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USA Today's Sensationalist Take on Manhunt 2
Fozzyuw writes "USA Today has up a story on Manhunt 2 for the Wii, the 'AO'-rated then re-rated title from Rockstar games. They appear to be specifically aiming to sensationalize the story, with evocative and needlessly violent language. Here are a few snippets from the article: '"Nintendo Wii takes a murderous turn." Manhunt 2 was originally rated Adults Only — equivalent to an X in films — and now carries an M for mature audiences (17 and up) ... Since the Wii version uses the motion-sensitive controllers, it literally gives players the hands of a killer ... Nintendo doesn't need to expand its user base to help the Wii continue to outsell its pricier and technologically superior competitors ... On the Wii, players physically make killing motions with the controllers — slashing for stabs and lifting to strangle — rather than simply pushing buttons.'"
I want to kill.
When will this game be release?
You lift the Wiimote to strangle people? It's like my very own Force-choke! Awesome!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I have no problem with people publishing ManHunt2, or playing it. But is anyone else very disturbed by the idea of using a Wiimote to stab/strangle/maim people? This just seems over-the-top to me. I don't think I could play this even if it appealed to me.
sounds fun?
RTFA. The article is fair. It describes what the game is about and how it is played. I am not sure what is sensationalized about the article itself. If having the game described shocks you then your problem is with the game itself.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
So, we kill by using completely different mostions and hand gestures than we would use were we actually to do this.
How utterly life-like. The next generation of killes will be raising their hands with small objects in them, trying to choke people and wondering why it wont work. Jack Thompson will then blame videogames for the increase of deadly crimes (ignoring all the incompetant "strangulations" that mysteriously fail).
I, like many Americans, have never made "killing" gestures with my hands.
You know, I may be one sick puppy for admitting this, but I had zero interest in this game before I read that summary. I'm just finishing up Metroid 3: Corruption, and I gotta say that the little gimmicky Wiimote actions ("Hold A, and twist the wiimote counter-clockwise...") are actually pretty fun. They're good for immersion and make an interesting new game mechanic.
So, being able to do the same with a shank? I'm in.
only come with the collectors edition? Are they modeled after Charlie Manson's by chance?
My boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now.
I believe the word they were looking for was "metaphorically", but it is USA Today so you can't really expect too much.
This is obviously the newest training method for terrorists. It must be that Nintendo and Rockstar are pawns of Al Qaeda and USA Today is doing a service for the weak and ever shrinking US government by bringing horrible tool of destruction to their attention.
Seriously, it seems like ever since kids stopped playing semi violent games (cops and robbers, cap guns, and a host of others) they are more prone to actual violence. But whatever sells papers I guess.
LOL Internet
They certainly use charged words, but they're not really slamming Nintendo or Rockstar. However, for a company that's constantly in battles about whether or not their games are "murder simulators" or the like, this quote wasn't such a great idea:
"It's a different level of engagement in video games," says Rockstar's Rodney Walker. "You can literally experience the emotional responses of the character."Yeah...maybe they want to give Mr. Walker a personal editor before his next interview? :)
Oh please, stop with the faux sense of outrage that someone might accurately describe a video game for the murder simulator it is.
Seriously. This is what this game is. You kill...almost indiscriminately. That is the name of the game. Hell, this is probably why I'm going to buy it.
And this is a big step for Nintendo. I just finished the Godfather: Black Hand Edition and it too was a 'bit' violent. But there is some history with this...not much, but some. The Godfather, violent as it may be, is in the publics culture. I believe it too was an Adult Only game. Manhunt? It is ONLY about killing. What is the backstory? Who knows -- it is about killing. That is like trying to put a backstory on Doom. Oh wait -- didn't someone try to do this? The story is you are put into an unrealistic situation where you need to kill or be killed...and given extra points or kudos and maybe a gold star next to your name because of how bloody a killing you make it.
