I am grateful that my Father understood reality vs games and all that. I grew up playing DOOM and being taught that you are killing demons & defending good. I was around 9 years old. I have that responsibility with my own children now. I still play these games and they see me playing. I talk to them about it, ask them how they feel about it and if they have questions for me. This is a topic that can get deep really quick and I am grateful for how you are able to cover this so well.
I let my son watch Dark Souls, as well as classic Doom. I warn him about the content he is about to see and let him take responsibility for his own actions. Kids aren't stupid. They don't need to be protected from everything. In fact, they should make their own experiences, as long as it's not related to extreme content. It is way more effective than turning them into mindless drones that follow other people's commands. When people complain about it, he tells them to "Relax. It's just a video game." He doesn't see the violence, he just sees the adventure. Hell, I grew up with somewhat racist games that made you shoot "the enemies of the state", and I still turned out fine (and not racist, in case someone didn't get it).
I was a kid in Colorado when Columbine happened, and I was 100% targeted by my school because they knew that I liked to play video games like Doom, Quake, and Mortal Kombat. I remember that I wasn't allowed to play them for some time because of how the school was threatening my parents with action from child protective services, sending me to correctional schools, etc... Thank God for Chex Quest. Got me though some dark (and boring) times.
Lawnie over at GetOffMyLawn just did a great review and overview of Chex Quest. Probably the second best Advertainment game next to Pushover. And the fact that it came in a cereal box is insane. The developer was never allowed to finish the game by General Mills so they actually went and finished it on their own. You can download and play the final chapter for free from them.
I was hoping this would be a gameplay-related post (inventory management, backtracking) but this was fascinating as well! It is funny to me how companies shift their moral standings once money is on the table. I remember as a kid in the early 90s writing to Lego to please, please, please make some Star Wars Lego, and they wrote back that the property did not reflect their values. Fair - it's a kids toy, Star Wars has some grim scenes and sci fi violence, that's fine. Of course, a few years later when the company was at risk of bankruptcy, Star Wars - among other things - brought them back from the brink, and now not only can you buy Lego™ Disney™ Star Wars™ Imperial Stormtrooper™ Space Nazis™ but they also carry sets that include characters like Carnage, an insane serial killer controlled by an alien virus. Funny. I'm just waiting for the Judge Dredd theme now. Anyway, I've never actually played any of the Doom or Quake games but I find the history of it all so interesting. Keep it up!
I met some Mormon missionaries in Poland, they seemed like very likeable people and I respect their dedication immensely - going to unknown countries to preach. The organisation felt a bit cultish though, asking me to give them 10% from all my earnings (like Jews B.C I guess?). I stayed with Catholics, but the Mormon teaching did help me mend an addiction I had at the time, and I'm thankful for that.
"Hell's interior decorator" I want to meet that guy, conduct an interview. Likely with a glass wall between us, I don't want to become the next mount he installs.
The whole smurf's being satanic was born out of The Watchtower magazine from the Jehovah's Witness folks. Check out the book "I'm perfect, you're doomed'" it details someone who grew up around it and left. Wild story
When some guy shot a lot of people during The Dark Knight Rises, I was in highschool. A teacher started talking about it by saying "obviously, that man played a lot of videogames". I got up from my desk and left the classroom. The teacher followed me and asked me why. I answered that "if you're going to stand there and call me and half my friends proto mass shooters, then I clearly have nothing to learn from you." Surprisingly, the principal sided with me on this one.
It is amazing to me that people still think there is a link between VG Violence and real violence. Sure, a psychopath might get ideas from a game, but he was already going to kill regardless
The reason that the principal sided with you is probably because the teacher was using their position of authority to push their opinion and marginalize a group of people they disagreed with, which is inappropriate. I recently dealt with the same issue at my job where the instructor conducting our safety meetings was marginalizing people who aren't blindly trusting the covid vaccine. I complained to my supervisor afterwards, and I don't know if he said anything to his superiors or not but the guy hasn't done it since. I think there is a time and place to discuss things like this, but using your position of authority as a soapbox when people are supposed to be listening and learning from you is just plain corruption, especially when you are dealing with impressionable youth.
I was 14 at the time Columbine happened. I can remember sitting there watching the Senate hearings, listening to them blame guns and music and DOOM and everything else _but_ the two little creeps that did it and the parents that couldn't be bothered to actually pay attention to what their kids were doing. I thought then, and still do, that that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, and it led to my lifelong conviction that people who go seeking to blame an object, or _access_ to an object, for the decisions of a warped mind is a sure sign of moral bankruptcy, emotional immaturity, mental deficiency, or all of the above.
My favorite argument for when people want to censor stuff it to point out that John Denver's song "Rocky Mountain High" was pulled from radio stations because people thought it was about drug use. And the sole reason they believed that was the words "Rocky Mountain High." Obviously "High" was talking about getting high on drugs and not feeling energized for being out in nature, right?
The panic mongers also blamed heavy metal music. Funny thing I'm a devout Christian and my three favorite things are tabletop RPGs, horror films/literature and heavy metal. 😂😂😂
I was just about to say the same thing about heavy metal. I've found black metal to be particularly cathartic for dealing with difficult life situations.
Great video, Sandy! I’m a Christian from a Christian family, and played Doom II when I was about 6 years old (well, I tried to play it, anyway - used the IDDQD and IDCLEV cheat codes a lot). It’s still my favorite PC game of all time. I’m glad my dad was never weird about it.
Fascinating! This is absolutely fantastic. I am with you 100% Sandy. I am an educator that encourages my students to game when they can. I did it as a kid and I'm still playing today. Addendum- I can't tell you how many times I have played Doom/Doom 2/Final Doom/Master Levels throughout my life. Those games got me through many hardships in life.
Thanks for this video. When I was a kid, it was the religious ‘right’ that influenced my parents to disallow me playing RPGs. It was a direct pathway to satanism and the occult. Thankfully, we made it through the Satanic Panic, and I can role play all I want, and get to play Cthulhu Wars whenever I want. No parental approval needed. Never mind that I’m 42.
Haha, when you were saying you showed it to companies and they'd say "We could never do this" I took it to mean that they would never have the ability to do it and I thought "Damn right you wouldn't"
Not the best of mockeries to make if anyone recalls an infamous pair of killers and what they played and what the media tried to tie together. I'm not saying there's a connection, because that's garbage, just saying that was a poorly chosen way of mocking the notion video games influence people.
Love this video....and everything said is so true. I was born in 79 and wasn't allowed to play DnD until i was 16 BECAUSE of the Satanic panic. I avow with 100 percent certainty that RPGs and gaming saved me.
In the so called "Dark ages" monastery's were the universities of the day and as part of your thesis you would argue a point of view. Students were encouraged to argue points that were even seen as heretical at the time and if they argued them well, they passed. It was not in the pursuit of liberalism, but in the exploration of truth. This is the origin of the modern PhD, you were encouraged to argue or touch on controversial topics for the benefit of truth. The dark ages, it seems, are a better term for now, than they were for then.
Fantastic video! Another reason why players respect your opinion and enjoy your games! Thanks for reminding us that “haters gotta hate” regardless of the lack of common sense
Do I see Starship Troopers Arachnids on one of those shelves? If I do, my already large amount of respect for you, sir, has just tripled ten-fold. Only TRUE video game and movie loving gentlemen understand Starship Troopers (even if nobody really understands the book).
Thanks for having a more balanced look at these sorts of things. I think it's important to remember that the paradigm shifts depending on who is in power, who wants power, and how far people will go for that power. Without going into the details, right now the groups that a decade ago were against my artist friends have united with them under the same causes as far worse problems have rose to prominence over time. Take care Mr. Petersen!
This was a really inspiring and informative video, Sandy! I love the stories you had to share about your time at id Software, and your arguments against the enemies of fun. The teenage suicide part, you touched on really well. That stuff is usually misunderstood. We can all understand why violent games and movies were so controversial at the time - it was groundbreaking, nobody had ever seen anything like this before. Nowadays, violence is like an integral part of several movies and games out there, which you probably saw with Doom Eternal and other recent releases. It's mainstream now, thanks to Doom and other media. I remember reading about some historic events that were just like this - there was something new and popular that not a lot of people were familiar with and strongly opposed it at first. Side note: I've only been playing Doom for five months now, and it's been an awesome ride. A lot of the levels you made were very memorable and will stick to me for years as I play them over and over again. Several inspired me for my own maps. Just wanted to say a resounding "well done".
