Citation Needed - The Entertainment Software Rating Board

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is an American self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games. The ESRB was established in 1994 by the��Entertainment Software Association (formerly the Interactive Digital Software Association), in response to criticism of controversial video games with excessively violent or sexual content.

So white diamond is like I want to see the real you and he's like this is the real me. Did you cry? I cried so hard, man. Good one. That's a good one. That was a good one. Monday, Monday, right? Okay, got it.

Yep, Monday. Guys, what are you doing now? No, why did you just rip off Eli's arm? That's an arm. Hey, hey Tom. So Noah had this great idea. You know how everyone likes video games? Yep.

Newtio games are for children. Okay, what, ignoring that. What if citation needed were the first podcast to be rated by the ESRB? Kee-aw! Oh, right through the stomach. Fudge you, man. No, fudge you. Wait, wait, wait, fudge you? What is that thing with stomach fudge you man. No fudge you.

Wait, wait, wait, fudge you? Yeah, the rules are nudity and swearing are a little weird, but other than that, this is gonna be fine. Take this. Ooh, my fudge and spleen. Guys, guys, guys, guys, look, I understand. I wanted to be popular, but hear me out. Isn't this system just gonna resort to an environment of Victorian sexual purity and grotesque ever-mountain violence all under the veneer of being

Aimed at an audience too young to hear the word fuck. Whoa too seriously, dude. What language man? I mean I ripped your heart out much better. There we go. This is fun. Hello! Welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Tom and I'll be mashing all the buttons at once and a desperate hope this experience is over quickly, but I can't throw these fireballs alone.

Joining me are three men whose choice of video avatars reveals far too much about their internal lives. Eli, Noah and Cecil. Okay. You photoshopped yourself holding one childhood beauty. Okay. No, Eli. Okay.

No, I'm always just a letter N because ultimately we'll all be forgotten. And my second life character is an exact replica of me, but it has a necktack too that reads, live dangerously. No regards, Cecil. All right, before we get much deeper down this digital rabbit hole, I want to take a moment to think the only people listening to this that matter are patrons You see if you listen and you're a patron you can stop and take comfort in the wondrous knowledge that this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for you Really we're not doing this shit for free. So if you want to give us money we'll keep doing the show otherwise These guys will spend all that extra free time show otherwise these guys will spend all that extra free time leveling up or some shit. I don't know.

So if you want to join the growing cadre of sophisticated kids who are the only reason we can afford to do this show, be sure to stick around until the end and we'll tell you how that out of the way. Cecil, tell us what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon or event. What we'll be talking about today. Today, we're going to be discussing the ESRB or the extra scuba rescue brigade. Yeah, I'm not sure that's right. Yeah, it's not.

You wrote my line. I know it's not right. Yeah, no, I write without reading ahead. So I don't know what ESRB stands for yet. It's the electronic software rating board. I mean, it's like four paragraphs down. Yeah, but I didn't read there when I started writing up here. Of course, whatever.

That must mean that Noah wrote this essay because this sounds really boring. Noah, are you ready to tell us a riveting tale about how some people have put little letters next to video games or whatever you do? Not trying to tell you how to do your job, Tom, but you could try being nice. No, not really.

I actually, I can't do that. So what manner have insomnia cure is the ESRB Noah? All right. So the ESRB or electronic software rating board, thanks for blowing the load early Cecil, is described by Wikipedia as quote, on American self-regulatory agency that assigns age and content raining to consumer video games. End quote. It was established in 1994 after a contentious Senate proceeding determined that children ripping people spines out through their decapitated neck holes was bad, even if it was for a tool.

Boo. All right. No, I assume you have some way of dragging this incredibly boring topic out for 30 minutes. Oh, at least 30, but you have to ask me about the origins of the ESRB. And you just said that it was from a Senate hearing. It just humor me, Tom. Oh my God, fine. So where does the ESRB to, R2D2 think I'm from? Who cares? Well, fear and panic about violence and video games

is about as old as I am. So we're gonna go back 43 years. Way back in 1975, there was a company called Exity. They created a video game called Destruction Derby in which two players drove a car around the screen and got points for wrecking other cars. Then they sold exclusive rights to that game to an arcade company called Chicago coin and sat back waiting for those big fat royalty checks to come in. For listeners born after 1990 and our Cade was like a house

full of other people's video games run by a pedophile that you paid in hopes of winning a $4 slinky, but mostly you got molested by the pedophile. Well, that's not, you might also have won the fucking slinky. You might have won the slinky. He'll give you the slinky at a certain point. You take enough. He'll give you the slinky. I was a weird nickname. I just want to object here a car. They drove a car around the screen in 1970. I'm sure it wasn't a different colored square that collided with other squares and sometimes a line. You know, two lumps is a bird. In 1975, the car would just like wait in a virtual gas line for six hours until your quarters run out. You know, unfortunately for Exidy Tom, that's kind of what happened.

