Editor’s note: This story uses info and content from Digging for Isix, the latest video by SHIRO!’s own PandaMonium. He acquired archival footage, documents and interviews going over what led up to Night Trap becoming a focal point of the 1993 U.S. Senate hearings on video game violence. You can watch the chapter detailing the rise to a boil at this timed YouTube link. We would like to sincerely thank Tyler Hogle, Kevin Welsh, and former North Dakota U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan for contributing to this story.
While exploring the history of FMV game developer Digital Pictures, I spent some time looking into the 1993 United States Senate hearings on video game violence. At the time, the U.S. based Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) did not exist. Other countries were either planning a similar rating system, or already implemented one. Discussions on if video games should have a rating system in the U.S. were not new. This topic reached a boiling point shortly after the release of Mortal Kombat from Midway, and Night Trap from Digital Pictures.
The Bathroom Scene
Night Trap is a live-action horror game in which the player must trap waddling humanoid vampires to save young women at a winery estate. The player does so by monitoring eight “video feeds” on the property, activating traps when the “Augers” get close to them. Instead of computer-generated graphics, the game is filmed with live actors on real sets.
It was originally filmed in the late 1980s for a VHS-based console known as Control Vision. Hasbro, the company funding this endeavor, later canceled the console. In 1992, the video footage of Night Trap was compressed into a SEGA CD game, launching alongside the expansion in the United States. Throughout 1993, a bad ending known as “the bathroom scene” showed a woman wearing a nightie being taken away by three Augers, dragging her into a hole in the wall with a blood-sucking device clamped around her neck.
This was one of the first parts of the game in which the player needed to listen to other characters for a changing trap code. Without the right code, this bad ending played out, causing many first-time players to see it several times. For months, “the bathroom scene” would be replayed on news channels around the world, blasted by politicians.
The bad ending prompted action from politicians across Australia and the United Kingdom. Canadian Toys “R” Us locations pulled Night Trap from its shelves. While the temperature of this moral panic kept rising, Digital Pictures pressed on with its own projects, filming and programming Ground Zero: Texas, Prize Fighter, and Double Switch.
The U.S. Senate Hearings on Video Game Violence
On Dec. 1, 1993, then-Connecticut U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman called for a press conference.
“Today, we’re here to talk about the nightmare before Christmas,” the senator told dozens of news reporters. “Not the movie, but unfortunately, the violent video games.”
He brought up his concerns about video games not having a clear rating system. Sen. Lieberman felt parents should be able to easily know what content is in a video game they purchase for their child. Lieberman showed the reporters game capture from Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, calling them two of the most violent video games on the market. Footage of “fatality” finish moves played out, followed by the bathroom scene from Night Trap.
“I personally believe that these violent videos are outrageous and contribute to the unacceptable level of violence in our society,” Sen. Lieberman said at the press conference. “Personally, I wish the video game industry would just stop making them. If they don’t, I really wish that we could ban them constitutionally.”
Senator Lieberman then announced proposed legislation that would create a rating system for video games. As the New York Times reported, leaders of the video game industry announced their own rating system is in the works. Lieberman is quoted in the Times article saying, “I had hoped for more… I had hoped the industry would adopt a code according to which they would simply stop producing some of the worst stuff, in terms of violence and sexual content.”
At around this time, recorded violent crime in the U.S. had reached a high point not seen in recent history. It was a major subject of concern for politicians and newsrooms. While gun control legislation was considered and acted upon, others felt violent media was also to blame.
A Senate hearing on the new legislation started Dec. 9 at Capitol Hill. Inside the chambers, three Democratic Party senators led the hearing: Lieberman, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, and North Dakota U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan. They showed the gallery that same footage of Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, then the senators shared their concerns about violence in video games.
A panel of child advocates gave their testimony. They consistently made the assertion that video games are for children, and violent games harm their minds. Then a panel of video game industry leaders answered to the senators, making it clear: video games are not just for kids.
Sega of America Vice President of Marketing Bill White said many older teens and adults buy SEGA CD games. Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln said they do not allow excessive violence on their platforms. He even asserted Night Trap would never come out on a Nintendo platform, even though there were plans to release it on the Nintendo PlayStation just a few years prior. Decades later, it would release in high definition for the Nintendo Switch.
“It has been quite a leap from Pac-Man to Night Trap,” Sen. Dorgan said at the hearing. “About two months ago, I saw the video game Night Trap for the first time. It is a sick, disgusting video game in my judgement. It’s an effort to trap and kill women. Shame on people that produce that trash, it’s child abuse in my judgement. And I know there will be people who say, well we sit up here as the thought police, trying to suggest what people can see or do. That’s not my intention. We have some basic responsibility in this country to protect children.”
On the very same day of the hearing, the funeral for 12-year-old Polly Klaas was held in northern California. A man was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Klaas while she was at a slumber party in October that year. Her murder and Night Trap were never explicitly connected at the hearing, though the story of her fate made national headlines. Tom Zito, founder and CEO of Digital Pictures, spoke about the events coinciding in the raw footage of Dangerous Games.
“That kind of juxtaposition was horrible,” Zito said. “The implication that bad stuff happened to innocent people like Polly Klaas because of products like this, which is absurd.”
Zito testified in the hearing through a written statement, saying Night Trap was meant to be a spoof of vampire films. He did show up to the hearing in person and made an effort to speak, but was apparently told there was no time to allow him to make his case to the senators.