People were against NOVELS when mass-market literature became a thing. I am not joking, the moral watchdogs of the time believed that reading(!) would corrupt young women. Once you know about bs like this, you can't take these yohos seriously anymore. They're just repeating the same old "arguments" whenever the times start passing them by and control slips through their fingers.
Almost always whenever I encounter these people it's someone who has absolutely no experience with the thing they want to censor. Yet they've already passed judgement on it. I always try to find some way to expose them to the thing they claim to be against.
Thank you for clearing this up. I thought the Christ images in Quake were really beautiful. I had no idea why would they fit in there, but they didn't seem disrespectful in any way. The pentagrams were bothering me, though I was never sure why.
Isn't that interesting, though? It's a great opportunity to examine your self. "Why does this evoke feelings in me?" is an excellent question to ask oneself. The pentagram in particular is very foggy, it has so many uses and has had an exceptional amount of different uses throughout history. What a great question to ask oneself. I try to do it as often as I can to myself. Introspection can be a very profound journey. And if you reach a roadblock, the act of dispelling yourself of the notion you're trying to explore is an even more profound exercise. That's real enlightenment right there.
Likely because very many of us grew up in a culture where indoctrination with Christianity is or was the norm. The pentagram has very little actual use, but due to the way it was used in culture in the past 40ish years, you connect it with "evil" in some way. It might also be that there's no real connection with the weirdo mish mash setting of Quake and pentagrams and their culturally motivated connection to "evil" in the way of christian hell and demons.
@@PoulWrist The problem is - I know people who have had to do with actual demons. Not fun stuff. Takes a decade to get rid of this shizz from your life with the help of priests. And the (upside-down) pentagram is used by satanic cults, which are very much connected to this. The upside-up pentagram BTW is a symbol or Mary (called the "marine star" I believe - no idea why though). So the satanic pentagram is an upside down version of the symbol of Mary, just like the upside down cross is the symbol of.. St. Peter (gotcha!). Seriously though - exorcists are the biggest badasses out there. And there's not many of them sadly. Allright, I'll wrap it up here.
I'm glad the "Satanic Panic" is mostly done with. I will say however, I do get a large amount of people who get flabbergasted that I like D&D and Lovecraft and went to a Christian college and minored in Christian Theology. "Isn't there devils in there?" My answer is "yeah, hence why I play a Paladin or a Cleric to *destroy* them." I also like to tell them that it's just a theoretical conflict resolution. People start to see it as fine these days. Now that lot's of fantasy shows depict violence and stuff, it's more mainstream. My favorite however is: "ewww you play D&D?" and then that person goes and binge watches Game of Thrones or The Lord of The Rings hahaha.
yes it's not such a threat as it was. But I fear that the non-Satanic opponents will grow in strength - the people who think that Doom caused Columbine, for instance.
Mr. Sandy, I am also an LDS and I found your story with the missionaries very funny. Keep publishing more content, I find it very cool and interesting. Great to see so many HP lovecraft and horror fans gathered in the comments. Greetings from Brazil.
You answered my next 5 questions I had lined up to flood your channel with. Kinda related but, how can I get my fiance into gaming? She has a hard time meeting new people or even talking to my own friends and family due to anxiety, how can I use gaming as a catalyst to bring her out of her shell?
Well I am certainly no expert at curing anxiety (BEING anxious maybe i'm better at). I'd say start off easy - just play a two-player board game with her; lots are available. Then introduce her to co-op games; they're less anxiety-inducing because you can't really lose. I mean, you CAN, but since everyone loses it removes some of the sting. Eventually you can move her to RPGs with the same people she was co-oping with, who with luck are now her friends.
Censorship has nothing to do with left or right, it's entirely an authoritarian problem. Doesn't matter if you're capitalist or communist, conservative or progressive; anyone who loves power and authority will want to censor what they don't like.
There is a fourth stigmata for suicide: clinical depression. The term isn't specific enough, and it is hard to factor out physiological aspects from social ones. But both David Foster Wallace and Chester Bennington did themselves in and were diagnosed with clinical depression. The both of them were very well loved, so good social environments stimulants were readily available to them. While depressed people are unlikely to voluntarily engage in role-playing games, RPGs have not been sufficiently explored as a therapeutic social tool.
I grew up with I’d Software in the 90’s (my 20’s in the parent’s basement, college years). I am LDS myself, and the imagery both creeped me out as well as intrigued me…as a oil painter I thought it’d be cool to paint some of that stuff. Do you ever find yourself having to sift between “Mormon culture” and actual Gospel. Well, anyway thanks for those awesome levels, as we as the Christ floor button story.
I think its really cool Sandy has a Christian faith, it was nice to hear that ID were careful about blasphemy in the past. I love classic Doom 1&2, its engine limitations have made it into something that endures time, all the old maps are stunning in their style and modern maps using the same limitations have carried it on. For fans that love the style it can never get old. Thanks Sandy.
My story about DOOM: I was a sales team lead for DALY Computers in 1993. At a small convention, everyone else was showing all kinds of boring business production software. We were a hardware maker, not software. So, I had DOOM running on the PC on display and at the same time, I had a surf music instrumental CD playing...to show how much computing power our PCs had. My boss found out about my attempt to attract attention, and chewed me out up and down, left and right, and in and out! I stayed quiet and just said, "So, are you saying we should tear up the 500 lead cards we got?" (At previous conventions, we only got about 50, FIFTY, at most.) He decided to keep me and the leads, but told me not to do that again. The next convention was FOSE...the biggest IT convention in Washington, DC. And, we did NOT have DOOM playing...but EVERY OTHER PC MANUFACTURER DID. And, we got 50 leads. After that, my boss required we play DOOM at EVERY convention, but by then, DOOM's appeal had died down.
Coming at this from not being an America and also not being a christian (of any denomination), it certainly gives a different perspective on strange (to me at least) reasons why people wanted to ban video games and RPGs. In Australia, the attempt to censor was more based around the graphic violence and that was more to do with video games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, along with the various copycat titles, rather than roleplaying games.
I remember when our local evangelist television network held an extremely long live call-in program denouncing the Goosebumps children's novels by R.L. Stine, on Halloween. Hapless mothers calling in how it gave their kids nightmares. It was clearly ridiculous, as the people there had never read any of the novels. The Satanic panic of the nineties was a weird time, even my usually even keeled parents were affected, my Dad made me throw out all of my MTG cards, because all he could see was tarot cards. I'm glad people have mostly relaxed on this stuff, realizing it is all just fantasy.
I think deeming what is and what isn't suitable content should boil down to both context and also common decency. Just like how a person can't be punished on the spot for an assumed crime, media shouldn't be banned or censored without seeing all the facts first. Plus there's common sense not to do things when creating media, like not stepping on the face of Christ in Quake as you mentioned. I'm a Christian myself and I don't find anything wrong with Doom, it's Judaeo-Christian without being sacrilegious and a solid game. Quake's theology has always confused me though, and I suppose now would be a good opportunity for me to ask about it. I don't think I was ever offended, I just never understood how it was all meant to tie together cohesively. Quake I's fictional world revolves around fantasy magic, different dimensions, and elder gods as later mentioned in Quake III (although I don't think you were still at Id during the making of Quake III). All of that would suggest that Quake is polytheistic or at least agnostic. On the other hand there are also images of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross, as well as the 'pentagram of protection' power-up. That would mean that Quake is monotheistic and rooted in Judaeo-Christianity. This is also further implied by Doom Guy's presence in several multiplayer Quake games, since Doom Guy is a character from a very Judaeo-Christian series of games (except Doom Eternal maybe which looks agnostic. The pentagram of protection power-up by the way is very Satan worshiping-esque, but I did read Quake I's manual. I know you guys weren't Satan worshipers). Logically, the polytheistic approach and monotheistic Judaeo-Christian approach could not possibly both be true for Quake's canon at the same time, even in a multiverse scenario. I do have my own thoughts as to how everything could workout canonically, but which one of the two views would you say is correct for Quake and why? Were the clashing views a result of Quake I's development hell at all? Thanks, Mr. Petersen, and please keep making videos!
