Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic Senator from Connecticut and a key figure behind the '90s moral panic surrounding games including Mortal Kombat, has died after after complications from a fall, his family said in a statement. He was 82.
A former vice presidential candidate known for his centrist politics and hawkish foreign policy, Lieberman is best-known to gamers for his outspoken criticism of the video game industry in the 1990s alongside Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl. Among other things, Lieberman expressed outrage over games like Mortal Kombat, saying that he really wished he could "ban them constitutionally" and that they made people more violent.
Lieberman and Kohl helped lead the Senate hearings on video games in 1993 and 1994, which put Mortal Kombat and Night Trap in the spotlight and forced Nintendo and Sega to defend their marketing practices. The hearings led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which became active in 1994.
Video games poked fun at Lieberman's outrage. When Mortal Kombat II was released it included "Friendships," which co-creator John Tobias added as a nod toward the Congressional hearings.
Lieberman, for his part, would later say in a 2017 interview, "[The video game industry] actually came up with a rating system that I think at the time — I honestly haven't been back to this in a long time — was the best. Much better than the movies."
Nevertheless, Lieberman continued to criticize video games through the 90s and 2000s, taking aim at games including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which he called "horrendous." When former vice president Al Gore selected Lieberman as his running mate in 2000, this website noted his prior actions and called it a "surprising selection."
Lieberman narrowly lost the 2000 election alongside Gore but remained active for more than a decade after. He announced his retirement in 2012 and subsequently joined the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
In the meantime, video game violence remains a major debate to this day, with former President Donald Trump meeting with game executives in 2018 and claiming they are "shaping young people's thoughts." With video games now worth tens of billions of dollars, the debate that Lieberman helped shape doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