Honestly, I think games are getting way too violent and too realistic. I don't think these things need censored for adults...but I also don't think kids under a certain age need to be playing them either -- and that is the point of these sorts of articles to warn the parents.
So please, spare us the faux indignation about sensationalism when the article does a good job of accurately describing what the game is and does.
nobody that's who
Gee, what other titles for the Wii allow you to slash the controllers to attack in-game. Hmmm... oh that's right, the critically acclaimed Zelda: Twilight Princess, rated T for Teen.
Or how about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, rated E for EVERYONE.
Remember kids, never let the facts get in the way of a good story!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
But can you really say that the Wii is technologically inferior ? The clockspeed isn't the only parameter to measure technology... One can argue that the Wii is technologically superior because of its controller novel design. Hey, it allows you to make killing motions, while you can't with the other consoles pityful controllers !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Yes this is not something a kid can learn from movies by pausing and rewinding till his cat is dead in a blood poll FILLED WITH ORGANS AND....ups sry got carried away
LOL belive it or not my Word from the image at the reply page to confirm im no bot its Cruelest... coincidence? I THINK NOT.
Since the Wii version uses the motion-sensitive controllers, it literally gives players the hands of a killer.
I was unaware that the hands of a killer were constantly wrapped around a white piece of plastic.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
So let me see here. Fencing, musketry, paintball, boxing, combat training, karate, kendo, sparring, stuntwork, etc, should all be out of the question for anyone younger than adults. These activities are far more real than their Wii-gaming counterparts. Houston, we have a problem.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
You might think that having to carry out the motions using the Wii remote instead having swiveling a joystick and pressing a button is a bit too realistic, but the same argument that firing a gun in a video game isn't like real life can be applied here. Swinging the Wii remote around isn't like strangling or shanking a real person in the real world (not that I'd know personally) but a little bit of thinking should make it obvious.
Hello i'm Michel and i'm a gamer turned murderer. I was playing mario tennis with my sister and when i was hitting the ball i bitch slap her with the wiimote.
Also killed my TV with the wiimote by serving.
My cat got tossed when he grabed my arm while i was bowling.BEST STRIKE I HAD.
Cumming to a games console near you soon: serial pedo rapist ultimate edition! /Puke
The "X" movie rating is simply a mock rating, used when the film has not been reviewed by the MPAA. The correct equivalent would be a "NC-17" rating.
It would be curious to see if these journalists are actually gamers themselves. These sound more like culture shocks than anything else. Journalists don't need to be experts in every fields they write about. But I do expect them to be quite well informed for very widespread phenomena such as gaming. It would be silly like expecting someone who knows nothing about about football covering a game.
USA Today may as well run a cover story slamming punching bags and their far-too-realistic simulation of actually using your fist to hit something that's meant to be the equivalent of a human. Or perhaps they should ban the sport of MMA, because anyone that fights in the ring is just training to fight elsewhere. How about banning the army? All those kids learning to shoot real guns at real people, surely all of these things must be just as harmful as a video game about simulating killing people, right? Or just maybe, there's a chance that by engaging in gameplay, people can let out frustration that OTHERWISE might lead to bad things. That would be much more understandable.
It isn't the training of killers that kills people, it's the killer's will to actually go out and kill. If they don't know how to aim a gun properly, it will just take more tries. I wouldn't use a gun that way despite knowing how to aim it... USA today apparently doesn't know the difference.
stuff |
The Godfather : Blackhand Edition for the Wii had choking (requiring you to shake the controls vigorously in a throat-grab position), garrote usage (requiring you to use the Wiimote and nunchuk to simulate looping the garrote around a neck and pulling it taut), gratuitous use of the word "Fuck!" and dancing call girls, in addition to being able to violently murder innocent bystanders in a variety of ways. Not entirely sure why Manhunt 2 was so outstanding, except that it was produced by Rockstar Games, and not EA.