Hot damn! The quality was almost unexpected (I’m new)! Also note that there could be enemies within the industry too. I just got in an argument with a bunch of gamers about an upcoming horror game, in which “nothing much happens, so it’s not really even a game” (roughly word for word quote from one of them). Could you perhaps do a video about sub-genre enemies of fun? It’s kind of a niche topic especially in comparison to the overall thing like the Satanic Panic and viOLenT viDeO gAMeS
You talked about M. Stackpole. The one that wrote all those battletech novels ? I really liked those. Cheers from a 12 years old boy that had to play Doom at release when the mom wasn't home, because "oh my god, so violent"
A couple of things. When someone is trying to deny their involvement, like this woman grieving for her suicidal son, they will blame anyone and everyone. Her I don't blame, because she could have coped better, but failed. She shouldn't have said it was you guys, but facing the pain that her son chose to do drugs, steal, and premeditate murder (what a suicide is) was probably too much. Even if she had no part in his decisions, a parent often would feel it was their fault, and society would have turned on her in that time of woe if she didn't deflect it. Really, it is our collective fault, not hers. The person responsible killed themselves, let's leave it there. Now, I played all those games as they came out. I knew a gamer who had his machine basicly from winnings alone. He played Quake competivly. So, I thought it was cool at the time. Those things are violent, and maybe the players need to evaluate that. It is like how horror has been equated to porn in the way it is produced and how it affects people. I would think the damage is in the individual, not the game, though. You can't reasonably be expected to police users. For suffering that process, thank you. Like it or not, it is needed. We need to look long and hard at everything new we make. The internet has proven this time and again. We still lack good policies and are still working through making them. *The issue is the extremists in any faction.* These zealots are useful and needed but shouldn't be allowed to rule the day. They make us question our presupposed oppinions. It helps growth, but when we are held in their sway, damage is done to the people. Thanks for all you have done. Horror isn't my favorite type of story, and I still enjoy what you make and have made. I like your civs better, though.
Yeah a lot of these "both sides" lot fail to mention that the left tends to want to censor bigotry and the right wants to censor minorities, and that liberals are not the left, but instead are center-right. People think the left censor a lot cause they straight up don't realise how much bigoted shit is in society and media. The right wing though will come down on you for anything from putting a trans flag in a corner of a level (A Hat In Time) to having a brown person in a Christmas advert.
@@Tedris4 The right wants to censor minorities? You need to study a little US history. Pro slavery south - Democrat. Ku Klux Clan - militant arm of the Democrat party. Jim Crow - Democrat. Segregation - Democrat. Planned Parenthood's designed genocide of blacks by an actual white supremacist, Margaret Sanger - Democrat. Philibuster of 1964 Civil Rights Act - Democrat. Having a KKK member as senior statesman in Senate until 2010, Robert Byrd - Democrat. Political party raised up to end slavery - Republican party. Half a million men who sacrificed themselves to end slavery - Republican.
@@bdwilcox breaking: local youtube commenter discusses American political history, seemingly unaware of nixon's southern strategy. We'll have more news as the situation develops.
@@voxdelumine7491 Breaking: local RUclips commenter doesn't know Nixon's South Strategy" is an unending canard for Democrats to try to shift blame onto Republicans for the Democrat's past and current racial atrocities. Of the 11 Democrat Southern Senators, how many became Republican when all of the Democrat's racism was magically transferred to Republicans? Answer: 1. Since the Southern Strategy was implemented in 1968, I'm sure all those white Southern racists started voting Republican since all the Democrat's racism was purged from the Democrats onto the Republicans, right? Except, no, the South didn't vote solidly Republican until 1996. Next time, try not getting your history from Wikipedia, Mother jones or the New Republic. Try reading an actual analysis like "The myth of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’" on, of all places, The Hill. Plain and simple, your propaganda only works on those as gullible and partisan as you.
This is a very late response to a very minor detail in the video, but the comics censorship legend as it has been passed down through the nerd hobby community is very complex and I think it does a disservice to simply say that Fredrich Wertham was simply anti-fun and a bad man. I'm not sure "evil" is the right term for Dr. Fredrich Wertham at all. Of course alarmist, misguided, maybe homophobic and antiquated in some of his views, and squeamish to a fault, but his concern for children was genuine and not driven by any sort of attention-mongering profiteering like it was for later anti-[thing] activists like the "murder simulators" guy. Fredrich wasn't just opposed to kids reading violent comic books, for one thing, he was also opposed to things like African American youth not having access to mental health care, and his writings on the effect of segregation on children were used in the case for Brown V. Board of Education. For one thing, whenever he was questioned about the comics code later in life, he repeatedly would state that he never favored censorship, or even disliked comic books in particular, but he was chiefly concerned with violent and mature media being easily accessible to children. (He also wrote a book about how TV was potentially damaging, but it seems no one was willing to publish it.) This was the thing that he wanted to change. The Comics Code Authority was the result of Fredrich raising these concerns and stirring public furor on the topic, but, really, almost none of it came from Fredrich himself. It was an agreement that had been developed between a handful of the big-name comics companies at the time, Marvel and DC being among them, as an alternative to any sort of government regulation. The rules had all been come up with, internally, to control how comics would be produced within these companies- And, interesting thing to note, a lot of these horror and crime comics were edgy, independently developed competitors to the bigger publishers that developed the CCA. This whole censorship thing was a shrewd move that, whether intentional or not, allowed these big names and brands to squash out their small competitors by signing deals with distributors and news stands to only sell CCA-approved comics. (You wouldn't wanna be the store that sells dirty comics, would you?) When video games came around to public consumption, Nintendo already knew about this whole rigamarole, as it had happened before already with film and comics, and they knew that it was also good for business if you wanted to present your brand as more trustworthy and kind of keep other competitors out of your lane. Before the advent of ESRB, the 'Nintendo Seal of Quality' was also a guarantee that your games would be suitable for all audiences, in addition to a certain baseline of quality that customers were wary about after that infamous Atari ET and the video game crash attributed to games like it. I haven't read nearly enough books to know how much of a role that played in Nintendo's success, but it seems to have worked given what a big thing they were at the time. They were big enough that I didn't even know there was supposed to have been a "video game crash" between the times of the Atari and the NES. Of course, business is a lot different now that we have mostly moved on from flat censorship to age-ratings systems in all of these mediums, but it raises a very interesting point: When there's public concern over content, and the biggest companies involved tend to react by instituting these changes in themselves and cutting deals to make sure nobody's distributing anything nasty (big studios also used to cut deals with theatres to make sure only certain movies could be shown, too) it tends to benefit those big companies more than the audience or the public we were kind of concerned about. Whether that's something we should find an alternative to next time or a natural growing pain inherent in the system is another matter entirely. I'm not sure what I would do about all the soft and shadow censorship on, say, youtube, personally.
Crazy to think that there are people who are too scared of creating a game that will get the FBI knocking on your door. Thanks for biting the bullet and inspiring many FPS games!
So in other words, we The People need to RESIST "the state" no matter who's in charge. The far-left and the far-right have more in common than either is willing to admit. Also, most Americans who self-apply the moniker of "conservative" would be more accurately described as "constitutionalist" since they're typically too "Open to Experience" (in Big Five terms) to be cognitively conservative. The term "liberal" used to mean "one who advocates liberty," so anyone who advocates censorship or gun control isn't really a "liberal" in the OG sense of the term. Back in the '90s, when I was in high school, I was a hardcore right-wing maniac, an ideal I embraced because I thought it was a path toward self-liberation and enlightenment. Some might regard it as symbolically ironic, but the American right wing in the '90s was basically the "left-hand path," so to speak, in the sense that it offered a sort of organized rebellion against what was the status quo at that time. I was infamous among my peers for my outspoken views and I often worked Doom and Evil Dead motifs into my rants, even quoting Bruce Campbell in actual debate speeches. People like me saw ourselves as engaged in resistance against the forces of order, conformity, censorship, and especially against global government. Our philosophy combined elements of Chaotic Good and Lawful Good. So basically Neutral Good with radical tendencies. "Radical" in sense of being engaged in rebellion against the ideological status quo. The '90s were, after all, an inversion of the '60s. *Note:* The demons depicted in Doom and the Evil Dead mythos are the Saturday morning cartoon versions of demons. Real demons are a lot subtler than that, using subterfuge to manipulate people against each other. Also, the word "hell" comes from the Hebrew word "Sheol" which simply means "the grave." Hell, as depicted in the Doom mythos, is more like an alternate dimension like Hades but more cosmic. So kinda like Half-Life's Xen, in a certain sense, but with less factional alignment ambiguity. Doom's Hell is distinctly Lawful Evil. 7:54 Smurfs aren't satanic. They're communist. Also, Gargamel is a racist caricature of a Jewish kabbalist (which might explain why his cat, Asrael, is named after the angel of death). Modern-day pro-communist factions conveniently forget that the Bolshies were almost as anti-Jewish (not broadly anti-Semitic, but specifically anti-Jewish) at the National Socialists.
