Manhunt 2 Ban Fallout, Game Rated AO By ESRB 384
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."
Any Legal Objections? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rather than selling it at a retail level, utilize the free PR to mention that the game will still be sold but is only available for online download.
They put in a disclaimer, you must be 18 to download this game, jada jada jada, and then sell it.
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand the outrage over an outright ban, but rating a game appropriately, regardless of the consequences to the bottom lines of the companies involved, sounds like a good move to me.
Isn't this what Rockstar wanted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So wait. (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the problem with the rating? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So wait. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand the outrage over an outright ban, but rating a game appropriately, regardless of the consequences to the bottom lines of the companies involved, sounds like a good move to me.
The only thing I really see wrong with it is that it seems that video games get rated more harshly than movies, and there's no reason for it. You press buttons for one and you don't for the other. I'd like to compare Manhunt 2 to Hostel 2 and see which is worse, because I imagine the answer is Hostel 2. Maybe the same board should rate video games and movies?
And this is different how? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem with the rating? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:movies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:movies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem with the rating? (Score:3, Insightful)
As yet there's still no proof that games in any way negatively effect a persons mentality in a violent manner. For every bit of so called evidence i.e. "columbine killers played games, games must be to blame" there's plenty of equally unfounded counter-evidence, for example, since Grand theft autos original release in the US, car crime in the US has dropped drastically, perhaps people are happy comitting their crime virtually? Or how about the guy in the UK a few weeks back who risked his life to save others in a gunpoint robbery and who was also a counterstrike player - we could just as well say games make people into heroes.
Neither scenario really shows that games improve society unless we apply the kind of idiotic logic that is applied each time someone kills someone and it's discovered that said person also played computer games now and again - well duh, most kids do.
It's the same mentality that makes so many people think Islam is bad, well, it's not (well, no more so than other religions), there are bad people that follow Islam and that's the difference, but we can't ban Islam or kill all muslims just because of a few bad followers as it's not Islam itself that's to blame.
If we're going to focus on anything, we should be focussing on why some kids are carrying guns and trying to immitate gangster rappers in the first place, why some people are willing to murder in the name of their religion and so on and so forth. Banning some form of media like this, be it a game, a film, a book or music just masks over the problem, it certainly doesn't make it go away, the kids that would kill are still going to end up killing, it's just a sad fact of our world today.
Re:What's the problem with the rating? (Score:1, Insightful)
The question is: is there any compelling reason a nanny state should be making decisions for the parents? As other have pointed out, AO is a retail death sentence. "Thinking of the children" means adults (the "A" in "AO") probably won't get to play the game either since it won't get released.
Parents don't want junior playing a game like this, they don't buy it for him or allow him to purchase/own it. This isn't a decision some group of nitwit politicos should be making.
Heaven forbid your little angel finds out that death can be a messy gruesome affair, that people kill each other in these ways for no good reason, or that babies are actually created by a biological process and not delivered by a long necked bird with a penchant for pecking at the legs of women.
Re:So wait. (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people do you know who have killed other people (aside from soldiers or police officers or something like that)? How many people do you know have had sex? The risk of a teenager having risky sex is astronomicly greater than the risk of the teenager commiting murder.
You really shouldn't brag "our censorship is better than your censorship" though. It is like bragging that your diarrhea is better. The truly civilized countries are the ones that trust parents to decide what they want their children to see and don't get involved.
Excessive regulation. (Score:4, Insightful)
This sort of excessive regulation, to me, reflects the general decline and weakness of the West. We've got these nanny states run by people who increasingly believe it's their responsibility to control every aspect of our lives. More troubling is how citizens are themselves abdicating all responsibility, expecting their governments to do everything for them. What these people apparently fail to realize is that inevitable the system will eventually come around and start trampling on their freedoms; it's a very slippery slope.