Right. Okay. So Chicago coin experience, some financial difficulties, likely related to their loan officers. Sanied get the money for him as soon as this peak quads was ready. And the whole company went under taking exclusive manufacturing rights to the game with them. Now this puts exiting a bind. So desperate to find a cash cow and at least a year away from the next big game. They go back to the drawing board with destruction

Derby and see how much they have to change that game before it's, you know, a new thing that they can still sell. It's literally called Call of Duty-ing a video game. Yes, it is. Correct. They're like, hey, kids, you try this brand new game, Conky Dong. Maybe we didn't think this branding thing through here. I don't know. I don't know. I've played Conky Dong and I've learned this at least.

Don't mash the button. It's a fantastic. That's not a matter. Disagree. It's really is the same advice in all the video games. Yeah. Okay. So the end result from all of that trial and error came in 1976 in a game called death

race. And this would have been just another unremarkable car game from the late seventies, except that they replaced the cars that you had to smash into with little stick figures you had to run over. And when you ran them over like baby grand theft auto. Yeah, but yes, exactly. Look up the graphics for it. They're hilariously awful and shit, but it is exactly baby grand theft on you and up to including that, like when you run the people over, they emit a little scream and they got replaced on screen by a little tombstone. If they made this game today, it'd be called angry, angry insult.

Oh, Jesus. This was meant to be a stopgap for them until the 1977 release of their next game, Carpolo. You remember Carpolo? No, right? I want to confess something that I initially read that too quickly. And I thought it was car Pope. And I was kind of hoping for a different game. But all right, run over the Pope. He goes to heaven. Shooting Adam in that bubble car. Yeah, they probably would have been able to sell that one car polo not so much. But it turned out not to matter because this stopgap was a hell of a lot more

than that. And the first indication that they had of that came in July of 1976 when the company gets a call from a reporter named Wendy Walker out of Seattle. Big name. Wendy had seen the game in a local arcade and wanted to speak to a manager about the objectionable content in it. So she ends up writing an article about it that garners national attention and pretty soon newspapers like the New York Times were writing about this shitty little game death rate. New York Times. Okay, let me guess they published an opinion piece about whether

the people in the game should have been nicer to the cars. I just see the headlines like when good pixels go bad. are your kids being corrupted by death? I feel like you probably could literally go see that headline, right? Like it's an arts archive somewhere. All right. So the company that made an exited, they're in full panic mode in terms of PR. They hastily concocted a backstory to the game where the little stick figures are actually undead Remlins. And you're trying to save the universe by taking them out, but nobody was buying that. They were buying, however, death race cabinets. Yeah.

Yeah, because regardless of the message, Wendy Walker intended to send the video game industry, the message that they took away was that controversy sells. Okay. We're in trouble. We're going to need a backstory, backstory guys for death race. Okay. Maybe the game is set in Jackson, Mississippi and no, no, no, no. All right. You're right. Two obvious. Okay. It's a women's liberation rally. You see an absolutely not Hispanics. How do you even have this job? Rem ones then or Jews, Jews coin flip ads. And it was just all right. So one of the first companies to fully absorb this lesson about controversy.

It was a software company called Mystique. They popped up in the late 80s to make sexually explicit games for the Atari 2600. So keep in mind that when Atari released their first console, nobody first saw the future of the industry. It never occurred to Atari that companies might produce games compatible with their So keep in mind that when Atari released their first console nobody first saw the future of the industry It never occurred to Atari that companies might produce games compatible with their hardware So when other companies started doing exactly that in 1979 Atari was completely unprepared right so at first they tried to sue but that backfire like fuck went a court Basically confirmed that anybody who wanted to make Atari games could

Which is why Eli and Jean Bonnet's great escape is only available for Atari and Dreamcast. That's not copy I protected, but those guys all killed themselves. You can pretty much do it. You know, we're talking about a screen that had a resolution of 160 by 192 pixels. If you see something sexually explicit, that says a lot more about you than it does the game, right? It's like, it's like in a stack of Rorschach tests to just flip it through.

Dick, Dick, Dick, pussy, pussy, asshole, T T-Rex pussy, you know what? Hey, you said we weren't sharing test results on the show, Cecil. Went through him so fast, Tom, so fast. He was so business like about it. That was the worst part. More T-Rexes than I thought, by the way. Yeah, right, right. No, we expect to the rest.