Literally? Literally implies that playing this game will cause you to commit murder, or spontaneously replace your own hands with those of a convicted murderer. Technically speaking, USA Today has knowingly defamed Take Two with malicious intent to cause damage to their business and reputation... the definition of libel...
Oh please, stop with the faux sense of outrage that someone might accurately describe a video game for the murder simulator it is.
Hi Jack Thompson, nice to see you on slashdot!
Seriously. This is what this game is. You kill...almost indiscriminately. That is the name of the game. Hell, this is probably why I'm going to buy it.
Er, um... maybe. Oh wait. Hi Jack Thompson, nice to see you on slashdot!
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
If these people have ever seen an arcade game with guns or crossbows. Silent Scope comes to mind, as does Beachhead 2000. Nintendo had a light gun for the NES home system. Games as far back as at least the first Star Wars arcade game used controls that simulated the actual controls used for killing your enemies up to a point. After Burner had a sit-down version with a flight stick, throttle, trigger, and thumb button which pitched and rolled with the plane on-screen. Battlezone drove with two joysticks like many tracked vehicles really do. Is the problem that knives and garrotes are more personal than ranged weapons?
Apart from video games, there are lots of other simulated killing actions. People have been fencing for centuries, and that's considered a respectable sport. The SCA features swords, maces, flails, and more. People doing civil war reenactments use rifles, cannon, swords, and bayonets. Paintball players are shooting guns and lobbing grenades at one another. Hell, the stores still sell water guns and water balloons for kids, don't they? I see them all the time, and I can't imagine they're in the toy section just to sit there. We used to play cops and robbers or CIA vs. KGB as kids.
Whoa! That's cool! Did they come from one of those countries where they chop off criminals' hands?
(Alternative response): Hey! I saw that movie. Funny stuff!
(Insert grumbling about inappropriate use of the word "literally" here.)
Disclaimer: I found Manhunt to be pretty gross. Never played the sequel.
Well, it's true that the violent language in the story could have been toned down and the point could still have gotten across, but avid, hardcore newsreaders find that the realism of the more violent mental imagery in the article lends itself to a more thoroughly immersive and enjoyable reading experience. People like you who decry the violent language in the article are just trying to suppress the free speech rights of its author. If you don't like the paper, you don;t have to buy it!
This space available.
M is a rough equivalent to R. R pretends to mean "No one under 17" just like NC-17 but everyone knows many parents, older brothers, etc. will ignore that warning and choose to take kids anywhere (I sat through Scream 3 while a woman took her roughtly 3, 5 and 10 year olds in with her). In the same way, Walmart and BestBuy will happily sell M rated games as they know they won't scare parents off from buying them for their kids in the same way Ao might do.
Hollywood has been sending movies back for re-review for years. There are even famous letters of producers debating how many "fuck"s a "Jesus Christ!" is worth. Generally, they pick a rating they want, aim for the edgy end of it, submit, then make whatever edits they're told they need to to squeeze it back in to that category. All that's changed is that game companies have learned from Hollywood - nothing more, nothing less.
The real shame isn't that "evil" games are getting reclassified after receiving edits. The greater shame is, much like movies, potentially great pieces of art that are totally appropriate for an adult audience are being squashed in the name of commercial viability.
Games such as Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines are examples of the truly amazing art form the genre can become. From betrayal to lust, infanticide to the damaged adult personalities of children who were abused, it was far and away the most epic piece of game storytelling I've ever experienced. Though also flawed by bugs at the time of launch, its biggest issue was no one talked about it, no one advertised it and it was hard to find. An amazing game studio crumbled because they released something phenomenal that couldn't be sold in puritan America. Since then, no one has even tried to launch a game with close to that depth of adult themes.
What's this about Sony and Nintendo not allowing Adults Only games to be made for their consoles? In the UK there were various games for the N64 rated 18 (Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day among others) and there are several games for the Wii which are certified 18 (Scarface and MK Armageddon at least). All the GTA series (i.e. their biggest sellers) have been 18-rated on the Sony machines.
