Abstract Trouble in River City: The Social Life of video games by

The “theft” and “drug use” frames also suggested that arcades were either the locus of problems or that games drove players to steal or traffic drugs to support their gaming habits. Often this frame came from the actions or speeches of small-town mayors who had banned arcades because they had heard of or seen deviant behavior in them—but never in their towns. Time reported in 1982 that “the town fathers of Irvington, N.Y. (pop. 6,000) rose up in wrath last July and passed an [anti-video game] ordinance designed ‘to protect the village against the evils associated with gambling.’”

The early “health risk” frame suggested by Wartella and Reeves was found, nearly simultaneous with the negative displacement frame. These occurred primarily in the 1980s and then faded away. Concerns revolved primarily around skeletomuscular ailments such as “Pac Man elbow” (Skow, 1982), “video wrist” ("Donkey Kong Goes to Harvard," 1983), “Nintendinitis” (Adler, Rogers, Brailsford, Gordon, & Quade, 1989; "Dr. Nintendo," 1990), and “Space Invaders wrist” (Zoglin, 1989), but also epileptic seizures (Leerhsen, ZaBarsky, & McDonald, 1983).

The study captured a significant volume of fears about the addictive potential of video games. Although the players often jokingly referred to their play as “habits” or “addictions,” the sheer volume of terms typically associated with drug and alcohol dependence was striking. Writers often relied on the language of pathology to describe game players, often using terms such as “junkies,” “mania,” “infected,” “pathological preoccupation,” and “madness.”¹⁵

The “other social risks” frame included the inability of children to distinguish between fantasy and reality, over-commercialization, mindless passivity in game play and the promotion of low culture. Intergenerational tensions were evident in the suspicion that Baby Boomers still had for their now-grown progeny. This frame has persisted to the present. One Newsweek headline joked insultingly in 1998 “Just Don’t Shoot the Client. How Do You Train Nintendo-Generation Workers?” and suggested that those “Nintendo-generation workers” needed more stimuli than previous generations, and had shorter attention spans (Meyer, 1998).

Lastly, “games as promoting violence” was tied consistently to adolescent males, and the hypodermic media effects model predominated the frame. This frame occurred primarily during the 1990s. Time claimed young male players had become “inured to violence” (E. Thomas, 1998), and Newsweek said games gave “kids a lack of respect for life” (Taylor, 1999). The Columbine incident initiated a resuscitation of this frame. U.S. News opined: “Did the sensibilities created by the modern video kill games play a role in the Littleton massacre? Apparently so” (Leo, 1999). But video games were not always framed as the main culprit in all of the articles. This is not to say that new media technologies do not serve as sites of anxiety for social problems—in fact the new ones still are. It is perhaps not surprising that in many other articles about the incident, a suspicious and shadowy newer medium was blamed for the Columbine incident: the Internet.

The dystopian frames speak not only to the hypotheses generated earlier, but to general social conditions in the United States, and to the idea that new technologies provide a telling window into the issues of the day. It is surely no coincidence that the years 1981 and 1982 marked the start of the dystopian frames of misspent youth, or fears of injury, drug use and the like—and that this is precisely the period of the conservative Reagan administration’s rise to power. In seeking to throw off what it perceived as the general social, cultural and moral malaise of the 1970s, the Reagan administration campaigned on a platform that especially highlighted the culpability and irresponsibility of single “welfare queen” mothers. Children and families were a site of struggle as “family values” became a means to attack working mothers. This political agenda lead to frames about truancy, latch-key children and the negative influences of electronic media of all types. Additionally, the administration’s highly publicized war on drugs in the 1980s may have influenced the pathological language used for games. Given this political backdrop, it would have been surprising to not see these frames gain prominence in the early 1980s.

Using games as a scapegoat was not limited to the early 1980s. When the industry died its spectacular death in 1984, the scapegoat was removed from the picture and the tensions over women and families moved into other domains. However, as soon as the Nintendo resurgence hit full stride in the late 1980s, the same patterns began again. These patterns have serious implications for game producers and players. Unaware of the disconnect between the research and the social construction, the public continues to worry about the deleterious effects of gaming. The second wave of tensions peaked in 1993 and again in 1999 when joint House-Senate committees held hearings on video game violence. At these pivotal hearings, conservative and liberal lawmakers raised the specter of potential regulation (Marketing Violence to Children, 1999). The hearings also featured a series of academic and advocacy critics of the game industry who made a case for a causal link between game violence and real-world violence (Chapter 6 presents the literature on game violence, and concludes that there is no solid connection).

The industry has sought political cover under the First Amendment by strengthening its content labeling system (see www.esrb.com) and advocating for the role of responsible parenting (Richtel, 2000), earning a mild commendation from government critics (Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Six-Month Follow-Up Review of Industry Practices in the Motion Picture, Music Recording & Electronic Game Industries, 2001). Still, lawsuits over violent games and children’s access to them in arcades and at retail points continue to dog the industry, with major cases in Indianapolis and St. Louis under review ("American Amusement Machine Association, et al. v. Teri Kendrick, et al," 2002; "Interactive Digital Software Association, et al., v. Westfall, et al," 2002). The free-market atmosphere cultivated by recent administrations is currently at odds with the moral codes of both liberals and conservatives, who have struggled to balance free speech concerns with their often strong personal dislike of much game content (Bennett, 1999; J. Lieberman, 1999). The leading advocates of game regulation, Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Congressman Joe Baca of California,¹⁶ continue to challenge game makers on moral and health grounds, and represent real political obstacles.

Consistent with prior new media technologies, video games served as touchstones for larger struggles within the culture—so much so that perhaps “lightning rod” is a better term. The two hypotheses about conservative fears around new media were supported by the data. These results show that politics, media coverage and even supposedly objective academic analysis can be powerfully affected by the tensions of the day. In this case, all three groups misfired badly. The good news is that by carefully examining a reaction to new media technologies, we can come to an understanding of what is really at issue. The next chapter will demonstrate this by showing how power and social control issues around video games have played out for age, gender and place.

("The American Family: Can it Survive Today's Shocks?," 1975; "The Clamor to Save the Family," 1988; "Death of the Family?," 1983; "Family's Chances of Survival," 1979; Wallis, 1992; Woodward, 1978)

Chapter 4: Playing With Power: Age, Gender and Place at Issue