The Call (for Video Game Censorship) is Coming from Inside the House!
Note: While I was editing this article the language of the petition against 6 Days in Fallujah was updated to remove the bit about how the game will “inevitably breed a new generation of mass shooters in America.” This doesn’t change the fact that scores of industry insiders were happy to sign with the original language. It also seems rather odd that change.org allows you to alter a petition after people have signed it, this seems like a feature that could be easily abused for some hilarious trolling… Not that I would do anything like that mind you.
The theory that violent video games will result in real-world violence is nothing new. Those of us that came of age in the 1990s and early 2000s can recall all manner of moral panics over the violent content be it from Mortal Kombat [1992], Doom [1993], Duke Nukem 3D [1996], Thrill Kill [1998], or Grand Theft Auto 3 [2001]. In each case, it was argued that these new ultraviolent video games would turn their player base into a bunch of psychotic murderers. It was all bunk.
As of yet, no scientific study has conclusively linked video games with violent behavior in their players. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that the opposite is true. If violent video games lead to violent behavior, then where was the massive surge in murders during the late 1990s and early 2000s where the video game world was positively drenched in bloody pixels? Not only did violent crime not surge as more and more violent video games hit the market, instead it peaked in 1991 and started to plummet as the decade wore on. In all likelihood, this downward trend in violence had nothing to do with video games, but if games make people more violent it would be difficult to explain why their rise in popularity coincided with the lowest violent crime rates since the late 1960s?
Yet lack of evidence has never stopped a good moral crusade, and during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the moral crusade against violent video games was synonymous with Jack Thompson. Thompson was a Florida-based lawyer and devote Christian who wanted to use whatever legal tools were at his disposal to combat all of manner of obscenity in contemporary pop culture. His targets ranged from rap music with explicit lyrics to shock jocks like Howard Stern. However, he is best known for his campaigns against violent video games.
Thompson saw a clear link between violence, particularly in the case of juveniles, and the violent video games the criminals played. While this link was never demonstrated by a scientific study, Thompson had no issue insisting that games caused demonstrable changes in both their player’s behavior and in their minds. He became a common sight in the aftermath of any high-profile tragedy, always ready to file a suit against developers on flimsy evidence that their video games were somehow to blame.
Thompson called violent video games “murder simulators” that teach kids to “kill efficiently and love it.” As proof of his thesis Thompson offered up the evidence that “In every school shooting, we find that kids who pull the trigger are video gamers” of course in the late 1990s and early 2000s all that meant was that they were young and male as by this point video games were a nearly ubiquitous hobby among teenaged boys.
During the height of his notoriety, Thompson was widely mocked and derided as a huckster, moral scold, and idiot by video game developers, the hobbyist press, and gamers themselves. He remained a persistent annoyance to gamers and game companies until the late 2000s when he was disbarred by the Florida Bar Association and officially sanctioned by the Florida Supreme Court. Thompson himself has fallen into obscurity, a footnote on the history of the industry. However, more than a decade after his disappearance Thompson’s rhetoric has reemerged, though not from the retired lawyer himself. No, oddly enough the Thompsonian view on violent video games has somehow infiltrated and subverted the video game industry itself.
Obviously, the games industry did not immediately embrace Thompson’s ideology. Rather, the Thompsonian viewpoint spread itself like a gradual infection, with only subtle symptoms perceptible here and there. Games were not openly denounced as “murder simulators” nor was it claimed that violent video games directly caused mass killings. Instead, games were labeled as “problematic” or “irresponsible” softer terms that did not call for immediate censorship, only the gradual softening of edges in certain cases. However, the difference between these two positions is a matter of semantics, both share the same ideological root: The belief that certain video games can cause real-world harm.
Despite the gradual progress of the Thompsonian takeover, the effects were no less profound. It became a common sight to see articles demanding the change of certain titles or warning of the consequences if games like this kept being made. Tellingly in 2019 when Donald Trump blamed violent video games for mass shootings, the press did not simply come out and say that there was no evidence that video games caused violence while denouncing Trump as an out-of-touch boomer as they would have a decade earlier. Instead, they carefully hedged their language saying that while video games do not cause violence they often foster and contribute to hateful ideologies that cause violence. To me, this just seems like “video games cause real-world violence” with extra steps. It seems like the Thompsonians agree with me because before long they dropped the pretense of the extra steps altogether.
In recent days we’ve seen huge swaths of the gaming press argued that Cyberpunk 2077 [2020] would foster transphobia and lead to harassment and violence against trans people. Setting aside the absurdities of this claim (not only does Cyberpunk 2077 [2020] have some of the best representation of trans people in the medium both as PCs and NPCs, but the argument that it will cause harm hinges entirely on an advertisement that depicted a highly sexualized trans person in a setting where highly sexualized advertisements for all identities are common) this is a complete reversal of the press’ position on the relationship between video games and real-world violence from the Jack Thompson days. Where once people who argued that video games could provoke real-world violence were mocked and derided, now they are recognized as authorities on the subject matter and paid to write about them by the enthusiast press. Whether they realize it or not every journalist who repeated this absurd claim was making the same arguments as Thompson did in the early 2000s.
