6 ms·

How the F.B.I. Made 'Winners Don't Use Drugs' the Arcade Motto of the '90s

77 points by dottrap 11y ago

superchink 11y ago
Those screens gave me an instant hit of nostalgia. Sort of a fluff piece, but an interesting blip in history. Thanks for sharing.
- astrodust 11y ago
  Like the absurd pre-roll crap they'd put on VHS movies about $250,000 fines and such. How many lives were wasted watching that stupid, completely pointless screen? "Thank you for purchasing our product! Now please endure this message about not stealing."
  - dkersten 11y ago
    I stopped watching DVD's because of the unskippable anti-piracy notices. The last DVD I ever watched had an obnoxiously long one for whatever reason and I remember feeling pretty annoyed at being forced to sit through that crap for a legally purchased (or rented - I don't remember) DVD.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
This is my favorite anti-drug PSA of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FLbwjyTo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FLbwjyTo8 "I'm not a chicken, you're a turkey!"
- ckw 11y ago
  I love Michelangelo's response.
everyone 11y ago
I remember seeing those screens as a kid and being confused. Seems like quite a departure from the game I was just playing. I wasnt even considering using drugs, will they somehow improve my game performance? and thats why not using them playing games is more honourable? Hmmm, I must investigate these 'drugs', Thanks FBI warning message! *ps I reckon we got the US versions of various games here in Ireland so the warning from the 'FBI' was doubly incongruous.
- marpstar 11y ago
  Same here. I guess I figured they were for the "bad" teenagers in my neighborhood, who wouldn't be caught dead in an arcade.
- derefr 11y ago
  On that tangent: is there such a thing as a "dexterity-and-reflex-enhancing drug"? I don't think amphetamines do that, nor any nootropic I'm even vaguely aware of. "Focus" or "alertness" is one thing, but actually suddenly being better at competitive twitch games is quite another. Maybe an anxiolytic, actually—theanine?—if you wanted to prevent "yips." But otherwise...
  - daheza 11y ago
    The Electronic Sports League (ESL) has recently decided to start testing for drugs during its tournaments. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-adderall-scandal-esports-company-will-police-performance-enhancing-drugs http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-adderall-scandal-espo... They will be using this list to test players http://list.wada-ama.org/ http://list.wada-ama.org/
    - derefr 11y ago
      The implications of testing for anabolic steroids for previously non-gender-segregated competition is worrying. Previously, a transitioning transgendered person could openly compete in an eSports tournament; steroid use was just irrelevant to what eSports measure.
      - actuallyalys 11y ago
        I'm kind of surprised there isn't an exception for medically necessary use of substances on the list (at least, that I can find). Obviously, medically necessary drugs can still give you a advantage, but taking a substance your body would typically produce seems a reasonable exception. For example, trans men don't produce significant amounts of testosterone, so they need to take it both to transition and to be competitive. That exception wouldn't technically cover trans women because we often take spironolactone to totally eliminate testosterone rather than because it's missing. Apparently, it's banned because it's used by athletes to hide their past usage of forbidden steroids.
AndrewStephens 11y ago
A scene repeated countless* times during the 80s and 90s: "Hey man, wanna do these drugs I have here?" "Nah, William S. Sessions says not to" "Who?" "You know, William S Sessions! Director of the F.B.I." "Oh right. Guess we mustn't then" * In this case, countless means zero.
- victor22 11y ago
  You actually have a great point. FBI was more focused on self-promotion then on actually fighting drugs. 90% of the screen is dedicated to the FBI logo, which kids just don't care about. But, as an advertiser, the majority of marketing campaigns directed to kids fail to properly communicate with them and are just a waste of money.
  - ghostDancer 11y ago
    They should be asking for a percentage to this seller http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelskaya/works/12584412-winners-dont-use-drugs?p=tote-bag http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelskaya/works/12584412-wi...
  - simplicio 11y ago
    Eh, I think the prominence of the FBI logo is to scare people with the legal consequences of drug use, rather than promote the Bureau. Same reason the words "FBI" or the FBI logo is the most prominent thing in anti-piracy warnings on DVDs.
    - victor22 11y ago
      While I agree it could be due to this reason, it still was a bad call in my opinion, because a scare tactic is totally disconnected with their motivational slogan below the logo.
baldeagle 11y ago