All right. So along comes Mystique, and they publish a total of three Atari titles, Bachelor party, super forgettable. Basically, it's a breakout clone, except the ball was the closest they could come to a naked dude in the bricks, whereas closest they could come to naked women. It gets better in. Yeah. And there was a proof trying to cop block you. It was, it was awful. And then also there was a game called beat him and eat him Exactly what you think is coming here This man yeah, this sentence is this sentence is exactly how you expect it to now a man stands at the top of a building jerking off

And a man stands at the top of a building jerking off. And the play in a quarter. And the player controls a nude woman on the street who has to run back and forth and has to catch his ejaculate in her mouth. Yeah. And or it's a guy with a flesh color jackhammer as he desperately tries to regain control. All right. Fuck the Grimmlands. I want to hear the backstory for that game. Like what's the?

Yeah, right. Yeah. I'm desperate. Yeah. I am desperately not searching for an Atari 2600 right now on eBay. So we should move on with the. All right. Wait, wait, wait.

They're expensive than I thought. It gets, oh, it gets so much better, because Mystique's most notorious release was 1982's Custer's Revenge in which players took control of a naked cowboy with priepism that has to make his way across a screen full of projectiles in his effort to rape an imprisoned Native American woman. Oh my God. Real thing. His dick, by the way, hold on, though, hold on, though, the best part is this picture of his dick is like pixels, but they're like their squares.

And so they're offsets. Yes. Yes, they work their way up. It's like a diagonal offset squares. It's like somebody was playing like some guy was fucking a connect for. Yeah, I have never more wanted a visual medium for this show. Yeah. I know. All right. So now two misdeeds credit. This is not much credit, but the game was sold with a very clear label saying not for sale. The minors and once the controversy started boiling, they issued a press release assuring players

that this game wasn't about raping an Indian woman. It was about, I should you not, it was about seducing one that was tied naked to a post and by rushing towards her erection first. Yeah. And what you don't see is that some black Israelites yelled at Custer first. So. Oh, yeah. So needless to say, neither of those facts calm the outrage much.

But I mean, the real question, I think everyone's asking is when can general Custer start doing stand up again? What the hell for you, Viva? We need to rewind back to that meeting where they're throwing out concepts of the game, you know? Look, we're all decided that it's going to be a great game. We just need a backstory that's going to justify it. General Custer. Oh my god, yes, Custer.

Holy shit. Great meaning. That happened in a boardroom somewhere. Exactly. That I just I just want to ask like if you're running at somebody with an erection. I mean, isn't are you always then running erection first? I mean unless you're playing the Buffalo Bill game, you know, that's a talk. Yeah. Right. Well, exactly. You can, there's all kind of directions. You can strafe. All right. So it's worth noting. Yeah. Guys, I don't want to play paintball when we all get together anymore.

I don't want to play paintball. All right. So it's worth noting, by the way, that all of Mystique's games were offensive, but the addition of both racism and rape made Custer's revenge the obvious focus for most of the consequences. I know. Okay. Yeah. I'm afraid.

I'm so awful. Um, but it also, but the other thing is though is that it made Custer's revenge sell about double what the other game sold. Once again, reinforcing to the industry that free advertising is lost. No shit. Okay. I look, I get that like buying something because of the curiosity factor, but like, who was the original market for this game? I want those focus group tapes. That's what I want to watch. I don't think you do, Tom. No, no, me no. All right. So by this time, Atari's already on the way out, the glut of

shit games that resulted from unrestricted software, doom the system. There were eventually 200 shitty games for every good one and consumers gave up. So a few years later, when a scrappy Japanese company called Nintendo decided to reignite the US game console market, they added an insurance policy when they released the Nintendo entertainment system, they added proprietary coding that locked out third party developers. Basically, if you wanted to make a game for the NES, you had to get Nintendo say so. Finally, they're doubling down on the consent issue. Right. And look, I mean, I like Nintendo. I was raised on Nintendo, but Nintendo is.

It's right. Biden. Well, really, yeah, exactly. But Nintendo will absolutely play the part of the Prudish old lady in this story, right? They went into this thing, terrified of pearl clutching American moms. So they set out a list of restrictions that were basically indistinguishable from the comic book code from the 1950s, except that they added restrictions against depicting smoking. For those of you less enduroed by geek culture than myself, let me offer up a quick

couple of excerpts from the comic book code so that you know what we're talking about here. Oh, I know. The first rule of comic book code is you don't talk about comic book code. No. The second rule of comic book code is you don't talk to girls. Okay. That one's in. What is this vagina need? Desicant.

