Politics  

The Plot to Regulate Video Games

by A.J. Ferguson

Insert enough quarters — say, $90 million worth — and scientists will tell you why videogames ought to be regulated.

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Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, has toured his state for months, conducting impromptu interviews and visiting town hall meetings to worry his constituency. Seems he's tilting at one of Illinois' most urgent problems: video games. Now the State House has voted 91–19 in favor of a bill requiring retail stores to figure out which games feature sexual content or "human on human violence" and thus can't be sold or rented to minors.

The governor won support for the bill by linking video games to antisocial behavior and, curiously, obesity. (I have yet to see the game that encourages me to eat all the ice cream in the freezer, but I'm waiting. Perhaps "Barbie Gets Jilted.") Harvard professor Michael Rich oozed out to anoint the governor's opinion: "Children are learning from video games. The question is: What are they learning?"

The implication, of course, is that they are learning the wrong things, and we must teach them the right things instead. Since Rousseau, at least, education theorists have sought to "make learning fun," and with the rise of video games in the '80s, that oft-lampooned goal^* seemed at last attainable. Games were designed to teach math, spelling, geography, and even sex ed. A few caught on: "Oregon Trail," in which you guided a pioneer family westward, showed kids how to die of dysentery and carve rude messages on tombstones for the next class to discover; "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?," where you tracked criminals around the globe, gave kids the vague but mistaken impression that Interpol is useful for something; and "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" taught kids that, while driving, one should pay close attention to the letters being formed by clouds in the sky. On the whole, they failed to teach a damn thing, yet updated versions sold well and received glowing praise. Eventually some marketing demon slapped the etymological abortion "edutainment" on the genre, and years later it chugs along even though no one plays such games without being forced to — a coercion often justified as "balancing out" the lessons taught by vapid or malevolent games at home.

Now, I could make a snarky list of libertarian ideals I learned from my gaming days, about self-reliant heroes and nosy government officials and rampaging mutant zombies, but that might imply that these boobs have a point. A much better question than "What are they learning?" is the one Professor Rich sneaked past with the first part of his statement: "Do children learn from video games?"

Truth is, Mike, I didn't learn much from video games, and I doubt anyone else did either (except maybe the loser-cum-hero in "The Last Starfighter"). Video games as media are unable to impart lessons that transfer to other situations: while I can develop a strategy for shooting some game's Mafia kingpin, it doesn't mean that I've learned any of the particulars of contract killing. Perhaps it means I've mastered that game, but whatever knowledge I gain is confined to that game alone (or, at most, to that game and other games made by that company). The button-mashing is primary and easily forgotten; what sticks in the mind are the secondary elements of such games: the music, the design, the atmosphere. Many graphic designers became very wealthy by assuming that bright colors in pixellated arrays would appeal to a generation raised on Nintendo games. Recording artists nabbed sound effects from decades-old games and used them as samples in their songs. Even the military caught on, producing recruitment ads that make service in Iraq look like a tactical strategy game, with a soldier peering down a sniper scope at a machine-gun wielding Arab in a jeep. Video game motifs flooded the American subconscious so completely that they trickled down to the next generation: the influx of Japanese pop culture over the past few years, specifically comics and card games, would have been unthinkable without Nintendo, Sega, and Sony breaking through first.

But new technologies and new fads invite the scrutiny of the professionally concerned, and any combination of the two is sure to set heads talking. "60 Minutes" aired a segment on the "psychology" of the video gamer, seeking to understand why anyone would waste his time on such violent, antisocial fare — sounds familiar, no? Yet this particular segment aired in 1976. They were riled up about "Death Race," in which the object was to run over as many "gremlins" as possible. With each success came the sound of something approximating a death rattle, and the appearance of a tombstone on the screen.^*

The free publicity worked wonders: "Death Race" sold ten times more units than the company had originally forecast. As is often the case, if the game had been ignored, it would quickly have been forgotten. Video gamers are a demanding lot: if a game isn't fun to play, they won't play it, no matter how much sex or violence it promises. Every time a company floats a game to see if people will purchase it for shock value alone, it sinks — unless it is buoyed by press-released outrage from the cultural lifeguards. Apart from the economic incentive created by protest groups who reliably denounce shock-value games, most of those games would not exist. For example, "Custer's Revenge," a game well in the running for most loathsome of all time, was released in 1982 to universally bad reviews. The graphics were poorly done, the character was nearly impossible to control, and the game wasn't any fun whatsoever. But the premise was so horrid that some interest groups couldn't help but protest: the player was expected to maneuver General Custer across the Little Bighorn battlefield, avoiding Indian arrows. Also, Custer was naked — his three-pixel penis proudly erect — and he sought to rape an Indian girl tied to a cactus. Without the copies sold to people who just wanted to see what all the fuss was about, the game would have been a wretched failure; with those sales, the company stayed out of bankruptcy long enough to release two more terrible games before mercifully closing up shop.

