MrCunningham
Member
Watch the nearly three hour long senate hearing unfold here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD-Afpg4P2U
Today (December 9th 2013) marks the twenty year anniversary of a very big milestone in in the video game industry On December 9th 1993 American senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl took Sega and Nintendo to court over violent and sexually suggestive content.
This senate hearing was important as it shaped the current rating systems we have today in North America known as the Entertainment Software Rating Board, AKA: the ESRB. This rating system influenced other countries to follow suit with their own self-regulatory boards like Japan's CERO and Europe's PEGI. These rating systems did take censoring duties out of the hands of first party licensee's and created a universal standard that spreads across multiple platforms and hardware. While some may see these rating boards as bad, I always looked at them as a good thing in the long haul. Without them, games would not have really been able to grow into a much more diverse market that we have now.
Videogame Rating Council, the starting point of the ESRB:
Sega of America took it onto themselves to create the: "Videogame Rating Council" months before this hearing started, but this system was not implemented until after the hearing ended. It was Sega's attempt to circumvent a government mandated rating system, something that Joe Lieberman was lobbying for if the games industry couldn't come up with a convincing solution.
The 'Videogame Rating Council' system used three different ratings such as "GA", "MA-13" and "MA-17" and was quickly adopted by 3D0, Atari and other third party developers. However, Nintendo was never part of this rating board and continued to push their own very strict censoring methods.
But as it was, the Videogame Rating Council was not perfect and brought some controversy of its own. It was inconsistent. Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis was rated MA-13, while the Sega CD version, which was essentially just the same game, received an MA-17 rating. Mega Man the Wily Wars, which was only released on the Sega Channel, was also given an MA-13 despite that it had no violence or gore at all. While a game like Castlevania Bloodlines which did feature dripping blood received a GA rating.
Sega's Videogame Rating Council didn't last long and was phased out in 1994 due to the above listed issues. But this was the foundation for the revised ESRB rating system that quickly superseded it with in the same year.
The original ESRB from 1994:
The current version of the ESRB hasn't changed much from its 1994 introduction, but it did replace the K-A rating with E10+ in 2004.. Also the E for everyone rating was added in 1998:
The three games that started this mess:
Mortal Kombat:
Most notably the Sega Genesis version of this game, which kept all the blood. gore and fatalities from the arcade game if enabled by a secret code from the intro screen. The game was a massive hit in the arcades and made a large splash on Sega's console due to Sega's lack of censorship. Nintendo of America president Howard Lincoln used the censored SNES version as an example of how much more responsible Nintendo was with censoring when compared to Sega.
Night Trap:
A full motion video adventure game that was developed by Digital Pictures and published by Sega. This game came out in fall 1992 for the Sega CD and features cheesy B-movie production values about vampire like creatures called Ogers that chase a bunch of girls around a house The game caught the attention of Lieberman for one scene in which a girl wearing a somewhat frilly night gown is suggestively strangled by the neck in a bathroom, to have her blood sapped out of her by the oger creatures.Even though this scene was very campy and didn't feature anything remotely explicit, alarmists still looked at this scene as suggestive rape towards women. Also the box showcased a woman in her underwear being chased by a monster.
It is also interesting to point out that Digital Pictures President Tom Zito was at this hearing, but didn't get a chance to defend his game. Even though he was clearly there and even shouted "I'm here" after Lieberman stated that he was not.
This is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Sega-16 with former Digital Pictures employee Rob Fuller, who had this to say:
"The Senate brought in Howard Lincoln, then president of Nintendo, who claimed emphatically “I’d like to state that Night Trap will NEVER appear on a Nintendo system, obviously it doesn’t pass our guidelines.” This was a great example of the true meaning of the term “weasel.” I mean, it’s a joke … I was in the room when Nintendo passed on the opportunity to distribute Night Trap, because their platform could not support FMV. So Howard Lincoln was correct in stating that Night Trap “did not pass Nintendo’s guidelines,” but what he meant was that the game did not pass Nintendo’s TECHNICAL requirements. Obviously Mortal Kombat is far more violent than Night Trap ever was. In Mortal Kombat, I can maneuver my avatar to kill off my opponent in cold blood, and then reach inside his chest and EAT HIS HEART. In Night Trap, my job is to save the lives of the onscreen protagonist, and if I fail, I see her dragged off screen."
