them icecream before dinner, they said they would kill her so she bought it for them.
They've learned they can do anything to the babysitter and they won't get in trouble. Last time she took their precious Playstation away for fighting, so they wedged the bedroom door closed with a chair while she was putting it in the closet. She tried to call the parents but they cut the phone line! She climbed out the window but they had locked the front door. Then they started shooting at her. She ran 2 miles to the next door neighbors (They live in the boonies, you see) and the mom came home and yelled at the babysitter for bothering her and taking their games away, then bought the kids ice-cream. (They didn't even have to threaten to kill her this time!)
On top of they, she is convinced the older one is the smartest person on the planet. He gets straight A's in elementry school, you see...mostly because she does all his homework and projects for him...but only because he's too smart to waste his time with them, you see ;)
Long and the short of it, she doesn't want Wal-Mart doing her parenting beacuse she doesn't want ANYBODY doing her parenting. She doesn't want her kids being repressed and deprived. And she certainly doesn't want them mad at her
Some of those games deserved to be banned (Score:5, Interesting)
Or at least, should have been sold only in adult bookstores. Custer's Revenge? That's fucked up right there. It doesn't mean I think it shouldn't exist, pretty fucked up no matter how you look at it.
A note on Wolf3D: Germany bans anything naziesque, whether you're being nazis, or killing them.
Incidentally I played (most of) phantasmagoria and aside from deciding it was a really cheesy game, I was nauseated by the experience of having my female character raped to further the story line. Given their track record i'm not sure "banned in Australia" really merits inclusion on the list. Although, I can't remember, if that's the game that has the sequence of a woman being killed by being fed her own guts through a funnel, I guess I can understand it. However, that's not mentioned here. The game was made by a woman though, the ever-famous Roberta Williams who is responsible for (in the old days) some fantastic games and (more recently) the stupidest puzzles ever known to man. So given that the main character is female, the author is female, I'd say it's man-hatin' if anything. Which should also hardly put it on the list.
The games that I feel are most justifiably contraversial are Grand Theft Auto 3/VC and Postal/Postal 2 (each game's second installment is basically the same game with different enhancements.) I feel this way because of all the different more or less realistic ways you can kill people in them. Postal (2, at least) is obviously goofy, like you can blow people's heads off while they're vomiting and vomit will come out of their neck. (Time for a MAD-style "Yeeeecch.") The thing that makes them different from, say, Unreal Tournament is that they are such a plausible setting, using (mostly) realistic weapons that the average person can get their hands on. (Obviously Postal has many departures from this, and GTA has a couple.) At least in games like Half-Life you're in a totally mythical situation.
Now, I like these games, I don't think they should be banned - but I can see why people get into such a froth about them. The bottom line though is that parents are responsible for parenting, not game companies. You don't let your kids eat rat poison and wash it down with antifreeze, even though rat poison looks like candy and antifreeze looks kinda like mountain dew. Why is this any different, besides the fact that we don't know if playing violent video games is actually harmful?
Re:Controversy misplaced (Score:3, Interesting)
You forgot to mention that as video games have gotten more violent and realistic, youth crime has hit rick bottom.
Young minds need to explore death in a fantasy context, so they can control their demons. An excellent book about stuff like this is "Killing Monsters" (forgot who the author is).
Mass-production education, absent parents, junk food and junk society... these warp minds.
They've warped minds to the point that youth crime is way down, drug deaths are even rarer then they were 15 years ago, teen pregnancy is down. In fact, despite all the mind warping, all things negative teenage are down, but the same thing cannot be said for people in thier 30s and 40s-crime rate up. If you don't believe me, check out the FBI's UCR for the last 10 years.
Diversions that keep kids off the street and most likely beneficial insofar as they provide a release mechanism.
The kids who could benefit from the diversions won't use them and come from families that won't use them. The kids affected and generally forced into these diversions don't and never did need them. They just lose their ability to manage their own time and plan their own activities.
To put it succinctly: The kids are alright, in fact they're much better then anyone says.
Re:am i the only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Look for the middle-ground.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Strictly, no. But games/films/comics/music/novels/plays/operas/philo sophy/politics will give them particular ideas. (Culture is no barrier to corruption.)
For example, there is an interesting phenomenon in the UK arising from a series of adverts for a Chocolate bar: Cadbury's flake. These adverts involved beautiful women eating the bar rather provocatively. For a man who went through puberty while these adverts were being shown, you can often get a rough estimate of his age by matching his sexual fantasy to a particular Flake advert. Is it the bath advert? The waterfall one? Etc.
