> In an era of potent concern over internet pornography, cyber-bullying, and drugs, it is hard to imagine a game being controversial.
Really? GTA? Every FPS ever? Video games in general?
This "moral panic" behavior is by no means limited to conservative/traditionally religious causes.
As an example that will likely challenge many here, try comparing environmental panics (historical and present) with religious ones. There is a very similar pattern of catastrophic predictions, frantic hyperbole, disregard of contradictory data (usually combined with demonizing those pointing it out), and the inevitable eventual shift to a new topic for panic.
Growing up through the D&D panic and experienced the first-person shooter makes you a killer or GTA makes you violent nonsense, nothing recent compares to the D&D panic.
There's a severe difference between people thinking a video game will make you anti-social, violent, or a killer and people being concerned over your immortal soul. Keep in mind, D&D was going to make you summon demons, have blood sacrifices to pagan gods, commit suicide, and then after all that evil you were going to burn in Hell forever.
As there is something to what you say in comparing environmental panics but most of the time that was often based on something real that was then overblown, taken out of context, or misunderstood. Acid rain and the ozone hole turned out to be not as bad as some were predicting, but they were real. Summoning demons is not.
That and the more recent nonsense over video games possibly causing anti-social behavior cannot even come close in comparison.
> try comparing environmental panics (historical and present) with religious ones.
Care to name some examples? Because the past ones I can think of (acid rain, ozone hole) do not fit the pattern AT ALL, they were well grounded in reality and abated because things were done that actually eliminated or mitigated the causes of the problem.
The easiest, most clearly falsified example is probably Paul Ehrlich's alarmist population bomb. Already too late to avoid hundreds of millions of people dying from starvation in the 70s. Didn't happen. Food production increased. Later editions said 70s and 80s. Didn't happen, food production increased. Instead of backing off the catastrophic rhetoric, he increased it, and was ignored by the community. Oh, wait, no, he got a MacArthur genius grant...
Peak oil (oh, we just mean "conventional oil"). Many resource exhaustion forecasts (it will happen, just wait). Mass species extinctions (it's happening! Dozens per day! Which species?)
Each of these is based on an element of truth, extrapolated without allowing any mitigating factors, and published with forecasts of imminent doom.
Really? GTA? Every FPS ever? Video games in general?
This "moral panic" behavior is by no means limited to conservative/traditionally religious causes.
As an example that will likely challenge many here, try comparing environmental panics (historical and present) with religious ones. There is a very similar pattern of catastrophic predictions, frantic hyperbole, disregard of contradictory data (usually combined with demonizing those pointing it out), and the inevitable eventual shift to a new topic for panic.