Slightly off topic - I remember a anti-drug commercial that features a thin brunette girl scrubbing the gout of the tile on her bathroom floor with a toothbrush while the jingle went "oooo, meth, oooo, meth - I don't sleep and I don't eat, but I've got the cleanest house on the street, oooo, meth". Now I never really wanted to try drugs, but that seemed more like a pro-meth ad than an anti-meth ad.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Pro/anti drug advertising is just weird. I remember seeing this ad on TV in the 90s when I had not been in the US very long and being utterly perplexed as to what it was that viewers were being urged to buy. I was very surprised later on to discover that it was a hay fever remedy, as opposed to an anti-depressant or similar psychiatric drug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzGjmUKPXhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzGjmUKPXhY I'm sure future generations will look back at contemporary TV commercials and wonder why every disease in the early 21st century had a cute little nickname. I blame Pokemon.
  - scintill76 11y ago
    That ad is almost indistinguishable from something like the Tim and Eric Show. (Or maybe VHS-looking video and the special effects of the era is all I need to perceive it that way.)
    - mortenjorck 11y ago
      Wow. I always thought of Tim and Eric as more of a funhouse mirror to low-budget 90s video production, but that... That genuinely looks like a Tim and Eric sketch. The measuredly frantic pacing, the incongruous juxtaposition of composited video, the creepy smiles, are all part of their playbook.
      - scintill76 11y ago
        Ha, yep. I'm half expecting this to be some hoax actually created by Tim and Eric, or maybe it's their secret source of inspiration.
koz1000 11y ago
I was at Williams Pinball around this time and we had the "SAY NO TO DRUGS" as part of the built-in attract mode loop. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/423338433692506875/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/423338433692506875/ We all hated it...but it was gently explained to us by our marketing staff that we were dependent on staying in good terms with Hollywood because we wanted to be able to license movie themes for upcoming games. We were also told that the FBI could have seriously messed with that relationship if they wanted to, to the point of shutting us out. Of course we had to please the AMOA/AAMA and all the other industry groups as well that were receiving pressure... So in it stayed...for releases to the USA. The home versions and export versions had it removed.
- jpmattia 11y ago
  > I was at Williams Pinball Maybe way OT, but was that gig as fun as it sounds?
  - koz1000 11y ago
    I won't lie, it was a blast. It was also an insane amount of work. Years went by like a blur. Some of what went on over there is documented in Greg Maletic's film Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. Josh Tsui (from the Mortal Kombat team) just completed a Kickstarter to make a similar documentary about what the guys downstairs in video were doing back then as well. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuatsui/insert-coin-inside-midways-90s-revolution https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuatsui/insert-coin-...
louithethrid 11y ago
That loser/winner dichtomy is one of the reasons for that titanic drug problem in the first place. If you fail and are allready frail, and society has decided to put you in the loser-box, drugs might be the only thing to make life seem bearable. The idea, that you could just step from the race-track, and be happy - without giving a thought on who is high/low in status - independent and with worth outside of the ratrace, doesent even exist in that animalistic (eat or be eaten) mindset.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Winners do drugs just like losers do drugs. Winners usually have a lot of money and come from affluence so they don't usually get in trouble for their drug use while losers do. A certain portion of the population does drugs, it cuts socio-economic lines. The reasoning might be different, but people from all walks of life do drugs.
  - reagency 11y ago
    Plenty of winners have lost their winner status via destructive drug abuse. It is practically a cliche in hr entertainment industry.
    - celticninja 11y ago
      Thats because you usually only hear about the burnouts. "Moviestar does drugs and has an early night" doesnt sell papers or pageviews.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- rancur 11y ago
  > drugs might be the only thing to make life seem bearable there's Jesus, but we took him away, too
powera 11y ago
So was it an anti-counterfeiting measure masquerading as an anti-drug message, or an anti-drug message that worked as an anti-counterfeiting measure?
- function_seven 11y ago
  And how did it prevent counterfeiting? Wouldn't the counterfeiter just throw that screen in their version as well?
simplicio 11y ago
The tagline is a little sensationalistic. The FBI Office of Public Affairs isn't part of the intelligence community.
snarfy 11y ago
I recall the first game to arrive at the arcade with that screen was a game called NARC by Williams.
- plonh 11y ago
  That game was incredible. My arcade had it configured to give 7 lives per quarter, until one day it changed down to 3. You could arrest people nonviolently, except for the ones who fired guns at you and the PCP junkies. The civil forfeiture aspect was sketchy in retrospect though. As was the incentives for destroying the drug labs you discovered.
bbrian 11y ago
I edited (vandalised?) Wikipedia to add "Michael Phelps" to the "See also" section of the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" page. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winners_Don%27t_Use_Drugs&oldid=268636385 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winners_Don%27t_U...

