[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 60 (Thursday, April 29, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4419-S4421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               VIDEO VIOLENCE AND THE CULTURE OF KILLING

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to address the body today on 
another aspect of our culture. I have spoken several times this week 
about different aspects of our culture in areas that I think need 
desperate reform, which certainly has been highlighted by what took 
place in Colorado.
  Today, I want to speak of video games. I have examples to show people 
in this body and I hope around the country of what is being marketed to 
our children, what is being put out there, what they are receiving.
  I have kids who are in this age range. My oldest daughter is 12, my 
son is 11, and my youngest daughter is 9. They have some exposure to 
some of these notions. I rise to address one aspect of our society that 
I think demands attention, particularly in the wake of these tragic 
events.
  Yesterday, I addressed the rise in popularity of music with 
hyperviolent, often misogynistic lyrics. More and more kids are tuning 
in to music which glorifies and glamorizes violence and viciousness. As 
the popularity and profitability of music depicting murder, torture, 
and rape grows, the music industry is making a killing off our kids.
  The problem is not unique to the music industry. It is found in many 
entertainment fields. This coming Tuesday, we will hold a hearing in 
the Commerce Committee to examine marketing violence.
  Today, I will talk about another equally troubling trend in pop 
entertainment, the rising popularity of gory, graphic video games. The 
video game industry has received far less attention than television or 
movies but is among the fastest growing entertainment media in the 
country.
  Last year, the video game industry was worth more than $6 billion. 
Its profitability is climbing steadily and rapidly. The rise in 
profitability is fueled by the rise in popularity of these games. Video 
games are being played more often by more people and particularly more 
kids.
  Even industry executives acknowledge that video games are a growing 
part of the cultural landscape. I want to put this in the context of 
the cultural landscape. One executive of the industry went so far as to 
assert in a recent Wall Street Journal article that:

       Games are a primary vehicle for popular culture.

  These games are.
  As a father with a young son who plays a lot of video games, I can 
tell you, they get to spend more time with him a lot of times than 
anybody else does, as he plays the video games.
  Although many video games are nonviolent, a growing number of 
companies are producing and promoting unimaginable gory, interactive 
video games. They are gory and they are interactive.

[[Page S4420]]

  Consider these few examples. ``Carmaggedon'' is a highly popular 
video game put out by Interplay, which debuted a little over a year 
ago. The purpose of the game is for the player, who controls a race 
car, to mow down as many pedestrians as he possibly can. That is the 
purpose of the game, ``Carmaggedon.'' You are in the car mowing down 
people. Points are awarded for each pedestrian killed, and the more 
gruesome, the better.

  Unlike some games where the player aims to kill villains, such as 
monsters or aliens, the targets in this game are innocent people. The 
game player is no longer cast in the role of vigilante but simply a 
cold-blooded killer.
  The video game ``Quake,'' put out by Midway Games and ID Software, 
the same companies as producers of ``Doom,'' consists of a lone gunman 
confronting a variety of monsters. For every kill, he gets points. As 
he advances in the game, the weapons he uses grow more powerful and 
more gory. He trades in a shotgun for an automatic, and later he gets 
to use a chain saw on his enemies. The more skilled the player, the 
gorier the weapons he gets to use. Bloodshed is his reward. ``Quake'' 
sold more than 1.7 million copies its first year out.
  Here are some other examples of popular games. I want to show you 
some of these ads, because I think they are particularly troubling in 
the advertisement that they use. These are ads that were all taken from 
a recent gaming magazine, again, aimed at a teenage audience. These are 
generally aimed at people under the age of 18. And I can see some of 
our interns and pages up front. I rather imagine they will recognize 
some of this advertising that I am going to show.
  But I want you to look at some. Here is ``Quake.'' Just look how this 
is advertised, if you would, Mr. President.

       Blowing your friends to pieces with a rocket launcher is 
     only the beginning . . . .

  Sound familiar?

       Whether you are in search of the ultimate online frag-fest 
     or looking for the latest Quake news, information player 
     ranks, or skins--the Imagine Games Network has it all.

  It talks about ``[b]lowing your friends to pieces with a rocket 
launcher is only the beginning. . ..'' Unfortunately, does that sound 
like a news headline?
  Let's look at the next one we have up here. And I want to point out, 
before I get to the real graphics of it, it is rated 14. So there is 
actually a rating system on video games. So this one is supposed to be 
purchased by people under the age of 18. It is rated to do so.
  Listen to the title of this one. Look at how this one is advertised 
at the very top. ``Kill Your Friends Guilt Free'' is the advertising. 
``Kill Your Friends Guilt Free.''

       If you consider yourself a fighter kind of surg, Guilty 
     Gear comes highly recommended. No true fan can be--

  This is online here. What else do we have of this one? ``Fighting 
games.'' You can see the rest of it, and the gory details. It is rated 
for teens. This is rated for kids under the age of 18.
  ``Kill Your Friends Guilt Free.'' Does that sound horrible?
  This is an actual game screen, really. This is of a very popular 
game.