Occasionally, though, a game hits on exactly the right combination of skilled craftsmanship and adult content, and the resulting crush of media attention makes it an even bigger success. Clearly Congress alone can stop such a juggernaut. In 1993, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) initiated hearings on video game violence, prompted primarily by Mortal Kombat, a one-on-one fighting game packed with impressive depictions of kung fu characters beating ten kinds of hell out of each other. The hearings proceeded with the detached, impartial manner that we've come to expect from our nation's lawmakers. However, the game companies came prepared, demonstrating a new ratings system they had begun to use. These ratings, like those given to movies, attempted to estimate which age groups could handle which games, from Everyone to Adults Only. And these ratings, like those given to movies, came to be seen by legislators not as suggestions, but as commandments handed down from on high.

In some states, would-be Solons have been flabbergasted to find that these ratings aren't legally binding. Attempts to etch them in stone, like Gov. Blagojevich's pet bill in Illinois, follow a standard pattern:

• Some horrible tragedy, usually involving a kid and a gun, snags the public's attention.
• An elected official seizes this opportunity to hold a press conference. He declares that video game companies aren't doing enough to keep violent games out of the hands of minors, and makes an unprovable causal link between a game he's never played (though he's been briefed on how bad it is) and the horrible tragedy.
• The official, or one of his henchmen, introduces a "get tough on games" bill in the assembly. Anyone who votes against it risks killing his career, inviting opponents to characterize him as "pro-child-violence" in the next election. The measure passes, after the usual grumbling from "civil libertarians" (as in the stock newspaper phrase "But some civil libertarians fear . . ." floating like an iceberg in the middle of any article on politics).
• The ACLU and pals immediately challenge the law, and it is struck down by an appeals court. This will happen in Illinois, just as it has happened in Indiana, Missouri, and Washington.

Since the hearings in 1993, video game legislation at the federal level has suffered from a lack of horrible tragedies. Since the courts would void any "get tough" bill that Congress spent time passing, most of Capitol Hill's windbags are content to squawk about video game content while pandering at campaign stops. Only lightweight Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.) has dropped a bill in the hopper, and his "Protect Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003" died in committee, despite picking up 43 co-sponsors.

This is a shame, at least from the censor's point of view, because a wildly popular scapegoat game already exists: Grand Theft Auto III (GTA), which has received armfuls of awards from every major gaming magazine — partly for its adult themes, but mostly for its open-ended game play. In it, the player controls a hoodlum working his way up through the crime syndicates that control Liberty City. The plot itself is pure pulp, but the game allows you to put off missions and explore the city instead, creating mayhem as you go. Run over a few hookers and the police come after you; start killing the cops, and you'll face SWAT teams, the FBI, and the Army. A separate statistic keeps track of how much attention your crime spree has drawn, from "late-night local news" to "USA Today front page" to "special meeting of the UN" (sadly, the blue-helmeted peacekeepers never pop up to lecture you on the Geneva Conventions while you're blowing up ambulances).

GTA is so perfect a target that truly savvy, dedicated statists can't afford to wait for a horrible tragedy; they must prepare as if one is already scheduled. Thus, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) plans to launch a $90 million investigation to find out how video games affect the "cognitive, social, emotional, and physical" development of children. It should be no suprise that she's already dictated the study's conclusion, referring to GTA as a "silent epidemic of media desensitization that teaches kids it's okay to diss people because they are a woman, because they're a different color, or they're from a different place." Once you're done laughing at her grammar and her painful attempt at slang, consider the implication lurking behind her words: that this "major threat to morality" was made for and marketed to children under 18. But GTA is clearly marked "M" for "Mature," meaning it's not recommended for anyone under 17; most retailers not only refuse to sell it to unaccompanied minors, but also attempt to discourage parents from buying the game for children under 16.