That's what the vagina needs. Women's just holding the signs as do not eat. All right. So a couple of quick comic book code examples here for you. Um, I love this one. In every instance, good shall triumph over evil and the criminal must be punished for his misdeeds. Yoar pale has that tattooed on his taint.

Right. Right. Makes for a better world, doesn't it? I'm here to the one illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed rape scenes as well as sexual abnormalities. I wonder what that was 1950s euphemism for are unacceptable. Okay. Just quick questions.

So then non illicit sex scenes are then okay in comic books. So you get to have like Superman, Mary Wonder Woman, then a whole issue full of them just banging away on his super dick and invisible airplane. And that would be cool. As long as they both wore rings while they did it, or if they just dry humped, yeah, it's really it's hard. You got to figure there were a lot of questions asked. There's an early Superman comic book where he and Wonder Woman get tricked into doing porn. The comic book code got really weird. That's real. All right. So, um, the, the, just one more I got because this

is absolutely wonderful. This was actually in the 1950s comic book code policemen judges, government officials and respected institutions. I don't know what the fuck those first three have to do with that last one. I'm shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authorities. Can we disrespect the FBI asking for a president here? I'm so yeah, Nintendo had a list of rules in that general vein and they were handing them to long haired pot smoking hippie programmers that were taking a pay cut to make video games instead of working for the military industrial complex. Needless to say, software developers immediately hated the ever loving fuck out of Nintendo. It's just like that.

Some guy turns down a six figure job at Lockheed Martin to follow his dream of coding porn video games. It's his job reads the handbook comic book. Oh, mother fuck. I thought they were Japanese. Right. Okay, but is it weird that knowing the end of the story results in a significantly better set of games puts me on the side of the story results in a significantly better set of games puts me on the side of

the British insanity. Like, I mean, I get it, but go ahead and put Zelda in a little storm trooper outfit breath of the wild was awesome. Yeah. All right. So through the late 1980s, the problem of violence and video games was more or less buttoned down. Nintendo dominated the home market with their list of rules that would make the dove foundation proud. And while there were still some violent video games coming out on our Cades, most of the

arcade owners and operators were hesitant to carry them because parents freaking the fuck out about their games was an existential threat to them. And more than one municipality had already banned video arcades all together. Up to Kevin Bacon, playing killer instinct alone in a bar. He loses the full goal and doesn't angry parallel bars routine. Fantastic reference. Thank you. All right. So to be clear, there were still some pretty fucked up games out there, but the main platform for those was the personal computer.

And the level of fucked up that those game reach is literally so bad that I don't know if I'm allowed to describe them without us getting kicked off of iTunes and Stitcher and shit. But if you want to go down a weird fucking rabbit hole, look up the show Joe games and then wipe your hard drive. Yeah, you know, I was tempted to do that, but then I was realizing that I was on my work computer when I wrote this and not in international waters. Yeah, that's the recommended. Yeah. All right. But the key here, though, is that violent and sexually explicit games existed, but parents weren't generally seeing them. But that would all change in the early 90s. All right, well, before we think too much harder about what else Noah was up to when left unsupervised,

let's take a little break for Appropoe of No. ["The End of The World"] Order, order! Miss Committee to Order for the 53rd annual Congressional inquiry into the relationship between violence and video games and real world violence. We have four witnesses to hear from today. Later, we'll be speaking with a psychologist with a book to sell to paranoid parents, an old woman whose head shakes and who thinks they're putting subliminal messages in candy

crush, and a shrieking mother whose son has a four syllable name. But before we get to them, we'll verbally abuse an actual expert who knows things. Dr. Wesley, thank you for joining us today. Uh, I was subpoenaed. You indeed were. Okay. So first up for the questioning, the honorable Senator Buttermeyer. Why thank you, Chairman.

Now, Dr. Wesley, is it true that this video game that I'm holding in my hand rewards young players for murdering computer people. Okay. That they're not called computer. That games called assassin creed. It's it's about assassinating people. So yes, it rewards players for assassinating people regardless of age.

And is it not true that this image of a human heart being held aloft by an elf comes from a game popular with young children? That's, that's a heart container, not a human heart, not a, not the ordinary. And is it true that that children of the 80s murdered millions of digital ducks just to avoid being chastised by a smart ass dog behind the bushes? That a duck hunt reference. You're doing now. Obviously, it is a duck hunt reference. You're doing now. Obviously it is a duck hunt reference. Okay, just clarifying some of our listeners are under 40. They just p-ray away. I'm gonna treat the witnesses hostile.