On teenage suicides: No teenager, ever, has thought the thought "I have 30 years ahead of me". That's adults being complete idiots and projecting how they see the world, at the age of 30+, and disregarding even how they looked at things back when they were children or teens. Teenagers are also generally speaking reckless, overly emotional bundles of hormones and rebellion just because (or rather, because they are at that stage of normal human development where they instinctively seek independence from the family unit). As such, they lean into being bad problem solvers. They aren't thinking with the left-brains, if you know what I'm saying. Or, TL;DR & put bluntly - how does anyone think teenagers are at less risk of suicide than 40 year olds? The 40 year old has survived 4 decades of varying levels of hardship, has the same amount of time seeing how the world works, and probably recognizes numerous obligations to his family & friends. The 40 year old isn't going to even be contemplating taking their own life unless they are at literal rock bottom. The teenager thinks it's the end of the world if they can't go to prom.
Sandy is the Main Character. He made Doom, Age of Empires and Call of Cthulu. The rest of us are just supporting NPC's so he can have a world to live in.
I always thought it was hilarious when that preacher chopped the head off a pokemon because it was evil. Pokemon wasn't evil it was extremely awesomely devious and successful marketing lol
Good video. A few interesting points. Made me laugh 'in the uk it was the right wing that wanted to censor, but in my instance it was the democrats', I paraphrase of course, but implying democrats arent right wing (by our standards at least) got a chuckle out of me.
I've heard stories before that the reasoning to include the Jesus textures was because John R. suggested that it'd be fun to use the nailguns on him. Was it true or was it some sort of a random bluff I heard floating around?
I heard a preacher bad mouth "young men who play video games". I'm still baffled at society's attack on gaming. They've done it for years and not gotten anywhere, but then I had it. I think I have it figured out. They attack gamers (I'm talking about religion in particular here.) because they know gamers are far fewer in their congregation than other avenues of entertainment. What about watching movies, TV, or sports. Those are a waste of time too right? Well, like I said they'd have LOTS of people walking out if they attacked anything beside games.
I am from a religious family and my dad bought Doom 2 when I was a kid and let me play it. I also played Diablo which is another series with Satanic themed enemies. It is kind of silly the way people overreact to things.
when you said the communists burnt books and so did the nazis, made me have mad respect because so many people think that the nazis were communists lol also appreciate you being nuanced enough to know cancel culture has been a theme for both parties. I always thought boycotts were an american freedom lol
Blaming communists for Hitler is hilarious. Hitler hated Jews for supposedly backstabbing Germany during WWI. The entire party tried to appeal to left wing laborers by labeling itself "National _Socialist" which Hitler nearly left the party because of. If it weren't for the Soviets, WWII wouldn't have been won by the allies.
@@danem2215 “Pogrom” is a Russian word, the well known “protocols” were created by Russian antisemites and Hitler became closely acquainted with commies during Bavarian republic. Whose leaders were mostly jewish AFAIK.
@@noop9k You're contradicting yourself. "Nazis were a response to commies." "Hitler became well acquainted with commies" "Hitler hated Jews cause of commies." "Commies were Jewish" Hitler developed antisemitic views long before the 3 week existence of the Bavarian Republic, which I *can* assume helped solidify his anti-Marxist and anticommunist beliefs.
I think people were trying to cancel doom because they don't understand it. I don't see anyone trying to ban pacific rim because it includes monsters or is too violent. Do not assume malevolence when a given action can be adequately explained by self destructive stupidity.
I'm wondering where all these great RPGers are that I keep hearing about. I have trouble finding a group where more than half the party don't have one solution for everything (usually "hit it") or don't get upset when presented with a challenge that they have to solve. The GM trying to encourage player imagination or problem solving has broken up more groups in my experience.
If I remember correctly, the kid that killed themself was gay, and the detective used the d&d story to cover that up Sad how bigotry goes hand in hand with hating things like rpgs
if you talk against believer spirits, yes in us, cleaned by the blood of Jesus, you shall not call them unholy, by law, based on law, do not dictate by law, no bound to the law of sin and death, no excuses needed, sinless cast the first stone, no leaders needed to served, only freedom in Spirit, in Christ, with God or godless, not both, law or christ
“He was from Microsoft so that’s probably okay”
😂😂 I’m so glad I discovered you have a RUclips channel.
LOL best quote ever!
I am grateful that my Father understood reality vs games and all that. I grew up playing DOOM and being taught that you are killing demons & defending good. I was around 9 years old. I have that responsibility with my own children now. I still play these games and they see me playing. I talk to them about it, ask them how they feel about it and if they have questions for me. This is a topic that can get deep really quick and I am grateful for how you are able to cover this so well.
I let my son watch Dark Souls, as well as classic Doom. I warn him about the content he is about to see and let him take responsibility for his own actions. Kids aren't stupid. They don't need to be protected from everything. In fact, they should make their own experiences, as long as it's not related to extreme content. It is way more effective than turning them into mindless drones that follow other people's commands. When people complain about it, he tells them to "Relax. It's just a video game." He doesn't see the violence, he just sees the adventure. Hell, I grew up with somewhat racist games that made you shoot "the enemies of the state", and I still turned out fine (and not racist, in case someone didn't get it).
@@asteria9963 you talking about postal? Very based
That was really inspiring Sandy! Those arguments against "the enemies of fun" were fantastic. I'm definitely going to use them!
thanks!
I was a kid in Colorado when Columbine happened, and I was 100% targeted by my school because they knew that I liked to play video games like Doom, Quake, and Mortal Kombat. I remember that I wasn't allowed to play them for some time because of how the school was threatening my parents with action from child protective services, sending me to correctional schools, etc...
Thank God for Chex Quest. Got me though some dark (and boring) times.
Lawnie over at GetOffMyLawn just did a great review and overview of Chex Quest. Probably the second best Advertainment game next to Pushover. And the fact that it came in a cereal box is insane. The developer was never allowed to finish the game by General Mills so they actually went and finished it on their own. You can download and play the final chapter for free from them.
I was hoping this would be a gameplay-related post (inventory management, backtracking) but this was fascinating as well!
It is funny to me how companies shift their moral standings once money is on the table. I remember as a kid in the early 90s writing to Lego to please, please, please make some Star Wars Lego, and they wrote back that the property did not reflect their values. Fair - it's a kids toy, Star Wars has some grim scenes and sci fi violence, that's fine. Of course, a few years later when the company was at risk of bankruptcy, Star Wars - among other things - brought them back from the brink, and now not only can you buy Lego™ Disney™ Star Wars™ Imperial Stormtrooper™ Space Nazis™ but they also carry sets that include characters like Carnage, an insane serial killer controlled by an alien virus. Funny. I'm just waiting for the Judge Dredd theme now.
Anyway, I've never actually played any of the Doom or Quake games but I find the history of it all so interesting. Keep it up!
I met some Mormon missionaries in Poland, they seemed like very likeable people and I respect their dedication immensely - going to unknown countries to preach. The organisation felt a bit cultish though, asking me to give them 10% from all my earnings (like Jews B.C I guess?). I stayed with Catholics, but the Mormon teaching did help me mend an addiction I had at the time, and I'm thankful for that.
