On Thursday, President Trump hosted a roundtable meeting at the White House with representatives from the video game industry to talk about violence in video games. But the names of the other invited guests made it clear that the event wasn’t intended to be a conversation — it was an ambush.
Trump’s tough talk on violent video games might run into a free speech wall
Allies of the president want a war on “murder simulators.” But the video game industry is stronger than he thinks.
One attendee, Dave Grossman, has described first-person shooter games as “murder simulators” and wrote in 2016 that experts who denied ties between video games and violence in youth will “be viewed as the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers.” Another, Brent Bozell, wondered in 2011, “Which sick CEO sits in a boardroom and says ‘yes’ to ultraviolent scenes” in video games?
As the White House attempts to shift attention away from calls for gun control after the Parkland shooting, the Trump administration has turned to an obvious scapegoat: violent video games. Bozell told the Washington Post he said to Trump at the meeting that violent games “needed to be given the same kind of thought as tobacco and liquor.”
But gaming executives left the Oval Office quietly, a reminder of what history has shown already — they are no easier to target than the gun industry or any other powerful lobby in Washington.
“Can anyone deny that we’ve raised the most vicious generation of killers the world has ever seen?”
Thursday’s meeting on violence in video games was so hastily planned that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the video game industry’s trade association, wasn’t invited until this past Monday, and a list of expected attendees was released only on Thursday morning. After initially inviting reporters to observe, the White House suddenly closed the meeting to the press just hours before it began.
The meeting did include some voices from the video game industry. In attendance was Robert Altman, the CEO of ZeniMax Media, publishers of the Fallout, Doom, and Wolfenstein game franchises. (Robert Trump, the president’s younger brother, serves on the board of directors of ZeniMax and was originally expected to attend Thursday’s meeting.) He was joined by Michael Gallagher, head of the ESA, as well as Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, which owns Rockstar Games, makers of the Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto game franchises.
In addition, the meeting included Patricia Vance, president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board — a ratings organization created after a series of congressional hearings on explicit content in video games was held in 1992 and 1993, followed by a threat by the federal government to regulate the industry if game makers didn’t do so first.
(In an indication of how hastily Thursday’s meeting was planned, Ms. Vance was originally referred to as “Mr. Pat Vance” in the initial White House guest list. )
In attendance at the meeting were Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), whose district encompasses the site of the Parkland shooting (he is also a noted Minecraft booster), and Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), who hasn’t voiced any public views on video games. But some of the video game industry’s most vigorous opponents were also present — and more often than not, their views have coincided with those of the president.
Among them was Dave Grossman. He’s best known for teaching a “killology” class to police officers across the country (in one such class recorded for the documentary Do Not Resist, he told police trainees that they would enjoy the best sex of their lives after they killed someone, a “perk” they should “relax and enjoy”). In 2016, Grossman wrote a book titled Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing, in which he argues that video games were creating a generation of violent murderers who could only be stopped with more guns.
During a 2017 seminar held at the National Rifle Association’s annual conference, Grossman told the crowd, “Can anyone deny that we’ve raised the most vicious generation of killers the world has ever seen? They’ve given us crimes that children have never dreamed of. They’ll give us crimes as adults in our darkest nightmares we never imagined.” On the subject of mass shootings, he added, “The one factor the killers have in common: every one of them dropped out of life and immersed themselves in the sickest movies and the sickest video games. The guns have always been there. The sick movies and the sick video games are creating sick, sick kids.”
Brent Bozell founded both the Media Research Center and the Parents Television Council, conservative advocacy groups represented at Thursday’s meeting. For decades, he has railed against violent video games, believing wholeheartedly (and with little evidence) that video games cause violence in real life. In 2011, he decried the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of video game manufacturers in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, writing, “Yes, freedom of speech means allowing the freedom of repulsive ideas. But that doesn’t have to extend to shopping your repulsive ideas to grade schoolers.”
And in 2013, he wrote that the Call of Duty video game series was a signpost of “techno mayhem,” adding that the game would eventually lead to someone being “desensitized and numb enough to endlessly stab some girl in the face.” (Interestingly, in April 2016, Bozell wrote an open letter, published in Breitbart, asking conservatives like Sarah Palin to rescind their endorsements of Donald Trump because he was too liberal.)
And Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) has also spoken out about her concerns regarding video games — particularly in light of calls for gun control legislation, which she described in a Politico op-ed written after the Sandy Hook shootings as a “common and simplistic response.” In that piece, she said: “We must have a meaningful conversation about mental health issues and other possible cultural and societal contributors to violent behavior, such as violence in video games.”
Video games as an easy culprit — but a tough opponent
That’s the view largely echoed by the president, a longtime video game skeptic who is more interested in targeting violent video games than gun control legislation that, after some initial openness, has largely been dismissed by his own party.
In fact, Trump launched the meeting by showing these clips from video games, including Fallout and Wolfenstein:
Instead, both the president and critics of violent video games at Thursday’s meeting argued that more restrictions that would prevent children from seeing or playing violent games are necessary.
Sen. Rubio seemed to agree, saying afterward in a statement, “While to date there is no evidence linking violent video games to the tragedy in Parkland, Florida ... I have an interest in making sure parents are aware of the resources available to them to monitor and control the entertainment their children are exposed to.”
The ESA, for its part, said in a statement that it “welcomed the opportunity” to meet with Trump and others today and that it “appreciate[d] the President’s receptive and comprehensive approach.
“We discussed the numerous scientific studies establishing that there is no connection between video games and violence, First Amendment protection of video games, and how our industry’s rating system effectively helps parents make informed entertainment choices.”
ZeniMax Media and Rockstar Games did not respond to requests for comment.
And historically, the law has been on their side. While Thursday’s meeting focused on potential age restrictions on violent video games, the ESRB created a ratings system in 1994 indicating what questionable content a game (including violence and sexual material) may contain. And the Supreme Court has already ruled that such restrictions — when enforced by the state — are unconstitutional.
In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the case Bozell was writing about back in 2011, the Court ruled 7-2 that a California law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional. In his opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the evidence provided to the Court showing that violent video games had an effect on aggression in children also showed that similar effects had been found in children shown Bugs Bunny cartoons.
“California’s effort to regulate violent video games is the latest episode in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors,” he wrote, but “even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply.”
According to the ESA, 65 percent of American households contain someone who plays video games regularly, making the video game industry one of the country’s most powerful (and pervasive.) So while Thursday’s meeting may have been tough for those from the industry in attendance, there’s a good chance that any potential regulation would be relatively weak to avoid challenges in court.
So after a whirlwind week in the White House on the subject of video game violence, virtually nothing has changed — or is likely to.
