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Back in 1954 Dr. Frederick Wertham wrote the infamous Seduction Of The Innocent, regarding the comics industry preying upon the youth of America.

"Wertham was convinced that comic books were evil, that they contributed to the delinquency of minors, and also to their sexual perversion. In addition Wertham claimed that when any questioned the comic book publishers on their product, they were conspired against, and were labelled communists."

Before you laugh off it off, recall the US Senate Subcommittee Investigation on Juvenile Delinquency in the United States. and all the recent stink about decency in television.

The comic industry, to placate the witch hunters offered self policing. Sound familiar? Wertham considered it a sham. Sound familiar, too?

For some background on Comics Code check this site and this site.

make way! make way! make way for the age of decency! 60,608,582 merkins can't be denied!

So why do people think video games shouldn't be able to discuss the same topics?

Because they are not considered free speech. In my find, this is a clear case of ignorance against a young medium. Comic books went through the same thing when they were young. We just need to wait a few more years until we're middle aged and still playing games, and our kids are too. Then this irrational fear will hopefully diminish, and we can commence hating and fearing whatever our kids our doing by then ("How dare you re-enact your grandfather's battle in that holodeck!").

>It's a very simple logical fallacy.

Yep, its the old causation vs. correlation fallacy.

America has already been through this when Dr. Frederick Wertham (a popular quack-ish psychologist from the 50's) wrote a book arguing that comics caused all sorts of deviant behavoir. This killed the comic industry by turning it into kid's stuff, more or less. More info here. Better details here.

I think this is the favorite meme for hack journalists. If a kid goes psycho then make sure to print how he dressed, what music he listened to, and what games he plays and start the witch-hunt! I was very surprised to see that almost 1/3rd of a AP/Reuters article was about these things and not what actually happened.

I doubt a "Comics Code Authority" self-censorship will take place again, but the kneejerk mentality is still there with some people. Hopefully we've learned something in the fifty or so years since the Comics Code was created.

I remember when I was a kid, about the age this group were (15-18), there was a made for TV movie called "Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters" in which a bunch of kids who play D&D become massively deluded by the deleterious (bullshit) effects of the RP, find a cave underground and start doing what we'd call live-action roleplaying today. They end up risking their lives on this delusion. The implication was a sort of Reefer Madness-esque demonization of the roleplaying genre. It was one of Tom Hanks' early movie appearances I believe.

Mind you, every time something bad happened to kids in that time frame, the media was all too willing to attribute it to the nasty effects of the demons of roleplaying as personified by D&D. The Christian Right was watching all of this gleefully, encouraging it when it could. Google for 'christian anti d&d' - there are just too many links to the anti-occult D&D bashing to pick a representative one.

In the interest of equal opportunity political bashing, Tipper Gore (and by extension Al) was a real jerk about all of this, advocating controls on roleplaying gaming materials. Very similar to her jerky attitude about censoring music while she was with the PMRC in the mid-80's. But that's another story for another time. A quick Tipper quote from her book, if you please.

"D&D] is based on occultic plots, images, and characters which players "become" as they play the game. According to Mrs. Pat Pulling, founder of the organization Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons, the game has been linked to nearly fifty teenage suicides and homicides. Pulling's own son killed himself in 1982 after becoming deeply involved in the game through his school's gifted students program. A fellow-player threatened him with a "death curse" and he killed himself in response."

In the generation before mine (I was born in 1969), there was a man named Fredric Wertham, a psychologist in New York, who was convinced that comic books were the evil that was plaguing America's youth. He published a book called "Seduction of the Innocent" to make his point. He testified in front of the US Senate in 1954 (the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, if you can believe it). A brief quote if you don't mind:

"They [comic books] arouse in children phantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune. We have called it the Superman complex." (and doesn't that sound familiar - substitute 'video games' for comic books?)

He was also the first to identify Robin, Batman's sidekick, as being ambiguously homosexual. "If Batman were in the State Department he would be dismissed." was his comment. Apparently the pulp comics were luring children into a homosexual lifestyle. As if. I'm assuming Saturday Night Live got the idea from this.

Dr. Wertham's effect was quite significant at the time, as was Tipper and her allies during the 80's. In the 1950's, Dr. Wertham nearly killed the comic industry, causing sales to plummet as parents took aggressive action to protect their children in light of the negative publicity. The "Comics Code" symbol was the direct result of Dr. Wertham's crusade.

Tipper Gore and the Christian Right actually managed through pressure to get the authors of D&D, TSR, to remove some or most (depending on your view) of the offensive material from the 2nd edition of D&D, particularly the demons and devils. Thus emasculated, the pen and paper game declined in popularity after that time (rougly 1986-87 if my memory serves), even unto the present

There's no need for anyone to try to run Xlibris out of business, or try to take them over. They just have a new twist on what Vantage and other subsidy/vanity presses have been doing for decades.

If Xlibris were making money from selling books they wouldn't need the authors to pay the tab, would they?

If there were money to be made in Print On Demand the big publishers would already be doing it, wouldn't they? But Time/Warner/AOL's iPublish program went down in dot-bomb flames.

Ask yourself this: How many books did you buy from Xlibris, iUniverse, and all the rest of the world's subsidy presses put together in the last year? How many did all your friends buy from them? Divide that number by the total number of books you and your friends bought. Multiply by 100. You now have an approximation of the percent of the market that these outfits enjoy.

So who does buy Xlibris books? With rare exceptions, the answer is:

The author.
The author's mom.
The author's mom's bridge club.

When would it make sense to go with Xlibris?

If you already know by name everyone who will buy a copy of the book, and you weren't planning on making any money on the sales anyway, go for it.

Or, if you've got specialized non-fiction that only a few people would be interested in, but those few would go any distance and pay any price to have that information, go for it.

Or, you're an experienced author with a out-of-print backlist that has a small but steady fan base, go for it. (If you're experienced, you already know where the minefields are.)

Otherwise, forget about it.

For more information on subsidy publishing, see http://www.sideroad.com/gethooked/column14.html

The CCA is a pretty interesting case. There is a fairly good write up on it. There were also many instances where the CCA was used to kill the competition. The main comic producers could essentially determine if smaller companies could bear the CCA seal or not.

"...the comic artists..."

Well, weren't the comics to blame for twisting the minds of the parents and grandparents before the Comics Code in the 1950s?

Gore Takes Tough Stand on Violent Entertainment

I really think that a lot of the christian hating is just based on a "please leave us alone" attitude. People aren't objecting to say, the Amish, because the Amish aren't trying to force their views on anyone else, despite the fact that most pro-technology people would find the Amish lifestyle anathema.

I do think, however, that there is something seriously wrong in knocking Bush's conservatism and not knocking Gore's conservatism. After all, I'm pretty well convinced that Bush's pandering to the Christian right is just based on vote getting... whereas I believe Gore is a true believer.

At any rate, one or the other is going to get elected and it is going to suck for gamers and people who believe in Free Speech in general no matter which way the election goes.

I suggest computer and console game developers read up on the Comics Code authority, because I forsee something similar in gaming's future:

Comic books were forced to adhere to a code which simplified and neutered the westerns, crime and romance genres. The horror comic books all but disappeared, while the funny animal comics flourished. Over a half dozen publishers went under, and a number of talented industry professionals moved into other fields for a while. --Origin Of The Comics Code Authority

The political arena thing is amusing, but it reminds me of, Are You a Red Dupe?, a final attempt at political satire from an industry that is about to have the life and creativity crushed out of it.