During the 1980s, the newly established industry and youth subculture
associated with role-playing games came under sustained attack
from schools, churches, parents and governments, instigated by
the Christian Right via organizations such as B.A.D.D. (Bothered
About Dungeons and Dragons). While both the organization
B.A.D.D and its claims linking Role-playing games to youth suicide,
drug use and Satanism eventually were discredited, the impact
of these accusations lingers on to the present. This article
examines the impact of the role-playing game “moral panic” on
the role-playing game community and investigates the responses
and coping mechanisms utilised by those directly targeted and
harassed by churches, the police, schools and governments during
the height of the “moral panic” in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. The article also investigates the
effect that the shared experience of being targeted by a “moral
panic” had on the formation of a role-playing counter culture
and community.
What are Role-playing Games?
[1] Role-playing games (RPGs) are a form of interactive novel
in which the protagonists create and control the actions of a
cast of characters. The characters operate in a virtual
world controlled by a referee/narrator figure called the GM or
games master, depending on which variant of game is being played.
(Variants include Dungeon Master, referee, narrator, storyteller,
etc.). The GM creates a virtual world and the players make decisions,
based on their character’s interaction with that world
and moderated by a combination of statistics, probability and
characterisation. The worlds themselves vary from the traditional
Dungeons and Dragons adaptation of Tolkeinesque fantasy realms
to Cyberpunk, Gothic Horror, Espionage, Space Opera and Westerns
and include some settings that are so surreal as to defy simple
definitions. Most forms of literature have an expression
as an RPG, some much more popular and mainstream than others.
[2] While overall numbers of gamers are difficult to estimate,
a 1990 survey conducted in the United States, Australia and Canada
estimated that at least 7.5 million people engaged in RPGs at
least once a month in those three countries. A 2000 survey
by the RPG company “Wizards of the Coast” estimated
that approximately 5.5 million Americans play RPGs regularly. Additionally,
there are numerous RPG conventions and gatherings held throughout
Anglophone nations. There are also sizeable RPG communities
in France, Germany, Spain and Italy, among others.
Theoretical Interpretations of RPGs in Youth
Culture
[3] What was particularly new about RPGs when they emerged in
the late 1970s, and that certainly contributed to their popularity,
was their potential for escapism. At their most enthralling,
RPGs require a multi-layered structure of close social interaction
and a mechanism for exploring shared ideals, values, symbols
and cultural forms (particularly those derived from literature).
They require a unique format that cannot be easily replicated
in other games or social activities. RPGs create a flexible
mechanism for exploring virtual worlds, identities, social structures,
symbols and cultural norms within a social environment that is
detached and segregated from daily life. This potential
for reflexivity, identity formation, close knit networks of social
interaction and escapism was certainly a crucial ingredient in
the popularity of RPGs and their later equivalents in computer
games, Multi User Dungeons and online gaming.
[4] According to research by Sherry Turkle, RPGs have a greater
potential for escapism than many other pastimes because they
not only allow the players to interact with their surroundings
but give them a venue in which they can create their own socio-cultural
identity. In RPGs, the role the player adopts is a tool
designed to further separate the context of the game from reality. The
player is not so much role-playing as persona-playing. By
using fantastic and alien characters, players can create sufficient
psychological distance to believe they have transcended the constraining
features of their own socio-cultural identity. A character
has a name, physical attributes and personality distinct from
the player but that the player adopts for the game. This
allows both an escape from the perceived cultural and social
barriers experienced in daily life while serving as a metaphor
for exploring these issues in a virtual context. The role
of RPGs in youth culture can be evaluated as an example of psychoanalyst
Erik Erikson’s psychosocial moratorium in which a “time
out” is placed on the consequences of actions and identity
formation. This provides people with an opportunity to
expose themselves to a variety of experiences without concern
for the result of those actions and to experiment with alternate
forms of identity. Doing so allows the individual to develop
a better-informed core self-identity and set of social values
which, according to Erikson, is a significant task in adolescent
psychological development.
[5] Unlike MUDs and online computer games, RPGs
require a close level of face-to-face social interaction. They
are usually played in an isolated area, typically a room at a
private residence, school, university or community centre, marked
off from the outside world with paraphernalia unique to the subculture
of gamers and involving a great deal of jargon and symbols that
have meaning only to those who are part of the group. There
are close parallels here with Victor Turner’s concept of
the liminoid and communitas. Players
actively work to create marked liminal spaces in which they can
shake off their mainstream socio-cultural identity and adopt
symbols and images deemed inimical to the mainstream cultural
construction of the self but which form their own unique anti-structure
in opposition to the mainstream socio-cultural order. Thirty-five
percent of men and 20 percent of women choose to play characters
of alternate gender and 60 percent prefer to play nonhuman characters. These
high numbers give credence to the anti-structural nature of role-playing
games. Similarly,
the game experience lives or dies on the social interaction of
its participants. It depends upon the creation of a protected
liminoid space in which the social world can be evaluated reflexively
and in which a sense of communitas can be created as a crucial
component of the success of the game. This sense of communitas
is experienced both as a heightened sense of closeness, equality,
joy and community within the group but also as a blurring of
the imaginative and real world through atmosphere, anti-structural
symbolism and depth of play. As one gamer commented,
Have you ever played a game where the real world has all but
melted away, and the feelings and actions of you and your
character become indistinct? If you have, you most likely feel that
this was one of the best games you’ve ever played,
that gaming is at its most brilliant when the boundaries
of fantasy and reality become blurred.
It is this experience of escapism, community and a psycho-social
moratorium in which identity, issues and cultural forms can be
freely explored, that lies at the heart of gaming and the gaming
sub-culture. It is also the source of many attacks against
gamers and RPGs on the grounds that they blur the boundaries
between reality and fantasy, leading people to engage in immoral
or anti-social activities, or in the case of fundamentalist Christian
attacks, leading young people to Paganism or Satanism and thus
away from the Church.
The Moral Panic against RPGs
[6] The moral panic in the
United States (and to a lesser extent in Australia and France)
directed against RPGs, especially Dungeons and Dragons, originated
in the media response to the suicides of 16 year old college
sophomore James Dallas Egbert III in August 1980 and 16 year
old high school student Irving Bink Pulling II in June 1982. Despite
a wide range of psychological and social factors such as drug
addiction, a long history of chronic depression, confrontation
with parents over sexual orientation, public humiliation in the
school environment and even doubts as to whether they had actually
played any RPGs regularly, the media interpretation of the events
was that the “strange game of D&D” was a crucial
factor in their suicides. Additionally,
Patricia Pulling, mother of Bink Pulling, attempted to sue TSR,
the manufacturer of Dungeons and Dragons, for the death of her
son. The case was thrown out of court in 1984. She
then partnered with Illinois psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, director
of the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV), to form
a new organization with close links to several fundamentalist
Christian bodies called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (B.A.D.D.). Pulling
linked her belief that there was Satanic influence behind RPGs
to three other perceived threats to the social order: Heavy Metal
music, the Pagan revival and the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare. The
perceived allegiance between these disparate threats became the
centrepiece of the anti-RPG moral panic. In Australia,
B.A.D.D primarily operated and distributed materials through
the Australian Federation for Decency (now Australia Federation
for Family) from 1986 onwards, headed by the Reverend Fred Nile.
