Console Wars

by Blake J. Harris

  In early 1993, Sega had made the decision to split up Sonic 3 into two separate games. This was a calculated risk, one that they likely would have taken again, but between that decision and now, one of the game’s best assets had been eliminated: Michael Jackson. While the company was working on the sound track for Sonic 3, allegations surfaced that Jackson had molested a thirteen-year-old boy. True or not, the stigma was too crippling to ignore, so a decision was made to unwind the deal with Jackson and remove any association he had with the game. At the time, that too seemed to be just a case of bad luck. But between that, the Senate calling subcommittee hearings, and the Sonic balloon fiasco, bad luck seemed to be an unfortunate trend.

  “What would you like me to do?” Lynch asked.

  The only good part about receiving this lousy news from Brenda Lynch was that, well, he was receiving it from Brenda Lynch, and when it came to spinning stories, that woman was a black widow. “Get down to the hospital,” Kalinske instructed, “and try to make this significantly less bad.”

  “I’ll do you one better,” Lynch replied. “How about making this into something good?” Before Kalinske could answer, she was already gone. Lynch ran through the snow-paced streets of New York City, leaving behind her husband and two children so that she could get to the hospital and twist bad luck into something good.

  In the following days, the press broadcast all sorts of stories about Sega’s balloon going rogue; but instead of focusing on an officer down, they were almost all about how Sonic was simply too damn fast to ever slow down.

  56.

  COMBAT PAY

  Bill White hadn’t necessarily planned to pull out the gun, but when he noticed the way everyone in the room was looking at him, he felt like he had no choice.

  The chips had been stacked against him from the beginning, ever since Senator Herbert Kohl (D-Wisc.) called the session to order. “This meeting,” he had begun stoically, “is a joint meeting between Senator Lieberman’s Governmental Affairs Subcommittee of Government Regulation and Information and my Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice.” That first sentence had sounded harmless, like run-of-the-mill politico-speak, but after that it became open season. “Before I turn the meeting over to Senator Lieberman, I want to make one point: today is the first day of Hanukkah and we have already begun the Christmas season. It is a time when we think about peace on earth and goodwill towards all people and also about giving gifts to our friends and our loved ones. But it is also a time when we need to take a close hard look at just what it is that we are actually buying for our kids. That is why we are holding this hearing on violent video games at this time. That is why we intend to introduce legislation on violent videogames as soon as Congress returns. Senator Lieberman?”

  “Thank you very much, Senator Kohl,” Lieberman had said, and then got right down to it. “Every day the news brings more and more images of violence, torture, and sexual aggression. Violence and violent images permeate more and more aspects of our lives and I think it’s time to draw the line. I know that one place parents want us to draw the line is with violence and videogames.” And then he said it, the sound bite that would forever define these hearings: “Like the Grinch who stole Christmas these violent videogames threaten to rob this particular holiday season of a spirit of goodwill.”

  After the good senators had set the tone for the hearings, a parade of assorted experts delivered testimony before the representatives from Sega and Nintendo who were brought in to defend their livelihood. Parker Page, president of the Children’s Television Resource and Education Center, spoke first. He suggested that the federal government fund an independent research into the psychological effects of videogames, as not enough was known at the time, and he recommended that until more was known, the industry ought to put a cap on the amount of violence allowed. After that, the floor went to Eugene Provenzo, a sociology professor at the University of Miami, who had recently published a book on the subject (Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo). He indicated that his extensive research had revealed that beneath the fun of a seemingly harmless diversion lurked a number of insidious themes: “During the past decade, the videogame industry has developed games whose social content has been overwhelmingly violent, sexist, and racist.” Following Provenzo came Robert Chase, vice president of the National Education Association. He began by warning against the dangers of censorship, but then seemed to upend his own thesis by explaining the incalculable negative effects of this new form of entertainment: “Electronic games, because they are active rather than passive, can do more than desensitize impressionable children to violence. They actually encourage violence as the resolution of first resort by rewarding participants for killing one’s opponents in the most grisly ways imaginable.” The last of the experts was Marilyn Droz, vice president of the National Coalition on Television Violence, who simultaneously complained about too much videogame violence and not enough videogames for girls.

  After these experts had delivered their diverse pleas for caution, a group of industry representatives were invited to take a seat in front of the senators. This panel of five included Dawn Wiener (Video Software Dealers Association), Craig Johnson (Amusement and Music Operations Association), Ilene Rosenthal (Software Publishers Association), and the main attractions: Howard Lincoln (Nintendo) and Bill White (Sega), who were seated beside each other, only adding to the tension.

  Howard Lincoln spoke first, and from the moment he opened his mouth it was clear that there was no environment on earth that could ever make him appear unpoised. The man had nerves of steel through and through, which appeared even more impressive in contrast to White’s natural reticence. “In the past year, some very violent and offensive games have reached the market,” Lincoln described, “and, of course, I am speaking about Mortal Kombat and Night Trap.” He spoke briskly but calmly about the conscious business decision that Nintendo made back in 1985 not to allow violence or pornography, eschewing profits in favor of ensuring quality content. This was the Nintendo way, a relentless commitment to values, and as proof that it hadn’t wavered since then, he cited the company’s decision to censor Mortal Kombat. And not only had the company left money on the table by making this decision, they’d also received thousands of angry calls and letters from parents around the country who criticized Nintendo for censorship. If Senator Lieberman hadn’t already seemed to favor Nintendo, then Lincoln’s comment about the blowback clinched it. Which made it even tougher when the man from Sega spoke next.