A pubescent boy will have fantasies regardless of what he sees on TV, but what he sees on TV will doubtless affect what those fantasies are. I imagine there's a whole new generation of fantasies based on Lara Croft doing handstands....
What they need is decent supporting social contexts to show them the alternatives.
They need that too.
Be careful of stating "They don't need X, they need Y" as quite often X and Y are complementary and should both be supplied.
Don't present running down pedestrians as entertainment to 13 year olds while also saying why safe road use is A Good Thing (TM).
HAL
Easy way to teach kids about violence... (Score:4, Interesting)
Violence, Roman games, and the military. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that doesn't address the issue of what the game is FOR, now does it?
If the purpose is to make money, "better" means "make more money". Violence is a tool to attract male teenagers with pocket change in the "young warrior" stage of maturation. So the profit maximization function may include putting as much violence in as possible without getting banned from the arcade.
If the purpose is to propagandize the player, then it depends on what you want to propagandize him WITH. Violence remains a tool to attract players. But now it must be tied to a propaganda message. Which can be done by the effects of use of violence in gameplay and the situations where using it improves, rather than harms, the score.
But then the issue becomes "what message do you want to propagate"? Political Correctness? The current legal system's rules? How to be a better warrior?
The Roman Games were viewed, by the rulers at the time, as a way to (in modern terms) desensitize the Roman population to violent death, in order to make them better soldiers.
Which brings us back to the fundamentals of US law.
The choice of "message" in any form of communication or art is a free speech issue. As such it's very heavily protected by the First Amendment. This is because government selection of moral codes is, in the view of the country's founders, more dangerous to the population than letting them select for themselves.
Violence in video games may not be "nice" according to some moral codes. But limiting communication to a particular set of moral codes is NOT within the government's power.
Re:Violence, Roman games, and the military. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure I wasn't making a free speech argument.
Re:More violence doesn't mean better (Score:3, Interesting)
The point that opponents of GTA and other such games would make: Why capture that premise *at all*?
Re:Optionally (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's Really Just A Statement About The Directio (Score:3, Interesting)
To quote the great Dave Barry:
"Fortunately, I live in the United States of America, where we are gradually coming to
understand that nothing we do is ever our fault, especially if it is really stupid."
In almost every aspect of life, I run into this. People who are unable to take responsibility for their action or inaction. Everything is always everybody else's fault.
They didn't lose their job because they neve showed up to work on time and then left early and took a two hour lunch. They "quit" because the boss was a hardass.
Here are some of the other funny ones that I heard lately.
Some girl is suing the Army because she didn't realize that by signing up, she might have to goto war...
A guy is suing his two (ex)buddies and a junk yard... The three mensa members decided (after some liquid courage) to go into a junk yard and put a bowling ball on top of a junk yard and take pot shots at it with a handgun. Needless to say, our buddy ended up short an eye over the whole thing... Now why it's the junk yards fault... see statement above...
It's just amazing and tragic all at the same time.
Re:Pulling Games (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a long email conversation with a member of some religious right group who was trying to justify the invasion of Iraq. This person used quote after quote from the bible showing how God condones the killing of people in the "right" circumstance. However, the quotes in the bible that condemn violence were conveniently forgotten by this person.
In the end, we all make our own decisions. One person's rational logic is another person's whacko crazy way of thinking.
"We're not gonna make it, are we?"
- Terminator II
Re:More violence doesn't mean better (Score:2, Interesting)
At the time of GTA's release, I couldn't believe how the critics couldn't see the brilliance of GTA.
Maybe society and culture changes to the point where stuff like GTA becomes acceptable enough to be considered a good game as was the case with the transition from GTA to GTA3.
GTA and GTA3 are nearly the same exact game, with the main exceptions being lack of multiplayer and the presence of better graphics and sound in GTA3. Also the physics model was improved in GTA3 by going from a 4 point model to an 8 point model. Hence cars could roll in addition to spin out. Other than those relatively evolutionary improvements, the 1st and 3rd in the series are exactly the same game. The both have the same theme, open-ended gameplay, violence, parody, etc...
Yet the first was a "gimmic" while the third is a "classic"? So society is definitely fickle.
Re:Violence, Roman games, and the military. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The question I have is ... (Score:2, Interesting)