More alarmingly than the press’ hissy-fit over Cyberpunk 2077 [2020], is the reaction against the upcoming shooter 6 Days in Fallujah [2021]. Currently, there is a petition circulating on change.org, asking both the United Nations and the United States government to either ban or censor the game. At the time of writing the petition has nearly 5000 signatures. The petition argues that the game will “inevitably breed a new generation of mass shooters in America and brainwash gamers into thinking RACISM IS OK.” Pretty bold claims about a game that’s not even out yet. Maybe we should be asking the petition’s creator, Hala Alsalman, for winning lotto numbers as well, since she clearly thinks she can predict the future.
Obviously, nothing of significance will come from this, all change.org petitions are little more than an exercise in screaming into the void. Indeed, thanks to the Streisand effect, all this petition will likely do is increase the visibility and profitability of 6 Days in Fallujah [2021]. However, a surprisingly large number of video game designers, journalists, and other industry insiders have put their names on the petition. Indeed, criticism of the ridiculous petition from inside the industry has thus far been muted, being limited to fringe outsiders like yours truly. No mainstream publications have published essays defending the game, and no famous developers have stepped forward in the name of freedom of expression. Despite that, I suspect that there are still plenty of people inside the video game industry who don’t think that 6 Days in Fallujah [2021] will inevitably lead to a rash of mass shootings. However, these designers and journalists are probably afraid of getting the Troy Leavitt treatment, so they instead opt to keep silent.
How did we come to this point? Twenty years ago, it would have been unthinkable that even the most periphery figure in the gaming industry would expose an openly Thompsonian position about video game violence. Yet here we are with major figures and publications openly proclaiming that 6 Days in Fallujah [2021] will cause mass shootings unless it is censored by the government, and those with sane views on the unreleased video game are too afraid to speak up in its defense. What the hell happened?
I suspect that Anita Sarkeesian and similar feminist critiques of video games provided the thin tip of the wedge that allowed Jack Thompson to inadvertently dominate the industry. As it turns out the only problem that game designers and developers had with Thompson was not with his ideas but instead with his vocabulary. He was a fundamentalist Christian who spoke of morality, obscenity, and corruption. Had he been a liberal atheist with feminist leanings arguing the video games would inspire misogyny rather than violence he would have doubtlessly been far better received. The industry was far more willing to listen to criticisms when they came from someone with a worldview that was at least somewhat compatible with their own, even if there is even less scientific evidence that video games cause sexism. It didn’t hurt that measuring sexism is a good deal less precise than measuring violence, and consequently, the flaws in Sarkeesian’s repackaged Thompsonian worldview were harder to detect.
As for my position on this, well that’s simple: I’m a free speech extremist. If an artist has a vision, or a businessman sees an opportunity to turn a profit, or a troll gets an idea for a legendary shitpost, they should be free to pursue it. Games can be as violent, perverted, weird, racist, homophobic, transphobic, edgy, and stupid as their creators want. Likewise, they can be as bland and boring to attract the mythical broader audience of marketing dreams. Big platforms like Steam and Gog don’t have to carry Hooker Fucker 5000 or Super Concentration Camp Simulator if they don’t want to, but these games should still be available from the creator’s personal websites if nowhere else. The only cases where a game should be censored or banned is if it contains illegal content (such as child pornography). Otherwise, anything goes.
I’m not just some edgelord that like offensive things because they are offensive either. Indeed, there are plenty of games that I find personally distasteful. JFK: Reloaded [2004] where the player takes on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and reenacts the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is highly insensitive to JFK’s living family. Super Columbine Massacre RPG [2005], a game that allows the player to relive the Columbine school shooting as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold likewise is an odious and morally indefensible work. Ethnic Cleansing [2002] is a racist game made by literal white supremacists and openly promotes their warped view. Wolfenstein: The New Order [2014] has a subplot that casually implies that Jews have been secretly running the world in some kind of Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style conspiracy. All of these games are vile.
Still, I would be appalled if any of them were targeted in the same way that 6 Days in Fallujah [2021] has been. They are only offensive insomuch as they make light of real-world tragedies (JFK Reloaded [2004] and Super Columbine Massacre RPG [2005]), or expose the twisted worldview of their creators (Ethnic Cleansing [2002] and Wolfenstein: The New Order [2014]). None of them are dangerous in and of themselves, because they are ultimately just artistic works. Unless they have just conducted a revolutionary study that overturns the last few decades of sociological research, anyone arguing that these or any other games will cause real-world harm is full of shit.
Twenty years ago, my views were the norm in the video game industry. Hopefully, this trend will pass, and we can go back to treating Jack Thompson as a joke, rather than a visionary. I don’t hold out much hope though, because as it stands now Jack Thompson is the most influential figure in the medium.