  White did everything possible to defend Sega’s actions (“The average Sega user is almost nineteen years old”) and appealed to those in the room as both a father (“of two boys, age five and eight”) and a former Nintendo employee (“having worked there for five years”), but no matter what he said, it appeared the die had already been cast. He was the villain, and his attempts to appear anything less than evil made his villainy all the more obvious.

  The longer this went on, the worse things got for White. Some of this was due to Lincoln’s well-crafted expressions of exasperation (“I can’t sit here and allow you to be told that somehow the videogame business has transformed today from children to adults. It hasn’t been, and Mr. White, who is a former Nintendo employee, knows the demographics as well as I do”), some of it was due to Senator Lieberman’s continual praise of Nintendo (which he felt had been a “damn sight better than the competition”), and some of it was due to the way that clips from some of Sega’s latest commercials seemed to offend just about everyone in the room. And as the hearings transformed into a well-dressed, well-worded pile-on session, White saw no other option to defend his and Sega’s honor, so he took it out. The gun.

  He held it up proudly, like a championship belt, Nintendo’s big gray Super Scope bazooka. White had brought it with him to Washington without advising anyone from Sega, and kept it under the desk in case things got out of hand. As the eyes in the room squinted at him with disdain, he saw no other option, and so he pulled it out. “A r
apid-fire machine gun,” White said decisively. “And they have no rating on that product.”

  It should have been Bill White’s moment of triumph, delivering the kind of personal screw-you that creates a lifelong pocket of confidence, but he had flubbed his words. Upon lifting up the bazooka, White had said accusingly, “I may also point out that Sega produces this product,” when obviously he had meant to fire a kill shot at Nintendo by naming it as the producer. Was this actually an illuminating Freudian slip, indicating that the only executive who had worked at both Sega and Nintendo saw, deep down, that the two companies were interchangeable? Perhaps, but it didn’t matter. Bill White had fired his silver bullet, and as noble as the effort had been, nobody in the room appeared to be particularly moved by it, causing the shot to come right right back at him.

  “No!” Kalinske exclaimed when he heard White jumble his words. He was back in Redwood Shores, watching it live on C-SPAN from the television in his office, and despite the flub, he was very pleased with how White had handled himself: perpetually poised, meticulously defensive, and just the right amount of angry.

  And so the following day, when White returned and walked through the office doors at Sega of America, he was greeted by a standing ovation. Peter Main’s former protégé had delivered an admirable performance for Sega, and as a result, Senator Lieberman and the other members of the committee had decided to give the industry a chance to regulate themselves before the government chose to intervene. There would be additional hearings in March 1994, to check in and see if enough progress had been made, but for now the threat had been deterred.

  For Kalinske, this turn of events meant even more than just Sega’s safety, and it relieved a lump on his conscience that had been growing for some time. Whether he was the true villain, for having allowed such games to be released, or the actual hero, for creating the first rating system, didn’t matter anymore. It was time to move forward, and he would be doing so unscathed. He had Bill White to thank for that.

  To show his gratitude, Kalinske gave White the largest Christmas bonus that he had ever received. When he asked his boss what it was for, Kalinske smiled and explained that it hadn’t been his idea. “As you know, a week or two after your triumphant performance, I went down to Capitol Hill to speak with many of the same men who had grilled you. One of them, of course, was Senator Lieberman. I asked him what he thought about how you had handled yourself, and do you know what he said?”

  “B-plus?”

  Kalinske laughed. “He said, ‘For what he put up with, that kid deserves combat pay.’ ” He motioned with his chin to the bonus check. “Well, as an upstanding American, I’ve been taught that it’s wise to listen to your government representatives. So there you go!”

  57.

  LIFE ON MARS

  Tom Kalinske, Paul Rioux, Shinobu Toyoda, and Joe Miller were all in Vegas for the 1994 winter CES, and they could all be found slowly walking down one of the exquisite hallways in the Alexis Park Hotel as they approached Nakayama’s suite.

  “Do you think he watched the hearings?” Miller asked.

  “Watched them?” Kalinske asked. “Or will admit to watching them?”

  “I know that he saw at least a part,” Toyoda put in, anticlimactically ending the group’s speculation about Sega of Japan’s volatile ruler.

  When they arrived at his suite, they were ushered in to sit down with Nakayama-san and his chief lieutenants at SOJ to discuss the future. In the hours that followed, a lot of strategies for the year ahead were tossed around, but amongst SOJ’s diversity of strategies one thing was clear: they were ready to kill the Genesis.

  “Look,” Kalinske said, “I think that staying on the cutting edge is as important as everyone else in the room, but not at the expense of something that’s still working. I mean, we’re barely even in the middle of the console’s life cycle!”

