The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had hoped to hear testimony on Wednesday from the heads of gaming forums about “the radicalization of online forum users, including instances of open incitement to commit politically motivated acts.” The committee scheduled the hearings after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which prompted a renewal of the half-century debate over the role of video games in acts of violence.
After the assassination, reports emerged that bullet casings recovered from the shooting contained references to internet memes and the video game Helldivers 2. That prompted some observers, like journalist Geraldo Rivera, to blame the suspect’s horrendous act on violent video games. A relative of the suspect told Fox News that he developed a powerful hate of conservatives and Christians thanks to video games. The suspect and a roommate were “big gamers, and obviously they have that group that influences them as well as others.”
The government shutdown at the very least postponed the hearings. But such claims aren’t new. Since video games' first appearances in bars and arcades in the 1970s, some public figures have argued that they represent a dangerous, amorphous threat to our nation’s youths. Initially, critics derided arcades as dangerous environments, a cesspool of an expanding urban America where the mafia and gangs conned attendees into wasting their hard-earned money on pinball and pleasure machines. As video games moved into homes and mass shootings became a troubling recurring feature in American life, critics pointed at violent video games as the culprit. As in prior moral panics, the technology proved to be an easy and tangible scapegoat, which enabled Americans to avoid grappling with the complex social factors—like deindustrialization, urban decay, and disillusioned suburban children—that led to a combustible situation ripe for tragedy.
Video games first emerged in the 1970s as an embodiment of Cold War-era computer science achievements. Early games like Computer Quiz and Spacewar! highlighted these links and portrayed games as a healthy educational opportunity. Things began to shift in 1972, when Nolan Bushnell and the founders of the Atari gaming system combined their knowledge of amusement parks and pinball to produce Pong, a game played on giant cabinet machines in bars and popular hangouts in California. This fed into local fears that video games were the newest attraction to lure youths into a dangerous environment away from family and friends, thereby leading vulnerable members of society into crime and delinquency.