"Hell's interior decorator" I want to meet that guy, conduct an interview. Likely with a glass wall between us, I don't want to become the next mount he installs.
And you know he is flamboyant with a hard lisp. He would be saying stuff like: "Thatan is just fabuluth!"
The whole smurf's being satanic was born out of The Watchtower magazine from the Jehovah's Witness folks. Check out the book "I'm perfect, you're doomed'" it details someone who grew up around it and left. Wild story
When some guy shot a lot of people during The Dark Knight Rises, I was in highschool. A teacher started talking about it by saying "obviously, that man played a lot of videogames".
I got up from my desk and left the classroom. The teacher followed me and asked me why. I answered that "if you're going to stand there and call me and half my friends proto mass shooters, then I clearly have nothing to learn from you."
Surprisingly, the principal sided with me on this one.
It is amazing to me that people still think there is a link between VG Violence and real violence. Sure, a psychopath might get ideas from a game, but he was already going to kill regardless
i'm very glad you said that to your teacher of the time. spot on.
The reason that the principal sided with you is probably because the teacher was using their position of authority to push their opinion and marginalize a group of people they disagreed with, which is inappropriate. I recently dealt with the same issue at my job where the instructor conducting our safety meetings was marginalizing people who aren't blindly trusting the covid vaccine. I complained to my supervisor afterwards, and I don't know if he said anything to his superiors or not but the guy hasn't done it since. I think there is a time and place to discuss things like this, but using your position of authority as a soapbox when people are supposed to be listening and learning from you is just plain corruption, especially when you are dealing with impressionable youth.
And everyone clapped
That was a very brave thing to do, good for you
I was 14 at the time Columbine happened. I can remember sitting there watching the Senate hearings, listening to them blame guns and music and DOOM and everything else _but_ the two little creeps that did it and the parents that couldn't be bothered to actually pay attention to what their kids were doing. I thought then, and still do, that that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, and it led to my lifelong conviction that people who go seeking to blame an object, or _access_ to an object, for the decisions of a warped mind is a sure sign of moral bankruptcy, emotional immaturity, mental deficiency, or all of the above.
My favorite argument for when people want to censor stuff it to point out that John Denver's song "Rocky Mountain High" was pulled from radio stations because people thought it was about drug use. And the sole reason they believed that was the words "Rocky Mountain High." Obviously "High" was talking about getting high on drugs and not feeling energized for being out in nature, right?
I just thought it meant geographical elevation.
@@sozaj It was a play on words in that sense. Yes, the elevation is high, but the song was about the love of nature.
@@terraneaux makes sense.
Or the song from Twisted Sister, which was about being scared of surgery, but people thought it was about torture and BDSM.
@@Seth9809 Which song by them? That sounds like a good example too.
The panic mongers also blamed heavy metal music. Funny thing I'm a devout Christian and my three favorite things are tabletop RPGs, horror films/literature and heavy metal. 😂😂😂
The good ol' days.
Not everyone who yells "LORD! LORD!" is let into the kingdom of God. Perhaps you're not such a 'devout' Christian after all.
I was just about to say the same thing about heavy metal. I've found black metal to be particularly cathartic for dealing with difficult life situations.
heavy metal = no real music/bunch of ugly bullshit
@@OliverdeClisson Gotta bait harder.
Great video, Sandy!
I’m a Christian from a Christian family, and played Doom II when I was about 6 years old (well, I tried to play it, anyway - used the IDDQD and IDCLEV cheat codes a lot). It’s still my favorite PC game of all time. I’m glad my dad was never weird about it.
Fascinating! This is absolutely fantastic. I am with you 100% Sandy. I am an educator that encourages my students to game when they can. I did it as a kid and I'm still playing today.
Addendum- I can't tell you how many times I have played Doom/Doom 2/Final Doom/Master Levels throughout my life. Those games got me through many hardships in life.
Thanks for this video. When I was a kid, it was the religious ‘right’ that influenced my parents to disallow me playing RPGs. It was a direct pathway to satanism and the occult. Thankfully, we made it through the Satanic Panic, and I can role play all I want, and get to play Cthulhu Wars whenever I want. No parental approval needed. Never mind that I’m 42.
The religious right thinks RPGs are bad because Satan. The extreme left thinks games are bad because school shootings I guess.
Sandy Petersen and us poor gamer are caught in the middle. Lol. I’m happy to be where we are.
Now it's the cultist Left who want to control what you play.
Both extremes want control.
@@osoewert6439 it is the nature of the extreme - if you are different from them, you must be Wrong.
Haha, when you were saying you showed it to companies and they'd say "We could never do this" I took it to mean that they would never have the ability to do it and I thought "Damn right you wouldn't"
That's exactly what I thought as well. Hilarious :-P
Doom is definitely a bad influence. A friend of mine knows a guy, and he stubbed his toe after playing it.. so, yeah. Evil
Not the best of mockeries to make if anyone recalls an infamous pair of killers and what they played and what the media tried to tie together. I'm not saying there's a connection, because that's garbage, just saying that was a poorly chosen way of mocking the notion video games influence people.
@@ENiceGeo Ha! That's hilarious 😅
Love this video....and everything said is so true. I was born in 79 and wasn't allowed to play DnD until i was 16 BECAUSE of the Satanic panic. I avow with 100 percent certainty that RPGs and gaming saved me.
I thought I was gonna see a video of you talking about the enemies you shoot in Doom. I ended up with something much more fulfilling!
In the so called "Dark ages" monastery's were the universities of the day and as part of your thesis you would argue a point of view. Students were encouraged to argue points that were even seen as heretical at the time and if they argued them well, they passed. It was not in the pursuit of liberalism, but in the exploration of truth. This is the origin of the modern PhD, you were encouraged to argue or touch on controversial topics for the benefit of truth. The dark ages, it seems, are a better term for now, than they were for then.
Fantastic video! Another reason why players respect your opinion and enjoy your games! Thanks for reminding us that “haters gotta hate” regardless of the lack of common sense
Do I see Starship Troopers Arachnids on one of those shelves? If I do, my already large amount of respect for you, sir, has just tripled ten-fold. Only TRUE video game and movie loving gentlemen understand Starship Troopers (even if nobody really understands the book).
"Do you want to know more?"
Thanks for having a more balanced look at these sorts of things. I think it's important to remember that the paradigm shifts depending on who is in power, who wants power, and how far people will go for that power. Without going into the details, right now the groups that a decade ago were against my artist friends have united with them under the same causes as far worse problems have rose to prominence over time. Take care Mr. Petersen!
This was a really inspiring and informative video, Sandy! I love the stories you had to share about your time at id Software, and your arguments against the enemies of fun. The teenage suicide part, you touched on really well. That stuff is usually misunderstood.
We can all understand why violent games and movies were so controversial at the time - it was groundbreaking, nobody had ever seen anything like this before. Nowadays, violence is like an integral part of several movies and games out there, which you probably saw with Doom Eternal and other recent releases. It's mainstream now, thanks to Doom and other media. I remember reading about some historic events that were just like this - there was something new and popular that not a lot of people were familiar with and strongly opposed it at first.
Side note: I've only been playing Doom for five months now, and it's been an awesome ride. A lot of the levels you made were very memorable and will stick to me for years as I play them over and over again. Several inspired me for my own maps. Just wanted to say a resounding "well done".
People were against NOVELS when mass-market literature became a thing. I am not joking, the moral watchdogs of the time believed that reading(!) would corrupt young women. Once you know about bs like this, you can't take these yohos seriously anymore. They're just repeating the same old "arguments" whenever the times start passing them by and control slips through their fingers.
Almost always whenever I encounter these people it's someone who has absolutely no experience with the thing they want to censor. Yet they've already passed judgement on it. I always try to find some way to expose them to the thing they claim to be against.
Thank you for clearing this up. I thought the Christ images in Quake were really beautiful. I had no idea why would they fit in there, but they didn't seem disrespectful in any way.
The pentagrams were bothering me, though I was never sure why.
Isn't that interesting, though? It's a great opportunity to examine your self. "Why does this evoke feelings in me?" is an excellent question to ask oneself. The pentagram in particular is very foggy, it has so many uses and has had an exceptional amount of different uses throughout history.
