Former US senator Joe Lieberman, who campaigned against violence in video games, has died at the age of 82. His family said in a statement that he had suffered “complications from a fall.”
Lieberman, who was a Democratic vice presidential candidate alongside Al Gore in 2000, criticized violence and sexuality in video games and the gaming industry's failure to adequately protect children from games. It caused a stir in the early 1990s. Such games can make children violent. In particular, Lieberman, along with Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl, took aim at the realistic sprites and digital violence in the fighting game “Mortal Kombat,” and the sexual content in the FMV game “Night Trap.” Established.
Both titles were released on Sega's systems as part of the company's ongoing “console war” with Nintendo for the Western gaming market. At the time, Nintendo, which was more selective about the third-party games it released on its systems, dominated the market, and Sega began trying to sway developers and publishers by loosening content restrictions. Mortal Kombat also appeared on the Super Nintendo, but it was heavily edited, blood was replaced with sweat, and many of the deaths in the game were more violent in keeping with the company's more family-friendly image. has become lower.
Lieberman and Cole responded to this release by holding Congressional hearings in both 1993 and 1994 to ensure that the video game industry had enough to police it more effectively and implement a better rating system. I applied pressure. Eventually, the industry would form an advocacy group known as the Entertainment Software Association (the same ESA that hosted E3, RIP) and create the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), which would be responsible for age ratings. About the game to this day. I wonder what he would think of the 20-something guy who helped me get around age restrictions by buying me a God of War HD collection while I was waiting outside a GameStop.
Lieberman's influence on video game content has sometimes been ridiculed over the years, including famously adding “friendship” to Mortal Kombat 2 in place of fatalities, which he denounced at a public hearing. This can be mentioned. He continued to lobby against violence in video games, and eventually he criticized Grand Theft Auto in the 2000s, but he was never as vocal against these games as he was in the 90s.
Lieberman eventually retired in 2012. That means he just missed the release of Grand Theft Auto V, which would definitely have given him a second wind. Hey, if he thought the '90s stuff was terrible, he probably hated the nasty stuff that eventually came out of the franchise like Doom and the subsequent Mortal Kombat games.