Ultimately, it's the parents who should be responsible for what their children are doing. If a child who plays these ultra-violent games has violent tendencies I'll guarantee those issues stem from poor parenting and not the game. From personal experience this has always been the case. The fact that the child has access to such games is merely a symptom of that problem.
As long as humans have been around there has been violence. I'm not making excuses for that violence, but humanity has in general gotten along fine. Look at the level of violence depicted in a lot of anime that officials in the US feel the need to censor. Yet Japan maintains extremely low crime rates.
Sometimes I think trying to shield children by depicting an unrealistic, utopian fantasy is a big mistake. It renders them poorly equipped to deal with the harshness of the real world. I'm not advocating they participate in violent blood sports, but as always everything in moderation is best.
Re:A Plea From an Adult Gamer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually very easy to understand. Just ask a couple of questions:
How many high school seniors have fathered or mothered a child?
How many high school seniors have killed a person?
The thinking is along the lines of: "I remember what it was like when I was in school, and I don't want my child getting/causing pregnancy and ruining their life." The idea that they're going to go Columbine at a school is a distant thought.
It's not about the act, it's about the probability of it becoming a problem in the household. I don't personally subscribe to that line of thought, but it's not like half the country took a crazy pill or something.
Ratings stifle creativity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. The summary made it perfectly clear why they don't want the AO mark: a number of cowardly stores refuse to stock AO games. Fewer stores means less visibility and fewer sales, even if they really only want adults purchasing the game. For a game that was expensive to produce, an AO rating can destroy the producers chance of making a profit. A Mature mark would get them into most stores with almost identical effectiveness (AO is 18+, while M is 17+ [esrb.org]).
Exactly as many people predicted, the ratings system, even a voluntary one, has stifled creativity. The ratings system resulted in incentives for stores to refuse to stock the highest rated games to appease the whiners. Not being carried in stores reduces sales, frequently to the point of ensuring the game will be a commercial failure. Developers and publishers to restrict what they do to avoid the top rating mark. End result: you get almost nothing specifically intended for the adult market. What you do get tends to be low quality and pandering, because shameless crap is the only thing likely to make money. The end result is that the highest rating becomes associated with pandering garbage, which just reenforces the entire cycle. You're pretty much guaranteed that some topics and some styles of gameplay that serious game developers might want to turn into a top quality title will either be watered down or simply never produced.
Not Much Different than M (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this what Rockstar wanted? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the US system of movies, there's the R rating (for 16 years and older) and the NC-17 rating (for 17 years and older). These are roughly equivalent to M and AO. If a movie is R, you can see it in theaters and buy it at wal-mart. If it's NC17, you can only see it in one or two theaters in a large city. If you want to buy it, you have to go to an adult store or get an edited copy.
Likewise, an M rated game is restricted to 17 year old people, but it's available everywhere. An AO rated game is restricted to 18 year old people and can only be found through adult retailers (for the most part).
The outrage is, why should Manhunt, certainly no worse in violent content than Hostel or Hostel II, get a higher rating? My biggest complaint is that the AO rating is so rarely used that this will certainly make for even more bad press for what is, in the end, a good game development house that pushes the limits of technology, genre, and social acceptance (the last one being what gets them in trouble).
Finally, to suggest that an uproar over a rating of AO means that it's made for children is to suggest that Hostel's R rating implies it's made for children.
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:3, Insightful)
END COMMUNICATION
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone have a link?
AOkay... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
Manhunt 2 - Rated so it can only be purchased by adults or with parental permission.
Remember that both these rating systems are up to the enforcement of the establishments as is not actually legally binding
Now for a more telling comparison on why Manhunt should actually be more restricted than hostile. Here are some possible quotes after enjoying these two entertainment devices.
Hostile 2 - "I saw this one scene where the person was killed in a really horrific way"
Manhunt 2 - "I killed this one person in this really horrific way"
Hopefully you can see the difference. One is a movie you were you watch people get killed, while the other allows you to simulate killing people.
Notice I am not supporting a complete ban, but have no issue with realistic ratings.