This is the top rating in the UK - not to be sold to any person under the age of 18. If that's not Adults Only, then what is?
Coming soon to Wii OJ Simpson's "If I did it, here's how you can to!" - , not only do you slit two people's throats using the Wii-mote, you get to drive the Bronco too!
Jack Thompson won't buy it. He'll send his 15 year old son in to buy it for him, and then be outraged that anyone would dare let a 15 year old buy Manhunt 2.
But the question is whether a game like Manhunt 2 is psychologically dangerous.
Ray Bradbury was posing this question as early as 1951 in his short story The Veldt. Gene Wolfe had his own take on role-playing games in When I Was Ming the Merciless, ca. 1976.
I don't think you dispose of these questions quite as easily as the Gamer-Geek would like to believe. I can see a problem in wielding the Wii remote in imitation of a real-life weapon.
Particularly in a game that - in any sense - rewards the player for the grotesqueness and sadism of his kills.
If this was a star wars game in which you stab the air to use the lightsaber, and lift a remote to forcechoke, there wouldn't be any controversy. Now granted, I really don't care about this game, it doesn't appeal to me (neither did #1), but I've got no problem with violence. But this seems like a double standard to me. As if hacking things to death with the master sword isn't violent.
I understand how Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do not allow AO games on their consoles, or that stores such as EB et al do not sell these type of games either. But does this mean that the consoles are hard coded in some way that they check the rating for a game before it plays? Does this mean that I were somehow able to get a copy of the game (I'm pretty sure it was torrented a few weeks ago...) I could throw it into my console and play? I can't recall which is the game company and which the publisher, Take Two and Rockstar, but why can't the publisher sell the game directly minus the middle man?
So I guess my question is, why can't they get the AO rating and sell the game via the intarwebs (the credit card could also be a way of checking for age authentication) to those interested in owning the game sans being barred from playing it if the consoles are locked against those types of games?
The MPAA doesn't give a flying f*** about what movies people can or can't see, so long as its members make money.
If the MPAA hadn't stepped in and created their own voluntary code, the government would have. By making their own voluntary code, they ensured they remained in control of it and not the government. This is exactly why publishers are supporting the ESRB ratings right now - they may not like the limits they impose but they'd much rather their own voluntary limits than the government making compulsory ones (the only problem being that theaters did a passable job of applying the limits and so the government backed away while many game stores keep ignoring the ESRB and so leave politicians with ammo).
So, the MPAA's ratings are only there to make the government go away. Given that that worked, they're totally happy for their members to release "unrated" versions - so long as a) the government stays away and b) their members make money. As the big chains are more than happy to sell unrated movies as something titilating and decades passing means politicians get no mileage from it, the MPAA is more than happy to support it.
Were the ratings really a symbol of MPAA power, sure, they'd fight "unrated" releases. But, given the ratings are simply there so they control censorship rather than letting the government do it, so long as their members don't upset the cart, they're more than happy for those same members to make even more money by appearing to flout them. They're still members and this is just another way for them to keep making a profit - which is all the ratings really were in the first place.
and that is the point of these sorts of articles to warn the parents.
Actually, I think the point of the article was to sell newspapers.
So please, spare us the faux indignation about sensationalism when the article does a good job of accurately describing what the game is and does.
I can only speak for myself, but there's nothing especially "faux" about my indignation. Just because the particulars of a story happen to be true doesn't mean that the presentation of the facts therein can't skew towards the sensational, and hence be misleading.
How can you say it's just about killing, you didn't even play it ?!?
But if you hear anyone else do this, you should laugh loud and hard, and ask them if their pants were ripped, and if they contacted the management to complain about the glue on the seats, and laugh even louder if they try to defend this egregious abuse of the Queen's English.
It's our job to school the young and clueless.
So when does the wii mote knife add-on come out?