What the Video Game Industry Needs to Learn from the Comics Industry of the 1950s
This is long. I’d normally apologize, but I feel like it’s all very important to say. While it takes quite a while, I promise it gets around to video games eventually.
“I can see how you might get confused and think this is for kids.”
By the end of the 1940s, interest in superheroes had faded as the audience that first grew up on comics moved into adulthood. As a result, while there were still plenty of books aimed directly at children, many of the best-selling titles featured stories aimed at young adult and adult audiences. Comics featuring crime capers, detective stories and gruesome horror tales routinely topped the sales charts.
The content of these books was presented quite explicitly. The audience wasn’t being tricked into buying something with an innocuous cover or title only to discover an unexpected trove of horror within. It’s hard to imagine kids were routinely able to buy these books WITHOUT the local vendor’s awareness and no parent was going to mistake “Tales from the Crypt” for a kid-friendly “funny animal” book.
At the same time, the United States was in the midst of a panic related to the perceived scourge of “juvenile delinquency” and the public demanded action!
In 1953, the bipartisan “United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency” was convened to start the kind of “dialog” about the causes of delinquency that are now routinely being called for in relation to gun violence. This was no simple task, since vague ideas like “juvenile delinquency” tend to have extremely fluid definitions and rarely have overt – much less singular – causes. And, of course, there were the added issues of not wanting to target any group or cause that had significant political influence. What Congress needed was a scapegoat without any serious defenders. And it needed it FAST. Read more