URL: http://www.sega-16.com/2007/09/interview-rob-fulop/
And here's a documentary that Digital Pictures made about the hearing that was produced in 1995: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIUliuDygHk
Lethal Enforcers:
Another arcade port that was released on the Genesis and Sega CD around 1993. The game was developed by Konami and is a light gun shooter that featured digitized graphics. The most noteworthy feature was a plastic gun that was included with the game called the Justifier. While the gun itself was blue, it was still a rather realistic looking handgun. Most concerns drew from the idea that kids could be playing this shooting down realistic (digitized) people with a revolver. It's also interesting to note that this game was released on the SNES about six months after this hearing ended in 1994.
Now onto the senate hearing:
Well there's way too much to cover here, so I will keep this portion somewhat brief.
The hearing was split up into two panels. The first panel features a bunch of boring non-industry types that represented areas like the Children's Television Resource & Education Center, the National Education Association, or self proclaimed experts on video game violence who wrote their own books on the subject.
One woman in particular in this panel went on a bit of a rant about how women get mistreated and represented poorly in video games, kind of side stepping around the original topic to get out her own agenda, which included quotes like:
"We are now losing a generation of women if we don't start addressing that the video games must address the needs of all children -- the need of course being a safe toy. Girls are offended by the lack of games for them to play with, They feel inferior, the boys and girls can very easily determine with are girl games and both games. Girls games are the ones with the fluffy little bunnies and they are the ones that boys choose not to play with.
playing video games have become a macho boys thing, girls are being trained in dressing Barbie dolls, and boys ave being trained in technology. This has to change."
The other three people in the panel gave standard speeches, comparing video game violence to previous studies made on the effects of TV and movies. There was also a lot of inconclusive evidence being cited, as games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were part of a newer generation of videogame that hasn't been seen previously in the industry. For better context, just watch the video.
Panel 2
Panel number 2 was a much more interesting one, as it included actual industry people. Someone from the coin-operated arcade association was there which had very little to say, and a women from a PC software rating council was also on hand, and well, didn't have much to say either. But the two two main "stars" of the hearing were Nintendo of America's former CEO Howard Lincoln, and former Sega of American vice president William (Bill) White.
Howard Lincoln pretty much owned this panel. The man is like a half shark, half human hybrid, he could be very calculating and ruthless at the same time. Before he was the CEO of Nintendo, he was previously their lawyer, so he knew exactly how to butter up the senate and rally them on his side. He is also very good at choosing his words carefully and knew exactly what to say at the appropriate time. When talking about Mortal Kombat, he had quotes like this: :
"Now let me turn to Mortal Kombat. To meet own game guidelines. we insisted that our largest. licensee; Akklaim Entertainment remove the blood. and death sequences present in the arcade version of Mortal Kombat before we would approve this gave. We did this knowing that our competitor (Sega) would leave these scenes in and with full knowledge that we would make more money if we included the offensive material.as well.
We knew that we would lose money by sanitizing Mortal Kombat, but sanitize it we did. But unfortunately, I must say, that we have been criticized by literally thousands of young game players, for insisting that the death scenes be removed from this game. "
Howard Lincoln also made some comments on how Night Trap would never get released on a Nintendo console because it would not meet with Nintendo's technical guidelines. He was also not impressed with Sega's newly formed Videogame Rating Council and made comments that Nintendo would never be a part of it, as their own review system was much better.
William White on the other hand was a much less formidable opponent in this hearing, repeating things from his initial statement over and over again, and showing a lot of charts and sales graphs trying to prove that there is a market for mature video games. His many charts included that the Sega Genesis was for younger audiences around the age of 13 and under while the Sega CD was for older age groups going from the 13 to 20 something crowd. While Mr. White did make some valid points in this hearing that video games are evolving beyond kids toys and that Sega wanted to lead this field going forward, he didn't articulate this as well as he could have. Mostly shoving sales charts and graphs into everyone faces.
He also tried to make a point that Nintendo had the hot selling Street Fighter II on their console. This was his attempt to prod the senate that Nintendo does in fact have violent games on their system as well. But this point was nullified by Howard Lincoln as Street Fighter II did meet with Nintendo guidelines (just like Mortal Kombat censoring). Howard had this to refute to Mr White:
"I can't sit here and allow you to be told that somehow the videogame business has been transformed today from children to adults. It hasn't been, and Mr. White, who is a former Nintendo employee, knows the demographics as well as I do. Furthermore, I can't let you sit here and buy this nonsense that this Sega Night Trap game was somehow, only meant for adults. The fact of the matter is, (gestures) this is a copy of the packaging, there was no rating on this game at all when the game was introduced. Small children bought this at Toys 'R' Us, and he [White] knows that as well as I do. When they started getting heat about this game, then they adopted the ratings system and put ratings on it. But today, just as I'm sitting here, you can go into a Toys 'R' Us store, or a Walmart, or a K-Mart, and you know as well as I do that you can buy this product, and no one, certainly no sales clerk at retail, is going to challenge you."