[7] Pulling's description of Dungeons and Dragons is as follows,
A fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft,
voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination,
insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic
type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration,
demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings. There
have been a number of deaths nationwide where games like Dungeons
and Dragons were either the decisive factor in adolescent suicide
and murder, or played a major factor in the violent behaviour
of such tragedies. Since role-playing is typically used
for behaviour modification, it has become apparent nationwide
(with the increased homicide and suicide rates in adolescents)
that there is a great need to investigate every aspect of a youngster’s
environment, [sic] including their method of entertainment,
in reaching a responsible conclusion for their violent
actions.
[8] In pursing her campaign against Dungeons and Dragons and
RPGs in general, Pulling utilised a variety of tactics which
she pursued, along with Thomas Radecki, with an enormous amount
of energy and dedication. These tactics include:
1. Numerous petitions to government agencies and politicians
[9] The Federal Trades Commission, the Consumer
Products Safety Commission, and numerous members of Congress
were lobbied to have RPGs sold with warning labels linking them
to suicide and murder or have them banned outright.
2. A compiled list of RPG victims
[10] A compilation of alleged victims was constructed
using names appropriated from newspaper reports and testimonials
of suicides and crimes that perceived to be linked to RPG-related
activities. It was labelled the “Pulling Trophy List” by
mass media and gamers alike.
3. Current affairs and talk show appearances
[10] Pulling, Radecki and others appeared on numerous talk shows
and current affairs programs such as the Gil Gross Show, Geraldo, Sally
Jesse Raphael, Donahue, 60 Minutes and others.
decrying Dungeons and Dragons as a Satanic threat to children
and a major cause of suicide and youth crime.
4. Lectures on cult crime and youth violence
[11] Lectures on RPGs being linked to cult crimes,
suicide, Satanic ritual abuse and youth violence were delivered
at policing and public awareness seminars on crime and the occult. Critical
to this approach was the linking of RPGs to the widely held belief
that there were numerous Satanic cults at work in American and
Western society which attempted to seduce youth to commit immoral
acts such as human sacrifice and ritual sex abuse through Heavy
Metal music, RPGs, educators, child care centres and television. The
following is an excerpt from a “Cult Crime” seminar
presented by Detective Gary Sworin in Richmond Virginia.
We have Dungeons and Dragons and all these other demons … and
all these games that are out. And luckily within our area,
we have nothing concerning repercussions from those types of
games… Its to the point where, in the game itself,
you portray yourself–you take on the characteristics of
another person and what you are really supposed to do at that
point is make believe you are that person and you are supposed
to rob, pillage; you’re supposed to murder–anything
you can do to achieve power in the game.
5. Lobbying and petitioning authority figures
[12] During this period there was extensive lobbying
by church organizations on schools, the media, government and
police, opining that RPGs were a fundamental threat to America’s
moral character, encouraged youth violence and were linked to
Satanism and the Pagan revival.
6. “Expert” testimony in high profile legal cases
[13] Patricia Pulling and Thomas Radecki offered their “expert” testimony
on RPGs in various high profile cases in which the defendant
wished to apply the “D&D Defence” for criminal
activities such as the Darren Molitor case and
in civil cases against the RPG games industry.
7. Saturation of public places with anti-RPG paraphernalia
[14] A public awareness and education campaign was initiated,
attempting to saturate schools, churches and public places with
anti-gaming paraphernalia such as the infamous “Dark Dungeons” cartoon
by Jack L. Chick.
[15] Apart from the claims to Satanic influence, the primary
threat perceived in RPGs was the perceived breakdown between
the realm of fantasy and reality. In representations of
RPGs in the mass media, players were regarded as becoming so
involved in their fantasy games that their concept of self and
reality began to dissolve to be replaced by the virtual fantasy
world of the RPG. Instead of a liminoid consequential moratorium
or an example of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, players
were perceived as breaking down the barriers of the public and
liminoid space and thus allowing their play to have “real
world” consequence. There was also concern about
what youth learned in their play. In the real world, criminal
or immoral behaviour has consequences, yet in a game without
these consequences, there was perceived to be no necessity for
gamers to act morally. Underlying this argument was a deep
fear of the unfettered imagination of youth having an impact
on real world situations. In a game, players can engage
in any virtual activities they wish with consequences that are
equally virtual. This is reflected in Patricia Pulling’s
advice to police that,
It appears that a significant amount of youngsters
are having difficulty with separating fantasy from reality. Or
in other instances, their role playing has modified their behaviour
to the extent that they react in real life situations in the
same fashion that they would react in a gaming situation. This
is not always obvious or apparent to the suspect. The personality
change is so subtle that in some cases the role player is unaware
of any behaviour or personality changes.
[16] Lying behind attacks on RPGs is the belief that a certain
mindset is required to carry out criminal, self destructive or
immoral acts and the negative consequences of those acts are
the primary incentive against their execution. In the anti-RPG
moral panic it was believed that the lack of real consequences
for virtual acts would permit players to experiment with criminal
or occult activities and thus act out tendencies that in the
real world would be repressed. Thus it is in the interests
of society to repress perceived deviant behaviour whether virtual
or not. In application, it appeared that RPGs were regarded
as having a greater influence upon adolescents' minds than social,
cultural and moral values.
[17] As in Cohen’s model of moral panics, two key factors
emerged in the anti-RPG campaigns. First, “right
thinking people” manned the barricades protecting the social
and moral order. School
principals, police, conservative politicians and churches all
spoke out against RPGs. The complainants' high positions
in the community gave weight to these claims, influencing public
opinion. Second, articles and lectures did not specify
where Satanic, Pagan or Socialist references or activities could
be found. There
was no description of the process by which the conclusion that
RPGs were linked with other perceived threats to the social order
had been reached. Additionally, the existence of RPGs was
construed as a threat to the welfare of children. With
such a clear challenge laid before school boards and city officials
there was little alternative action that could be taken without
appearing to be unconcerned about the emotional and physical
wellbeing of children.
[18] This approach to the anti-RPG campaign is well illustrated
in B.A.D.D’s profile of teen Satanism and the occult, distributed
to police departments for interviewing suspected occult related
youth crime. Also of significance was the construction
of the threat in extremely vague terms which could be applied
to almost every aspect of youth culture and sector of society
through a process of self-fulfilling prophecy, as is illustrated
here in Pulling’s guide to identifying the influence of
teen Satanism by police, clergy and educators. Michael
Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” is particularly
succinct in analysing the circular logic, double hermeneutic,
overt generalisations and self-fulfilling prophecies involved
in Pulling’s approach to identifying Satanic influences
in young people.
THE WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE AND HOW OF TEEN SATANISM
WHO
1. Adolescents from all walks of life.
2. Many from middle to upper middle class families
3. Intelligent
4. Over or Under Achievers
5. Creative/Curious
6. Some are Rebellious
7. Some have low self esteem and are loners
8. Some children have been abused (physically or sexually)
WHEN does this occur?
It appears the ages most vulnerable are 11-17
WHERE?
1. Public places such as rock concerts, game clubs in communities
or at school.
2. Private parties at a friend’s home.
HOW?
1. Through Black Heavy Metal Music
2. Through fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons
3. Obsession with movies, videos, which have occult themes
4. Collecting and reading/researching occult books
5. Involvement with “Satanic Cults”, [sic] through
recruitment
6. Some are born into families who practice [sic] “satanic
cult rituals”
WHAT can we do?
1. Document all information relating to occult involvement (even if it does
not appear relevant at the time)
2.Keep an open mind
3. Stay objective
4.Never assume that an individual is acting along [sic] until
all other information surrounding the case and individual has
been fully investigated.
5. If individual is involved in “satanic activity,” he/she
will deny a great deal to protect other members of the group
as well as the “satanic philosophy”.[sic]
6. Have a team approach; work with a therapist, clergymen and other helping
professionals.
