Something I will never, ever understand

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

You know how in the early nineties (and for a considerable time afterwards) there were these huge, completely overblown debates about videogames and how they were the root of all evil? You surely remember how the likes of Doom and Mortal Kombat were forever linked to violence and the corruption of our youth, being accused of almost singlehandedly pushing kids into lives of crime and junk.

Now, of course, that's BS... but I find it remarkably amusing that not a single finger seemed to have been pointed to the incredible amount of games (some of which were actually Doom and Mortal Kombat clones) that did all of that and had actual porn on top.

There was no shortage of games either hiring actual porn stars or going there with their FMV cutscenes, yet no-one ever accused them of anything (at least not to my knowledge).

In the minds of out-of-touch lawmakers, your kid being able to chainsaw a sprite to death or ripping a digitized actor's spinal cord was far more troublesome than him (or her) engaging with pornography and that's just a perfect representation of that troubled era of gaming, specially because this was largely before the rating system and during the age of lawlessness governing game stores (which many didn't even see as legit businesses anyway and could, therefore, get away with selling these to children).

Nineties, man XD

 

[Lod 10]

Você se lembra de como, no início dos anos 90 (e por um bom tempo depois), havia aqueles debates enormes e completamente exagerados sobre videogames e como eles eram a raiz de todos os males? Certamente você se lembra de como jogos como Doom e Mortal Kombat foram para sempre associados à violência e à corrupção da nossa juventude, sendo acusados de praticamente empurrar crianças para vidas de crime e vícios.

Ora, é claro que isso é uma grande besteira... mas acho extremamente curioso que ninguém tenha apontado o dedo para a incrível quantidade de jogos (alguns dos quais eram, na verdade, clones de Doom e Mortal Kombat) que faziam tudo isso e ainda tinham pornografia de verdade.

Não faltavam jogos que contratavam estrelas pornôs de verdade ou que exploravam esse tema em suas cenas de vídeo FMV, mas ninguém jamais os acusou de nada (pelo menos não que eu saiba).

Na visão de legisladores desatualizados, o fato de seu filho poder matar um sprite com uma motosserra ou arrancar a medula espinhal de um ator digital era muito mais problemático do que ele (ou ela) consumir pornografia, e isso representa perfeitamente aquela era conturbada dos jogos, especialmente porque isso ocorreu em grande parte antes do sistema de classificação e durante a era da ilegalidade que regulamentava as lojas de jogos (que muitos nem sequer consideravam negócios legítimos e, portanto, podiam vender esses jogos para crianças impunemente).

Anos noventa, cara XD

Eu possoI can tell you about my experience in my country. There's a TV station in Brazil called Record that always speaks badly of video games, saying they're very harmful and they hate anime.I used to have a deep-seated hatred for them, but I've matured and no longer feel that hatred; I even agree with them nowadays.

 

[MasterEn]

You know how in the early nineties (and for a considerable time afterwards) there were these huge, completely overblown debates about videogames and how they were the root of all evil? You surely remember how the likes of Doom and Mortal Kombat were forever linked to violence and the corruption of our youth, being accused of almost singlehandedly pushing kids into lives of crime and junk.

Now, of course, that's BS... but I find it remarkably amusing that not a single finger seemed to have been pointed to the incredible amount of games (some of which were actually Doom and Mortal Kombat clones) that did all of that and had actual porn on top.

There was no shortage of games either hiring actual porn stars or going there with their FMV cutscenes, yet no-one ever accused them of anything (at least not to my knowledge).

In the minds of out-of-touch lawmakers, your kid being able to chainsaw a sprite to death or ripping a digitized actor's spinal cord was far more troublesome than him (or her) engaging with pornography and that's just a perfect representation of that troubled era of gaming, specially because this was largely before the rating system and during the age of lawlessness governing game stores (which many didn't even see as legit businesses anyway and could, therefore, get away with selling these to children).

Nineties, man XD

you can have the most disgusting, vile, inhumane shit in a movie, game, comic, book or tv show; but if no one notices it; it doesn't get attention, and slips by everyone.
and even without a rating system, the x rated stuff was kept out of sight, just like with the movie counterparts.
and another thing to keep in mind, video games are unique in the fact that they usually have demos play to catch and draw someone's attention. you get a chance to see what the game is about before you even try to play it. you can't do that with a movie unless it's on tv or a movie rental's in store tvs.
also, people like to scapegoat other things and other people for their inability to teach and parent children correctly. and people have always blamed new advances in tech for the downfall of humanity.
i read in a uncle john's bathroom reader that some one back thousands of years ago said that written language would make people stupider.
people hated radios when they first came out, cars as well; tv was disliked heavily until it was marketed as a way to shut kids up for a few hours. i think books were hated for a while as well, comics too. heavy metal, rock and roll, pokemon, yugioh, magic the gathering, dungeons and dragons, and so on and so on.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Probably bc those other games werent as popular

 

[RageBurner]

Eh, the legislators at the time were just interested in boosting their own careers (though thankfully the power of hindsight makes them look rightfully ridiculous). They had no real perspective on the topic or the knowledge to back their absurdist claims (not that they could, even if they did).

