E. Video Games
The video game business, like home video, is a new industry. In the last 20 years video games have become an important force in the media world. In the early days of video games, most were played at commercial machines in restaurants and other places of business. Then video arcades opened and attracted many young customers.
Video games spread from the arcades to units that attached to consumers’ televisions and did not require coins to play. The industry has gone through much turmoil. Atari, a very successful company in the early 1980s, has today become a minor force (though it is still competing in 1995 with a new system). Today the standard is 16bit machines and that market is divided between Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. The equipment for this format attaches to a television set and becomes part of the world of television. Most titles are licensed to both platforms, but some are developed by one of the companies and not available to their competitors. Donkey Kong Country, the number one seller of the past year, is not available to Sega.
The video game business is currently going through another transformation. The current 16bit standard offers only adequate quality graphics and is slow compared to what is becoming available. There is a move to 32 and 64bit machines, and the addition of CDs, as in the 3DO or CDI systems. The whole business is changing and the only thing that is clear is that the economic stakes are high, as customers are certain to purchase much hardware and software.
Although video games appeal primarily to young people, many of the users can not afford the equipment without financial assistance from others, usually their parents. The current price of the hardware for the less expensive systems begins around $100. This is more than most kids can afford. More complex systems cost as much as $400. The software can also be expensive. While there are less costly titles available, the most popular games cost about $50.
Because of the high costs compared to television or home video, parents are almost always a part of the purchase process in video games. Kids simply cannot acquire the hardware or most of the software without help. Parents may acquiesce by giving their children the money for the equipment or buying the titles they want.
Since the parents are usually part of the purchase process, they have an obligation to become involved in the purchase decision. It is their responsibility to find out about the game and how it is played. Almost any video store will demonstrate the game. Parents should not passively hand over the money for the games or acquire the packages without investigating the game. More so than with any other media system described in this report, parents have a responsibility and an opportunity to learn about the video games that interest their children.
To help with this parental role, the video game industry has developed a rating system. Devised by the Entertainment Software Rating Board for the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), the ratings are administered by Dr. Arthur Pober. As of November, 1994, video games are rated for one of five audiences:
EC: Early Childhood titles are suitable for children ages 3 and older and do not contain material parents would find inappropriate.
KA: Kids to Adult is suitable for ages 6 and older; they may contain minimal violence or some crude language.
T: Teen is for those 13 and older; they may contain violent content, strong language or suggestive themes.
MA: Mature material for ages 17 and older; these products may include more intense violence and language with more mature sexual themes.
A: Adults only; these may include graphic depictions of sex and/or violence and are not to be sold to those under 18 years of age.
It is a system that deals with different levels of violence. The ISDA is addressing parents’ concerns in a responsible way. Unfortunately, whether by accident or design, a number of retailers have placed a price tag over the game’s rating.
All of the other forms of media discussed in this report have some relation to each other. Theatrical films, for example, become the content of home video, cable, network television and local television. Television series become the content of the syndicated marketplace. While video games do attach to the television set and become a part of the home television environment, they are really a very different part of that world. We looked at video games in a very tangential way and do not imply that our findings apply to all games in the industry. We did, however, look at the most successful games.
We examined the five topselling video games of the year as compiled by the NPD Group which, according to the IDSA, is accepted as the best source of retail sales data. The NPD Group’s listings separate games by platform so that NBA Jam, for example, is both second (on Sega) and fourth (on Super Nintendo). Ignoring the different platforms, we established the list of games to be monitored as follows:
Donkey Kong Country
NBA Jam
Mortal Kombat II
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
We moved the Power Rangers up the list slightly because it is a title in both the television and feature film world and we felt those other media might spur sales of the video game. Although not best sellers, we also looked at Beavis and ButtHead and The Tick because they also have a presence in the television world.
Some critics have argued that video games, by their very nature, encourage violent behavior. They make the case that the act of pulling some kind of trigger or pushing a button is like shooting a gun. They also argue that chasing anything, even a friendly little blob as in PacMan, is tantamount to hunting and then killing. These are some of the same critics that consider almost any sport to be potentially violent. While we understand the philosophy behind this argument, we are not persuaded that all video games are, by their nature, violent.