7. Educate the community so that potential tragedies might be avoided.
[19] It is difficult precisely to evaluate the extent to which
the anti-RPG moral panic permeated the social order. At
its peak, many schools banned the game, shops were closed, several
smaller companies were forced out of business and many gamers
experienced harassment ranging from minor disapproval and restrictions
of behaviour from educators, police, churches and parents to
more severe actions. I will discuss the experience of
gamers shortly.
[20] B.A.D.D documents were distributed to police departments
across America and in many schools, churches and local governments
in Britain, Canada and Australia. Anti-RPG
documents, articles and cartoons were distributed throughout
Australian, British and Canadian churches, police departments,
welfare agencies and schools, but there is no evidence to suggest
that moral panic ever became embedded in educational, government
or police institutions of other nations to the same extent as
it did in the U.S. Several
films were produced with support and consultation from B.A.D.D
and other anti-RPG organizations, most notably “Mazes and
Monsters”, “Cruel Doubt” and “Honour
thy Mother.” Perhaps the most bizarre event was the
raid by the American Secret Service on Steve Jackson Games on
the premise that the RPG Cyberpunk contained secret coding on
how to become a computer hacker and encouraged participators
to commit cyber-crime. The Judge found that the agents
in charge had acted without proper investigation and “in
his zeal to obtain evidence for criminal investigation, simply
concluded that Steve Jackson games was involved in illegal activities
because of the wording on the “Illuminati” bulletin
board menu.” However,
the moral panic did follow three clearly identifiable stages. The
first was the claim that students were using occult paraphernalia
included in RPGs to curse or hex fellow students, parents and
teachers. This was the claim made by Pulling in her attempt
to sue TSR for her son’s death and presented through many
anti-RPG forums such as then infamous "Dark Dungeons” cartoon
by Jack T. Chick. The second phase began in the mid 1980s
and claimed that the fantastic and morally dubious world of RPGs
would lead students to suicide, murder and violent crime. The
final phase, which started in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
was the claim that RPGs would lead gamers to become Satanists
or Pagans and then to engage in immoral and violent activities.
[21] While the moral panic against RPGs was pervasive and RPGs
are still stigmatised in some sectors of society as being linked
to Satanism, youth suicide and the occult, the campaign against
RPGs collapsed in the early 1980s and quickly lost much of its
support among the judiciary, police, educators and government. Unlike
the moral panics against Mods and Rockers and Heavy Metal music,
the collapse of the anti-RPG moral panic has close ties to the
loss of credibility and financial support by anti-RPG organizations
that profited from the moral panic. In particular, with the collapse
and disbanding of B.A.D.D as a political and media force, media
attention was no longer being continually drawn to spectacular
accusations of deviant behaviour and supposed immorality against
gamers that subsequently led to the decline of the anti-RPG moral
panic. The collapse of the credibility and effectiveness
of B.A.D.D and other anti-RPG organizations can be traced to
several specific causes:
1. Litigious failure
[22] Despite many cases supported by B.A.D.D there
has yet to be a civil or criminal case in which the so-called
D&D defence has succeeded. This undermined much of
the incentive for its application in law and denied B.A.D.D a
vital platform for publicising its agenda through the mass media.
2. Lack of academic credibility
[23] Despite numerous attempts to finance academic research which
could prove psychological transformation, a propensity to criminal
activity, depression, alienation and other anti-social tendencies
as linked to RPGs, virtually all these studies found that the
difference was statistically insignificant or that gamers scored
lower on key indicators linked to alienation, propensity to violence,
depression and inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. This
inability to achieve published findings in refereed journals
was a major blow in B.A.D.D’s attempts to legitimise its
claims against RPGs. What was particularly significant
with this failure to achieve academic and professional credibility
for the belief that role-playing games represented a threat to
youth was that without this credibility, it was difficult to
create the political impetus to legislate against role-playing
games or to gain support from law enforcement and educational
bodies beyond the local and demagogic level. Additionally,
when the levels of suicide amongst RPG players was investigated
in relation to national statistics on youth suicide in Canada
and the United States by the American Association of Suicidology,
the Centres for Disease Control, and the National Safety Council
(among others), it was found that while overall level of youth
suicide (15-25) was 5300 per year, there had only been 128 suicide
attempts by game players recorded by B.A.D.D and affiliated organizations
between 1979 and 1988. Furthermore, most of these claimed
suicides were simply accumulated unsourced newspaper clippings,
often referring to the same incident several times over. According
to the estimated number of RPG gamers in the country at the time,
there should have been at least 1060 gamer suicides in the same
period. Consequently, the finding of the report was that
suicide amongst RPG gamers was actually significantly lower than
national averages for the age demographic of 15-25 year olds.
3. Discrediting of B.A.D.D
[24] The credentials and activities of Patricia
Pulling, Thomas Radecki and B.A.D.D were themselves under intense
scrutiny in the early 1990s. Most notable is the work of
Criminologist Robert Hicks and the now famous Pulling Report
commissioned by the Game Manufacturers Association of America
(GAMA) to investigate claims made by Pulling against RPGs. The
findings of these and other investigations were scathing of the
methods used by Pulling and B.A.D.D. In particular, the
claims of Teen Suicide were found to have been taken from newspaper
clippings, many of which provided no date, location or details
of the event. Patricia Pulling was also under fire for blatant
manipulation of statistical data. Most prominent was the
claim that there were 56,000 Satanists living in the Richmond,
VA area. It was later discovered she had arrived at that
figure by including all activities she perceived to be New Age
or Pagan influenced. Another heavily ridiculed claim was
her argument that eight percent of the total population of America
were Satanists. This figure later emerged to have been
determined by adding together an estimated four percent of youth
and four percent of adults. Additionally, in the absence
of empirical evidence. scepticism regarding belief in claims
of Satanic conspiracies and Occult crime in general was gaining
support among, law enforcement officers and welfare agencies,
further undermining the claims made by B.A.D.D regarding youth
and the occult.
4. The increasingly fantastic nature of
the claims
[25] In the absence of supporting evidence regarding
the secular claims of RPGs leading to suicide and violent crime,
B.A.D.D and supporting fundamentalist Christian organizations
such as the “700 Club” made increasingly grandiose
and unsupportable statements, e.g., that RPGs were actually a
form of Satanic worship, caused multiple personality syndrome,
involved Satanic rituals, was used as a cover for human sacrifice
and child abuse, and that the supposed magical rituals conducted
in RPGs had a real world effect. Other
grandiose claims expressed a belief in lycanthropy and vampirism. Similarly,
the fixation of B.A.D.D publications on whether youth had been
exposed to the “Necronomicon” was ludicrous, since
it is a fictional creation used as a literary tool by pulp era
sci-fi and horror writer H.P Lovecraft. The extravagant
nature of these claims ultimately worked to alienate large segments
of the mass media, law enforcement and the general public.
5. Organization and solidarity among gamers
[26] By the 1990s, many of the gamers targeted in
secondary school and university were becoming politically active
in lobbying against attacks on RPGs and gamers. Gamers
Will Flatt and Pierre Savoie established CAR-PGA, the Committee
for the Advancement of Role Playing Games in 1988 to provide
legal and personal support for gamers targeted in the moral panic. The
organization lobbied government, law enforcement and educators
extensively against the activities of B.A.D.D. Gamers also
used conventions, forums in magazines like “Dragon” and
in local gaming groups to coordinate local lobbying of law enforcement,
schools and parents as well as engage in numerous letter campaigns
and articles submitted to mainstream news letters, magazines
and television programs with varying degrees of success.
