The First Court Case

People being angry about video game violence goes all the way back to 1976, with the arcade game Death Race.  The game had the player using a car to drive over “gremlins” (National Coalition Against Censorship) that made a disturbing sound when they were run over, and the characters were replaced with tombstones once they were killed.  It is fairly clear that people were upset by this game because of how graphic and “disturbing” it was.  Several other games received similar reactions in the following 17 years, resulting in the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) a year after that in 1994 (NCAC).  The ESRB is a system still used today that rates video games using a series of different criteria including, alcohol reference, blood and gore, intense violence, fantasy violence, etc. (ESRB).  These ratings are used similarly to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film ratings, meaning that the ratings dictate who can buy the video games.  The ratings range from “Early Childhood” to “Adults Only,” (ESRB) but the first rating that effects a person’s ability to buy a game is the “Mature” rating.  To purchase a game with a “Mature” rating, someone must have some form of identification that proves that the person is 17 years of age, or older.

According to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), the first time that video game violence was brought to court was in 1997, by Jack Thompson.  Mr. Thompson is an anti-video game activist who filed a law suit on behalf of three parents whose children were killed in the Heath High School shooting in 1997 (NCAC).  In this shooting a freshman killed three people and injured five more (Holland).  Mr. Thompson claimed that the shooter “…had regularly played various computer games (including Doom, Quake, Castle Wolfenstein, Redneck Rampage, Nightmare Creature, MechWarrior, and Resident Evil), accessed some pornographic websites and owned a videotape of ‘The Basketball Diaries,’…” (NCAC)  Mr. Thompson lost this law suit for failing to make a legally recognizable claim. In July, 2008, he was disbarred for “…inappropriate conduct, including making false statements to tribunals and disparaging and humiliating litigants.” (NCAC)  This makes his claims less recognizable, but he was the first person to link video games to violence in the courtroom setting.  Now, when school shootings, or any act of violence committed by a child, or teenager, happens, one of the first assumptions made by some people is that the violence was caused by video games.