History of Role-playing Games - Controversy

Controversy

Role-playing games are often poorly understood by the non-gaming community, and have attracted criticism from concerned parents and religious conservatives. The religious objections leveled against fantasy role-playing games in the past are similar to religious objections sometimes now made against the Harry Potter fantasy series and The Walt Disney Company. However, these objections have not led to a boycott of Hasbro similar to those organized against the latter two products.

Outsiders who misunderstand the nature of fantasy gaming have created serious problems for the industry. Publisher Steve Jackson Games nearly went out of business after a 1990 United States Secret Service raid seized the company's computers. The firm's fantasy technology game GURPS Cyberpunk inspired a mistaken assumption that they were computer hackers. A 1994 U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit ruling upheld the firm's subsequent suit against the Secret Service. These actions, in part, led to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Though many role-playing games have had controversies or poor press, Dungeons & Dragons has often been the primary target of criticism, at least in part because it is so widely played that it has become emblematic of role-playing in popular culture. Groups as diverse as the Israel Defense Forces and Jack Chick publications have singled the game out as a source of concern.

One of the most widely referenced incidents relating to Dungeons & Dragons came in 1979, with the disappearance of 16-year-old James Dallas Egbert III. Egbert had attempted suicide in the utility tunnels beneath the campus of Michigan State University, and after his unsuccessful attempt, hid at a friend's house for approximately a month.

A well-publicized search for Egbert began, and a private investigator speculated in the press that Egbert had gotten lost in the steam tunnels during a live-action version of the game. The press largely reported the story as fact, which served as the kernel of a persistent collective delusion regarding such "steam tunnel incidents." Egbert's suicide attempts, including his successful suicide the following year (by self-inflicted gunshot) had no connection whatsoever to D&D, being brought on by his being a talented but highly depressed young man under incredible stress. The 1981 book Mazes and Monsters was a thinly disguised fictionalization of the press exaggerations of the Egbert case. It was later adapted as a made-for-television movie in 1982.

Also in 1982, Patricia Pulling's son, an active D&D player, committed suicide, and Pulling believed the game to be the direct cause of his death. After unsuccessful legal action, Pulling founded the one-person advocacy group Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD), and began publishing information circulating her belief that D&D encouraged devil worship and suicide.

Overall opponents of role-playing gaming were remarkably successful at attracting media attention in the 1980s. In a 1994 Skeptical Inquirer article, Paul Cardwell, Jr. observes that, "The Associated Press and United Press International, between 1979 and 1992, carried 111 stories mentioning role-playing games. Almost all named only Dungeons & Dragons... Of the 111 stories, 80 were anti-game, 19 had no majority, 9 were neutral, and only 3 were pro-game. Those three pro-game stories were all from UPI, which is a considerably smaller wire service than AP.

Gamers organized the Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGa) in 1988. This organization writes letters to editors, gives interviews, and advocates for balanced reporting about RPGs.

Their defense of RPGs has been made easier as more research has become available regarding such games. For example, the American Association of Suicidology, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and Health & Welfare (Canada) have all concluded that there is no causal link between fantasy gaming and suicide. And writer Michael Stackpole used BADD's own data to demonstrate that suicide is actually lower among gamers than non-gamers.

From 1994 to 1997 three proposals were put forth in the Swedish Riksdag aimed at removing government grants for Sverok, the Swedish nationwide umbrella organization for gaming clubs. The arguments for the proposals were that playing role-playing games made youths more prone to acts of violence and that some sensational cases that had come to the public's attention were caused by role-playing games.

In response, the Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs, the government agency charged with monitoring and acting on the interests of youths in Sweden, was given the assignment to evaluate role-playing as a hobby. This resulted in a report with the title Role-playing as recreation. The report gives no support to claims of correlation between acts violence and playing role-playing games, nor of claims that impressionable youths would be susceptible to blurring lines between reality and fantasy, another claim made in the Riksdag proposals. On the contrary, the report is positive of role-playing as recreation for youths.