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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. "
See: How Rock'n'Roll Music Became the Bogeyman in 1950. Bunch of wound-up old people that don't like change.
First it was radio... then it was television, rock and roll and comic books. After that it was video games, rap, heavy metal, and goth music. Now it's the internet and more realistic games.
Message to parents! If your child screws up, it is probably your fault! Sucks, doesn't it?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
'Cause all their Lemmings died.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I'm willing to be it's because television, music a movie industry interests are lobbying our representatives to place restrictions on the games industry, which they see as a threat. The games industry just isn't ponying up enough money to counterract the rest of the entertainment industry's lobbying dollars and stay off the regulation radar, and now they're paying the price. It's a terrible way to run a country, but people in power are making too much money to change it...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Williams, 34, said those under 38 have a different view of games than their elders.
I think he needs to go higher than 38, I'm 41 and I too grew up with video games. I play HL2 deathmatch on a server where the majority of players are older than me.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
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.
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.
Back in my time it was Dungeons and Dragons. You'd watch the news and see these "exposes" on the kids who are LEARNING TO LOVE SATAN because of the EVIL D&D game. Oh yeah, and Satanism was also a dire threat to our kids. Oh and Styx and Kiss too. Then 2 Live Crew. My neighbor tells me that in his day it was Bob Dylan that was symptomatic of evil.
The vast majority of what goes on in the world, from legislation to war, can be attributed to people's desire to control other people's actions.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
People would rather blame than take responsiblity.
What can we blame for the lower per capita crime rates?
Particularly when we consider some things weren't crimes, or weren't widely reported earlier.
Yes we have had graphic headline grasping crimes lately, but there has always been something. I'm sure there were pissed off kids taking swords or clubs to each other before they invented guns.
Yes, games are a terrible waste of our time and money, and a contributor to drinking, institutionalized violence, and selling sex!
... ooops!
It sucks billions and billions out of foolish peoples' pockets...
More riots, beatings, and other assorted violence take place because of games!
During games, people are exposed to repeated messages selling them alcohol and sex as well!
Did I mention that hundreds of pro and amateurs are permanently injured or killed playing these "harmless" games?
In fact, there are numerous studies proving that these games suck money away from vital education programs and game-players often score lower on standardized tests!
Yes, they are evil.
Wait a sec, we *are* talking about sports aren't we???
crappy triceratops
It seems like the media and some parents just point the finger to anything that there child loves. While I never enjoyed it, Pokemon was a good example. Some Christians found it to be Satanic and animal lovers found it supported animal cruelty. However if these people just sat down an watched an eposide of the anime, I'm sure that they would find that it was a good (as in good and evil) show.
You can usually find those claims at the end of some drama. Some teenager goes bonkers, goes on a killing spree, kills himself or just rapes the girl next door, THEN, and only then, you get those witchhunts for the culprit.
... in the 20s, that aweful dances ... in the 30s, the damn radio ... in the 40s, that aweful swing music ... in the 50s, that godforsaken rock music ... in the 60s, that hippy music ... in the 70s, that disco music ... in the 80s, that devil's spawn D&D ... in the 90s, those gangster-rappers ... and today, violent video games
The parents? How DARE you! Those poor people gotta live with what their son did now! They cannot be the ones to blame. So it has to be...
Glad we found a culprit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm an Old Person (tm), and a gamer. I've been doing it since line-printer lunar lander games on mainframes. Pac-man is newfangled :). I'm as against this idiotic blame shifting as anybody.
Blame it on stupid people, instead, some of whom happen to be old. We're not all like that.
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.