Okay, look, I have, I have two charts. If I can just draw everyone's attention, uh, this one is the rate of violent crime. Uh, this one is the rate of violence and video games. And you can see how they move independently of each other entirely, independently of each other. Uh, sir, if we were moved by data, we'd have stopped doing this in the name of these. Right. I'm saying that this is it's provable that violent video games do not cause violent behavior. Like sure, people who are violent tend to like violent video games, but few things

have been more exhaustively studied in the whole history of psychology is actually huge waste of time and resources. And no cause a link has ever been found between the two ever. That doesn't help me scare my constituents at all. I'm sorry. I guess you're dismissed. Oh, see you the next time a shirter turns out to have played Fortnite. Sure.

See you guys then. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ All right, and that's now... That's over, so good on on. No, I'm not. Please, please, buddy, continue another one of your stories with no characters. Oh, Tom, you're a character. All right.

So by the late eighties, video arcades had a serious problem. They'd been overbilled to the early part of the decade. So a ton of them went under leaving the industry with a glut of unusable machinery. Home systems were getting better and better. And while the graphics were still better in the arcades, arcades couldn't offer you the immersive long form games that the video game players were tending towards, right? So like a home game that keeps you glued to your TV for hours is a home run, but an arcade game that doesn't turn you over in a couple of minutes is a failure.

Yeah, and now we're taking all of those unusable machines and selling them for twice the original price. The douchebags lathered in mustache wax and stinking of art isn't distilled gin can stand next to them in the basement of the house. They gentrified away from poor people whose quarters still go into their washing. Okay. I don't even drink gin, but fine. Okay. So, but everything better. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. So every time the industry was about ready to write off video arcades altogether, some would come along and push this news button on their abituary.

Games like gauntlet, double dragon and the Simpson's offered up a novel way to sell video games to multiple players at the same time. And that ability to join a game in progress helps squeeze a few more tokens out of them. You had driving and flight simulation games taking advantage of dedicated hardware and haptics to give gamers an experience they still couldn't get at home. But even with all of that, our kids were in steep decline through the late 80s and into the 90s. Hey, fun fact, I actually single handedly kept the entire industry afloat from 92 to 93 by putting approximately $7 million into the sense in sentence game at a local pizza parlour.

So yeah, it was so good. If you're looking for the spike, that was me. Um, 90s, the only arcades that I would see would be the ones at bowling alleys. So watching them over the next few years was like watching two fading stars crash into each other during the heat down universe, you know, right? It's like, why don't you guys put one of those in a drive-ins next to the video rental store. Yeah.

We got a blockbuster slash ball and alley slash video arcade woman who likes to give blow jobs all year in one spot. I don't think my dad ever really understood how those things work because like once a year on our birthday, he'd take us to fun rockers, which had a few arcade games. He'd give my brother and I know shit. He'd give us each a dollar. And then he'd be shocked and dismayed when we return table side like four minutes later. Yeah.

And like if these were my kids and I could pay for them to leave me alone with quarters, their pocket could be smaller than Virginia Woolf. It's a fantastic reference, kids. She can. So yeah, no, we make it the oldest smartest. Like a champ by not swimming. So that will come as a game that takes a serious effort at reversing this arcade decline, right?

This game would be street fighter two. It was a goddamn global phenomenon at a time when the video game industry didn't really think that was possible anymore. In Japan, whole arcades were dedicated to nothing but Street Fighter 2 machines. And while it never got that popular in the US, it was still damn popular here. Video cabinets were creeping back out of the arcades, started showing up in diners and pizza places and laundromats and shit just for this one game. Yes.

And more importantly, the heaths of the world discovered their true calling, trapping you in the corner because they are Hitler. Yes, they are. They're all agree that the heath is Hitler when he's not here, right? You know, street fighter was just too cartoony for me. You have anything where someone rips the skull and spinal cord from a bean opponent. You know, I crave realism. I do crave realism. Oh, yeah. Now you want that, Cecil, but when I try to decorate the studio, you call the police and it's all thing. All right. So yes, Cecil, we're getting

there. Okay. So here's Capcom, the company that owns the Rice to Street Fighter 2, they are fucking raking it in, making mad amounts of money all over the world. And they're one of their major competitors midway is getting hella jealous. So they decide that they're going to take them head on with their own fighting game, which would eventually develop into mortal combat, arguably the most successful franchise in the history of fighting it. I spent an associate's degree with the quarter. Me too. I do. I do. I do. I do. Me too. Me too. Absolutely. I watched grownups play.