Response by Gamers to the Moral Panic
[27] So how did gamers respond to being targeted by a moral panic? According
to Kenneth Gagne in his dissertation on moral panics, fully-fledged
and politically oriented subcultures such as Punks and Hippies
became polarised when targeted, giving them strong clear identity,
culture and politics. By contrast, he argues that pseudo-subcultures
like RPG gamers, comic book fans in the '40s and computer gamers
have typically responded by toning down their activities, reducing
the anti-structural association of their cultural products and
engaging in apologetics. However,
in my research, which between 1979-2001 has involved field work
at RPG conventions, searching through newsgroups and online forums,
and an investigation of editorials, forums, letters to the editor
in the magazines Dungeon, Dragon, Breakout, Critical miss
and Places to go People to Be (PTGPTB), and the satirical
magazine Knights of the Dinner Table, I have found a variety
of responses by gamers targeted by religious, educational, police,
parental and government authorities for their gaming practices.
Overall Findings
[28] Overall, the number of articles, letters, editorials and
forums dealing with attacks on gamers peaked between 1988 and
1992. In fact, after 1992 I have been unable to find any
letters, articles or editorials on the topic except for several
retrospective examinations of the history of gaming between 1997
and 2000 and an article dealing with prejudice against Christians
from within the gaming community in PTGPTB in 1999. During
the most intense periods of correspondence on the issue, almost
every edition of the magazines I reviewed contributed portions
of their material to debates by gamers regarding experiences
and responses to anti-gaming activity and perceived prejudice
in the community. Prior
to 1988, the first mention of attacks on gamers from within gaming
publications is a letter expressing concerns about behavioural
changes in campaigns run with evil characters in the March 1985
issue of Breakout. Similarly,
the last piece I found was an editorial in 1993 reflecting on DragonMagazine’s
seventeenth anniversary, its “Baptism of Fire” after
being attacked by Christian fundamentalists, reflecting on the
hatred of fantasy, science fiction and horror by many fundamentalist
Christians. The
experiences described by gamers varied from minor harassment
by teachers, police and clergy to that of more substantial issues
of seizing property, bashings, loss of privacy, expulsion from
school for continuing to play after a ban had been put in place
and harassment/arrest for supposed satanic desecration of graves
and churches etc. The most common complaints by gamers
were:
1. Low level harassment from teachers and parents, teachers and
police.
2. Being blocked from using public space or private homes to
meet and socialise, whether gaming or not.
3. The sabotaging of groups by teachers, clergy and parents
through leaving of satanic, drug or pornographic material
prior to a session and then claiming to “find” the
material in the room with students.
4. Tacit encouragement of violence, theft and abuse directed
against adolescent gamers by teachers, clergy and parents.
[29] Overall, most correspondence reflected a profound sense
of frustration from gamers at their inability to be heard in
the face of what, they felt, was an astounding level of ignorance
and superstition among the mass media and public authority figures. Many
letters and comments described feelings of having been betrayed
by teachers and parents. There was an overall realisation
by many contributors that the games were more than a hobby; they
were a major social and creative outlet and an important vehicle
for personal expression. Finally, many of the contributors
described a sense of bewilderment. Many had no previous
difficulties with public authority figures, maintained solid
grades and maintained what they had thought to be good relationships
with their parents. Suddenly they found themselves perceived
as a major threat to the social order.
[30] This sense of betrayal and rift between students, teachers,
religious bodies and parents is reflected in David Bromley’s
article on the satanic cult scare of the 1980s in which he argues
that the scare, including its manifestation in the anti-RPG moral
panic is a “counter subversion ideology” in which
contractual-covenantal tensions, such as that between parents,
children, child care centres, schools and youth sub-cultures
have been exacerbated by the encroachment of the economic sphere
into the realm of familial relations. The ideology surrounding
the permeation of Satanism and threats to children are thus a
metaphorical construction of a widely experienced sense of danger
by western families in the wake of profound socio-economic transformation. In
this sense, RPG gamers, as youth, are profoundly affected by
this cultural and ideological shift, experienced as a bewildering
change in familial relationships, the feeling of being torn between
competing roles as students, friends and children (which makes
the role of RPGs as a psycho-social moratorium all the more important)
and becoming the target of psycho-social projection based on
a social drama they are only peripherally aware of in their socially
ascribed roles as students, “youth” and progeny.
[31] Some typical responses from the experiences of gamers who
felt targeted by the moral panic as listed on internet forums
and in letters to the editor in RPG magazines such as Breakout, Dragon,Places
to Go People to Be, Critical Miss, and Dungeon are:
“It got so bad that any time I felt like wearing
a black shirt to school a legion of counsellors, teachers, priests
and police officers would descend upon me like a horde of locusts
looking for signs of suicidal or violent behaviour. It
sucked. Fortunately I worked with quite a few of
the local cops, who I got on well with, who would chat
to me and get the teachers off my back.”
“My sister tried to start up the first RPG club in
the school. The announcement was put up on the bulletin
board a week prior to the meeting. It was up for 2 days
before enough parents called up for the school to ban it. Of
course we all heard the announcement and turned up anyway, even
though it was supposed to be banned. We decided to use
the local library and got their permission. We had
a chance to get together twice before the local library
asked us to leave.”
“Recently, a friend of mine from high school got involved
with an RPG group. His teacher saw he had some friends,
since he was a bit of a loner, was concerned that his friends
had been seen near the local gaming store. The teacher
talked to the school counsellor and local Baptist minister had
also heard his new friends had been playing these evil games,
and the counsellor in turn called up his parents to tell them
that their kid was running around with a cult of Satan worshipers. Well
grounding was the least of his concerns after that. I don’t
know if his relationship with his parents will be the same again. My
parents were more understanding, for which I am thankful. When
I joined a local RPG group my mum asked me “Are you planning
to kill yourself?” I answered “No” and have
had no problems since she’s been on hand for a lot of our
sessions and seen that we aren’t Satanists but just
a bunch of kids having fun.”
“Our high school let students arriving early to go to the
lunch room to escape bad weather while waiting for school to
start. Four kids played Dungeons and Dragons while waiting
and as a result were verbally attacked, bailed up against the
wall and denounced in front of the school as Satanists by a teacher. Two
of the kids were active members of a local protestant church,
one was a very nominal Catholic and the fourth was a rather strange
kid who was part of this local group of Pentecostals … A
problem for the school was that the parents of one of the kids
was a police officer. He investigated the episode and that
verified their story. The teacher made this awful insincere
apology and the principal claimed it wouldn’t happen again. However
the game is now banned from the school and the teacher was supposedly
given a merit raise at the end of the year. We found it
more pathetic and funny than traumatic. We used to make
gestures and stick our fingers up at him behind his back for
a few months after that. He claimed kids were trying
to put hexes on him and would shuck the biggest stink if
he caught us at it.”
