Watchdog Group Sounds Warning on Video Games

Amid the cheerful tinkling of holiday bells, another set of sounds can be heard: the thip-thip-thip of electronic gunshots, the grunts and groans of hand-to-hand video combat, the primal screams of cyber opponents being ripped to shreds.

According to the National Institute on Media and the Family, these are the sounds of video and computer games that are hooking kids across the country on murder and mayhem.

The Minneapolis-based media watchdog group, joined Thursday by two U.S. senators who have played a prominent role in past efforts to reduce the violent content of video games, urged parents to exercise caution before buying video and computer games as holiday gifts. Many popular games, they warned, are “more violent, more antisocial and generally more disgusting than ever.”

In one game, “Primal Rage,” produced by Time Warner Inc. and marketed to teenagers, a combatant celebrates a kill by urinating on his opponent. In the United States, 1996 sales of video games alone are expected to reach $4.1 billion.

Other video and computer games deliberately glorify violence in their marketing appeals: Fighting Vipers, a Sega Saturn game also marketed to teens, promises video players a chance to “learn the true meaning of rage” by manipulating the game’s “vicious arcade streetfighters.”

“Every holiday season, we see lists of toys that can harm children physically,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). “We’re here to talk about toys that can harm our kids’ minds. . . . The gift these products give is to communicate the unadulterated message that killing is cool and viciousness is a virtue.”

Lieberman and Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.), another participant in Thursday’s press conference, have been active in pressing media companies to offer more family-friendly products and to improve the information they provide to parents. They were instrumental in convincing the video and computer-game industry to adopt a system of voluntary ratings in 1994, after threatening to introduce legislation that would make such a system mandatory.

David Walsh, executive director and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, urged parents, retailers and rental outlets to learn more about the voluntary ratings that manufacturers are displaying on games. Walsh, a psychologist who wrote the American Medical Assn.’s “Physician’s Guide to Media Violence” also warned that today’s video and computer games are faster and more realistic than those of even a year ago. As a result, he suggested, young consumers could be drawn into their violence more dramatically.

In a nationwide survey of video arcades and stores, the institute found that while virtually all manufacturers are participating in the industry’s voluntary rating program and labeling their products, the rating system--which has been in effect since 1994--is poorly understood and scantily enforced by retailers and rental outlets. While 29% of rental stores visited by the group observed a policy of denying rental of video games to those younger than the prescribed age range, the remainder had no such limits.

The makers of computer games have been less swift than video-game manufacturers to participate in a rating system. The institute’s survey found that only 50% to 60% of the software games now for sale carried ratings.

The National Institute on Media and the Family was founded in September, with the release of the AMA guide. It is one of a small number of groups working in the area that are not associated with broader-based conservative causes.