What a great question to ask oneself. I try to do it as often as I can to myself.
Introspection can be a very profound journey. And if you reach a roadblock, the act of dispelling yourself of the notion you're trying to explore is an even more profound exercise.
That's real enlightenment right there.
Likely because very many of us grew up in a culture where indoctrination with Christianity is or was the norm. The pentagram has very little actual use, but due to the way it was used in culture in the past 40ish years, you connect it with "evil" in some way.
It might also be that there's no real connection with the weirdo mish mash setting of Quake and pentagrams and their culturally motivated connection to "evil" in the way of christian hell and demons.
@@PoulWrist The problem is - I know people who have had to do with actual demons. Not fun stuff. Takes a decade to get rid of this shizz from your life with the help of priests. And the (upside-down) pentagram is used by satanic cults, which are very much connected to this. The upside-up pentagram BTW is a symbol or Mary (called the "marine star" I believe - no idea why though). So the satanic pentagram is an upside down version of the symbol of Mary, just like the upside down cross is the symbol of.. St. Peter (gotcha!). Seriously though - exorcists are the biggest badasses out there. And there's not many of them sadly.
Allright, I'll wrap it up here.
I'm glad the "Satanic Panic" is mostly done with. I will say however, I do get a large amount of people who get flabbergasted that I like D&D and Lovecraft and went to a Christian college and minored in Christian Theology. "Isn't there devils in there?" My answer is "yeah, hence why I play a Paladin or a Cleric to *destroy* them." I also like to tell them that it's just a theoretical conflict resolution. People start to see it as fine these days. Now that lot's of fantasy shows depict violence and stuff, it's more mainstream.
My favorite however is: "ewww you play D&D?" and then that person goes and binge watches Game of Thrones or The Lord of The Rings hahaha.
I had a coworker who was visibly frightened by the cover of my copy of "KULT: Death is not the end"
@@Skullkan6 haha oh my 😂
yes it's not such a threat as it was. But I fear that the non-Satanic opponents will grow in strength - the people who think that Doom caused Columbine, for instance.
@The Xenomorphian please let Tipper Gore know.
It didn’t go away. It just changed form. It’s called cancel culture now. The only thing authoritarians change is their vocabulary.
Mr. Sandy, I am also an LDS and I found your story with the missionaries very funny. Keep publishing more content, I find it very cool and interesting.
Great to see so many HP lovecraft and horror fans gathered in the comments.
Greetings from Brazil.
Please don't tell my daughters I can go to South Korea without being arrested
Hey Herb! How are you doing!
@@sandypetersen6935 Great, thanks! These videos are awesome, btw!
Ah doom
A lone marine doing God's works of cleansing the world and galaxy of demons
A game where you are shooting demons in the face with a shotgun is "evil". Makes perfect sense.
You answered my next 5 questions I had lined up to flood your channel with. Kinda related but, how can I get my fiance into gaming? She has a hard time meeting new people or even talking to my own friends and family due to anxiety, how can I use gaming as a catalyst to bring her out of her shell?
Well I am certainly no expert at curing anxiety (BEING anxious maybe i'm better at). I'd say start off easy - just play a two-player board game with her; lots are available. Then introduce her to co-op games; they're less anxiety-inducing because you can't really lose. I mean, you CAN, but since everyone loses it removes some of the sting. Eventually you can move her to RPGs with the same people she was co-oping with, who with luck are now her friends.
Never been a fan of scary movies but playing Friday the 13th game helped with my anxiety :)
Censorship has nothing to do with left or right, it's entirely an authoritarian problem. Doesn't matter if you're capitalist or communist, conservative or progressive; anyone who loves power and authority will want to censor what they don't like.
There is a fourth stigmata for suicide: clinical depression.
The term isn't specific enough, and it is hard to factor out physiological aspects from social ones. But both David Foster Wallace and Chester Bennington did themselves in and were diagnosed with clinical depression. The both of them were very well loved, so good social environments stimulants were readily available to them.
While depressed people are unlikely to voluntarily engage in role-playing games, RPGs have not been sufficiently explored as a therapeutic social tool.
I grew up with I’d Software in the 90’s (my 20’s in the parent’s basement, college years). I am LDS myself, and the imagery both creeped me out as well as intrigued me…as a oil painter I thought it’d be cool to paint some of that stuff. Do you ever find yourself having to sift between “Mormon culture” and actual Gospel. Well, anyway thanks for those awesome levels, as we as the Christ floor button story.
I think its really cool Sandy has a Christian faith, it was nice to hear that ID were careful about blasphemy in the past. I love classic Doom 1&2, its engine limitations have made it into something that endures time, all the old maps are stunning in their style and modern maps using the same limitations have carried it on. For fans that love the style it can never get old. Thanks Sandy.
My story about DOOM:
I was a sales team lead for DALY Computers in 1993. At a small convention, everyone else was showing all kinds of boring business production software.
We were a hardware maker, not software. So, I had DOOM running on the PC on display and at the same time, I had a surf music instrumental CD playing...to show how much computing power our PCs had.
My boss found out about my attempt to attract attention, and chewed me out up and down, left and right, and in and out!
I stayed quiet and just said, "So, are you saying we should tear up the 500 lead cards we got?" (At previous conventions, we only got about 50, FIFTY, at most.)
He decided to keep me and the leads, but told me not to do that again.
The next convention was FOSE...the biggest IT convention in Washington, DC. And, we did NOT have DOOM playing...but EVERY OTHER PC MANUFACTURER DID.
And, we got 50 leads.
After that, my boss required we play DOOM at EVERY convention, but by then, DOOM's appeal had died down.
Fun fact, the Jesus face plate floor buttons DID ship with quake, e3m6 for example.
hey love the video thanks for making this, definitely gonna show this around
Coming at this from not being an America and also not being a christian (of any denomination), it certainly gives a different perspective on strange (to me at least) reasons why people wanted to ban video games and RPGs. In Australia, the attempt to censor was more based around the graphic violence and that was more to do with video games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, along with the various copycat titles, rather than roleplaying games.
My respect for you just grew immensely! I love the way you stand up for Christianity and I share your faith.
I remember when our local evangelist television network held an extremely long live call-in program denouncing the Goosebumps children's novels by R.L. Stine, on Halloween. Hapless mothers calling in how it gave their kids nightmares. It was clearly ridiculous, as the people there had never read any of the novels. The Satanic panic of the nineties was a weird time, even my usually even keeled parents were affected, my Dad made me throw out all of my MTG cards, because all he could see was tarot cards. I'm glad people have mostly relaxed on this stuff, realizing it is all just fantasy.
Oh hey, I never knew you were a Latter-Day Saint. Somehow I'm completely not surprised.
Also 5:21 LOL
Great work Sandy
I think deeming what is and what isn't suitable content should boil down to both context and also common decency. Just like how a person can't be punished on the spot for an assumed crime, media shouldn't be banned or censored without seeing all the facts first. Plus there's common sense not to do things when creating media, like not stepping on the face of Christ in Quake as you mentioned. I'm a Christian myself and I don't find anything wrong with Doom, it's Judaeo-Christian without being sacrilegious and a solid game. Quake's theology has always confused me though, and I suppose now would be a good opportunity for me to ask about it. I don't think I was ever offended, I just never understood how it was all meant to tie together cohesively.
Quake I's fictional world revolves around fantasy magic, different dimensions, and elder gods as later mentioned in Quake III (although I don't think you were still at Id during the making of Quake III). All of that would suggest that Quake is polytheistic or at least agnostic. On the other hand there are also images of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross, as well as the 'pentagram of protection' power-up. That would mean that Quake is monotheistic and rooted in Judaeo-Christianity. This is also further implied by Doom Guy's presence in several multiplayer Quake games, since Doom Guy is a character from a very Judaeo-Christian series of games (except Doom Eternal maybe which looks agnostic. The pentagram of protection power-up by the way is very Satan worshiping-esque, but I did read Quake I's manual. I know you guys weren't Satan worshipers).
Logically, the polytheistic approach and monotheistic Judaeo-Christian approach could not possibly both be true for Quake's canon at the same time, even in a multiverse scenario. I do have my own thoughts as to how everything could workout canonically, but which one of the two views would you say is correct for Quake and why? Were the clashing views a result of Quake I's development hell at all? Thanks, Mr. Petersen, and please keep making videos!