“On January 22 1990 I was asked to appear as a member of
the audience for a taping of the 'The Shirley Show' since I was
the founder of the local gaming club but the researcher had strange
notions about RPGs because the show was about the threat of Satanism. The
researcher Jeanette Diehl wanted to cover RPGs as one of the
8 faces of modern Satanism. When I spoke to her she became
increasingly perplexed 'What do you mean you don’t wear
costumes and do magical rituals?' Still I was contacted
only 3 days before taping. Two guests had been operating
on the show for 2 months in advance they were Thomas Radecki
and Patricia Pulling. These two are anti-game crusaders
from the US but their arguments are full of holes. I was
one of the few game players to research their claims in depth
but even when I shovelled refuting evidence on the show it was
ignored as if I wasn’t there or shouted down by the two
crusading yanks. The two guests spouted incredible nonsense
about RPGs and there was no real avenue open to discredit them
on the show. Pulling claimed that RPGs are based on the
occult, that they are psychological manipulating and brainwashing
techniques and that they include rituals worshiping Pagan gods
and demons in the books. The producer responded to my complaints
on air that he wanted to get away from American style talk shows. I
responded with “Then why are you importing American lunatics …”
[32] The responses by gamers published in web forums, letters
to the editor in gaming magazines and personal discussions indicated
several patterns of response to being targeted by a moral panic:
1. Self Censorship and apologetics
[33] Typically, this took the form of numerous debates surrounding
the idea of whether or not evil characters should be allowed
in game play and numerous requests for gamers to avoid doing
anything that could be construed as Satanic or anti-social.
2. Rationalist and secularist critique
[34] This approach really began in earnest in the forum of Dragon magazine, with
the formation of CAR-PGA. Previous editions, most notably
issues151 (October 89), 152 (December 89) and 158 (June 1990)
had letters and articles pertaining to Gamers perceiving major
flaws in anti-RPG arguments and decrying the lack of support
networks and vehicle to express their opinions. Typically,
this approach was portrayed as either a free speech issue or
a campaign against what was perceived as the bigotry, superstition
and irrationality of the fundamentalist Christian backers of
the anti-RPG campaigns. Investigations were initiated in Dragon magazine
as to the anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and racist materials and
background of key anti-RPG figures such as Jack T. Chick. The
academic credentials of Thomas Radecki and Patricia Pulling were
debunked. Numerous links were forged with academics and
government agencies studying youth suicide and academic publications
on gaming were collated and made available to gamers wanting
to investigate and/or debunk anti-RPG claims. Gamers
began to coordinate lobbying campaigns by phone, letters, public
forums, the burgeoning internet and word of mouth as a means
of informing the media, law enforcement, educators and local
government about RPGs and their role in youth culture. Links
were forged with the Skeptics Society and other secularist organizations. Articles
were written in Skeptics Society journals and journals of psychology,
and law enforcement officers and criminologists, such as Robert
Hicks, began to debunk and expose the supernaturalist origins
of anti-gaming claims and question their relevance in law enforcement
initiatives. Perhaps the greatest blow to B.A.D.D, Patricia
Pulling’s and Thomas Radecki’s credibility was the
publication of Michael Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” which
severely criticized the ethics and methodology of anti-RPG campaigners
and was widely distributed amongst law enforcement, educational
bodies, game manufacturers, gamers and government agencies.
3. Satire and play power
[35] I have borrowed the term “Play power,” coined
by Richard Neville’s book of the same name, to describe
the method of challenging authority figures and the construction
of moral barricades through harnessing the absurd, the nonsensical
and the bizarre through the spirit of play and humour. This
approach both worked to discredit anti-RPG organizations through
drawing attention to the absurdity of their claims and served
as an outlet for gamer anger against churches, schools, parental
authority and the mass media. An example of this is wide
circulation of the satirical essay "Chess: The Subtle Sin:
Should Christians play chess?" based on the anti-gaming
text Should Christians play Dungeons and Dragons? Another
example is the response to Jack T. Chick’s Dark Dungeon cartoon
and the many satirical variations of it produced by gamers. Many
gamers of the 1980s and 1990s claimed to distribute these at
conventions, which anti-RPG bodies had covertly saturated with
anti-RPG propaganda, with the text removed, to encourage gamers
to put in their own subversive text. Perhaps the most famous
of these is “Jesus Kills” in which the gaming group
is turned into a bible study (including the use of the GM shield
to not let members read the bible for themselves), the Pagan
and Satanic associations made with RPGs are turned into a Christian
affiliation and a member commits suicide after being cast out
from the group for a homosexual encounter at university. Other
examples include numerous cartoons in Dork Tower and Knights
of the Dinner Table that satirise anti-RPG tracts. The
Final Church, a game parodying fundamentalist Christianity,
in which the players take on the persona of fundamentalist Christians
to hunt down gamers, pagans and heavy metal fans, is another
example of this kind of approach.
[36] Another tactic was a process called church baiting in which
gamers would provoke fundamentalist churches into loud raucous
displays in the media and in public gatherings, and then humiliate
them by revealing the "bait" to be fake, or by leaving
satirical models or slogans at the gathering place or supposed
site of Satanic activity. An example of this approach is
an extract from an article in Critical Miss an online
Gaming magazine, on how to provoke a public response from fundamentalist
Christians. The following is an example of church baiting
taken from an article in Critical Miss magazine.
Triggering A Panic
This is actually something you could do without access to
handy Pagans. Simply take a selection of RPGs that could be
misinterpreted, either because they have new-age themes, or
perhaps because they satirise violence, and send them (as
an anonymous package) to various self-appointed moral "watchdogs" …
What you do here is pretend to form a role-playing club, apply
to a church for the use of their premises as a meeting place,
get refused, then complain very loudly in the local press. (You
can then use the newspaper cuttings as part of your TV pitch).
There is one very important point to note here: Pick the right
church.
It's no point picking a normal neighbourhood church. All that
will happen is that the vicar will say something totally
unhelpful like: "Of course you can use our church ... roleplaying
is an excellent pastime which teaches literacy and numeracy skills
to young people." You need one of the more modern, scary,
fundamentalist churches. As an aside, my Mum and Dad, who are
Christians, once started getting newsletters sent by a local
Christian bookshop (they didn't ask for them, these people just
started sending them). One issue of the newsletter had a "prayers" section.
It said something like:
"We pray for John and Anne Sutherland, whose daughter
Kirsty is suffering from Leukaemia. We pray for Jenny Richardson,
who recently lost her husband Keith. We pray that the people
of Israel come to realise the folly of talking peace to the
Palestinians ..."
That's the sort of church you want.
Another example is the registering of the domain name B.A.D.D,
calling it Bothered About Disposable Dragons as a site
parodying “Save the Whales” campaigns.
4. Christian gamers and game designers
[37] Gamers who are affiliated with Christian churches or who
come from Christian backgrounds inevitably described the highest
level of harassment from parents, teachers, friends and clergy. In
addition, there are several prominent game designers and authors
of RPG based fantasy who are very outspoken about their Christian
identity. Most notable of these are game designer and author
of the New York Times best selling series Dragonlance,
Tracy Hickman and ex-Baptist Minister James Wyatt. These
two authors and designers of RPG paraphernalia have taken a leading
role in RPG advocacy and support networks for Christian gamers. While
Tracy Hickman is much more politically conservative than the
liberal Democrat Wyatt, they both argue that fantasy has long
been a vehicle for metaphorical representations of social and
moral issues both biblically and in the work of Christian fantasy
authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S Lewis. In particular,
they argue that the metaphorical nature of Fantasy, Sci-fi and
Gothic Horror throws issues of good, evil, compassion and morality
into stark relief, developing a greater depth of understanding
in real world scenarios. Christian game groups commonly
bemoan the alienation of a youth sub-culture and the abandonment
of a medium by hostile churches.