Later in the hearing, this print add was exhibited for a Super Nintendo game that was made by Ocean:
It brought up some concerns that Nintendo's marketing could be as irresponsible as Sega's.. Earlier in this hearing Joe Lieberman commented on this commercial made by Sega, showing a nerdy kid who became cool by playing Streets of Rage II. Bill White tried to wave this off as being a commercial shown for the MTV crowd and it never aired on children's television. But Mr Lincoln had this to say about that print ad:
"And let me say that I agree that everything we've done has not been perfect. As a matter of fact, when I came into the hearing room this morning, I saw that you've got an advertisement up here for one of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System games, that says 'they've got a bullet with your name on it.' Well, let me tell you what I did: I phoned my office to find out that that licensee put that advertisement out without our consent, without our review, and without our permission. And unless that advertisement is withdrawn, that company is in breach of its license agreement. So we do have -- just as Sega does in the case of Namco, which is a Sega licensee -- the ability and the right to control advertising by our licensees and we take that seriously. And I'm going to apologize to this committee over the fact that we slipped up, and our licensee didn't tell us about this. But let me tell you, when I get back to Seattle, I will call that licensee."
Howard Lincoln was just feeding the senate everything they wanted to hear.
But in conclusion
This article has gone on much longer than I expected it to. Did anyone really win in this hearing? I don't know. But it is interesting to look back on this piece oh history and reflect on what happened 20 years ago. A lot of the arguments here are still present today, and we still see a lot of crusaders carrying on this torch 20 years after Lieberman lighted it. But the game industry still rolls on and retailers are probably not any more responsible than they were in 1993 when it comes to selling M rated games to minors.
It's also interesting to note that Doom was released on December 10th 1993 for PC, the day after this hearing ended. With it's first person perspective and ultra gone (for its time), it was one of the most violent games every released up to that point.
So, Happy 20th Birthday Doom
Today (December 9th 2013) marks the twenty year anniversary of a very big milestone in in the video game industry On December 9th 1993 American senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl took Sega and Nintendo to court over violent and sexually suggestive content.
This senate hearing was important as it shaped the current rating systems we have today in North America known as the Entertainment Software Rating Board, AKA: the ESRB. This rating system influenced other countries to follow suit with their own self-regulatory boards like Japan's CERO and Europe's PEGI. These rating systems did take censoring duties out of the hands of first party licensee's and created a universal standard that spreads across multiple platforms and hardware. While some may see these rating boards as bad, I always looked at them as a good thing in the long haul. Without them, games would not have really been able to grow into a much more diverse market that we have now.
Videogame Rating Council, the starting point of the ESRB:
Sega of America took it onto themselves to create the: "Videogame Rating Council" months before this hearing started, but this system was not implemented until after the hearing ended. It was Sega's attempt to circumvent a government mandated rating system, something that Joe Lieberman was lobbying for if the games industry couldn't come up with a convincing solution.
The 'Videogame Rating Council' system used three different ratings such as "GA", "MA-13" and "MA-17" and was quickly adopted by 3D0, Atari and other third party developers. However, Nintendo was never part of this rating board and continued to push their own very strict censoring methods.
But as it was, the Videogame Rating Council was not perfect and brought some controversy of its own. It was inconsistent. Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis was rated MA-13, while the Sega CD version, which was essentially just the same game, received an MA-17 rating. Mega Man the Wily Wars, which was only released on the Sega Channel, was also given an MA-13 despite that it had no violence or gore at all. While a game like Castlevania Bloodlines which did feature dripping blood received a GA rating.
Sega's Videogame Rating Council didn't last long and was phased out in 1994 due to the above listed issues. But this was the foundation for the revised ESRB rating system that quickly superseded it with in the same year.
The original ESRB from 1994:
The current version of the ESRB hasn't changed much from its 1994 introduction, but it did replace the K-A rating with E10+ in 2004.. Also the E for everyone rating was added in 1998:
The three games that started this mess:
Mortal Kombat:
Most notably the Sega Genesis version of this game, which kept all the blood. gore and fatalities from the arcade game if enabled by a secret code from the intro screen. The game was a massive hit in the arcades and made a large splash on Sega's console due to Sega's lack of censorship. Nintendo of America president Howard Lincoln used the censored SNES version as an example of how much more responsible Nintendo was with censoring when compared to Sega.