The Smurfs, know as the blue agents of the Devil.
Thank you SO MUCH for this video! Very well articulated!
Verry intelligent man, and yes Doom was my first fps. Just discovered Sandy's channel here on yt and its gold!
Hot damn! The quality was almost unexpected (I’m new)! Also note that there could be enemies within the industry too. I just got in an argument with a bunch of gamers about an upcoming horror game, in which “nothing much happens, so it’s not really even a game” (roughly word for word quote from one of them). Could you perhaps do a video about sub-genre enemies of fun? It’s kind of a niche topic especially in comparison to the overall thing like the Satanic Panic and viOLenT viDeO gAMeS
Heya sandy, I just found your channel and I'm really enjoying it. Keep it up 🙂
Sandy on point my man! Loved this analysis.
My mom is a Christian me and her love horror games and horror movies
"The Lord is on our side, let's kill satan."
"Wait, you can't say 'satan', that's satanist!"
"😑"
You talked about M. Stackpole. The one that wrote all those battletech novels ? I really liked those.
Cheers from a 12 years old boy that had to play Doom at release when the mom wasn't home, because "oh my god, so violent"
Don't touch my Robotech or you'll get a neutron s missile right in the keester.
wish i had an uncle like Sandy Petersen
The Christians Zalets would claim that by playing doom you are practicing Saintenazam
A couple of things.
When someone is trying to deny their involvement, like this woman grieving for her suicidal son, they will blame anyone and everyone. Her I don't blame, because she could have coped better, but failed. She shouldn't have said it was you guys, but facing the pain that her son chose to do drugs, steal, and premeditate murder (what a suicide is) was probably too much. Even if she had no part in his decisions, a parent often would feel it was their fault, and society would have turned on her in that time of woe if she didn't deflect it. Really, it is our collective fault, not hers. The person responsible killed themselves, let's leave it there.
Now, I played all those games as they came out. I knew a gamer who had his machine basicly from winnings alone. He played Quake competivly. So, I thought it was cool at the time.
Those things are violent, and maybe the players need to evaluate that. It is like how horror has been equated to porn in the way it is produced and how it affects people. I would think the damage is in the individual, not the game, though. You can't reasonably be expected to police users.
For suffering that process, thank you. Like it or not, it is needed. We need to look long and hard at everything new we make. The internet has proven this time and again. We still lack good policies and are still working through making them.
*The issue is the extremists in any faction.* These zealots are useful and needed but shouldn't be allowed to rule the day. They make us question our presupposed oppinions. It helps growth, but when we are held in their sway, damage is done to the people.
Thanks for all you have done. Horror isn't my favorite type of story, and I still enjoy what you make and have made. I like your civs better, though.
Thank you for this video Uncle Sandy!
Great work as usual!
Adults only isn't hard to achieve in germany.
If they smell a fussle of 1940 you're lucky it doesn't get banned.
(looking at you Doom II)
Everyone in government should have to sit down and watch this.
Good stuff anyway.
2:45 try loving a man or opposing corporate oligarchies. so much for the tolerant right.
Yeah a lot of these "both sides" lot fail to mention that the left tends to want to censor bigotry and the right wants to censor minorities, and that liberals are not the left, but instead are center-right.
People think the left censor a lot cause they straight up don't realise how much bigoted shit is in society and media. The right wing though will come down on you for anything from putting a trans flag in a corner of a level (A Hat In Time) to having a brown person in a Christmas advert.
@@Tedris4 The right wants to censor minorities? You need to study a little US history. Pro slavery south - Democrat. Ku Klux Clan - militant arm of the Democrat party. Jim Crow - Democrat. Segregation - Democrat. Planned Parenthood's designed genocide of blacks by an actual white supremacist, Margaret Sanger - Democrat. Philibuster of 1964 Civil Rights Act - Democrat. Having a KKK member as senior statesman in Senate until 2010, Robert Byrd - Democrat. Political party raised up to end slavery - Republican party. Half a million men who sacrificed themselves to end slavery - Republican.
@@bdwilcox breaking: local youtube commenter discusses American political history, seemingly unaware of nixon's southern strategy. We'll have more news as the situation develops.
@@voxdelumine7491 Breaking: local RUclips commenter doesn't know Nixon's South Strategy" is an unending canard for Democrats to try to shift blame onto Republicans for the Democrat's past and current racial atrocities. Of the 11 Democrat Southern Senators, how many became Republican when all of the Democrat's racism was magically transferred to Republicans? Answer: 1. Since the Southern Strategy was implemented in 1968, I'm sure all those white Southern racists started voting Republican since all the Democrat's racism was purged from the Democrats onto the Republicans, right? Except, no, the South didn't vote solidly Republican until 1996. Next time, try not getting your history from Wikipedia, Mother jones or the New Republic. Try reading an actual analysis like "The myth of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’" on, of all places, The Hill. Plain and simple, your propaganda only works on those as gullible and partisan as you.
@@bdwilcox that's because you're both the right
Doom was no Mario Brothers.
The UAC was evil.
Yep. Even the formation of the church can be debated.
Bro you’re LDS? Awesome!
This is a very late response to a very minor detail in the video, but the comics censorship legend as it has been passed down through the nerd hobby community is very complex and I think it does a disservice to simply say that Fredrich Wertham was simply anti-fun and a bad man.
I'm not sure "evil" is the right term for Dr. Fredrich Wertham at all. Of course alarmist, misguided, maybe homophobic and antiquated in some of his views, and squeamish to a fault, but his concern for children was genuine and not driven by any sort of attention-mongering profiteering like it was for later anti-[thing] activists like the "murder simulators" guy. Fredrich wasn't just opposed to kids reading violent comic books, for one thing, he was also opposed to things like African American youth not having access to mental health care, and his writings on the effect of segregation on children were used in the case for Brown V. Board of Education. For one thing, whenever he was questioned about the comics code later in life, he repeatedly would state that he never favored censorship, or even disliked comic books in particular, but he was chiefly concerned with violent and mature media being easily accessible to children. (He also wrote a book about how TV was potentially damaging, but it seems no one was willing to publish it.) This was the thing that he wanted to change.
The Comics Code Authority was the result of Fredrich raising these concerns and stirring public furor on the topic, but, really, almost none of it came from Fredrich himself. It was an agreement that had been developed between a handful of the big-name comics companies at the time, Marvel and DC being among them, as an alternative to any sort of government regulation. The rules had all been come up with, internally, to control how comics would be produced within these companies- And, interesting thing to note, a lot of these horror and crime comics were edgy, independently developed competitors to the bigger publishers that developed the CCA. This whole censorship thing was a shrewd move that, whether intentional or not, allowed these big names and brands to squash out their small competitors by signing deals with distributors and news stands to only sell CCA-approved comics. (You wouldn't wanna be the store that sells dirty comics, would you?)
When video games came around to public consumption, Nintendo already knew about this whole rigamarole, as it had happened before already with film and comics, and they knew that it was also good for business if you wanted to present your brand as more trustworthy and kind of keep other competitors out of your lane. Before the advent of ESRB, the 'Nintendo Seal of Quality' was also a guarantee that your games would be suitable for all audiences, in addition to a certain baseline of quality that customers were wary about after that infamous Atari ET and the video game crash attributed to games like it. I haven't read nearly enough books to know how much of a role that played in Nintendo's success, but it seems to have worked given what a big thing they were at the time. They were big enough that I didn't even know there was supposed to have been a "video game crash" between the times of the Atari and the NES.
Of course, business is a lot different now that we have mostly moved on from flat censorship to age-ratings systems in all of these mediums, but it raises a very interesting point: When there's public concern over content, and the biggest companies involved tend to react by instituting these changes in themselves and cutting deals to make sure nobody's distributing anything nasty (big studios also used to cut deals with theatres to make sure only certain movies could be shown, too) it tends to benefit those big companies more than the audience or the public we were kind of concerned about. Whether that's something we should find an alternative to next time or a natural growing pain inherent in the system is another matter entirely. I'm not sure what I would do about all the soft and shadow censorship on, say, youtube, personally.