  This statement was generally accurate, but it was also false, which is what accounted for part of the schism in the room. Kalinske considered the summer of 1991 to be the de facto American launch of the Genesis. That was when SOA had dropped the price, introduced Sonic, and started doing the kind of marketing that would redefine Sega. If that was considered the starting point of the life cycle, then this was really only year three. Sega of Japan, on the other hand, had released the Mega Drive in August 1988, never enjoyed the second wind that SOA had, and consequently viewed this as something like year six. Ultimately, though, this all boiled down to the fact that despite SOA’s earth-shattering success with the Genesis, SOJ had continued to strike out with their Mega Drive. As a result, Nakayama proposed moving forward with a pair of systems to take Sega into the next generation:

  Project Saturn: A CD-based system with 32-bit technology that would effectively serve as Sega’s next-generation console. No surprise here. This was the SOJ-only system that had been selected in favor of developing something with Sony and Silicon Graphics.

  Project Mars: A cartridge-based system with 32-bit-like capabilities. This was basically a souped-up version of the Genesis.

  Kalinske understood the merits of the Saturn, which would eventually replace the Genesis as Sega’s next-generation console, but what exactly was Mars supposed to be? SOJ had been pitching this “32-bit-like” device for almost a year now (he had been shown something very similar to this back when he’d first seen the Pico), but as much as he enjoyed pushing the envelope with new products, he wasn’t convinced that Sega would have the resources to fully support this. Nor were Rioux, Toyoda, and Miller (as well as Nilsen, who was adamantly against this until the day he left). Sega was already asking developers to create games for the Genesis, the Game Gear, the Sega CD, and the upcoming Pico. That already pushed the limit, and that’s why the guys from SOA couldn’t help but look at one another, spooked by the idea of adding more hardware to the mix.

  To clarify the supposed necessity, Nakayama explained that Mars would bridge the gap between the Genesis and the Saturn. Kalinske didn’t understand what gap needed to be bridged: the Genesis was still selling well and the Saturn would be out in just over a year. But Nakayama explained that this wasn’t an issue up for debate. It was now starting to become clear that Kalinske was no longer the chief decision maker. Sega of Japan was sick of being compared to the much more successful SOA (and sick of watching the company’s name get dragged through the mud in Washington), so they had decided that it was time to take back the company, at whatever cost. So Kalinske had better buck up and get used to life on Mars.

  Frustrating as the meeting in Nakayama’s suite may have been, it wasn’t the only get-together between those with opposing ideas for the future. In an effort to prevent Washington from putting the videogame industry at the whims of the FCC, representatives from Sega, Nintendo, and the prominent players in the software industry agreed to a secret, off-site meeting in Vegas. The cloak-and-dagger aspects may have felt a bit excessive, but they were necessary to avoid allegations of market collusion.

  The first few hours consisted of little more than shouting and swearing. This is all your fault! No, it’s all yours! Fuck you. No, fuck you! But beneath the infighting, the meeting provided an interesting opportunity for the folks from Sega and Nintendo to finally sit down in the same room. Tom Kalinske, Shinobu Toyoda, and Bill White; Howard Lincoln, Peter Main, and George Harrison. All the alpha dogs had willingly come to the trough.

  “We’ve all come here for a common goal,” Kalinske explained, “and the answer seems rather simple. Why doesn’t everyone simply adopt Sega’s rating system?”

  “How is that the simple solution?” Peter Main asked.

  “Why adopt a system at all?” Lincoln asked. “Nintendo already closely reviews all of its content.”

  “How many times do you plan to repeat that?” White wondered aloud, and the shouting and swearing escalated once again. In the middle of the bickering, Arthur Pober arrived to discuss the possibility of using his expertise to create an industry-wide rating system—something very s
imilar to what he had created for Sega, but which would address the concerns of the other companies at the table. Shortly after surveying what was going on in the meeting, however, Pober was ready to call it a day. “I have no interest in this,” he declared as he walked toward the exit. “You are all men: act like it.”

  Bill White chased after him, urging him to reconsider, but Pober was adamant and said to call him at the hotel if they ever managed to get their houses in order.

  Later in the day, while watching some terrible movie that must only ever get watched from hotel rooms, Arthur Pober received a call: everyone was now on their best behavior and they would like for him to return. He accepted, put on his jacket, and looked at the clock. It had only taken a few hours. Not awful. Perhaps there was hope for them yet.

  Pober’s optimism was confirmed when he got back to the meeting site. The guys from Sega and Nintendo no doubt despised one another, but beneath the anger and irritation they were all incredibly smart men. And they were smart enough to know that the he-said/she-said crap gets old real fast.

  “Look,” Kalinske said, “it’s obvious our companies have different approaches to doing business, but while we’re stuck together in this room, we need to suspend the past.”

  “Tom’s right,” Lincoln said in support. “We’re all in this thing together, and we need to come out of this with a united front. I don’t like it any more than all of you folks do, but I like it a hell of a lot more than the alternative.”