Consider too the shift in strategy: Hillary is not asking for regulation of video games. She's asking for a study of them, because these days you can't build a platform without applying a scientific veneer. If the study is funded — and she has enough allies in both parties to pull it off; Sens. Brownback (R-Kan.) and Santorum (R-Pa.) have already declared their support — it will confirm Mrs. Clinton's preliminary findings, and the propaganda ("media sensitization," perhaps?) can begin. TV commercials, movie trailers, even video games themselves will carry melodramatic anti-game messages. Game makers will fight back at first, and may even escape being forced to advertise against their own products. But they will eventually lose when a horrible tragedy happens, and Mrs. Clinton holds her triumphant "I told you so" press conference.^*

Publicly-funded science has become the preferred tool of statists for dismantling constitutional protections. Given enough grant money, facts can always be found to support the government's thesis. Peer reviews of such studies are unreliable, because oftentimes the reviewing peers are themselves dependent on public funding for their own projects. Any scientist who challenges an approved doctrine — on secondhand smoke, perhaps, or medicinal uses of marijuana — risks his career; if he manages to obtain private funding to propagate his research, he is often called a corporate stooge, or even a traitor. This strategy has proven so successful and subsequently pervasive that a state legislator like Illinois Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia can claim with a straight face that empirical evidence from a Harvard University study on post-traumatic video game stress in children "provides the necessary punch needed" to push aside the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court may disagree, but they too are being sidestepped. The Constitution is pesky, at least when the courts bother to defend it, and statists have tried audacious methods to brush it aside (like Andrew Jackson's refusal to obey a Supreme Court decision, or FDR's court-packing scheme). But now they realize that the only court that matters is that of public opinion. By controlling scientific research, they control the facts that reach the common man, and the litany of things that "everyone knows" is not subject to constitutional review. Once a fact penetrates the mass mind — the evils of marijuana, for a present example; the supremacy of the Aryan race, from the past — it is very difficult to extract, especially when some or all of the government's power relies on the perpetuation of that fact. If "everyone knows that video games teach kids to kill," and a horrible tragedy happens that seems to confirm that fact, it will be all but ineradicable.

Video game companies can best fight this tactic by learning from the porn industry (the two are becoming more closely related, as seen in the "Adults Only" rating given to games including nudity and sex). Every time there is legislation pending that would restrict the distribution of their products, pornographers launch a comprehensive public relations campaign: They remind everyone that porn is protected speech; they note that, while they produce adult content, they intend for it to be bought only by adults; they point out that they aren't forcing anyone to buy any of their products; they outline the options available to parents to protect their children from objectionable content; in short, they say whatever they have to in order to ensure that everyone doesn't "know" that pornography is bad. It may be self-serving, as critics claim, for smut peddlers to wrap themselves in the First Amendment, but porn hawks know that if they don't serve themselves, no one else will.

To this point, game makers have relied on the courts to protect them, but the final decision will be made by the public, and that is the venue in which game makers must fight. As cynical as it may sound, video game companies must prepare for a horrible tragedy, because their opponents are surely preparing to exploit one. At every opportunity, they must trumpet everything they have volunteered to do to keep adult games in adult hands, such as their age-check agreements with all retailers and built-in content filters on all hardware. Above all, they must emphasize that parents, not game makers, are responsible for their kids' "cognitive, social, emotional, and physical" development. If parents can't get kids to read a book, talk to others, express their feelings, or go outside, how can they expect video game companies to do it for them? It is the parents' responsibility to determine what is appropriate for their children, and make sure that they hold their children to the standards they have set.

I realize that, to some extent, this involves an implicit acceptance of the notion that the depiction of an act causes imitation of that act — a notion which those who hate censorship must firmly resist in courts of law. But after a horrible tragedy the kangaroo court of the common man will accept that notion explicitly. The question then will not be "How could this have happened?" but "How could you game makers let this happen?

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*	*For a fine example, see Saki's short story "The Schartz-Metterklume Method."

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The game maker had tried to soften the game: "Death Race" was originally called "Pedestrian," and the player was charged with running over humans, not gremlins (though in 1976 they couldn't be made to look much different). In later years, as companies exported games with better special effects to countries without First Amendments, they had to devise odder and odder methods to slip their products past government censors, such as turning all human victims into zombies and making all blood green. I'm not sure what kids are supposed to learn from such substitutions; I presume they're made in deference to important cultural prerogatives.

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Hillary's comments have a more immediate purpose, of course: the day she entered the Senate she sloughed off her strident socialism, and since then she's presented herself as a slippery centrist in preparation for her presidential bid. But every time she's crossed the aisle — most notably in support of the war in Iraq — it's been in favor of stronger government. Her stance here is a sort of political speculation: in the short term, she gains a few votes from gullible mothers; in the long term, she positions herself on a small swell of an issue that could crest in time (the summer of 2008 would be nice).

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