Night Trap:
A full motion video adventure game that was developed by Digital Pictures and published by Sega. This game came out in fall 1992 for the Sega CD and features cheesy B-movie production values about vampire like creatures called Ogers that chase a bunch of girls around a house The game caught the attention of Lieberman for one scene in which a girl wearing a somewhat frilly night gown is suggestively strangled by the neck in a bathroom, to have her blood sapped out of her by the oger creatures.Even though this scene was very campy and didn't feature anything remotely explicit, alarmists still looked at this scene as suggestive rape towards women. Also the box showcased a woman in her underwear being chased by a monster.
It is also interesting to point out that Digital Pictures President Tom Zito was at this hearing, but didn't get a chance to defend his game. Even though he was clearly there and even shouted "I'm here" after Lieberman stated that he was not.
This is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Sega-16 with former Digital Pictures employee Rob Fuller, who had this to say:
"The Senate brought in Howard Lincoln, then president of Nintendo, who claimed emphatically “I’d like to state that Night Trap will NEVER appear on a Nintendo system, obviously it doesn’t pass our guidelines.” This was a great example of the true meaning of the term “weasel.” I mean, it’s a joke … I was in the room when Nintendo passed on the opportunity to distribute Night Trap, because their platform could not support FMV. So Howard Lincoln was correct in stating that Night Trap “did not pass Nintendo’s guidelines,” but what he meant was that the game did not pass Nintendo’s TECHNICAL requirements. Obviously Mortal Kombat is far more violent than Night Trap ever was. In Mortal Kombat, I can maneuver my avatar to kill off my opponent in cold blood, and then reach inside his chest and EAT HIS HEART. In Night Trap, my job is to save the lives of the onscreen protagonist, and if I fail, I see her dragged off screen."
URL: http://www.sega-16.com/2007/09/interview-rob-fulop/
And here's a documentary that Digital Pictures made about the hearing that was produced in 1995: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIUliuDygHk
Lethal Enforcers:
Another arcade port that was released on the Genesis and Sega CD around 1993. The game was developed by Konami and is a light gun shooter that featured digitized graphics. The most noteworthy feature was a plastic gun that was included with the game called the Justifier. While the gun itself was blue, it was still a rather realistic looking handgun. Most concerns drew from the idea that kids could be playing this shooting down realistic (digitized) people with a revolver. It's also interesting to note that this game was released on the SNES about six months after this hearing ended in 1994.
Now onto the senate hearing:
Well there's way too much to cover here, so I will keep this portion somewhat brief.
The hearing was split up into two panels. The first panel features a bunch of boring non-industry types that represented areas like the Children's Television Resource & Education Center, the National Education Association, or self proclaimed experts on video game violence who wrote their own books on the subject.
One woman in particular in this panel went on a bit of a rant about how women get mistreated and represented poorly in video games, kind of side stepping around the original topic to get out her own agenda, which included quotes like:
"We are now losing a generation of women if we don't start addressing that the video games must address the needs of all children -- the need of course being a safe toy. Girls are offended by the lack of games for them to play with, They feel inferior, the boys and girls can very easily determine with are girl games and both games. Girls games are the ones with the fluffy little bunnies and they are the ones that boys choose not to play with.
playing video games have become a macho boys thing, girls are being trained in dressing Barbie dolls, and boys ave being trained in technology. This has to change."
The other three people in the panel gave standard speeches, comparing video game violence to previous studies made on the effects of TV and movies. There was also a lot of inconclusive evidence being cited, as games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were part of a newer generation of videogame that hasn't been seen previously in the industry. For better context, just watch the video.
Panel 2
Panel number 2 was a much more interesting one, as it included actual industry people. Someone from the coin-operated arcade association was there which had very little to say, and a women from a PC software rating council was also on hand, and well, didn't have much to say either. But the two two main "stars" of the hearing were Nintendo of America's former CEO Howard Lincoln, and former Sega of American vice president William (Bill) White.