It was just a media circus, a smokescreen to hide real issues that never get addressed, and this tactic hasn't changed any, it's just that video games aren't the small guy anymore, you can't complain about a multi-billion dollar industry willy-nilly now and try to win the day, so the daily cursed effigies to get burned kind of rotate a bit more.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

I was on the receiving end of one of these but it requires a bit of context. Anyone remembers when TVs were hated? “Don’t spend too much time on tv” or “TVs will rot your brain” were the two most frequent things you’d hear. When social media became big in the early 2010s, people slowly started forgetting about TVs and started moving onto other stuff. An interview from a scholar got viral where he claimed violence in movies is ok cuz you’re an outsider but is not ok in games cuz you’re a participant. People unfortunately believed that crap and some got crap for playing video games. Of course it was all bs. I’ve played gta my whole life and all that did to me was give me a sensational never ending thirst for crime dramas and noir stories.

 

[Morgana Veil]

Mostly in the 90s here in the USA @Waffles, they needed a scapegoat, and DOOM and Mortal Kombat were big at that time. DOOM not as much as Mortal Kombat when this issue arose. I do recall the whole Night Trap debacle, which was utter bullshit. It was a lot less graphic than Wolfenstein 3D, which came out the same year and before the witch hunt, I mean trial.

What it boiled down to was simply that they needed something Christian parents could get on board with, and Mortal Kombat and Doom hit the mark. It was the whole "Think of the children" mentality people had a decade earlier, in the 80s, with lyric censoring and the Satanic Panic, which saw D&D as summoning demons and pure Satan worship. Which couldn't be farther from the truth.

It mostly boiled down to Jack Thompson having a hard-on for killing video games. There's more to JT than this. Look it up if you want the full story.

 

[Morgan Katarn]

Games are root of all the evil even today they still try to blame games on the school shootings in the US and not maybe their shitty gun laws + not taking mental health issues seriously.

I mean you can just look at Bluesky and twitter and reddit alone and see all the lunatics just runs free and say and do what ever they want and demanding if you don´t agree with them that you get jail.

But I will say as I always say. You as a parent are responsible for what your kids interact with and not the government nor the games industry. when I worked in a game story I must say parents don´t seam give a damn about the ESRB system and some don´t even understand it.

I find it amusing people want harder regulations instead of taking their damn responsibility as a parent. As a parent my self I find it disgusting how lazy and nonchalant parents are.

 

[Mal]

i do find it funny that before i would never thought videogames could ever be evil, and nowadays they are predatory as fuck and i do wonder how are kids, with all this dopamine gambling gacha games, going to turn out.
maybe nothing does come out of it, but who knows.

 

[Netra]

It was the 90s and American society needed someone to blame for something, they don't care about what but they need an escape goat.

Both politicians and evangelical pastors used video games as the perfect target. For example, they could lie about Japanese IPs and claim they were devil worshippers because no one would contradict them, they had total control of the media.

Unfortunatelyit wasn't just a 90s, throughout the 2000s and until recently with Gamergate this excessive hatred against video games began to surface.

 

[diet_orange]

I'm surprised how little the arcade game (and subsequent unlicensed NES port) Chiller is mentioned in such conversation (Williams' NARC as well)

Think the company also made Deathrace? Which did have a good bit ot public outcry

 

[moonbits]

Movies, music, video games; the more they became accessible, the more these sort of idiotic debates sparked. Specially when the themes were diabolical or had adult themes. Here in Mexico they used to say Pokemon was of the devil.

 

[Goshikk]

Dude... what console did you have? There certainly was none of that on the PS1...

Besides, I always had the opposite feeling. You can make games as violent and disgusting as you want and they'll sell just fine, but the SECOND a female nipple is visible it's totally taboo

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Dude... what console did you have? There certainly was none of that on the PS1...

I had a PC, which had plenty of that being sold for it... Openly.

 

[starseeker300]

Because new thing bad, old thing good, i dont understand new thing , which makes it scary, and therefore evil.


the reason mortal kombat, doom, and night trap were targeted is that they were more well known then say a random h game or smt (which actually does encourage devil worship lol)

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

Sexually explicit and/or suggestive stuff is a big no-no in games here. Games like that will either be heavily censored or outright refused release. Although, Last of Us II got a pass?

I'd say violent video games get a similar treatment. Cyberpunk 2077 came out here and has a decent amount of gore to the combat. So maybe Cyberpunk got an exception because it would've made a lot of money for local retailers?

Either way, sexual stuff is generally way more frowned upon/sometimes illegal where I live, although anything seems perfectly fine if it'll make money.

 

[Graw]

In the minds of out-of-touch lawmakers, your kid being able to chainsaw a sprite to death or ripping a digitized actor's spinal cord was far more troublesome than him (or her) engaging with pornography and that's just a perfect representation of that troubled era of gaming

I find this kind of interesting because I remember we would get American tv channels as well as Canadian ones and if say the same movie came on both channels, like Total Recall for example, it's one I remember watching on both an American and a Canadian channel, the violence would usually be a lot less censored on the American channel and any sexual content or swearing would be fairly heavily censored. Whereas on the Canadian channels, nudity, sex stuff and swearing was usually less censored but violence and gore was usually pretty heavily censored.

 

[RageBurner]

Because new thing bad, old thing good, i dont understand new thing , which makes it scary, and therefore evil.

Very true.

the reason mortal kombat, doom, and night trap were targeted is that they were more well known then say a random h game or smt (which actually does encourage devil worship lol)

Uh... not really, it would be like saying Pokémon encourages animal abuse because you are trapping them in plastic balls; swap "demon" for any other permutative term and there would be nothing there.

That said, I agree with you it would be in the center of some vapid controversy if it did come west back in the day.