Tue, January 27, 2004

I mentioned a while back that the CEO of the Seattle Mariners had a part in convincing me to buy a Nintendo GameCube about a week ago. It's entirely true, although he certainly didn't call me up and talk me into buying it.

Howard C. Lincoln, CEO of the Seattle Mariners, sits on the board of Nintendo of America, Inc. Until recently, he was the Chairman of NOA, and he worked there for over two decades. In 1993, he was a Senior Vice President, and it was in that capacity that he was called before a Senate subcommittee on video game violence, to offer Nintendo's views.

I happened to be home sick from school that day, and somehow I ended up watching the hearing on C-SPAN. This was certainly not typical TV viewing for me, then or now. My guess is that after The Price Is Right, there were only soap operas and I was flipping around and this caught my eye. I do remember at the time that there was a lot of scapegoating of Hollywood and the video game industry for corrupting the mind's of America's youth with rampant violence. I wouldn't have remembered it if you'd asked me, but it turns out that this was my first encounter with "Joltin' Joe" Lieberman, who is currently laughably seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2004 presidential race. Ridiculously holding the entertainment industry accountable for poor parenting and undiagnosed sociopathic disorders in children continues to be a pet cause of his, even today. So, at the time, I had heard something about it, and thought it was preposterous, and my guess is that's why I stopped on C-SPAN that day. Plus, they probably had images of scantily clad women on display to make the case against the video game publishers.

The point is, I started watching the thing and my mindset was, "These losers. They should leave the video game industry alone." As I remember it (It's probably free to look up the transcript. Someone, be a dear.), there were representatives from Nintendo and Sega, and one other company – possibly Sony, but I don't know if they were in the business yet. Anyway, the first thing that happened was that my eyes were opened to the extraordinary level of senseless violence and misogyny that were present in some games. (It's not in my nature to be squeamish about these things, as many of you surely know, but this was ridiculous.) There was a game called Night Trap, in which the player is part of a gang of masked men that break into a house and brutally rape a semi-clad young woman. Where's the fun in that? (I mean, where's the fun in doing that in a video game?) Second, I became aware of a serious difference of approach between Nintendo and the other companies present. Lincoln testified that Nintendo had rejected Night Trap, because they just thought it was too violent. He also said that Nintendo worked with third party game publishers to tone down the senseless violence in some other games. Sega, on the other hand, just acted aloof. They asserted that they could put whatever mindless slaughter they wanted into a game, because they had an internal rating system that told parents not to buy the bad stuff for kids. That's fine in theory, but we all know how easy it is for kids to get their hands on stuff that's rated "mature" (in fact, such a thing only fuels their curiosity), and that's assuming that parents are even paying attention and doing anything to prevent it – in most cases, the parent will just buy the explicit game without so much as a glance at the label.

The hearing – particularly Lincoln's testimony – really changed my mind, and so I sent him the following letter. I didn't write many letters to random executives back then, but his integrity and his straightforward manner really made an impression on me. I wrote:

December 15, 1993

Dear Mr. Lincoln:

My name is Jamie Simmons. I am fifteen years old and a proud NES owner. Last Thursday, December 9, I was home sick with the flu, and I watched the Senate subcommittee hearing on Video Game Violence on C-SPAN. I have to tell you I was impressed.

Going in, I had the feeling that the recent crackdown on violence in the television, motion picture, and toy industries was unnecessary government intervention and that parents were responsible for restricting their children from violence but after the conference I was completely converted. I'm not a very conservative thinker, mind you, but a lot of the things that were said raised my consciousness extensively.

I haven't played video games in a while, so I don't keep up with the new games. I did not realize how violent some games have become. I really did not know that there were products like Night Trap on the market and I think it's obscene for Sega to imply that even "adults only" find entertainment in watching scantily-clad women getting assaulted on a video game. I was previously unaware of Nintendo's internal screening of prospective new games, and also Sega's lack thereof, and I am personally very proud of Nintendo for turning down Night Trap and editing Mortal Kombat.

But I was most impressed by your personal actions during the conference. After watching Sega's Bill White duck out the back door and hide behind his "self-imposed rating system" on every one of Senator Lieberman's questions, it was assuring to hear your answers because you were prepared, insightful, and altogether inspiring.

I agree that a rating system alone will not take care of the violence problem. Video game companies must follow in Nintendo's footsteps and make contractual agreements that games must first be approved on the basis of violence and explicit sexual situations before they can be marketed for the system. Children will always be able to expose themselves to the programs, regardless of what is printed on the box, be it "MA-17" or "G". It is important that the game companies weed out the senselessly violent aspects of many games so that even the most violent games available on the shelf are not so excessively violent as to corrupt.

Again, I was very impressed by your values and your speaking skill and I think people like you are helping to better America's children and America's future, and I want to thank you for going before the Senate and standing up for your beliefs.

Very sincerely yours,
(Signed)
Jamie Simmons

(Okay, first of all, no fair making fun of me for the "Jamie" business. It was a long time ago.)

Now, clearly, then as now, I had a propensity for employing vainglorious phraseology where a regular word would have done just fine. But, aside from that, I'm very proud of the letter. I probably wouldn't have written it much differently today.

Here's where Howard Lincoln really impressed me, though. He wrote back. He sent back a personal letter that was extremely nice and even thoughtful, and it really had an impact on me. I displayed it proudly on my bulletin board for months. Here was a guy I had seen on TV, standing up for things he believed, and even with his busy schedule of senior veeping, he took the time to jot a genuine response to the letter of a 15-year-old.

January 4, 1994

Dear Jamie,

Thank you very much for your very kind letter. It arrived while I was on vacation. I must say that it made my day!

I've given copies of your letter to a number of people at Nintendo including Mr. Arakawa, our president. I think everyone will be as impressed as I am with your thoughtful analysis and excellent writing skills.

Sincerely,
Nintendo of America Inc.
(Signed)
Howard C. Lincoln
Senior Vice President

P.S. I trust that you are over the flu and back in school!

So, when the time came to start choosing between the wildly popular PlayStation 2 and the somewhat less dominating (in terms of titles published for the system) GameCube, it was Howard Lincoln and Zelda that tipped the scales in favor of the GameCube. Not only was it meaningful to me that Lincoln was a neat guy, but that his company employed and promoted neat guys because the company has a philosophy akin to my own. They think about the best product first and the market share second. While Sony and Microsoft were working to make their consoles into set-top boxes with every feature under the sun (DVD player, CD player, Internet device, etc.), Lincoln and Nintendo were simply making the GameCube the best possible video game console – which, in the end, is what you're actually shopping for. Just as, while Sega was printing whatever dangerous garbage crazy psychos would buy, Lincoln and Nintendo were screening out the corruptive content because they believed it was the right thing to do.

You can believe Howard Lincoln is getting another letter from me. I'm reasonably confident he'll reply, too. He's the best pen pal a guy could have.

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