1994: A coalition of game publishers presents Congress with its proposal for the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, a voluntary industry-wide standard for age ratings on videogames.

A joint congressional hearing in December 1993 took up the growing concern that the game industry was irresponsibly marketing violent videogames to minors. Spearheaded by Sens. Joe Lieberman (then D-Connecticut, now an independent) and Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), the hearings were largely a response to the popularity of the fighting game Mortal Kombat.

The game’s use of digitally captured actors and bloody, violent “fatality” moves caused a stir when it was released in arcades in 1992; Home versions of the game appeared on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis 16-bit game machines in September 1993.

Mortal Kombat was the hottest game property of the moment, so both hardware makers wanted it on their consoles. But each responded differently to the game’s exceptional violence. Nintendo censored the game, removing the blood and fatalities.

Sega left the gore in, but established its own internal system of game ratings, based on the motion picture industry’s schema. Sega put an “MA-13? symbol on the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat, indicating that it was appropriate for “mature audiences” over 13 years old.

Congress, however, was satisfied neither with Nintendo’s explanation that all of its games were appropriate for all audiences, nor with Sega’s that it had the matter well in hand with its self-applied ratings.

So Congress convened the joint hearings, asking videogame publishers whether they were in fact peddling inappropriate material to children. The usual suspects were paraded forth: A representative of the National Coalition on Television Violence said that violent games were “training early killers,” and a university professor said that Nintendo games were not just violent, but “sexist and racist,” too.

But these attacks from outside were, perhaps, not nearly as damaging to the videogame makers as were their attacks on each other. Rather than presenting a united front, Nintendo and Sega dragged the console wars into Congress.

Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln and Sega vice president Bill White took potshots at each other during the hearing. Lincoln said that the Sega CD game Night Trap — another photorealistic, occasionally violent game that the company had rated MA-17 — “simply has no place in our society” and testified that “small children” had bought it.

Meanwhile, White’s position was that Sega was more responsible than Nintendo, because his company had a rating system in place. He played tapes for the congressmen of violent games on Nintendo systems that carried no ratings, even going so far as to bring a Nintendo Super Scope gun controller with him to the hearing in an attempt to embarrass Nintendo. Lieberman would later express his shock that the two executives went after each other with such ferocity.

Lieberman on Feb. 3, 1994, introduced the Video Game Ratings Act of 1994, which sought to establish a federal commission to create an industry-wide standard for game ratings. It was understood that the law would not be passed if the game industry came up with an entirely voluntary system on its own, and indeed the bill ended up dying in committee.

Following the acrimony of the hearings, and under threat of official regulation, the major gamemakers of the day convened to put aside their differences and hash out a solution. Many of them were already members of the general-purpose Software Publishers Association, but Nintendo, Sega, Electronic Arts and Acclaim, among others, decided to create a videogame-specific umbrella organization that would represent the industry’s interests in Washington. They called it the Interactive Digital Software Association — which later became the Entertainment Software Association.

Sega wanted the entire industry to adopt its own rating system, but Nintendo reportedly bristled at the idea that it would feature its rival’s creation on its products. Eventually, a compromise was hammered out: IDSA would administer the independent Entertainment Software Ratings Board. Representatives of IDSA went back to Congress on July 29 to propose the system.

After all was said and done, the ESRB’s proposed ratings weren’t that different from what Sega was already placing on the covers of its games. The initial ratings were:

• Early Childhood (eC): Suitable for ages 3 and over, usually educational in nature.
• Kids to Adults (K-A): May be unsuitable for players under 6.
• Teen (T): May be unsuitable for players under 13.
• Mature (M): May be unsuitable for players under 17.
• Adults Only (AO): Content considered unsuitable for minors.

The ESRB plan didn’t just ape movie ratings. After consulting with parents and educators, the board added more-detailed content descriptors. On the back of the game box, parents could see why the game received the rating it did, with brief phrases like “Blood and Gore” or “Tobacco Reference.”

Congress was satisfied with the proposal, and the ESRB began rating games on Sept. 1, 1994. The board hired part-time raters who would watch videotapes of each game’s potentially most controversial moments, and assign ratings accordingly. Gamemakers paid a fee to have each product rated. While it was a nominally voluntary system, ratings were required by the hardware makers and by many retailers.

Later, the ESRB refined the system, changing the K-A rating to “Everyone” (E) and adding an E10+ rating. Only a small handful of games with the “Adults Only” rating have ever been published: Since much of the original intent of the rating was to delineate violent games from pornographic ones, game hardware makers had blanket policies that prevented any game with an AO rating from being released on their platforms.

Of course, the controversy over violent games and ratings continues today. Although the ESRB is considered one of the most effective and informative ratings systems, some advocates have sought governmental oversight over the industry, as in the proposed Truth in Video Game Rating Act of 2007.

Sources: The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent, The New York Times, Wikipedia

Image: Screenshot from Mortal Kombat.