Okay. So now from the perspective of video game history, Mortal Kombat actually had a lot going for it. Like the graphics were way ahead of the curve for the time that the gameplay was unique despite the game being such a direct lift from Street Fighter. And the depth of the game's mythology was impressive for an arcade release of that time. But the real difference everybody focused on is that in Mortal Kombat, unlike Street Fighter 2, you could rip the still beating

heart from your opponent or melt the flesh from their bones. Oh, I mean, you could pixel the pixel from their pixels. Well, yeah, the graphics were like the memories of a dead loved one. And they were not great in getting worse. They were so good for the time. I mean, like, we're worried that we could watch Temple of Doom in pixels rather than on film. That's fair, right? That's fair. Like, there was definitely shit like this in fucking movies by this time. Yeah. But

needless to say, Mortal Kombat was a huge success. It dwarfed Street Fighter 2 in popularity, at least here in the US. And I think globally as well. But even as we first saw it, right? Like, like I think I was 16 years old. The first time I saw it in the arcades, somebody does the sub zero fatality where you rip out the opponent's spine. And I look around nervously like guys and adults is going to see us doing this and make

America stop. Right? It was, I mean, it was so obvious that there was, this was way over the overly sanitized line that Nintendo had weaned all of our parents on to. I had the exact opposite reaction. First time I saw that came, I was like, those people doing Coke and a requiem for a dream. Me too. That was a weird orgasm. I went, you're all weird. That was sick about it.

So thank you. You don't know. She screaming fatality the whole time. I didn't understand what's going on. All right. So obviously the game sparked some controversy, but it wasn't really until it shows up for home release. By then, Nintendo actually had some real competition in terms of home systems.

And Sega was desperately trying to brand themselves as the edgier console for older kids, right? So when it came time to release home versions of Mortal Kombat, Nintendo insisted on a boldly rise version with no blood, no guts and no fatalities. And Sega just let them port the arcade game as accurately as the system would allow. And the result was that Sega ate Nintendo's fucking lunch on console sales just gets crumbs all over the console and that's your fault now because it's always the fact kid leaving the crumbs everywhere. But that's not true.

Because that kid's know how to eat in secret. Now, where's he? He should be here. What were you saying about video games? Yeah, no, I was still talking about videos. Okay. So, this was not the only title that Sega and Nintendo approached differently. Nintendo was still working from their comic

book code script of drugless, sexless characters and incorruptible judges and Sega was giving gamers whatever the hell they wanted, but they were being at least somewhat responsible about it. Right. So Sega had created their own voluntary rating system called the video game rating council, and they prominently displayed a games rating on the packaging. So Mortal Kombat, for example, was rated MA 13. Hey, Dave, what age do you think we can safely expose people to sex and violence? Don't say 13. 13. All right. Well, no, you're more than halfway through an episode about a rating system.

And this is the first mention of a rating system. So please continue, but not the S R B. No, no, it's not. We're not there. Not even there. Okay. So at this point, two things enter the essay and they're both ugly things that you don't want in your essay. What is Joe Lieberman? The other though is speculation. And I'm only including this because it's a great story. So the official story is that Senator Joe Lieberman came across Mortal Kombat picked himself up from his fainting couch and called for congressional hearings on video game violence and the corruption of society.

That's actually how he named them a hearing on video game violence and the corruption of society. That's actually how he named them. A hearing on video game violence and the corruption of society. I feel like maybe you've made up your mind already when you say when you name your hearing that, but anyway, there's also a persistent industry rumor that Nintendo has been denying ever since that they actually instigated these hearings to ding their only real competitor in the console market. Yeah, just a Japanese guy slipping a picture of Sonic the hedgehog under Sega's door this. This will finish that. Man, I am glad Congress found time to investigate video games and not the Iran counterpart. Yeah. Wait. Maybe we should look at his terror and use in baseball, Joe.

What do you say? Mark McWire just had a giant hat. No, come on now. There's no way that a company who followed the fucking Boshito book code of ethics or whatever would do. So say it ain't so, buddy. Well, it probably isn't, but like, okay, but Nintendo was in a perfect position to do it.

Um, you know, like they expect to wander into these hearings, looking like the stalwart against violence and corruption that kept your kids safe all the way through the mid to late 80s. And Sega's going to show up with digital blood on their hands, stammering about consumer choice. Now, like I said, this has been denied by both Nintendo and Joe Lieberman, but it would explain an awful lot. Wait, this probably didn't happen would have explained an awful lot. Did Eli write this part? Yes. I mentioned that. Did he get it from the Lieberman book? Yeah. Fun fact, it was actually the Taco Bell next door

that started the pizza gate thing. Well, that's not true. It would explain a lot. next door that started the pizza gate thing. And well, that's not true. It would explain a lot. It would explain all kinds of shit. Yeah. No, I told you when I was putting untrue stuff in my ass. I told you when Eli was putting untrue stuff in this, I guess it is the same. They're here for shenanigans.

