Joseph Lieberman, a former senator and vice presidential candidate whose campaign against violent video games in the early 1990s led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, has died at age 82. [According to a statement released by Lieberman's family (via Politico), Lieberman's death was due to "complications from a fall."

Lieberman's political career began with his election to the Connecticut State Senate in 1970, a seat he held until 1980, and also served as the state's attorney general from 1983-89; he was elected to the Senate in 1988 as a Democrat; he was a member of the House of Representatives from 1983-89, and was elected to the Senate in 1988.

In 1993, prompted by the increase in "realistic" violence and sexual content in games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, Lieberman, along with colleague Senator Herb Kohl, held a hearing on violence in video games and its effects on children. These hearings and the proposed Video Game Ratings Act of 1994 ultimately put pressure on the industry to create the ESRB, a voluntary ratings board that was launched in September 1994. [Lethality in modern "Mortal Kombat" games certainly exceeds levels that Lieberman could have imagined in 1992, and even today hardly deserves an eyebrow raised. For example, when the backlash against randomized loot boxes began in the late 2010s and gamers began calling for restrictions against them, there were legitimate concerns that, as editor-in-chief Evan Lahti puts it, "we should be careful what we wish for."

"Any American who played games in the 1990s remembers the pearl-clutching, pseudoscientific fear-mongering by senators like Joe Lieberman who called for banning violent video games," he wrote in 2017." Government regulation of loot boxes would probably be a step in that direction and open the door to further legislation around gaming content."

A clip of Lieberman saying in a 1993 congressional hearing that he wanted to ban the development of violent video games

Lieberman ended up cheering the US invasion of Iraq, undermining Barack Obama, preventing public health insurance options from being included in health care reform laws He moved on to other things, such as making sure that the public health care option was not included in the health care reform law. However, he continued to speak out against violent video games over the years and participated in the advocacy group National Institute for Media and the Family's annual "Video Game Report Card" presentation. [He was reelected to the Senate in 1994, 2000, and 2006, and served as Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, ultimately losing to the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney team; in 2004, he set his presidential ambitions on fire, but was outspent in the early primaries, withdrew his bid for the Democratic nomination.