77 points by dottrap 11y ago

Those screens gave me an instant hit of nostalgia. Sort of a fluff piece, but an interesting blip in history. Thanks for sharing.

astrodust 11y ago
Like the absurd pre-roll crap they'd put on VHS movies about $250,000 fines and such. How many lives were wasted watching that stupid, completely pointless screen? "Thank you for purchasing our product! Now please endure this message about not stealing."
- dkersten 11y ago
  I stopped watching DVD's because of the unskippable anti-piracy notices. The last DVD I ever watched had an obnoxiously long one for whatever reason and I remember feeling pretty annoyed at being forced to sit through that crap for a legally purchased (or rented - I don't remember) DVD.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

This is my favorite anti-drug PSA of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FLbwjyTo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FLbwjyTo8 "I'm not a chicken, you're a turkey!"

ckw 11y ago
I love Michelangelo's response.

everyone 11y ago

I remember seeing those screens as a kid and being confused. Seems like quite a departure from the game I was just playing. I wasnt even considering using drugs, will they somehow improve my game performance? and thats why not using them playing games is more honourable? Hmmm, I must investigate these 'drugs', Thanks FBI warning message! *ps I reckon we got the US versions of various games here in Ireland so the warning from the 'FBI' was doubly incongruous.

marpstar 11y ago
Same here. I guess I figured they were for the "bad" teenagers in my neighborhood, who wouldn't be caught dead in an arcade.
derefr 11y ago
On that tangent: is there such a thing as a "dexterity-and-reflex-enhancing drug"? I don't think amphetamines do that, nor any nootropic I'm even vaguely aware of. "Focus" or "alertness" is one thing, but actually suddenly being better at competitive twitch games is quite another. Maybe an anxiolytic, actually—theanine?—if you wanted to prevent "yips." But otherwise...
- daheza 11y ago
  The Electronic Sports League (ESL) has recently decided to start testing for drugs during its tournaments. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-adderall-scandal-esports-company-will-police-performance-enhancing-drugs http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-adderall-scandal-espo... They will be using this list to test players http://list.wada-ama.org/ http://list.wada-ama.org/
  - derefr 11y ago
    The implications of testing for anabolic steroids for previously non-gender-segregated competition is worrying. Previously, a transitioning transgendered person could openly compete in an eSports tournament; steroid use was just irrelevant to what eSports measure.
    - actuallyalys 11y ago
      I'm kind of surprised there isn't an exception for medically necessary use of substances on the list (at least, that I can find). Obviously, medically necessary drugs can still give you a advantage, but taking a substance your body would typically produce seems a reasonable exception. For example, trans men don't produce significant amounts of testosterone, so they need to take it both to transition and to be competitive. That exception wouldn't technically cover trans women because we often take spironolactone to totally eliminate testosterone rather than because it's missing. Apparently, it's banned because it's used by athletes to hide their past usage of forbidden steroids.

AndrewStephens 11y ago

A scene repeated countless* times during the 80s and 90s: "Hey man, wanna do these drugs I have here?" "Nah, William S. Sessions says not to" "Who?" "You know, William S Sessions! Director of the F.B.I." "Oh right. Guess we mustn't then" * In this case, countless means zero.

victor22 11y ago
You actually have a great point. FBI was more focused on self-promotion then on actually fighting drugs. 90% of the screen is dedicated to the FBI logo, which kids just don't care about. But, as an advertiser, the majority of marketing campaigns directed to kids fail to properly communicate with them and are just a waste of money.
- ghostDancer 11y ago
  They should be asking for a percentage to this seller http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelskaya/works/12584412-winners-dont-use-drugs?p=tote-bag http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelskaya/works/12584412-wi...
- simplicio 11y ago
  Eh, I think the prominence of the FBI logo is to scare people with the legal consequences of drug use, rather than promote the Bureau. Same reason the words "FBI" or the FBI logo is the most prominent thing in anti-piracy warnings on DVDs.
  - victor22 11y ago
    While I agree it could be due to this reason, it still was a bad call in my opinion, because a scare tactic is totally disconnected with their motivational slogan below the logo.

baldeagle 11y ago

Slightly off topic - I remember a anti-drug commercial that features a thin brunette girl scrubbing the gout of the tile on her bathroom floor with a toothbrush while the jingle went "oooo, meth, oooo, meth - I don't sleep and I don't eat, but I've got the cleanest house on the street, oooo, meth". Now I never really wanted to try drugs, but that seemed more like a pro-meth ad than an anti-meth ad.

