Violence and video games
Since their inception in the 1970s, video games have often been criticized by some for violent content. Politicians, parents, and other activists have claimed that violence in video games can be tied to violent behavior, particularly in children, and have sought ways to regulate the sale of video games. Studies have shown no connection between video games and violent behavior. The American Psychological Association states that while there is a well-established link between violent video games and aggressive behaviors, attributing acts of violence to violent video gaming "is not scientifically sound."
Background
Since the late 1990s, acts of violence have been highly publicized, where it is often assumed that suspects may have a history of playing violent video games. The 1999 Columbine High School massacre created a moral panic around video games, spurring research to see if violent video games lead to aggressive behaviors in real life. Some research finds that violent video game use is correlated with, and will not cause, increases in aggression and decreases in prosocial behavior. Other research argues that there are no such effects of violent video games. This link between violent video games and antisocial behavior was denied by the president of the Interactive Digital Software Association in 2005 in a PBS interview. In the interview, he stated that the problem is "vastly overblown and overstated" by people who "don't understand, frankly, this industry". Others have theorized that there are positive effects of playing video games, including prosocial behavior in some contexts, and argue that the video game industry has been used as a scapegoat for more generalized problems affecting some communities.A primary concern about a potential relationship between violence and video games is that a significant portion of gamers are young, and as such, particularly impressionable. A large-scale study conducted in 2022 suggested that at least a quarter of all gamers are between 10 and 20 years of age. Additionally, a survey of 1,102 children between 12 and 17 years of age found that 97% are video game players who have played on the last day, of which 14% of girls and 50% of boys favored games with an "M" or "AO" rating—and 25% of parents do not check the censor's rating on a video game before allowing their child to purchase it.
History
Before video games
Elements of the type of moral panic that came with video games after they gained popularity had previously been seen with comic books. Through the 1950s, comics were in their Golden Age, having become a widely popular form of media. As the media expanded, some artists and publishers took more risks with violent and otherwise questionable content. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist, wrote Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, which outlined his studies asserting that violent comics were a negative form of literature and led to juvenile delinquency. Even though some of Wertham's claims were later found to be based on inaccurate studies, the book created a moral panic that put pressure on the comic book industry to regulate their works. Later in 1954, the comic industry issued the Comics Code Authority which put strict regulations on content that could appear in comic books sold at most stores, eliminating most violence and other mature content via self-censoring. The mainstream comic industries waned as comics had lost their edge, while an underground market for the more adult comics formed. The comic industry did not recover from Comics Code Authority regulations until the 1970s, when adherence to the Authority was weakened. By the 2000s, the Authority was generally no longer considered. Modern trends of targeting violence in video games have been compared to these events in the comic industry, and video game industry leaders have specifically avoided the use of self-censorship that could impact the performance of the industry.Pinball machines had also created a moral panic in the post-World War II United States, as the teenage rebels of the 1950s and 1960s would frequently hang around establishments with pinball machines, which created fear across the generation gap of older Americans unsure of the intents of this younger crowd. To some, it appeared to be a form of gambling, while more religious people feared pinball was a "tool of the devil". Because of this, many cities and towns banned pinball machines or implemented strict licensing requirements which were slowly lifted in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Notably, New York City's ban on pinball machines lasted until 1976, while Chicago's was lifted in 1977. The appearance of video games in the early 1970s overlapped with the lifting of bans on pinball machines, and when youth were drawn to arcade games, the same concerns that were initially leveled at pinball machines as gambling machines and immoral playthings were also made about video games.
1970s–1980s
After Pong exploded onto the arcade game market, arcade game manufacturers were aware of the attention that video games were getting and tried to position games as entertainment aimed at adults, selling units preferably to bars and lounges. This gave them more leeway with content, but still which drew criticism from some. Two arcade games had already drawn attention for amoral content prior to 1976. Atari's Gotcha in 1973, a maze game, initially shipped with two joystick units that were covered in pink domes as to represent women's breasts, but which were removed in later makes. The 1975 Shark Jaws, also by Atari, was an unlicensed adaption of the film Jaws and attempted to play on the film's violent context, though here, the player was hunted by the shark. As arcade games spread into more locations, the ease for children to access the games also elevated concerns about their potential impacts.The 1976 arcade game Death Race is considered the first game to be targeted for its violent content. The game, like Shark Jaws, was an unlicensed adaption of the 1975 film Death Race 2000, a violent film centered on driving. Within the game, the player was challenged to drive a car and run over simulated gremlins scoring points for doing so. Besides the game's simulated content, the game cabinet was also adorned with imagery of death. The game caught the attention of an Associated Press writer, Wendy Walker, who had contacted the game's manufacturer, Exidy, with her concerns that the game was excessively violent. Walker's concerns spread through other media organizations, including the National Safety Council, who accused the game of glorifying the act of running people over when at the time they were trying to educate drivers about safe driving practices. While some arcades subsequently returned the Death Race machines due to this panic, sales of the game continued to grow due to the media coverage. It was recognized that many other competing arcade games at the time, like Cops 'n' Robbers, Tank 8, and Jet Fighter, all games equally about violent actions, saw little complaint. Nolan Bushnell of Atari said that "We Atari had an internal rule that we wouldn't allow violence against people. You could blow up a tank or you could blow up a flying saucer, but you couldn't blow up people. We felt that that was not good form, and we adhered to that all during my tenure."
United States Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was one of the first to raise concerns about the potential connection of video games to youth behavior. In 1982, Koop stated as a personal observation that "more and more people are beginning to understand" the connection between video games and mental and physical health effects on youth, though that at that time, there was not sufficient evidence to make any conclusion.
1990s
''Mortal Kombat'' and congressional hearings (1993–1994)
The fighting game Mortal Kombat was released into arcades in 1992. It was one of the first games to depict a large amount of blood and gore, particularly during special moves known as "Fatalities" used to finish off the losing character. Numerous arcade games that used high amounts of violent content followed in Mortal Kombat wake. However, as these games were originally exclusive to arcade machines, it was generally possible to segregate them away from games aimed for younger players. Eventually, there was significant interest from home console manufacturers in licensing Mortal Kombat from Midway Games, particularly from Sega for its Sega Genesis platform and Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. At the time, Sega and Nintendo were in the midst of a console war to try to gain dominance in the United States market. Sega's licensed version of Mortal Kombat retained all the gore from the arcade version, while Nintendo had a version developed that removed most of the gore, recoloring the blood as grey "sweat" and otherwise toning down the game. Sega's version drastically outsold Nintendo's version and intensified the competition between the two companies.The popularity of Mortal Kombat, along with the full-motion video game Night Trap and the light gun shooting game Lethal Enforcers, gained attention from U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl. This resulted in two congressional hearings in 1993 and 1994 to discuss the issues of violence and video games with concerned advocacy groups, academics, and the video game industry. Sega, Nintendo, and others were criticized for lacking a standardized content rating system, and Lieberman threatened to have Congress pass legislation requiring a system that would have government oversight if the industry did not take its own steps. By the time of the second hearing, Sega, Nintendo, and other console manufacturers had outlined their agreed-upon approach for a voluntary rating system through the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, which was in place by the end of 1994. This also led to the establishment of the Interactive Digital Software Association, later known as the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group for the video game industry that managed the ESRB and further supported trade-wide aspects such as government affairs.