Controversy Over Doom On The $100 Laptop

The One Laptop Per Child organization's XO laptop, sometimes called "the $100 Laptop," was obviously designed with videogames in mind. To the left of it's 7.5 inch screen is a d-pad, and to the right are four game buttons. With the screen rotated and pushed back against the keyboard the whole thing resembles a giant PSP. It's no surprise then that the first reaction many would have with the machine is to get their favorite games up and running on its Linux based operating system.

EA released the source code for the original SimCity allowing many to download and play the game on their small, green laptops. Freeciv, an open source, turn-based strategy game similar to Civilization, has also become a popular download. And, of course, the open source, original(ish) FPS, Doom, was added to the list of games available on the OLPC project's official wiki.

Guess which one created a problem.

In the nearly fifteen years since Doom was released we've gotten used to the "this demon killing simulator will destroy our children" argument. Still, it's surprising to see it raised amongst a community as necessarily geeky as the contributors to the OLPC's wiki.

The controversy started when a contributor named Bryan Berry removed Doom from the wiki's list of official activities (OLPC's term for programs). Among Berry's complaints was the argument that violent games, like Doom, do not have a place on a computer designed for developing nations which may suffer from real violence and war on a scale the United States hasn't seen in over a century.

"I work in Nepal, a country recovering from an 11-year civil war. Exposure to more violence, real or virtual, is the last thing most Nepali communities want," he wrote.

To some it was a reasoned argument. The XO laptop was designed for children after all. To others it was censorship and an arrogant assertion of the will of a few over the right of all XO users to choose what they can add to their laptops.

"OLPC is not in the business of censorship or content classification, and you have no right to try and remove thing from the wiki just because you dislike them. If you are worried children will find distasteful things on the internet, perhaps you shouldn't give them a laptop," argued Noah Kantrowitz.

One contributor even tried to mediate the argument by creating a separate page for "unendorsed" activities. The only entry: Doom.

In the end those in favor of a lax policy towards what is added to the OLPC wiki won out. Berry's comment was removed from the site and Doom was once again on the list of official activities.

Doom may be back but arguments over what is appropriate for the XO and the children using it are unlikely to end. As many noted during the discussion over Doom, these computers are connected to the internet and the internet is not always child friendly, at least from a parent's perspective. For the kid looking for porn and things that blow up there's nothing better.

For now the OLPC wiki, and the arguments over what belongs and does not belong on the site have quieted down, with one caveat. Under the "Activity Guidelines" section of the wiki, where different standards for XO projects are listed, a new question over age rating has been added. Further down, at the end of the page, someone scrawled: "the game DOOM is not appropriate for many of the xo's users!!!"

[Update: I just noticed this post on OLPCnews covering the same issue. There's a long, interesting discussion in the comments worth checking out]