anigbrowl 11y ago
Pro/anti drug advertising is just weird. I remember seeing this ad on TV in the 90s when I had not been in the US very long and being utterly perplexed as to what it was that viewers were being urged to buy. I was very surprised later on to discover that it was a hay fever remedy, as opposed to an anti-depressant or similar psychiatric drug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzGjmUKPXhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzGjmUKPXhY I'm sure future generations will look back at contemporary TV commercials and wonder why every disease in the early 21st century had a cute little nickname. I blame Pokemon.
- scintill76 11y ago
  That ad is almost indistinguishable from something like the Tim and Eric Show. (Or maybe VHS-looking video and the special effects of the era is all I need to perceive it that way.)
  - mortenjorck 11y ago
    Wow. I always thought of Tim and Eric as more of a funhouse mirror to low-budget 90s video production, but that... That genuinely looks like a Tim and Eric sketch. The measuredly frantic pacing, the incongruous juxtaposition of composited video, the creepy smiles, are all part of their playbook.
    - scintill76 11y ago
      Ha, yep. I'm half expecting this to be some hoax actually created by Tim and Eric, or maybe it's their secret source of inspiration.

koz1000 11y ago

I was at Williams Pinball around this time and we had the "SAY NO TO DRUGS" as part of the built-in attract mode loop. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/423338433692506875/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/423338433692506875/ We all hated it...but it was gently explained to us by our marketing staff that we were dependent on staying in good terms with Hollywood because we wanted to be able to license movie themes for upcoming games. We were also told that the FBI could have seriously messed with that relationship if they wanted to, to the point of shutting us out. Of course we had to please the AMOA/AAMA and all the other industry groups as well that were receiving pressure... So in it stayed...for releases to the USA. The home versions and export versions had it removed.

jpmattia 11y ago
> I was at Williams Pinball Maybe way OT, but was that gig as fun as it sounds?
- koz1000 11y ago
  I won't lie, it was a blast. It was also an insane amount of work. Years went by like a blur. Some of what went on over there is documented in Greg Maletic's film Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. Josh Tsui (from the Mortal Kombat team) just completed a Kickstarter to make a similar documentary about what the guys downstairs in video were doing back then as well. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuatsui/insert-coin-inside-midways-90s-revolution https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuatsui/insert-coin-...

louithethrid 11y ago

That loser/winner dichtomy is one of the reasons for that titanic drug problem in the first place. If you fail and are allready frail, and society has decided to put you in the loser-box, drugs might be the only thing to make life seem bearable. The idea, that you could just step from the race-track, and be happy - without giving a thought on who is high/low in status - independent and with worth outside of the ratrace, doesent even exist in that animalistic (eat or be eaten) mindset.

x5n1 11y ago
Winners do drugs just like losers do drugs. Winners usually have a lot of money and come from affluence so they don't usually get in trouble for their drug use while losers do. A certain portion of the population does drugs, it cuts socio-economic lines. The reasoning might be different, but people from all walks of life do drugs.
- reagency 11y ago
  Plenty of winners have lost their winner status via destructive drug abuse. It is practically a cliche in hr entertainment industry.
  - celticninja 11y ago
    Thats because you usually only hear about the burnouts. "Moviestar does drugs and has an early night" doesnt sell papers or pageviews.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
rancur 11y ago
> drugs might be the only thing to make life seem bearable there's Jesus, but we took him away, too

powera 11y ago

So was it an anti-counterfeiting measure masquerading as an anti-drug message, or an anti-drug message that worked as an anti-counterfeiting measure?

function_seven 11y ago
And how did it prevent counterfeiting? Wouldn't the counterfeiter just throw that screen in their version as well?

simplicio 11y ago

The tagline is a little sensationalistic. The FBI Office of Public Affairs isn't part of the intelligence community.

snarfy 11y ago

I recall the first game to arrive at the arcade with that screen was a game called NARC by Williams.

plonh 11y ago
That game was incredible. My arcade had it configured to give 7 lives per quarter, until one day it changed down to 3. You could arrest people nonviolently, except for the ones who fired guns at you and the PCP junkies. The civil forfeiture aspect was sketchy in retrospect though. As was the incentives for destroying the drug labs you discovered.

bbrian 11y ago

I edited (vandalised?) Wikipedia to add "Michael Phelps" to the "See also" section of the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" page. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winners_Don%27t_Use_Drugs&oldid=268636385 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winners_Don%27t_U...