5. Identity formation and counter cultural imagery
[38] One important side effect of the panic was the development
of a gamer identity. RPGs are inherently an esoteric pastime
with an enormous amount of jargon that can be quite alienating
to the non-gamer. Similarly, a large body of slang and “Folk
Speech” has emerged within the RPG community including
references associated with other media such as Japanime, various
forms of literature (mainly horror, sci-fi and fantasy) and cinema
(especially fantasy, sci-fi and horror but also including Hong
Kong and French cinema, and English comedy such as Monty Python),
computer gaming and other material derived directly from the
experience of RPGS. Some examples are Munchkins/Hack Master,
Sanity Check, Monty Haul, Rules Lawyer, I Disbelieve, Red Shirt,
Test Hobbit and Polish/Irish Mine Detector. Additionally,
the common experience of being targeted by a moral panic among
the community was spread by means of networking through forums,
magazines and conventions and led to the aforementioned political
action and to a sense of common cultural identity manifested
through slang, fashion and cultural artefacts.
Cultural Shifts in the Wake of Moral Panic
[39] The most obvious impact of the RPG moral panic is widespread
hostility to Christianity, presented as a bigoted, oppressive
and violent religion. Gary Pellino in his article on prejudice
within the gaming community argues that the response by gamers
to Christians, particularly committed or conservative Christians,
is akin to the comments reserved in mainstream society for Nazis. He
argues that this hostility is almost entirely defined within
the context of a sense of being unfairly targeted and harassed
by Churches and Christian authority figures. Another
important effect of the anti-RPG campaigns was the major shift
in gaming culture towards an open embracing of Gothic-derived
cultural symbols and increasingly subversive themes in games. Most
prominent in this shift was the popularisation of Vampire:
The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse by the
game publishing company White Wolf, and to a lesser extent the
increased popularity of Call of Cthulhu based on the works
of H.P Lovecraft, produced by Chaosium. These games directly
dealt with issues considered taboo for RPGs during the 1980s
such as sex, horror and the occult. The Gothic games originating
in the mid 1990s also openly embraced cultural forms deemed inimical
to fundamentalist Christianity, such as Paganism, homosexuality
and occult, and recast them as oppressed and misunderstood victims
pursued by a bigoted, fearful and ignorant public. While
the pseudo-Goths or Vampire Goths, as they are often referred
to in the gaming community, are usually described as part of
the Gothic music and fashion subculture, research by Paul Hodkison
into the Gothic subculture in Britain found that, despite some
crossover, they actually formed a distinct group of their own
with closer links to gamers than to the Goth subculture and philosophy.
As with Goths, tattoos, piercing, face and body paint are common,
as are variants of clothing derived from horror literature, with
nineteenth century style clothing and black leather predominating.
[40] In pseudo-Gothic games, complex rules and a focus on violence
are eschewed in favour of role-playing, characterisation and
amateur thespianism. In these games, protagonists deal
with overtly dark themes and have become the new target of media
antagonism against RPGs, but this is done through linking them
to the Goth subculture rather than describing them as gamers. This
has tended to increase the division between fantasy gamers and
pseudo-Goth gamers. There
is also a significant amount of rivalry between pseudo-Goth gamers
and high fantasy gamers (labelled hackmasters/munchkins over
issues of gender and cultural identity). While the number
of women in games has risen from an estimated three percent in
1985 to possibly as high as 37 percent in 2000, by far the majority
of women have joined the pseudo-Goth sub-category. as illustrated
by an estimated 42 percent female market for Vampire: The
Masquerade. Additionally,
the construction of feminine identity by female pseudo-Goth gamers
violates the symbolic construction of femininity held by fantasy
gamers. leading to conflicts and rivalries as illustrated by
the following anecdote:
Gigi was an ultra-skinny, pale-skinned girl with a boyish
figure and black lipstick, fingernails, clothes, eyes, bruises,
etc. She had really, really short hair, but only on one side.
It was buzzed so short that you could see the tattoo. The
other side was longer, so I guess she could comb it over and
pretend like she had hair on both sides of her head, the way
balding men sometimes do. Only she didn't do that, she just
let the long-side dangle. Gigi also had a lot of metal in
her face. I figured there were about four pounds of metal
altogether, and that's not counting metal in places I couldn't
see. I asked her about all the stuff in her face, something
tactful, yet direct, like, "Why do
you have all that metal in your face?" She said she was
making a statement. The normal English words on Gigi's
character sheet described a vampire, which was somewhat depressing.
Ed was much better refereeing fantasy adventure and sci-fi games
than those awful, dark, neo-gothic things. I was hoping for something
new and fresh. Angst-ridden, melanin-deficient, red-wine-drinking
... oh yeah, the stereotypical vampire of vampires. I made an
annoying hissing noise through my teeth and handed it back to
her, shaking my head–body language she seemed to
take as a personal insult.
[41] A key feature of Pseudo-Gothic RPGs is that they are overtly
counter-cultural in symbolism. Werewolf: The Apocalypse,
for example, features the characters engaged in a struggle against
big business and corporate capitalism to prevent environmental
catastrophe and preserve pristine wilderness. However,
this seldom appears to relate to any form of political activism. Rather,
the vehicle of RPGs seems to have a normative function akin to
Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque.” They
represent a space in which people can explore alternate forms
of identity and reconcile tensions in real world scenarios without
real world consequences. The virtual world of the RPG acts
as an outlet for societal tension rather than encouraging behaviour
in real world scenarios.
[42] Essentially, games like Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The
Apocalypse and other pseudo-Gothic games are a vehicle
for expressing the alienation of youth. They feature
characters who are outcasts from society, and who must preserve
their secrecy and fight against the mainstream for survival. Many
of these games, and their associated literature, cinema, television
programs and computer games, feature identities in which the
protagonist is perceived as a monstrous outcast but is, in
reality a powerful, noble and beautiful creature who is misunderstood
and hounded by a bigoted and ignorant bourgeois humanity. These
virtual worlds and identities reflect the experience of youth
targeted by moral panics, powerless in the face of apparent
ignorance and hostility from authority figures, desperate
for personal space and needing to develop models and symbols
associated with empowerment and personal strength.
Conclusions
[43] The crusade against RPGs offers unique insights into the
nature of moral panics, as it contains elements that are clearly
symptomatic of a moral panic yet remains atypical of those directed
at Mods, Rockers, Hippies and Punks. The RPG moral panic
fits Cohen’s definition in that it involved generalisation
against an existing sub-culture implanted from outside; it was
publicised through the mass media; claims were based on anecdotal
urban myths rather than quantifiable evidence; and it was pursued
by “right thinking people” who used their social
standing to attack perceived sites of deviance and threats to
the social and moral order. However, unlike Cohen’s
model of moral panics, the anti-RPG moral panic was almost entirely
the product of campaigning by a group of like-minded political
organizations, which had little general support outside of the
publicity generated by organizations like B.A.D.D. This
is clearly illustrated by the extent to which anti-RPG sentiment
among the general public collapsed in the wake of the discrediting
of B.A.D.D from 1992 onwards.
[44] Another aspect of the RPG moral panic is that unlike Punks
and Hippies, there was little common cultural identity, and certainly
little in the way of a political agenda, among gamers. Until
the shared experience of moral panic and high publicity brought
them together as a subculture with a shared identity, RPG gamers
were simply hobbyists. To a large extent, the development
of an embryonic common political and cultural identity among
gamers was the product of being targeted by a moral panic. Even
today, there is little evidence of a “gamer politics” or
polarised socio-political identity as demonstrated by other sub-cultures
such as Punks, Hippies and Metal Heads, etc.
