Beginning in the 1970s, games went from being trivial and innocuous elements of childhood culture to major touchstones of North American popular culture. Games came to symbolize the dangers of a rapidly shifting technological and cultural landscape. This led to a series of moral panics that were centered upon these new, often complex, and increasingly realistic games that were apparently a source of moral corruption for children and teenagers. This view of games as a moral hazard for young people was often taken up by the news and mass media, opening the path for many moral entrepreneurs to leverage 'common sense' Media Effects thinking and gamer stereotypes for their own personal gain. This thesis tracks the historical development of these interrelated phenomena from Death Race in 1976, the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, the Mortal Kombat hearings and finally to Doom and the Columbine Massacre in 1999.
Author Keywords: Media Effects, moral entrepreneurs, moral panic, realism, role-playing games, video games