Two of the categories created for children’s programming, tame combat violence and sinister combat violence, apply well to these games. Slapstick really does not apply and a new category, sports, needs to be added. The only sports game we examined, NBA Jam, falls into this new category and allows the user to play basketball. It is a nonviolent game except that players occasionally bump into each other. Martial arts games would not be considered as part of the sports grouping.
Most of the rest of the games (like many of the Saturday morning shows) fall into the tame combat classification. In these, some kind of minor confrontation is part of the game. These confrontations, however, neither involve weapons nor killing; instead they may simply disappear or fall off the screen and out of the field of play. If there is fighting it is, as the category name suggests, tame. The game environment usually has bright colors and graphics, carnivallike background music and simple looking, clearly animated characters, small in relation to the screen size. Donkey Kong Country, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, The Tick and Beavis and ButtHead all fall into this tame combat category. These games would not raise concerns about violence except for the youngest audiences.
The third category, sinister combat violence, contained one title, Mortal Kombat II. These are the games in which the goal is to injure or kill the opponent (another player or the computer). The characters tend to be larger than in the tame games, allowing for greater detail to be shown in combat. Methods of fighting tend to be more elaborate and far more lethal in nature. A much wider variety of fighting techniques and options are available. For example, rather than just punching an opponent as might be found in the tame combat games, in sinister combat games a character has a selection of different, distinctive punches, some of which are more lethal than others. Players learn the ins and outs of fighting. These games also tend to be much more graphic; blood and disfigurement are often evident. Interestingly, the characters in these games have backgrounds and identities described in the instruction manual. Each character or fighter has his or her own distinctive personality, thereby making them seem more human and the game more realistic.
Some studies show that parents believe video games contain horrible violence and bring out aggressive and disturbing characteristics in their children. Mortal Kombat II (and I) is the game that sustains that belief. It contains the violence that many parents fear. It is sinister combat violence and even pushes that category to the edge.
Mortal Kombat comes in a variety of formats: video arcade, home video games, computer software and, in August, 1995, a motion picture. We examined the Sega version of the video game. Mortal Kombat II comes with the MA (Mature Audiences) rating, but as mentioned above, some retailers cover the label.
Mortal Kombat is a very realistic combat game. Players choose which character they wish to portray. There are 14 characters each of whom has a biography in the instruction manual. Two of the 14 are women. One male fighter, "Reptile," is described as follows:
Shang Tsung’s personal protector, Reptile lurks in the shadows stopping all those who would do his master harm. His human form is believed to disguise a horrific reptilian creature whose race was thought extinct millions of years ago. He enters the contest hoping to defeat all and protect his master.
Each character has special moves and skills that are described in the manual. A player enters combat against another player or the computer. The combat is brutal and realistic, involving vivid sounds and special moves. As the opponent is beaten, there is no doubt that the confrontation will end in death as the computer encourages the victor to "FINISH HIM." The game is about brutal combat and players spend hours mastering combat moves and techniques.
What parents and many others do not know, however, is that there are special "blood codes" available that take the game to a higher and extraordinarily graphic and violent level. These codes are not in the instruction manual and parents would not know about them. A player in Sega’s Mortal Kombat I achieves this higher level by pressing buttons in a special sequence. Both Sega’s and Nintendo’s Mortal Kombat II have special moves that are published in video game magazines and on the Internet. The articles reveal special moves not described in the manual that allow players to rip off arms and watch them spurt blood. They also teach how to impale on hooks, slash an opponent’s throat, cause an opponent’s body to explode or decapitate him or her. It is the most shocking and grisly violence imaginable.
Most video games now seem to be under the umbrella of the rating system. There have been some extremely violent games, including some on CDROM, that involve terrorizing women. The worst of the games are as bad as critics and parents fear. Our hope is that this will begin to improve as parents assume their responsibility in the purchase process of the video game.