[38] The shift to the Gothic in the wake of the collapse of the
moral panic is particularly interesting. Essentially, this
can be interpreted as a response to years of self-censorship
and concerns about negative publicity of gamers regarding counter
cultural imagery and mature themes through the impact of moral
panics. This reasoning can also be applied to the resurgence
of Live Action Role Playing (LARPs) in the mid 1990s. It
is also indicative of the shifting age demographic of gamers
and the desire to explore adult themes that resonate more closely
with the issues of an older gaming population. Another
crucial issue regarding the shift to the pseudo- Gothic in gaming
is the extent to which the experience of being targeted by a
moral panic created an environment in which gamers identified
with images perceived to be inimical to a Christianity caricatured
as encompassing rampant cultural conservatism, a saccharine approach
to morality and fundamentalist dogma. This reversal of
darker images into an empowering “anti-hero” model
of cultural values is, in this light, paralleled by the popularisation
of witchcraft in the 1980s in the context of a constructed model
of witch identity in popular culture as the innocent victims
of church and mainstream persecution. One
can also see these models in the popularity of comic heroes like
the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk as expressions
of empowerment, alienation and isolation from what is perceived
to be the cultural mainstream.
[45] In the final analysis, RPGs, although virtual, are intrinsically
a reflection of the socio-cultural issues and tensions of life
in the real world. As the experience of gamers in relation
to mainstream culture has shifted, so have the symbols, images
and identities utilised by gamers to express themselves through
the medium of gaming. As Kyna Foster argues:
Though the game world is constructed as an independent world,
and though the players like to think of themselves as different
and somehow separate from the mainstream, which they might be,
the effect of the surrounding culture cannot be denied. To the
point, the gaming world is shaped by the players, who are shaped
by the dominant culture of that time and place.
Ultimately, the formation of a shared gamer identity
is due to the experience of moral panic and thus the cultural
identity created forthwith is intrinsically linked to that experience
translated metaphorically through the medium of the game world
and its expression in play.
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Notes
Jack Buetell, “Adventure Games are on a roll,” Toy
Book (September): 1-12; Ruan Dancey, “Adventure
Game Industry Market Research Summary,” Wizards
of the Coast Corporation (http://www.thegpa.org/). While
these figures do represent industry gathered data, with all
the bias such research engenders, the numbers remain generally
accepted throughout the literature and are constant with my
own ethnographic research.
Erik Erikson, Childhood
and Society (New York: Norton, 1958), pp. 222, 262; Gary
Fine, Shared Fantasy Role Playing Games as Social
Worlds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp.
181-204; Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1995), pp 180-203.
A reasonably comprehensive
study of jargon and slang amongst gamers is available in Woodelf’s essay “Folkspeech
by Role playing gamers.” http://www.upl.cs.wisc.edu/~woodelf/mystuff/essays/RPGlingo.html
For more information on
Turner’s theory of liminal, liminoid, anti-structure and
communitas please see, Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre:
The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts
Journal Publications, 1982), pp 20-70.
These results come from
a survey I conducted while during fieldwork at gaming conventions
and stores. This was inspired by, and received approximately
the same results as a survey and analysis conducted by Dr. Kathryn
White in her article “Gender Bending in Games” http://www.womengamers.com/articles/;
Turkle, Life on the Screen, pp 212-26 regarding
online roleplaying and gender swapping.
Gary Pellino, “The
Shame of the Game,” Places to Go People to Be 4
(August 1998): 7.http://ptgptb.org/0004/antigame.html
Here, I am using the theory
and definition of moral panics devised by Stanley Cohen in his
book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Oxford: MacGibbon
and Kee, 1972), in which he defines a moral panic as “A
condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become
defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature
is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass
media, the moral barricades are manned by editors, Bishops, politicians
and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts
pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved
or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges
or deteriorates and becomes more visible" (p. 9). While
the moral panic against role-playing games never reached the
heights of that directed against youth sub-cultures such as Hippies,
Punks and Skinheads, the public response to role-playing games
is clearly accommodated by Cohen’s model, as will be discussed
shortly.
William Dear, The Dungeon
Master (New York: Ballantine, 1985), pp. 17, 20-22, 163,
316; Shaun Hatley, “The Disappearance of James Dallas
Egbert III, Parts 1 and 2," Places to Go People to
Be 6 & 7 (February & April 1999): pp. 15-20,
17-21; Robert Hicks, In Pursuit of Satan: Police and the
Occult (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1991), pp, 287-88. Michael
Stackpole, The Pulling Report (Game Manufacturers Association
of America [GAMA]), pp. 19-21 (http://www.rpgstudies.net/stackpole/pulling_report.html).
Hanover District Court. Pulling
vs Bracey (Virginia, September 17 1984). Transcript
of Case No. L-128-82 Virginia Circuit Court of the County
of Hanover, the Honorable Richard H.C. Taylor, Judge, pp.
12-13. While this attack was not directly linked to
claims of Satanism or childhood maladjustment, discussed previously,
the raid against Steve Jackson games is relevant to this argument
as it indicates the extent to which law enforcement agencies
were willing to assume criminal behaviour and a threat to
the social order on increasingly dubious evidence without
thorough investigation, a phenomenon comment on by Richard
Hicks, None Dare Call it Reason, pp. 18-10.
Pulling, Patricia. The
Devil’s Web. Los Angeles: Huntingdon House. 1989. p
179.
Cited by Hicks, Robert. In
Pursuit of Satan. p 286.
Pulling, Patricia. The
Devil’s Web; Stackpole, Michael. The Pulling
Report. pp 31-35, 49-53.
Jack Chick, Dark
Dungeons (Chick Publications, 1984). (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp accessed
5 October 2003).
For more information
on Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais
and his World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press:
Indiana, 1988), pp. 48-96.
Patricia Pulling, “Interviewing
Techniques for Adolescents,” BADD Inc., September 1988,
p. 3.
James Golbert, A Cycle
of Outrage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986),
p. 9.
Cohen, Folk Devils, p.
9.
This material is very
hard to source in a global or statistical sense, as my commentary
to this effect comes from newspaper clippings, gamers discussions
online, letters to the editor in roleplaying game magazines and
discussions with numerous gamers at conventions, etc. While
it is clear that the response was widespread and creates the
impression of a sense of widespread harassment by gamers, it
is difficult to gain statistical evidence of the size and scale
of the public response due to the inherent subjectivity of the
experience. A large number of public seminars and debates
on roleplaying games are detailed in the following texts: Stackpole, Pulling
Report, pp. 19-21; Paul Cardwell, “The Attacks of Role-Playing
Games,” Skeptical Inquirer 18,2 (Winter 1994): 157-65;
David Bromley, “The Satanic Cult Scare,” Culture
and Society 28 (May 1991): 63-66; Kenneth Gagne, "Moral
Panics Over Youth Culture and Video Games." Unpublished
dissertation submitted to the Worchester Polytechnic Institute,
April 27, 2001, p 22 (http://www.gamebits.net/other/mqp.html;
accessed October 1 2003); Hicks, Pursuit of Satan.
Stackpole, Pulling
Report,pp 19-21.
Pulling, “Interviewing
Techniques," pp. 13-14.
There was also a substantial
moral panic and anti-RPG campaign in France but I have little
information on its characteristics as yet.
With the exception of
France which will be investigated further in forthcoming research.
While this
attack was not directly linked to claims of Satanism or childhood
maladjustment, discussed previously, the raid against Steve Jackson
games is relevant to this argument as it indicates the extent
to which law enforcement agencies were willing to assume criminal
behaviour and a threat to the social order on increasingly dubious
evidence without through investigation, a phenomenon commented
on by Richard Hicks in None Dare Call it Reason: Kids Cults
and Common Sense (Law Enforcement Section, Department of
Criminal Justice Services, Virginian Department for Children’s
12th Annual Legislative Forum, Roanoke, September 22, 1989).
