Just as home video technology created "video nasties," and increasing graphical power made games into a problem, so too will changing technology take the focus off games. The question is how much damage will be done before the moral panic passes.
The Comics Code stifled creativity within the comic book industry for decades and perhaps denied comics their chance to ascend into a medium appreciated in the same way they are in Japan. Yet a similar outcry over music in the early 1990s merely led to the introduction of the Parental Advisory sticker, and the game industry's decision to voluntarily bring in the ESRB and thus avoid legislation has proved to be very astute.
The moral panic over videogames will probably never die out completely. There will always be something shocking to stir up the usual suspects, just as Marilyn Manson brought back the fear of rock music and Bret Easton Ellis the book burners. But the nadir of the videogames moral panic was probably Columbine, and if gaming was able to overcome the reaction to that event, in which games could be seen to play a very substantial role, the worst has passed.
Games have already become an inseparable part of our culture. The multi-billion dollar launch events for the PlayStation 3 and the Wii in late 2006 were reported in every media outlet, and gaming has become a much bigger and more influential business than it was in 1993.
Moreover, the shift away from videogames is already happening. Enough time has passed for most sensible readers to figure out videogames are not very likely to turn your child into a serial killer. More importantly, a generation of journalists has grown up with videogames and knows this for themselves; games are simply another hobby, another form of media, no longer a strange and alien whipping boy. The focus can already been seen shifting away, to other media starting to come into its own - social networking sites, where you never know who your kids might be talking to.
As deplorable as the willful obfuscation of facts and creation of hate figures may be, moral panics are in one sense understandable. They are an attempt to put reason on situations that are beyond our comprehension - to put logic on the sheer insanity of human brutality. In an ideal world, a swish of a pen on some legislation would save us from ever having to wake up to another Jamie Bulger or Columbine.
But the world just doesn't work like this. And sooner than we think, the world will have come to terms with videogames and moved on to something else. As Cohen, who could not have predicted even the development of videogames when he first wrote his theory, says, "More moral panics will be generated and other, as yet nameless, folk devils will be created ... because our society ... will continue to generate problems for some of its members ... and then condemn whatever solution these groups find."
Gearoid Reidy firmly believes that losing at Winning Eleven causes real violence against his furniture. Find him at www.gearoidreidy.com.
