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What Would Make Manhunt 2 Acceptable To BBFC?
MTV's Multiplayer Blog wonders aloud what would make Manhunt 2 acceptable to the BBFC. The BBFC rejected the game for a second time a few days ago, and now MCV is reporting that the version they rejected was identical to the US version approved for an 'M' rating by the ESRB. From the BBFC's response: "Unfortunately I cannot list the changes we suggested as this is a matter between us and the distributor and if they are not happy to give you chapter and verse I'm afraid I can't either. I can say, however, that the changes were to the level of visual detail in the kills and to some of the dialogue. As our news release said, 'The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient. There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the 'execution kills', but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature.'"
I think if they just changed the name to "OMG Ponies" the BBFC might change their mind.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Perhaps if they removed all those ninja and samurai along with those ninja moves like sneaking or stealth killing they'd be a bit more lenient.
BBFC's response has almost sold me on the game. Great work guys!
The idea that a regulatory or inspectory agency should be unable to cite reasons for its decision is essentially the exposition that it has no rules. I'm an American video game developer, and whereas I write kids' games and have dodged this bullet, I can say for certain that the ESRB is full of crap and has no idea what it's doing. It sounds, however, like Europe is winning the war in arbitrary judgements based on personal beliefs and associations with retailers.
This is absurd, and the BBFC should be replaced with an agency willing to set their rules out in black and white.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
sed 's/FF0000/00FF00/' manhunt2/src/*
It's 2007. International borders mean little, information is weightless. Organisations like the BBFC are only going to become less and less relevant as time goes by.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Nah...let's change it from ponyhunt to RIAA lawyer hunt....I doubt any standards body would reject that for ruthless violence...especially if they own music.
Remember, it's not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you...
Just take the prison setting move it to a field of flowers with a bright yellow sun, blue sky and white fluffy clouds. Remove the bad guys and put in ponies. Remove weapons and replace them with water cans, so you can water the flowers. If you don't water them the plants get sad (they won't die...that's bad). Your guy should be changed into a happy princess who wants to bring the world a smile. And her weapon of choice is to shoot rainbows from her finger tips that make everyone happy and safe.
See piece of cake
...and then release a patch on the Internet that restores everything. "Game experience may change with online play," right?
Face it, this decision is based on general public opinion on video games as well as political climate and other social factors. It's 100% arbitrary. If Rockstar wasn't the developer, they could avoid the controversy Bully and GTA created and actually rate the game on it's own merits. As it is, the decision smacks of teaching Rockstar a lesson, especially considering some of the films they've let through in recent months. So, if they don't want to change the content they could just wait 6 months, by which time the daily mail will have a new story about princess Diana, or immigrants, or some other piece of shit about todays fads killing our kids (my next prediction is Anime), and it will slip through without incident.
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - George Orwell, 1984
There are two paths to making the game more acceptable in society, that is, to the media, which define it. BBFC won't approve something if they expect letters written to The Sun and the Daily Mail.
1. Change the title from Manhunt to something less headline catchy, and change the first level so that reporters won't see anything but bunnies and flowers.
2. Alter the gameplay so that the player is murdering paedophiles.
As usual, you people are missing the forest for the trees. If you play their game, you have already lost:
> what would make Manhunt 2 acceptable to the BBFC?
How about electing different politicians?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
From everything I've heard about Manhunt 2 it's not an adult game. The focus on GORE! and NASTY KILLING! is very adolescent. It sounds like something designed by an angsty, hate-filled teenage boy who's going to have a teacher see his notebook and be afraid he's going to be another Columbine killer any day now.
All this gory, blood-soaked shit gets called "adult" but it's not. It's adolescents wallowing in mindless excess.
egypt urnash minimal art.
No chance. Cruelty against animals is worse than against humans.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Judging from "adjustments" to be "suitable" for the German market:
1. Claim every person is a robot.
2. Throw all speech into some program that removes all bass to make it sound all robot'y.
3. Cripple all "flesh" textures into some shades of grey and apply some bolts to the "skin".
4. Make all blood green or blue, and say it's "coolant fluid".
5. Apply the same for guts and say it's "pipes".
6. And of course, put it all into a parallel universe far, far away.
Should work out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whenever a school shooting or other media event gets blamed on kids having access to violent video games, Slashdotters are quick to point out that the parents weren't paying attention to the ratings. But the reaction to this story seems to imply that a lot of people would like those ratings to be basically toothless - like there's no level of horrific violence that should EVER qualify a game for the equivalent of an X-rating.
Do we apply this standard to movies? Of course not. Everyone more or less accepts that movies have to censor themselves down to make an "R" rating rather than "X" (OK, "NC-17"). While there are plenty of people who oppose the specifics of movie ratings, I don't think I've heard many people espouse indiscriminately giving porn an "R" rating.
Anyway, good play by Rockstar. Their crappy game managed to get more media coverage than Halo 3 by playing the controversy card.
I personally read the BBFC's comments as
'They didn't take our suggestions and tell us how wonderful and insightful we are so we are going to throw a tantrum and now allow their game'
Their amazing B.S. comments about how they don't have a double standard for games vs movies is just icing on the cake...
According to articles on the US changes, they blurred out the real graphic scenes (which really disappoints me as an adult who should be able to see them). Why can't they release an M version with lots of blurring called "Manhunt 2: The Jack Thompson Pussy Version, Still Not For Kids" and an uncut, unblurred AO version called "Manhunt 2: For Real"?
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
What on earth makes you think that's why I'm squicked by Manhunt 2?
Man, I'm all for more sex in games. I'd love to see sex in all popular entertainment be shown as explicitly as violence are. You can fling innards around like doubloons at Mardi Gras and get an R/MA, but show one naked cunt or cock and have people fuck and it's X/AO. And it gets ghettoized into this incredibly stupid, impersonal sex.
"Wow! Look at this cool way I can kill someone!" is an incredibly adolescent urge, no matter how many man-hours went into getting the shaders tweaked so the blood soaks into the walls juuuuust right.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I got no problem banning it either. I'd really like to see less of this kind of adolescent wallowing in ultraviolence made in the first place. I'd prefer that it be through developers saying 'hey, this is too far' and axing stuff like this before it gets to the point where 50-100 people have worked on it for 18 months, and the financial fate of the studio rides on it being released, and it does seem that this is becoming the case.
When I call it 'violence porn' I don't mean that it's got OMG SEX! in it; I mean that it's pornography of violence: lingering on it, encouraging it, made for no other reason than to glorify this taboo act, and usually to do so in the most tawdry way possible.
egypt urnash minimal art.
But maybe if the game wasn't about making gruesome snuff films and sadistically murdering people, they might find it a bit more acceptable.
The only reason they got a response like that is because the Brits hate violence more than sexuality (imagine that!) and there are few, if any *redeeming* points to the game. In other words, one might be able to list the few (if any) acceptable points of the game, but the unacceptable parts are simply too numerous to list.
We may hate actual violence, but that doesn't mean we like a bunch of adults telling other adults what they're allowed to see, just because some find it "unacceptable". If you don't like it, don't play it.
Snuff films are a myth, btw.
Since they are now in a sense changing their vision of the original game, shouldn't they just make it Manhunt SP, or something like that, then release the full Pro version for the PC? They could even make a 'lite' version by cutting to a scene of flowers right before knife enters someone's heart.