Howard Lincoln pretty much owned this panel. The man is like a half shark, half human hybrid, he could be very calculating and ruthless at the same time. Before he was the CEO of Nintendo, he was previously their lawyer, so he knew exactly how to butter up the senate and rally them on his side. He is also very good at choosing his words carefully and knew exactly what to say at the appropriate time. When talking about Mortal Kombat, he had quotes like this: :
"Now let me turn to Mortal Kombat. To meet own game guidelines. we insisted that our largest. licensee; Akklaim Entertainment remove the blood. and death sequences present in the arcade version of Mortal Kombat before we would approve this gave. We did this knowing that our competitor (Sega) would leave these scenes in and with full knowledge that we would make more money if we included the offensive material.as well.
We knew that we would lose money by sanitizing Mortal Kombat, but sanitize it we did. But unfortunately, I must say, that we have been criticized by literally thousands of young game players, for insisting that the death scenes be removed from this game. "
Howard Lincoln also made some comments on how Night Trap would never get released on a Nintendo console because it would not meet with Nintendo's technical guidelines. He was also not impressed with Sega's newly formed Videogame Rating Council and made comments that Nintendo would never be a part of it, as their own review system was much better.
William White on the other hand was a much less formidable opponent in this hearing, repeating things from his initial statement over and over again, and showing a lot of charts and sales graphs trying to prove that there is a market for mature video games. His many charts included that the Sega Genesis was for younger audiences around the age of 13 and under while the Sega CD was for older age groups going from the 13 to 20 something crowd. While Mr. White did make some valid points in this hearing that video games are evolving beyond kids toys and that Sega wanted to lead this field going forward, he didn't articulate this as well as he could have. Mostly shoving sales charts and graphs into everyone faces.
He also tried to make a point that Nintendo had the hot selling Street Fighter II on their console. This was his attempt to prod the senate that Nintendo does in fact have violent games on their system as well. But this point was nullified by Howard Lincoln as Street Fighter II did meet with Nintendo guidelines (just like Mortal Kombat censoring). Howard had this to refute to Mr White:
"I can't sit here and allow you to be told that somehow the videogame business has been transformed today from children to adults. It hasn't been, and Mr. White, who is a former Nintendo employee, knows the demographics as well as I do. Furthermore, I can't let you sit here and buy this nonsense that this Sega Night Trap game was somehow, only meant for adults. The fact of the matter is, (gestures) this is a copy of the packaging, there was no rating on this game at all when the game was introduced. Small children bought this at Toys 'R' Us, and he [White] knows that as well as I do. When they started getting heat about this game, then they adopted the ratings system and put ratings on it. But today, just as I'm sitting here, you can go into a Toys 'R' Us store, or a Walmart, or a K-Mart, and you know as well as I do that you can buy this product, and no one, certainly no sales clerk at retail, is going to challenge you."
Later in the hearing, this print add was exhibited for a Super Nintendo game that was made by Ocean:
It brought up some concerns that Nintendo's marketing could be as irresponsible as Sega's.. Earlier in this hearing Joe Lieberman commented on this commercial made by Sega, showing a nerdy kid who became cool by playing Streets of Rage II. Bill White tried to wave this off as being a commercial shown for the MTV crowd and it never aired on children's television. But Mr Lincoln had this to say about that print ad:
"And let me say that I agree that everything we've done has not been perfect. As a matter of fact, when I came into the hearing room this morning, I saw that you've got an advertisement up here for one of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System games, that says 'they've got a bullet with your name on it.' Well, let me tell you what I did: I phoned my office to find out that that licensee put that advertisement out without our consent, without our review, and without our permission. And unless that advertisement is withdrawn, that company is in breach of its license agreement. So we do have -- just as Sega does in the case of Namco, which is a Sega licensee -- the ability and the right to control advertising by our licensees and we take that seriously. And I'm going to apologize to this committee over the fact that we slipped up, and our licensee didn't tell us about this. But let me tell you, when I get back to Seattle, I will call that licensee."
Howard Lincoln was just feeding the senate everything they wanted to hear.
But in conclusion
This article has gone on much longer than I expected it to. Did anyone really win in this hearing? I don't know. But it is interesting to look back on this piece oh history and reflect on what happened 20 years ago. A lot of the arguments here are still present today, and we still see a lot of crusaders carrying on this torch 20 years after Lieberman lighted it. But the game industry still rolls on and retailers are probably not any more responsible than they were in 1993 when it comes to selling M rated games to minors.
It's also interesting to note that Doom was released on December 10th 1993 for PC, the day after this hearing ended. With it's first person perspective and ultra gone (for its time), it was one of the most violent games every released up to that point.
So, Happy 20th Birthday Doom
