Phase 4: "Well Fine, Assholes."

At this point in the cycle, things look pretty dire. With the enemies of media unified against them, industries are faced with two options: regulate themselves or submit to the mercy of the government.

The film industry of the early 1930s did not have the First Amendment or public sentiment in their corner; people saw Hollywood as an immoral and corrupt place that produced immoral and corrupting films. Will H. Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (later the Motion Picture Association of America), had developed loose guidelines for film content in 1927, but he lacked the authority to enforce it so it went largely ignored. In 1930, however, with the pressure on, the MPPDA instituted a formal Production Code, based on the teachings of Catholicism, to delineate which content was and was not appropriate for American films.

Studios still ignored the new rules until Hays created the Product Code Administration, an authoritative body with the power to authorize or deny films based on their adherence to the Code. No film could be released unless it had received a certificate of approval from the PCA. Eventually Hollywood got on board the Code Train, and the Production Code determined content for over thirty years.

On the heels of the devastating Senate hearing on comic books, William Gaines went to other comic book publishers and told them that they had to work together if they were going to keep their industry alive. The others agreed, and they created the Comics Magazine Association of America, with its own code and enforcement agency, the Comics Code Authority.

Because a restrictive code was not at all what Gaines had suggested -- and because stipulations like the ones forbidding the use of words like "horror" and "terror" in comic titles obviously targeted EC -- he initially refused to join the CMAA. However, faced with an inability to sell unapproved comics to wholesalers, he had to give in. EC transitioned to medical dramas and other, more experimental titles, but its business in comics had effectively ended.

In a rare sign that society might have actually learned something from history, video games skipped the enactment of a code entirely. Instead, individual developers created ratings systems for their own games. In late 1994, however, the industry founded the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) to provide ratings for all games released in the United States. The ESRB served a similar purpose to the Code Authorities in film and comic books, but without all the crazy religious people.

Industry use of the ESRB is ostensibly voluntary, but hardware manufacturers and many retailers will not license or sell unrated games.

Phase 5: "Okay...I Guess You're Cool."

The Production Code for movies stayed in place until the late '60s, although for years filmmakers and studios persistently tried to find ways around it. Eventually, the industry at large simply started ignoring the MPAA and the Code, as MGM did with Blow-Up (1966):

MPAA: You can't release that. It has boobies.

MGM: Well, we're going to.

MPAA: Well, you can't.

MGM: Well, we just did.

MPAA: Well...you shouldn't have.

In 1968, with so many refusing to respect its authoritah, the MPAA finally abandoned the Code in favor of a ratings system. Originally there were only four ratings: G (for "General"), M (for "Mature"), R (for "Restricted"), and X (for "X"), but the "M" rating became "GP," and then "PG," and then in 1984 the MPAA threw an intermediary "PG-13" in there because that bit with the heart in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was probably a bit much. In 1990, "X" became "NC-17," and the ratings have remained the same ever since.

The creation of a ratings system more or less stabilized the industry, and courts have consistently rejected the censorship and banning of films at the state and local level (in 1952 the Supreme Court overturned the decision that denied Hollywood First Amendment rights). While controversies still come up from time to time, film as a medium has achieved acceptance and legal protection.

The Comic Book Code is technically still in place, but by the '70s it became fairly optional -- if a book didn't receive CCA approval, the publishers just left the Code Seal off of the cover and sold it anyway. The Code itself has been modified to allow more mature themes and content, but since most comic dealers will sell books whether they've been approved or not, it has become meaningless.

The video game industry, without all that pesky Code approval to worry about, has spent the time since the inception of the ESRB refining the ratings system, and contrary to the title of this section, games have not yet reached the level of public acceptance (or, at least, permissibility) of film or comic books.

This is where we are now: The Supreme Court is going to rule on whether games can be selectively banned, despite the fact that history has proven that every attempt to ban or censor entire media has either failed outright or been overturned later. It will be no different with video games. As understanding, acceptance, and truth spread, people will run out of reasons to blame games for the things that were wrong with society before we even had video games.

Video games will win this debate because film won this debate; comic books won this debate; and music, television, and books won this debate. And in fifty years when people are freaking out about how much time the kids are spending in those damn holodecks, holodecks will win this debate. It is just a matter of time.

That's not to say it will happen automatically, or even quickly, but we can speed things up by getting involved, talking to people, and most importantly by not allowing the enemies of fun to put us on the defensive. They are wrong, they are misinformed, and they will lose this argument, because we have more than just reason and the truth on our side.

We also have history.