Historical Text

Death Race - 1976

This video game was considered to be one of the first video game controversies that was criticised for the violence that it had included. In this case the complaint that many of the broadcasters had was the violent content. Although this game is an adaptation of the live action movie Death Race 2000, this was released a year later and the complaint talked about the roadkill that was featured in the game. This was considered very controversial at the time because although the arcade game had called the people you road kill as gremlins, at the time it was hard to distinguish whether gremlins were gremlins or whether they were human. Because of this outrage, it would follow on that many other video games later on would have a negative association with the news since they would always highlight them in a negative atmosphere.

It can be argued that Death Race had reflected the zeitgeist with the justification of killing creatures rather than humans. Hence why the public outcry when Death Race had featured human like characters that were meant to be killed. This would be because at the time war games weren't so popular until the late 1990s in which the franchise Medal of Honour would be seen as one of the first main WW2 shooters. The shift from sci-fi with old video games like Doom and Duke Nukem had shown that violence would still exist at the time but killing humans would be considered controversial due to its sense of gruesome content that may influence young players into becoming more violent.  

However in contrast to Death Race, the current text that I'm studying is Battlefield Hardline. Although there would be negative associations because of the genre, it could be argued that players have later become more desensitised to violent content. This is because of video games like Grand Theft Auto which would embrace the violent lifestyle that would involve them in partaking in violent missions. Although in 1976 when road kill was considered to be unacceptable and very gruesome, games like the Battlefield franchise would reward players with a 20 point bonus for "Roadkill". This could also contrast the moral panics that were present in the 1970s. However moral panics in the modern day would be considered to be more controversial in the sense that one of the biggest controversies had come from the FPS Modern Warfare 2 which had featured the mission "No Russian" Because of it's theme of espionage and simulating a terror attack, this moral panic may have a greater impact against video games and can also show how the modern day players are very desensitised in comparison to the past.