Video games have a bad reputation.
Newscaster VO: Concerns today over the violence in a new video game...
"The latest fad, or dangerously addictive?"
"But while the adults were asking questions,
America's kids went on their daily shooting spree."
They’ve been around since the sixties, and still get talked about like the weird cousin
at a family reunion.
And we have pinball, of all things, to thank for that.
In 1942 public opinion against pinball was so bad that mayor Fiorello LaGuardia
ONE: Banned the machines in New York City and
TWO: BULLIED THEM? for a newspaper photo op
The NYPD seized thousands of the machines in raids.
They were smashed and dumped into Long Island Sound.
They turned the balls into bullets for the War Effort.
That is not a joke.
Similar bans were passed in Chicago and LA.
But LaGuardia wasn’t a super uncool dude.
He was actually pretty progressive, in his time and … even in ours.
In 1926, he famously protested Prohibition by drinking beer in the House of Representatives.
In 1944, he took a radical pro-marijuana stance after commissioning a study which showed
that weed doesn’t turn people into criminals — well, unless it’s criminalized.
But pinball?
That was too much.
Coin-operated pinball machines were invented in 1931.
The companies that produced them made other coin-operated machines, too.
Things like jukeboxes, cigarette dispensers … and slot machines.
So right from the start, there was an association between pinball and gambling.
Some pinball machines gave cash prizes.
And this was the pre-flipper era, so say goodbye to trick shots or… aiming.
At all.
What’s a pinball machine without flippers?
Well… you just sort of launch the ball and pray.
Players would tilt the machines with their bodies.
It’s hard to call that a game of skill.
But what’s wrong with gambling!?
Well, aside from being illegal or heavily restricted, boy, was it frowned upon.
More than anything, gambling was associated with organized crime.
Among other things, the mob owned casinos, and also distributed coin-operated machines
like pinball.
LaGuardia had both Italian and Jewish ancestry, and he was very resentful of those groups
being stereotyped as gangsters.
So he set out to crush organized crime.
He arrested a lot of gangsters, he shut down brothels, and he got rid of slot machines
— and pinball.
So that was the legal justification for the pinball ban.
The moral justification: was the children.
Here’s pinball historian Seth Porges, speaking on the Between Worlds podcast:
Pinball machines... it was viewed as this gateway gambling device
that would lure kids in, sucker them in, and they would be tainted and ruined
and forever in the grasp of this moral hazard.
This all sounds really familiar.
NEWSCASTER: Are children gambling when they play video games?
Do you reckon he is addicted? YES! Definitely.
The closest disorder we think video games are like is gambling.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Pinball manufacturers changed a few things to convince people that pinball wasn’t gambling.
Flippers were introduced in 1947, giving more credence to the idea that this was a game
of skill and not chance.
Coin payouts had already been ditched.
But pinball still had this bad rep when New York’s city council overturned the ban in
1976.
At that time, pinball manufacturers like Midway were diversifying.
They were making arcade cabinets and home consoles.
We love the arcade!
What a fun place.
FOR CRIME TO HAPPEN.
Arcades carried an aura of naughtiness thanks to, yes, pinball.
During pinball’s darkest days you could usually find the machines in back rooms of
sex shops or dive bars.
Not exactly child-friendly fun zones.
Kids hung out at arcades without adult supervision, which basically made them a black hole of
suburban parental anxiety.
Maybe video games could have overcome that association but… they didn’t.
In 1976, Death Race became one of the first video games to cause a scandal.
It looked like this:
*KILL BILL SIRENS*
Okay, I know that’s so… so silly.
But remember, pinball was supposed to turn kids into stabby little thieves hungering
for lunch money for one more game.
With this logic, of course Death Race was considered “graphic violence.”
In fact, all the pinball anxiety sort of transferred over to video games, as the newest media on
the block.
And games never shook the association with kids’ entertainment.
That’s caused problems even when adult games have tried to tell adult stories...
And it’s certainly caused problems when games came full circle, and did start to incorporate
techniques that mimic gambling!
So, where does that leave us?
Video games still have a bad rep today for the same reason pinball did in 1942.
They’re a convenient shorthand for moral corruption.
Video game history is a litany of scandals about sex, violence, brain-washing, you name
it.
Some of that’s earned, and some of it’s totally baseless.
But it’s part of a conversation that started wayyyyyyy before video games came on the scene.
A conversation about pinball, and the children.