How Videogames Became the Bogeyman

Tom Leupold, writing for the Inside Bay Area site, explores why videogames have become an American bogeyman. Talking with prof. Dmitri Williams, he discusses the rise, fall, and resurrection of games as a part of mainstream society. From the article: "Today, as games have once again infiltrated the mainstream, a growing number of adults are again enjoying gaming and understand there are games that are appropriate for different age groups. But that hasn't stopped crusaders from trying to censor them in the name of 'saving' the children. Williams, 34, said those under 38 have a different view of games than their elders. Most have grown up with games and, like television for the previous generation, games are embedded in their culture. "

How Videogames Became the BogeymanMonday Morning Q

[westlake]

I don't recall any campaign to censor game content for adults.

I do remember a campaign to restrict sales of adult-themed games to adults and a profound distrust of developers who pushed the limits of the M-rated game to protect their sales through Walmart.

If you want to know why videogames became the Bogeyman, you only have to look at adolescent idiocies like Hot Coffee and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

It is not Fallout, or System Shock, Resident Evil or Half-Life, or any of a hundred other significant, popular, M-rated games published within the last ten years that make the headlines.

It is the handful of games from the handful of publishers we all know are aiming for the flashpoint.

The culture war

[VTMarik]

Ah yes, first it was The Novel, then it was Radio, then Movies, then Comics, then Television, then it was Lenny Bruce, and now it's video games. Anything that is new and exciting to the younger generation (AKA what wasn't around for the previous generation) is evil simply because it is new and untested. The game The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the Atari, which had no blood and only showed death as children flipping upside-down before disappearing, caused a massive storm of controversy for all of two days before everyone started speculating about the end of the fad.

Thanks to Nintendo, the fad has now become a staple of entertainment and everyone's left wondering why. This confusion quickly leads to hatred and FUD which brings us up to date. And now you know the rest of the backstory....

Good day.

Re:Lobbying Money

[neutralstone]

Agreed. But I think Tycho put it best. [penny-arcade.com]

Re:How Videogames Became the Bogeyman

[rob1980]

Even Christianity, when it first came along was a threat.

It's still a threat even now, considering some of the shit going on these days.

Music is the weapon. Retail is the defense.

[Animats]

Rock and roll used to evoke similar hostility. But that's changed, as rock moved from rebellion to senility and lost its political connection.

It's suprising how little hostility hip-hop and rap evoked, considering that much of '90s rap was about killing people. ("Devil, to gangbanging there's a positive side and the positive side is this--sooner than later the brothers will come to Islam, and they will be the soldiers for the war; what war, you ask; Armageddon; ha, ha, ha, ha, ha" -- "Armageddon"; RBX, The RBX Files, 1995, Premeditated Records, © Warner Brother Records, Time Warner, USA.) But hip-hop and rap switched from guns to "bling", thereby encouraging shopping. "According to American Brandstand, a Web site that tracks brand names on the Billboard top singles chart, of the 111 songs that made the Billboard Top 20 in 2003, 43 mentioned a product; 84 different brands were named."

So we can expect that as in-game advertising becomes more pervasive, media criticism of games will become muted.