Content Rated By: An Oral History of the ESRB excerpt — “Doom to the Power of Ten”

GamesBeat is publishing this exclusive excerpt of Content Rated By: An Oral History of the ESRB.

To help commemorate its 25th anniversary, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) reached out to Blake J. Harris, the best-selling author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation and The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality to document the behind-the-scenes origins of the rating system for video games and how it has evolved over the past quarter century. Content Rated By: An Oral History of the ESRB provides eyewitness accounts from the key people involved in the ESRB’s creation and its development into one of the country’s finest examples of industry self-regulation. 

Prologue

On April 2, 1994, Howard Lincoln – who, just months earlier, had been made the Chairman of Nintendo of America – published a poem in a press release aimed at his chief competitor, Tom Kalinske, the President of Sega of America:

Reading these words, Tom Kalinske was not amused. But truth be told – at this critical moment in time – poetic barbs were the least of Kalinske’s worries.

Cut to: One Year Earlier

Above: Nintendo’s Howard Lincoln sent his rivals at Sega a poem in 1994

PART 1: Doom to the Power of Ten

ARTHUR POBER (CARU): Back in 1993, I was the Director of the Children’s Advertising Review Unit [aka CARU, part of the Better Business Bureau and the self-regulatory arm of the children’s advertising industry]. And at CARU, both Sega and Nintendo sat on my boards. So, you know, over time I got to develop a pretty strong relationship with Tom Kalinske and Howard Lincoln. And because I also had a strong relationship with the FCC and other folks in Washington, I kept hearing whispers that the government was taking a closer look at the video game industry. So, every few months, I would basically say to Tom and Howard, “Look, your industry is under scrutiny right now. They’re going to go after you guys; so, if you’re looking to avoid censorship, you better get organized — you better come up with a rating system” . But did they listen to me? And their answer to me was basically, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re never going to band together because it’s a competitive and very adversarial marketplace.”

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): It was extremely competitive. We had the Genesis — our 16-bit system that we thought was way better than their SNES—and we were giving Nintendo a run for their money. Just two years earlier, Nintendo controlled over 90% of the market and by this point — after the release of Sonic 2 — we had just about pulled even with them.

ARTHUR POBER (CARU): Eventually, Tom Kalinske calls me and says, “You know, I think you’re right about a rating system. It’s the right thing to do. So, Sega is going to take the leadership on this. Would you like to be a part of this group?” Absolutely! I told Tom that this sounded great and that I was glad he was being so responsible about it. Then I called up Howard and Howard was very adamant that Nintendo was not going to be part of any group that was created by Sega . Which, you know, may sound a little petty, but you could understand where he was coming from. Because — again — the industry was extremely competitive: everyone was at each other’s throats. It was like Doom… only to the 10th power, at that point.

Above: Doom was the most controversial game of the early 1990s…until Mortal Kombat

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): So we had actually come up with our own rating system at Sega.

• GA: General Audiences (Appropriate for all audiences) 
• MA-13: Mature Audiences (Parental Discretion Advised)
• MA-17: Mature Audiences (Not appropriate for minors)

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): For our Sega rating system, we hired independent educators, psychologists, child development experts and sociologists; and [this Council] was run by Dr. Arthur Prober, a noted educator in New York City.

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): We tried to get the Motion Picture Association of America on board, but Jack Valenti [president of the MPAA] wouldn’t agree to lend his system to us and so we had to develop our own. But I think it was a really good first step and we immediately started rating all our games so that it was very clear to the consumer which were for children and which were for adults.

Above: Sega’s pre-ESRB age ratings.

RILEY RUSSELL (SEGA): We used “G.” There was “MA.” I’m not sure what else we used, but it was a lot like the MPAA. Gail Markels, who ultimately became the lawyer for ESA, was at MPAA. She called me and threatened me that they were going to sue us for the use of the marks. I was a young lawyer — probably more cocky than I should have been—and I said, “You can’t trademark a ‘G’.”