Aren't you audience? Call in response. Who wants shenanigans? Someone just said I want shenanigans. They were trying to get someone at home. They were trying to get along and now they're embarrassed. They're like, no, I didn't. Yes, you did. I'm okay. So regardless of how the hearings got started, Lieberman's hearings began in 1992 and focused primarily on two games, the aforementioned Mortal Kombat and a lesser known interactive movie called Night Trap, which was like an

early effort to use video footage in a CD-ROM game. The game used full motion video and the player takes the roles of vampire hunter that sets traps to protect a group of girls at a slumber party. So ridiculous. Well, yeah, right. And if you fail, the girls get dismembered by vampires. So in one notorious scene, a girl in a nightgown as drug off screen and ex-sanguinated, that's a scene that Lieberman would later characterize as promoting sexual aggression against

women. But when they came for the gumbos, he said nothing. Am I the only one that was googling ex-sanguinated with his pants around his angles and left disappointed? Because that's now what I expect. Where you left ex-sanglinated by the I apologize. All right, so the makers of night trap defended their game during the hearings by pointing

out that the scantily glad women being drained of their blood was what happened. If you lost the game, so it wasn't promoting that behavior. Yeah, the senators were unimpressed. Of course, the legions of video game players who wanted to see this notorious scene in the days before video streaming on the internet were impressed and sales of the obscure game skyrocketed during and immediately after the hearings. I don't know, in Lieberman's defense guys, I actually ran across that game when I was a kid and I saw that scene and I remember being like, ah, I'm one of those guys.

I got to have a weird test the waters conversation with everyone I date. Thanks, night crap. Thanks. I'm joking. I'm joking. Unless you're not joking. That's my life. Thank you, night crap. All right. So as to the hearings themselves, they were the most embarrassing thing to happen in Congress until every subsequent time senators engaged with technology of any kind, right? So they tried it out experts who guarantee that no darker mushroom would be safe. What's the Nintendo generation came age? Nintendo and Sega have this awkward, like, divorced couple that find themselves at the same

wedding fight. Nintendo is like, oh, here's the most violent video game on your system. And then. Nintendo is like, oh, here's the most violent video game on your system. And then Sega saw like, well, here's the little plastic gun that comes with your system. It's really embarrassing. Oh, by the way, if you haven't gotten a chance, there are videos of this online. Watch just the video clip of the Sega guy trying to make the Nintendo gun look menacing. Well, it was black because if he was black, I bet it was the best. You wouldn't have made it to the floor. You bet.

No camera phones. Yeah. All the senators were appalled by fake plastic guns. This should come with a real gun. This is America. Yeah. Right. We'll think of it for pissed off about the plastic ones.

Get the real ones. They're allowed to get pissed off about those. All right. So for their part, Sega came out of the hearings, looking a hell of a lot better than Nintendo. Nintendo's prudish behavior offered them some insulation against the Senator's most stinging rebukes, but they're not trying to sell their product to septiginary and public officials, right? Plus the fact that Sega was already voluntarily doing the thing that the hearing wanted

them to do made them pretty unassailable. This was all about the fucking rating system. I mean, as bad as the nightgown scene was in night trap, nobody would have considered banning a movie that contained that scene. Yeah. The year before a Silent Salam's one best actor, actress, picture, director, and screenplay and someone throws their sperm in that movie. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. But Cecil does anybody try to catch it? I think she tries to dodge. Yes. She does dodge it. And it's Jody Foster. So she tries.

All right. So another thing that Sega managed to do was win the public argument about video games being a purely childish pursuit. They brought reams of data showing that their average say a player wasn't the 10, 12 year old that might be traumatized by implied boobies or whatever. By and large, they were late teens early adults. They were people that were raised on the steer old titles of Nintendo and were dying for a video game where, for example, a senator might be portrayed as an uninformed moralizing

jackass. See, no, you say that. And yet McCarthy hearings too have you no shame for the PS4 had terrible sales. I bought it. All right. So ultimately two things would come out of this hearing. The first was the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association, which is an industry group that would be tasked with making sure that like Nintendo didn't release revenge