Most people think nerdy stuff is cool now anyway.
not sure if "most" is correct there.
Well it seems more profitable to be a "geek."
Crazy to think that there are people who are too scared of creating a game that will get the FBI knocking on your door. Thanks for biting the bullet and inspiring many FPS games!
Wife was an epic troll
Much love
I like how be just starts listing reasons for why kids suicide 😂
So in other words, we The People need to RESIST "the state" no matter who's in charge. The far-left and the far-right have more in common than either is willing to admit. Also, most Americans who self-apply the moniker of "conservative" would be more accurately described as "constitutionalist" since they're typically too "Open to Experience" (in Big Five terms) to be cognitively conservative. The term "liberal" used to mean "one who advocates liberty," so anyone who advocates censorship or gun control isn't really a "liberal" in the OG sense of the term. Back in the '90s, when I was in high school, I was a hardcore right-wing maniac, an ideal I embraced because I thought it was a path toward self-liberation and enlightenment. Some might regard it as symbolically ironic, but the American right wing in the '90s was basically the "left-hand path," so to speak, in the sense that it offered a sort of organized rebellion against what was the status quo at that time. I was infamous among my peers for my outspoken views and I often worked Doom and Evil Dead motifs into my rants, even quoting Bruce Campbell in actual debate speeches. People like me saw ourselves as engaged in resistance against the forces of order, conformity, censorship, and especially against global government. Our philosophy combined elements of Chaotic Good and Lawful Good. So basically Neutral Good with radical tendencies. "Radical" in sense of being engaged in rebellion against the ideological status quo. The '90s were, after all, an inversion of the '60s.
*Note:* The demons depicted in Doom and the Evil Dead mythos are the Saturday morning cartoon versions of demons. Real demons are a lot subtler than that, using subterfuge to manipulate people against each other. Also, the word "hell" comes from the Hebrew word "Sheol" which simply means "the grave." Hell, as depicted in the Doom mythos, is more like an alternate dimension like Hades but more cosmic. So kinda like Half-Life's Xen, in a certain sense, but with less factional alignment ambiguity. Doom's Hell is distinctly Lawful Evil.
7:54 Smurfs aren't satanic. They're communist. Also, Gargamel is a racist caricature of a Jewish kabbalist (which might explain why his cat, Asrael, is named after the angel of death). Modern-day pro-communist factions conveniently forget that the Bolshies were almost as anti-Jewish (not broadly anti-Semitic, but specifically anti-Jewish) at the National Socialists.
On teenage suicides: No teenager, ever, has thought the thought "I have 30 years ahead of me". That's adults being complete idiots and projecting how they see the world, at the age of 30+, and disregarding even how they looked at things back when they were children or teens.
Teenagers are also generally speaking reckless, overly emotional bundles of hormones and rebellion just because (or rather, because they are at that stage of normal human development where they instinctively seek independence from the family unit). As such, they lean into being bad problem solvers. They aren't thinking with the left-brains, if you know what I'm saying.
Or, TL;DR & put bluntly - how does anyone think teenagers are at less risk of suicide than 40 year olds? The 40 year old has survived 4 decades of varying levels of hardship, has the same amount of time seeing how the world works, and probably recognizes numerous obligations to his family & friends. The 40 year old isn't going to even be contemplating taking their own life unless they are at literal rock bottom. The teenager thinks it's the end of the world if they can't go to prom.
Look, you wrote so many words that boil down to one fact. Teenagers are stupid.
Just noticed the TARDIS in the background Sandy, it tickles me thinking one of the level designers of Doom is a fan of Dr Who 🙂
It's really odd to see a video about suicide prevention pop up as video in the up next section.
Sandy is the Main Character. He made Doom, Age of Empires and Call of Cthulu. The rest of us are just supporting NPC's so he can have a world to live in.
Amen brotha!
I always thought it was hilarious when that preacher chopped the head off a pokemon because it was evil. Pokemon wasn't evil it was extremely awesomely devious and successful marketing lol
Good video. A few interesting points. Made me laugh 'in the uk it was the right wing that wanted to censor, but in my instance it was the democrats', I paraphrase of course, but implying democrats arent right wing (by our standards at least) got a chuckle out of me.
They absolutely are not, by any metric (except radical).
Not all democrats are leftists, but all republicans are from the right
TIL Doom and Quake were designed from a Christian perspective and went out of their way to avoid blasphemy.
I've heard stories before that the reasoning to include the Jesus textures was because John R. suggested that it'd be fun to use the nailguns on him. Was it true or was it some sort of a random bluff I heard floating around?
I think DOOM is the most overwhelmingly Christian piece of media ever released.
More Christian than the bible
Well,, yes... I do see the logic...
But I still think we can safely ban football... even the american version where the foot rarely touches the ball.
I
I heard a preacher bad mouth "young men who play video games". I'm still baffled at society's attack on gaming. They've done it for years and not gotten anywhere, but then I had it. I think I have it figured out. They attack gamers (I'm talking about religion in particular here.) because they know gamers are far fewer in their congregation than other avenues of entertainment. What about watching movies, TV, or sports. Those are a waste of time too right? Well, like I said they'd have LOTS of people walking out if they attacked anything beside games.
Video games where considered violence by people
i love sandy!
We all need a re_Print of "Thomas Paine's" "Common Sense".... and read it, actually study it....
I am from a religious family and my dad bought Doom 2 when I was a kid and let me play it. I also played Diablo which is another series with Satanic themed enemies. It is kind of silly the way people overreact to things.
FANTASTIC!!!!
when you said the communists burnt books and so did the nazis, made me have mad respect because so many people think that the nazis were communists lol also appreciate you being nuanced enough to know cancel culture has been a theme for both parties. I always thought boycotts were an american freedom lol
Nazis were a response to the danger coming from communists, without commies there wouldn’t be nazis. Studying Hitler’s younger years can show why.
Blaming communists for Hitler is hilarious. Hitler hated Jews for supposedly backstabbing Germany during WWI. The entire party tried to appeal to left wing laborers by labeling itself "National _Socialist" which Hitler nearly left the party because of. If it weren't for the Soviets, WWII wouldn't have been won by the allies.
@@danem2215 “Pogrom” is a Russian word, the well known “protocols” were created by Russian antisemites and Hitler became closely acquainted with commies during Bavarian republic. Whose leaders were mostly jewish AFAIK.
@@noop9k You're contradicting yourself. "Nazis were a response to commies." "Hitler became well acquainted with commies" "Hitler hated Jews cause of commies." "Commies were Jewish"
Hitler developed antisemitic views long before the 3 week existence of the Bavarian Republic, which I *can* assume helped solidify his anti-Marxist and anticommunist beliefs.
@@danem2215 I see no contradictions. Nazis were formed by first propaganda created in Russia then by danger coming from Bolsheviks in Russia.
I don't like scary movies. I don't have a reason I just don't want to willingly subject myself to being spooked. In other words: too scary for me.
I think people were trying to cancel doom because they don't understand it. I don't see anyone trying to ban pacific rim because it includes monsters or is too violent. Do not assume malevolence when a given action can be adequately explained by self destructive stupidity.
I'm wondering where all these great RPGers are that I keep hearing about. I have trouble finding a group where more than half the party don't have one solution for everything (usually "hit it") or don't get upset when presented with a challenge that they have to solve. The GM trying to encourage player imagination or problem solving has broken up more groups in my experience.
i thought it was explaining the names of doom enemies. Well looks like im dumb
If I remember correctly, the kid that killed themself was gay, and the detective used the d&d story to cover that up
Sad how bigotry goes hand in hand with hating things like rpgs
@Gzus Kreist creep
if people took personal responsibilty there would be no need of censorship or anything
do you think covid is from satan or from god? do you think saying "amen" to law blesses or curses?
if you talk against believer spirits, yes in us, cleaned by the blood of Jesus, you shall not call them unholy, by law, based on law, do not dictate by law, no bound to the law of sin and death, no excuses needed, sinless cast the first stone, no leaders needed to served, only freedom in Spirit, in Christ, with God or godless, not both, law or christ
dont serve people, or you are owned by them
believers never die
juvenoia is not a good idea!