GAIL MARKELS (MPAA): As head of state government affairs at MPAA, we saw an explosion of bills attempting to regulate video game content with no one stepping up to oppose the bills. This was a huge concern because if efforts to ban or regulate video games were successful, movies could be next. The MPAA stepped up to kill the bills to protect our member’s interests.

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): Once we had our rating system in place, we felt we would be safe. And with Mortal Kombat coming (as well as a couple of more mature titles on Sega CD), we felt that we were doing the responsible thing. So we were feeling confident. And then we started feeling even more confident after we learned about what Nintendo had asked Acclaim to do.

HOWARD LINCOLN (NINTENDO): Mr. Arakawa [Nintendo of America’s President at the time] and I were well aware of the Mortal Kombat coin-op game and we knew it was a very violent game with a lot of blood. We had some pretty strict standards, and we had been making sure that both Nintendo first-party and third-party games adhered to those standards…in part because we were selling games to kids and we just didn’t like the violence. So we had long discussions at Nintendo about whether we should allow the blood in and I ultimately decided that we would not. And I told them [Acclaim] that we have to take it out and, I think, we changed it to green blood.

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): The Nintendo version showed green gore. Well, what human being has green gore in ‘em? We released in its original form — in other words: you can see the blood in it — but we also clearly rated the game. We made it clear that this game was for “Mature” audiences. And as a result, we stayed true to our audience of teenagers, college kids and young adults. At that time, forty percent of our players were over the age of eighteen so clearly we needed to provide games for the over-eighteen audience. And I thought reaching that audience was incredibly important — not just for our business at Sega, but because I felt that if the industry was ever going to be considered more than just a child’s toy, we had to have games appealing to teens and adults.

DONA FRASER (ACCLAIM): The game industry was changing; it was getting older.

DONA FRASER (ACCLAIM): The first game I ever worked on was Mortal Kombat. And, yeah, sure, we were aware of what people were saying about the game. But the counterargument we used to make amongst ourselves — as staff — was that we all grew up watching Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner and we’re fine ! Nevertheless, we ended up changing the color of the blood to green for certain territories. Like in Germany we couldn’t show red blood. And then, of course, there was Nintendo…

HOWARD LINCOLN (NINTENDO): We got our clocks cleaned! We absolutely got wacked on that.

TOM KALINSKE (SEGA): I think we outsold the Nintendo version five-to-one.

DON JAMES (NINTENDO): Nobody bought our game! They all bought Sega’s game because everybody wanted red blood. That was sort of a big learning experience for us.

HOWARD LINCOLN (NINTENDO): Sega introduced Night Trap and the instant I saw what that game was about I knew we were going to be in front of Congress. It was obvious. I remember telling [Nintendo of America’s VP of Marketing and Communications] Perrin Kaplan, “Mark my words, this game will cause such a reaction by parents, by the media, it’s going to get to Congress and there will be a hearing.”

GAIL MARKELS (MPAA): Before the MPAA, I was a prosecutor. As a former Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn NY, I knew that factors such as poverty, demographics, dysfunctional families and drugs impacted the crime rate and that movies, music or video games were not factors. Facts matter. As video games became more popular, the crime rate plummeted.

Above: Sen. Joe Lieberman, who led investigations into violent video games

The Washington Post

JACK HEISTAND (EA): I remember watching this all play out on C-SPAN: representatives from Nintendo and Sega testifying in a Judiciary Subcommittee chaired by [Senator] Joseph Lieberman. And what was taking place was not good. It was basically just an hour-long, back-and-forth, finger-pointing session over which company’s games were worse. Like I said: not good. And I don’t just mean for Nintendo and Sega, I mean for all of us. This had the potential to be incredibly harmful to everyone in the industry.

JACK HEISTAND (EA): Well, I had an idea…

The next seven parts of Content Rated By: An Oral History of the ESRB include the development of the ratings and enforcement system, how ratings are assigned, garnering support from video game retailers and how the ESRB created a scalable global rating solution to meet the needs of mobile app and other digital game storefronts. Part 2 will be published next week in the ESRB blog.   

Blake J. Harris is the best-selling author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation, which is currently being adapted for television by Legendary Entertainment.