Zito reported a surge in Night Trap sales right after the hearing. It was pulled from store shelves by SEGA a week later. The Entertainment Software Rating Board was established in the latter half of 1994. Sen.r Lieberman would hold occasional press events to check in with how the rating system is doing, though the tension between the industry and U.S. politics cooled down considerably for a while. Night Trap on SEGA CD rereleased with a “Mature” ESRB rating roughly one year after the hearing.
Reflecting on the Hearing 30 Years Later
Former North Dakota U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan is the only surviving senator of the three who led the hearing. His tenure as senator ran from 1992 to 2010, when he chose not to seek re-election. John Hoeven, the previous Republican governor of North Dakota, would succeed Dorgan — he’s still in the U.S. Senate to this day.
Dorgan is now spearheading projects aimed at bolstering rural and Native American communities. He is a senior policy advisor at ArentFox Schiff and is co-chair of the firm’s Government Relations practice. Through their office, I was able to connect with Mr. Dorgan and conduct an interview with him.
To start, I asked if he is satisfied with the ESRB as the outcome of the hearing.
“I actually haven’t gone back to evaluate how it’s enforced,” Dorgan said. “Is it enforced appropriately?… It’s not just violent video games, but movies and other kinds of things as well, and these industry structures that describe what people are about to see and who should be able to see them… I do think it is helpful that we held some hearings, and as a result of those hearings, there was some pressure on the video game industry to begin to create and promote some understanding of what’s in these games and who they are appropriate for.”
Dorgan does not recall much about the content of Digital Pictures’ watershed moment. Though he does remember the purpose of the hearings well enough. He conceded to the matter of perspective, much like his counterparts leading the 1993 hearing.
“When I grew up… we didn’t have access to those kinds of things,” Dorgan told me. “First of all, we didn’t have the internet, and secondly, you couldn’t go to a movie to see it. So none of that existed, and now all of a sudden, it does exist in a very significant way. And my own view is I think it doesn’t help that it very likely injures a lot of children in watching these issues of violence on video games.
“It’s why I think myself, Sen. Kohl, Sen. Lieberman and some others raised some questions about what our children are watching, and why, and what is the impact of it,” he added.
At the time of the hearings, the multiple screenings of “the bathroom scene” isolated that bad ending from all other parts of Night Trap, not showing the context of what was happening to the characters or what the player of the game was really capable of doing. On multiple occasions, during the hearings and news segments, the object of the game was misinterpreted as inflicting violence against women. In reality, the object of the game is to save the women from vampires using traps. I explained this to Dorgan, and asked if he feels Night Trap was treated unfairly in retrospective.
“Well again, I don’t remember the specifics of that particular game,” Dorgan responded. “It doesn’t take much time to take a look at what exists in these games and what exists on television and particularly the internet. You can see a lot of people being murdered very quickly. You see their blood, you see… all these scenes that are kind of unbelievable scenes of violence. I’m not suggesting that we rush in to censor a bunch of things. It might have seemed so. But I think it’s useful to ask the question, is what children are watching these days helpful to children or hurtful to children? It certainly is like it is in the movie industry. So we have PG-13 and R and so forth… I think having opportunities for people to be able to evaluate what kind of capability exists in these video games, what exists in movies… I think it’s very helpful, and it’s helpful to prepare and evaluate what children should see.”
He told me that initial Senate hearing “created some pressure that I think was helpful to require the industry to put together a different proposal.”
Why Was Night Trap Pulled From Stores in 1993?
On Dec. 16, 1993, Sega of America recalled the SEGA CD version of Night Trap from store shelves. In a letter to retailers, company president Tom Kalinske requested they return all copies so they can re-edit and rerelease the product. Bill White said it was voluntarily withdrawn because “the controversy surrounding this game prevented constructive dialogue on an industrywide rating system.”
Kevin Welsh, who was a producer at Digital Pictures during this time, told me there is more to this story.
“There was a moment of panic when the president of SEGA came over to our office and said, ‘We have to pull Night Trap from the shelves,'” Welsh recalled. “We’re like, ‘Why?’ We got the explanation. Basically, Sen. Joe Lieberman was the senator that was really pushing for this. And of course, it would be a First Amendment violation if the government tried to censor any of this stuff. But yet, of course, the government has their ways.”
Like many game systems, SEGA consoles were reportedly being sold “below cost.” The company makes up for this with the profits from software sales.
“If you sell a piece of hardware below cost in the United States, [and] it comes from another country, it violates anti-dumping laws,” Welsh said. “So the government came to SEGA and said, ‘We can prosecute you on anti-dumping laws, stop the sales of all SEGA consoles in the US and fine you heavily — unless you pull Night Trap from the shelves.’ Tom Kalinske, the president of SEGA at the time, came to us and said, ‘Look, I don’t really have a choice here. It’s my business or this.’”
“I learned a lot about government in that time,” Welsh added.
I followed up with Mr. Dorgan after hearing this story from Welsh. After explaining the allegation of Leiberman threatening an antidumping fine as leverage to pull Night Trap, Dorgan responded with the following email:
| “Thanks for the email. Joe and I visited about a number of different approaches to deal with the issue. But frankly I just don’t remember whether Joe mentioned that he had called the CEO. However, I am not surprised by it if he did reach out with that message.” |
Former Sega of America President Tom Kalinske did not respond to my request for comment.
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