United States District Court, Steve Jackson Games vs Secret
Service (Austin Division, 1990). This available online
from numerous sources; the most readily available is http://www.sjgames.com/SS/complaint.html.
Hicks, Pursuit of Satan; Hicks, None
Dare Call it Reason, pp. 8-12; Hicks, Satanic Cults, pp.
10-18; Stackpole, Pulling Report, pp.
12-16; Nathan, Satan Scare.
Paulos, Innumeracy, pp.
168-69; Freeman, “Truth,” pp. 1-11.
Bromley, “Satanic
Cult Scare,” pp. 63-66; Clifton, “Three Faces,” pp.
9-18; Cardwell, “Role-Playing Games,” pp. 8-12; Hicks, Pursuit
of Satan, pp. 8-13; Hicks, Satanic Cults, pp. 10-18; Stackpole,
Pulling Report, p 14; Nathan, Satan Scare.
John Paulos, Innumeracy:
Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (New York: Vintage,
2001), pp. 168-69; Jeff Freeman, “The Truth: On Sale
Now,” The Skeptic 9,5 (May 1995): 1-11. Phelan, “Psychological
Study.”
Bromley, “Cult
Scare,” pp. 63-66; Chas Clifton, “The Three Faces
of Satanism: A Close Look at the Satan Scare,” Gnosis 12
(Summer 1989): 9-18; Cardwell, “Role-Playing Games,” pp.
8-12; Hicks, Pursuit of Satan; Hicks, None Dare
Call it Reason; Hicks, Satanic Cults; Stackpole, Pulling
Report; Nathan, Satan Scare.
Chick, “Dark Dungeons”;
William Schnoebelen, “Should a Christian Play Dungeons
and Dragons?” and “Straight Talk on Dungeons
and Dragons” (http://www.chick.com/articles/dnd.asp).
Cardwell, “Role-Playing
Games,” pp. 157-65; Stackpole, Pulling Report, p.
16.
Pellino, “Shame
of the Game, ” p. 9.
Gagne, "Moral Panics," p.
22.
Pellino, “Shame
of the Game.”
See Dragon Magazine;
in particular issues 111, 122, 125, 134, 138, 146, 148, 151,
158, 160, 162, 171, 181, 182 and 194 for examples on the debate
within the RPG community on debates regarding perceived harassment
and prejudice.
R. McDonald, “The
Gaming Spirit,” Breakout Magazine,” 17,5
(March 1985): 9.
Roger Moore, “Free,
Proud and 17,” editorial in Dragon Magazine 194
(June 1993): 6-7.
Bromley, “Satanic
Cult Scare,” p. 66.
http://www.kenzerco.com/forums/ubbthreads.php;
accessed 10/30/2003.
RPGnet open forums; http://forum.rpg.net/;
accessed 5/11/2003
RPGnet open forums.
Cardwell, “Role-Playing
Games,” pp. 161-62,
Letters to the Editor, Dragon
Magazine (August 1990): 36.
Bromley, “Satanic
Cult”; Cardwell, “Role-Playing Games,” pp.
157-165; Hicks, Pursuit of Satan, pp. 286-87; Hicks, “None
Dare Call it Reason,” pp. 12-18; Hicks, “Satanic
Cults, ” pp. 10-12; Stackpole, Pulling Report; Nathan, Satan
Scare; Freeman, Jeff. “Truth,” pp 1-11.
Moore, Dragon 182
(June 1992): 6-7.
For CAR-PGA’s list
of academic publications on RPGs see http://www.theescapist.com/litlist.htm.
Bromley, “Satanic
Cult Scare”; Cardwell, “Role-Playing Games”; Hicks, Pursuit
of Satan; Hicks, “None Dare Call it Reason;”;
Hicks, “Satanic Cults”; Stackpole, Pulling Report; Nathan, “Satan
Scare”; Freeman, “The Truth.”
R. Neville, Play Power (London:
Granada Publishing, 1971), pp. 31-33.
A copy of “Chess:
The Subtle Sin–Should Christians Play Chess” is available
online at http://elephanticity.250x.com/xianches.html . A
copy of “Should Christians play Dungeons and Dragons?” is
available online at http://www.chick.com/articles/frpg.asp
A copy of “Jesus
Kills” is available online at http://www.pvponline.com/rants_jesus.php3 Other
satirical variations of “Dark Dungeons” can be located
at http://www.planetadnd.com/humor/DD-MST3K/index.php and http://www.rpg.net/252/quellen/darkdungeons/pp02-03.html and http://www.fecundity.com/darkdung/setup.html the
Chick publication is available at http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp.
John Nexus, “Johnny’s
Action Plan,” Critical Miss 8 (Summer 2002); http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jonnysactionplan2.html.
Site is available at http://baddragon2.tripod.com/dragons.html
Darlington, “A History
of Roleplaying, ” PTGPTB 8 (March 2002), p. 12.
A reasonably comprehensive
study of jargon and slang among gamers is available in the essay “Folkspeech
by Role Playing Gamers." (http://www.upl.cs.wisc.edu/~woodelf/mystuff/essays/RPGlingo.html).
Pellino, “Shame
of the Game,” p. 6.
Darlington, “History.
Paul Hodkison, Goth:
Identity Style and Subculture (Oxford: Berg Publications,
2002), pp. 36, 44-46, 113, 166.
While Dancey (“Adventure
Game Industry”) argues that women gamers represent 20%
of the market share, Foster contends that her research indicates
that Dancy’s numbers are flawed by his ignoring statistical
data regarding women over 35. Foster instead claims that
when women aged above 35 and under 15 years of age are taken
into consideration the market share of female gamers based on
the same survey results is 37.5% (Kyna Foster, “Dungeons,
Dragons and Gender: Role-playing Games and the Participation
of Women, ”paper presented at the 42nd annual meeting of
the western social sciences Association in Washington D.C April
26th 2000, p. 13). http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~anthclub/studentwork/KynaFoster.htm accessed
may 27, 2003..
D. Waldron, “Ecofeminism
and the reconstruction of the Burning Times,” Intercultural
Studies 6. (August 2003): 36-52.
Kyna Foster, “Dungeons,
Dragons and Gender: Role-playing Games and the Participation
of Women,” paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of
the Western Social Sciences Association in Washington DC, April
26, 2000; http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~anthclub/studentwork/KynaFoster.htm .
A useful analytical tool
in evaluating the role of counter-cultural symbolism in identity
formation among gamers is presented in Matt Hills' Fan Cultures,
in which he argues that in fan-based culture, toy characters
act as a mechanism for fluid objectification and self-identification. Whereas
traditional masculine “heroic” identities are central
to the narrative structures of traditional science fiction and
fantasy, he argues they are unable to retain centrality in play
outside of the immediate text in terms of identity formation. Outsider
identities, however, allow for a greater development of “object-relational
interpellation” which creates a greater potential for subjectivity
in terms of identity formation and self creation by the participant
outside of narratives of compliance to traditional patterns of
authority and identity created by the masculine and hierarchical
hero-narrative (Hills, Fan Cultures [London: Routledge. 2002]). On
another note, Horror writer and professional film critic
Feo Amante makes some insightful, if hyperbolic, comments regarding
the close parallels between the representations of vampire and
werewolf horror and the experience of alienated youth in American
secondary schools ,especially as represented in Vampire: The
Masquerade and in vampire related action films such as “Underworld” (http://www.feoamante.com/Movies/Vampires/under_world.html).
D. Waldron, "Ecofeminism
and the Reconstruction of the Burning Times,” Intercultural
Studies 6 (August 2003).
Foster, “Gender.”