       It is built on the revolutionary Quake II engine kingpin. 
     Life of crime. Includes a multiple player gang bang 
     deathmatch for up to 16 thugs.

  I think you can see the blood splattering here at the side in which 
different people are blown away.
  One other point I want to make about this is that we will have people 
testify at our hearing about the desensitization that this does to 
people to allow and even empower them to do things to people that are 
not even imaginable, but after you spend so much time looking at and 
studying the screen and shooting at and blowing up people, the 
desensitization process happens.
  We will have an expert witness testifying that that allows you to do 
things that you would otherwise have an internal mechanism in you 
saying, no, you cannot do that; no, you do not do that. But after hour 
after hour of the blood and guts, it has a desensitization to it.
  These are advertisements.
  Look at this one. Look at this one: ``Deploy. Destroy. Then relax 
over a cold one.''
  ``Deploy. Destroy.'' And ``[t]hen relax over a cold one.''
  On this one you can see the little teen label. This is marketed and 
this is for teens to purchase. They actually are for teens to purchase.
  Can you really sit there and say that the consumption of this on and 
on and on does not have some impact on a young mind, on a young soul?
  ``Deploy. Destroy. Then relax over a cold one.''
  Look at this one. This one goes further than even death.

       Destroying your enemies isn't enough. * * * You must devour 
     their souls [in this one]. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. As a 
     result, stalk the shadows of Nosgoth, hunting your vampire 
     brethren. Impale them with spears, incite them with torches, 
     down them in water. No matter how you must destroy them, you 
     must feed on their souls to sustain your quest, the ruin of 
     your creator, Kain.
       [Y]ou must feed on their souls to sustain your quest, the 
     ruin of your creator, Kain. Dark Gothic story, shift real 
     time between material and special planes. Morph.

  Those are being marketed to our kids.
  The video game industry has not only deemed some of these acceptable 
for teens and parental consent unnecessary, but they market them to 
teens as well.
  This may seem over the top, but they are among the more popular games 
around. One survey of 900 fourth to eighth graders found that almost 
half of the children said their favorite electronic games involved 
violence.
  Columnist John Leo put it this way:

       We are now a society in which the chief form of play for 
     millions of youngsters is making large numbers of people die. 
     Hurting and maiming others is the central fun activity in 
     video games played so addictively by the young. Can it be 
     that all this constant training in make-believe killing has 
     no social effects?

  One would think that some of these games are so violent that they are 
out on the fringe somewhere snubbed by respectable companies, cringing 
somewhere in the electronic redlight district. Not so. They are backed 
and distributed by some of the biggest names in the business.
  GT Interactive distributes ``Quake.'' Sony Corporation is developing 
the ``Doom'' game, which so inspired the two young killers in 
Littleton, into a movie. They are making this into a movie and are in 
the process of negotiating with its own game division's ``Twisted 
Metal'' car game, where the object is to mow down innocent pedestrians.
  In these games, the goal is death. Success is determined by the body 
count. Others' pain is your gain.
  Moreover, almost all of these games are sold in toy stores. Reports 
indicate that they are typically arranged in alphabetical order, not by 
rating or age level.
  It seems pretty apparent to me that toy stores are designed to appeal 
to children. Children are the targeted audience. Parents do not enter 
toy stores to buy toys for themselves. But right there on the shelves 
are products that are supposedly unsuitable for children.
  Defenders of these games say they are mere fantasy and harmless role-
playing. But is it really the best thing for our children to play the 
role of murderous psychopaths? Is it truly harmless to fantasize about 
mass murder? Is it?
  We need to do better than this. I am not saying that companies do not 
have a right to peddle this, but it is not right to make a killing off 
peddling violence to our children.
  Raising children is a precious duty and a precarious task. It 
requires nurturing, sacrifice, and lots of love. But even the most 
devoted parents may find it impossible to shield their child from these 
images and messages that surround them at school, at the mall, at a 
friend's house, through music, TV, movies, and video games. We can no 
more shield our children from a polluted culture than we can shield 
them from polluted air.
  Just as a polluted physical ecosystem is poisoned by several sources, 
so our cultural ecosystem has many points of source pollution. And this 
is one. We all need to do our part in cleaning up our cultural 
ecosystem--or else we shall all be poisoned by it.
  Mr. President, I am willing to share these graphics with other 
offices for them to look at as well. I simply ask them to look and to 
examine and to think as we start to explore more in this area of 
cultural renewal and the need for renewal of what we are actually 
dealing with today--how do we

[[Page S4421]]

move forward to get to a better and a brighter day, so our children can 
live in a culture of life rather than a culture of violence and a 
culture of death? What are they receiving today versus what we want 
them to receive tomorrow? Can we really sit here and say that these 
have no impact on our children? I don't think we can.

  I think we need to examine and push, each of us individually, and 
start down this line of saying, what is it that is being received? What 
sort of cultural pollution is getting to our children, and how do we 
improve that ecosystem? How do we get it renewed?
  We can, and we have to start about this task, not by a series of 
censorship but first by knowledge and, by that, spreading and getting 
away from a culture of doom and death to a culture of life.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative assistant proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
to proceed for up to 12 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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