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Manhunt 2 Ban Fallout, Game Rated AO By ESRB
In the wake of yesterday's announcement of a UK ban on Manhunt 2 , Rockstar has registered its disappointment at the BBFC's decision. The company simply stated that they 'respect those who have different opinions about the horror genre and videogames as a whole, but we hope they will also consider the opinions of the adult gamers for whom this product is intended.' Meanwhile, here in the US, the ESRB has given the game the dreaded AO rating, for adults only. If you're unfamiliar with this seldom-seen designation, it's essentially the 'kiss of death' for a title at retail; a number of popular videogame outlets refuse to carry titles with that rating. MTV's Stephen Totilo has a lengthy and considered discussion of these proceedings. "For 'Manhunt 2,' signs pointed to the title being both less and more extreme than the first. Gone from press previews were mentions of snuff films and Directors. Instead, a more traditionally violent video game premise: one man's struggle to stay alive in an insane asylum gone mad."
I'm definitely going to buy it. Can I order direct from Rockstar?
Rockstar, if you're listening, please do us a favor. Keep the game just the way it is. Release it with the AO rating.
You have the capital to take a risk like this (especially with GTA 4 coming soon, and the tidal wave of cash it is sure to generate). Someone has to be the first to put out high quality AO content. The Atari 2600 came out in 1977. There are lots of adults that have been playing games for their entire lives, and want game content that falls in the same noire category as 300, Reservoir Dogs, and Sin City.
Until there is a proven market for this material, the vendors won't take a risk on it. But you have the ability to establish that market, and the cashflow to take the risk.
I don't even think it's that much of a risk; the first game to thumb its nose at the family-values whining minority. Everyone who would have bought the game will want it, 90% of them are old enough to legally buy it, and most of those will be willing and able to make the effort necessary to do so.
So please, give it a shot. You can always rerelease it with duckies and bunnies, and a gun that shoots hearts to make the furry animals love you, later.
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Was going to post this in the "UK BAN"-thread, but post it here instead.
I have always been a firm believer in films/games not making people more violent. Something happened to me, though, to sort of make me doubt my strong belief.
I bought Manhunt and played it. It was really fun, a great little sneak-and-kill game. But it was very violent and I did not really like being that violent but it was part of the game and making the gruesome kills was fun in a strange way. It was axhilarating to see how long you could sneak behind someone before you had to do the kill.
When I finished the game I played for a particularly long day and that night I had the most bizarre and gruesome dreams. I dreamt that I cleft people with chainsaws and ran over them with my car. Everything felt OK and I didn't have any moral complaints in my dream, which, if you ask anyone in my surrounding, is totally different from my personality. I am not a psychopath as far as I can tell. :)
I haven't had any such dreams since and I hope I won't again (though they weren't nightmares in the true sense since I wasn't scared in them, only by my reaction to them). What I'm saying is that I do believe we are affected by what we see/experience. At least if its done frequently enough.
In cases like very violent films or games, however, having a 18-year restriction on buying the game is enough. Grown up people can decide for themselves what they want to see/play. I felt desturbed by my experience and probably won't buy Manhunt 2 for that reason, but I certainly don't believe in denying the experience from anyone else who is old enough to make a grown up decision about this.
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Games are more immersive, seem more 'real' for that reason, and you usually spend much longer playing a game than you would watching a movie. So, assuming that some or all people do have their propensity to commit violence stimulated by experiencing fictional violence, a violent game would seem to have more effect than a movie depicting similar acts.
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The best way to explain this is the film Midnight Cowboy which got an X rating, won an Oscar anyway, and was later re-rated by the MPAA to be an R.
Ok, this was an embarrassment for the MPAA, especially considering nowadays no one thinks an X rating is going to be for a movie with much actual content. So the NC-17 rating was created to cover cases like this. If you've ever seen an NC-17 rated film, you've probably been disappointed if you were looking for porn. (I've seen a few, like Requiem for a Dream one of my girlfriends favorite movies.)
However, the distribution still treats NC-17 movies as things that it doesn't want to deal with, you won't see them in Blockbuster or many retail stores. The rating has failed to achieve broad distribution for controversial films, and films that are intended to be commercial will either be edited to be R or if the director has enough clout the MPAA will rate them R and turn a blind eye to content that would earn an unknown director an NC-17.
It's far simpler for video games. AO is the rating for porn games, period. There's no such thing as an NC-17 rating for video games, because they are currently considered to be entertainment only with no artistic value by the Establishment. Since no game will be considered art at the present time, there is no reason for an "art" rating. (Note: The views of the Establishment do not reflect the views of the author of this comment.) If your game gets an AO rating, it better fit into that niche (although... in movies porn is pretty huge for a niche, and makes a huge amount of money to show it). If it doesn't, you are basically screwed, you've probably spent to much on development to justify a niche game that will only sell on the Web (even the porn store guys that sell porn games will likely go, "you're kidding, right?" if you try to distribute it through them).
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."