Why the fuck? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real issue... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So wait. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. I also remember the shitty list of candidates we had. I wouldn't be so quick to judge. That election just plain sucked.
Re:Games like this do affect people (Score:3, Insightful)
When I play tetris for a particularly long time, I dream tetris. But it doesn't make me go out and stack blocks.
I support the idea of restricting games to adults. The problem is that I think most people over 18 aren't particularly adult, and some people are more mature than those people will ever be before they even reach their majority.
When we can come up with a system for measuring maturity and restricting purchases based on that, then I'm all for maturity-based restrictions. But age has never been a good signifier of maturity and it never will be.
Re:So wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
And why does it matter? It's very, very, very likely that someone is going to eat sometime, so we should censure all references to food in movies? Sex is a natural behavior, everybody will engage in it sooner or later (there's still some hope left for you slashdotters!), and educating children about sex is a much better way to go about things than making it a forbidden and hidden dirty secret. Procreation is part of the normal functioning of human race and society. Murder isn't. What's the message you send kids when you're ok showing them somebody's head blown off, but have a conniption at the accidental sight of a nipple?
Re:So wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I think its not so much about the probability of sex vs probability of violence. Lets look at US history for just a brief moment. Who came here first? Oh thats right the uber puritans...you know...scarlet letter and all. The folks that believed it was perfectly natural to burn whiches, stone whores, drown the nonbelievers, cut out tongues, and any other number of horrifically violent things...and these horrific and violent responses were frequently in response to that horribly impure and immoral SEX!. So this stuff has been ingrained into American thought from day 1. Sex is horrible and impure and an affront to God, violence on the other hand is frequently used to glorify God, so the choice of violence vs sex seems pretty easy, how else could you possibly justify stoning the whore?
Re:In that case... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A Plea From an Adult Gamer (Score:2, Insightful)
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/18
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:4, Insightful)
NC-17 is a kiss of death for theatrical movies because they aren't porn. They didn't just lay down a few grand to get a girl who knows how to fuck on camera, find a room somewhere and capture the fun on video. If a movie is being made, and they're going for an R rating, that's still mass-market. In all likelihood it's a multi-million dollar venture, and they expect a return on that - a return they can't get with NC-17, simply because theaters won't show NC-17 movies. Hence, death.
"Owning NC-17 movies" these days is a bit different than it used to be, thanks to the "DVD special edition" phenomenon - a movie can get released to theaters with an R rating and then sold in stores with both R and NC-17 (or unrated) cuts as alternate purchasing options - the "restored footage" becomes added value. This is a strategy that could potentially work for games, but it would probably be difficult to make it work.
AO is pretty much the same. There is no practical difference between an M-rating and an AO-rating in terms of the definition: 17+ vs. 18+, one whole year. M-rating is just the version of AO that gets sold in stores. It's like AO exists separately only so it can be shunned - to make M-rating look tame by comparison.
Re:ESRB is out of control (Score:3, Insightful)
"I forget where, but there was a wonderful british study recently that found the suspension of disbelief was harmed by playing a videogame compared to watching a movie."
The BBFC [bbfc.co.uk] are the British organisation that refused to give a rating to Manhunt 2 in the UK. They are also the organisation that commissioned the survey you're thinking of,
"Video Games Research to improve understanding of what players enjoy about video games, and to explain their preferences for particular games" [bbfc.co.uk] (PDF)
Bear in mind that this is a survey of attitudes, not a scientific report that proves anything. It does raise a lot of subtle and complex issues though so I'd recommend you review the following sections in detail,
"6.3 Violence: gamers"
pp. 71 - 80
"6.4 Violence: professionals"
pp. 81 - 87
Violence is a serious matter. (Score:3, Insightful)
The trivialization and glamorization of violence is something that we expect only fully developed adults to manage appropriately, young people lack the necessary life experience to know better, specially children, that learn by mimicking.