porn of Sega at the next congressional hearing. The second was the titular ESRB. Now, it's worth noting that all the game manufacturers that were making violent and sexually explicit games were already rating them before this happened, right? There was a bit of a difference across platforms, but the rating systems were all pretty self-explanatory and carried additional information like don't buy this shit for your kids along with whatever alpha numeric code meant that. Now, when the industry agreed to a single rating system to be used across all platforms, the logical thing to do would be just use the most

widely used existing system, the one that was developed by Sega, but that would make it super obvious how bad Nintendo got their asses kicked in the hearing. So they forced everybody to come up with a brand new one that was exactly the same as the other one. Alright, so to be clear, the ESRB is still a voluntary thing that is still controlled entirely by the video game industry. It's, it's basically the regulation that they've given themselves to avoid federal regulation. It classifies games into one of six categories ranging from early childhood to adults only and can and has been ignored on the lower left side of virtually every game sold since 1994. Okay, but I love that they just came up with their own system. Like someone number. Okay. That's what we're using.

Okay. This would be clear that the result of all this was that if the industry wanted, they could create their own rules and then decide if they wanted to follow them. That's what we are. That's what Congress was doing. Yes. But it's also worth noting. Look, the whole effort was a huge cobra effect.

As Eli already mentioned, you don't need to play a lot of modern games to realize that they've gotten way more violent than the shit that made Joey else so apoplectic in the early 90s. And a lot of the reasons that games were able to develop in that direction is that they were cloaked by the ESRB. So now not even Nintendo has qualms about releasing games where you stab a dude in the face, then pull your knife out through the back of his skull. Yeah, but you have to get really far and smash brothers to do that.

Well, too. All right. And Noah, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I learned that my internet search history could get weird. All right. Terrific. And Noah, are you ready to? I know. Insert video game pun here with the panel. I am ready to insert whatever you guys are willing to take. All right.

No, uh, Congress has been spending time playing games since Senator Lieberman had these hearings. What one have they been occupied by? A, Iran Contra, B, this whole position, that's P O L L, that's a, anyway, secret a man of fort. Yeah. Or D, the one they, they were just playing during the shutdown. Silent Hill. I'm going to go with A, because both the game and the scandal are equally known for their effective cheats.

All right. No, a video game violence. It's a very serious problem, but we should put this into perspective. So please rank the below in order of social concerns. It's a little different. A. crippling debt and a broad lack of economic mobility. B. Video game violence. C. the wholesale destruction of the environment at a rapidly accelerating pace. Or D. Finding a goddamn mattress that doesn't wear out in six months and turn into an enormous sponge talk. God. Amen. You got a fuck hard.

You got a fun. I want a better mattress. That is never the answer. Eli, okay, it's going to come to a surprise as a surprise to a lot of people, but I'm putting D on the top because Tom not getting a good night's sleep, good lead to wholesale destruction and crippling a lot quicker than greenhouse gases and predatory lending. So I'm going to go DCA, e through Q to the J. All right. Noah, obviously the ESRB has outlived its usefulness, which of the following would be a much more useful addition to the rating system for the video games of today. Is the answer I for indie game warning warning scripts torn directly from a live journal.

16 plus warning contains unnecessary 16 bit graphics. That's a day. Warning, if you go online in this game, a 12 year old in Korea will destroy you. Or for racing game. Warning, why do these exist? I'm going to go with secret answer E or A, since you didn't letter them out. And in fact, deleted the letters that I left in the notes and replaced them with bullet points. I'm going to go with G for grammar is going to piss you off. No. Okay. Well, very obviously the winner here is Heath because he didn't have to sit through any of that. So he'll take over as the host next week. Sure. Hope it. Eli to

do the essay. So the entire thing can be then underline with little red zigzag. We all know. Yes, yes, this fucking rated G grammar is going to piss you off. All right. So for Eli, Cecil and Noah, I'm Tom. And while I have no illusions to time here was well spent, it was almost certainly better spent than schooling noobs or learning the floss. We'll be back next week. and by then, Eli will be lying to you about something while no one reads his blog. So, go check out our other projects. You can find all of them by heading over to CitationPod.com, where we can also find notes for the show, and connect with us on social media.

And if you have money you want to give us, should, you can make a per episode donation over at patreon.com slash citation pod. And remember, not on the best friend's list if you don't leave us a five star rating. Preferably an iTunes, but Bridge by Aducks and bathroom stalls are also acceptable. ["Fast and Furious"] OK, and then you press this button to punch. No, you punch to punch.

That doesn't even make sense. Come in the game. Everywhere, Eli. Nope. Not on the game. Every where you lie. Nope. Not...

I'm the game.