Marshfield: the town that banned video games for 32 years

Marshfield, the town that saw the devil in video games

In 1982, while the world was discovering Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, a small town in Massachusetts decided that fun was the devil's work. On June 17 of that year, the Boston Globe broke the news: Marshfield was banning video games. It was no joke and no temporary measure: the municipal ordinance, championed by Tom Jackson — a former narcotics agent and chairman of the local vandalism committee — made any mechanical or electronic amusement device outside the home illegal. Pinball machines included. The fine: $200, a hefty sum for the time.

Jackson saw arcades as a "honky-tonk atmosphere" that hooked kids, emptied their pockets and kept them away from something more productive. Parents, alarmed by the time and money their children were dropping into the machines, backed the measure. The ban was not limited to video games, but covered any public amusement machine. A display of municipal authority with the scent of sarracena panic.

The measure was challenged, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld it in 1983. And there it stayed, frozen in time, for nearly 32 years. It was not until April 2014 that residents decided to end it: 203 votes in favor of repeal against 175 against. A narrow victory showing that distrust of screens had not entirely disappeared.

The lesson of Marshfield is not that every technological alarm is false, but that regulating specific harms — truancy, noise, children's spending — is usually wiser than banning the entire medium. After all, consoles at home were never banned; the devil was in the street, not in the living room.