The “Break it Down” Blog

(Part 2 is here)

We covered the whole Manhunt 2 debacle (getting an AO rating, and banned in the UK) a few months back and it was an interesting topic to cover. For those that don’t know, even though the UK flat out banned Manhunt 2, the “AO” rating it was given essentially makes it unsellable as AO-rated titles won’t run on any current console system. While AO is a valid rating for a PC game, the market of folks purchasing AO-rated PC games is so small, that an “AO” rating on a video game is synonymous with driving a stake through it’s heart.

The whole topic of Video Games and Violence is an interesting one. From 10k feet or so, you have two sides:

1. Nothing should be censored. The market will decide what people want to play. Bring on the death-rape simulators!
2. Everything should be censored to a degree if it’s unnecessarily violent and trains kids to be killers. Down with FPSs!

Naturally no topic is that simple and can be categorized away that easily, but from 10k feet that is approximately what the landscape looks like.

For a while I felt like I was in Group #1. Why should we censor things? Let the parents, children, consumers, market, etc. decide what people want. We shouldn’t sweep a broad hand across the middle of the entertainment industry and say “half this stuff is OK, the other half has to go”. How do I know what should be kept and what shouldn’t? I consider myself a very reasonable person, but if I think I am the right one to decide this, who’s to say some right-wing Christian fanatic isn’t just as qualified or left-wing tree-hugging hippy?

Hmmm…

I didn’t give the issue much more thought until an email I got today from Noah Jacobs-Andresen. I thought the issue of video game violence had been settled until I read his email, then it got me thinking.

Noah was kind enough to agree to have his original email quoted, have a look:

Hey there, Riyad.
I’ve been thinking things on the subject for quite some time, and when I read your article about manhunt 2, I just really wanted to throw some words out. Theres no argument, manhunt really is a disgusting game. Unfortunately morbid people are everywhere nowadays, and the term disgusting tends to be more of a musing. In SoF2 the head shots were very gruesome, but not at all the goal in the game,or at least not the goal the developers set for us. I loved the game, you COULD blast enemies to peices, and when I first played it I was amazed. For me it gave the game a realistic appeal. Now it would be off to say that these games are too far removed in that both games depict violence in pretty extravagant ways, but manhunt strikes a definite cord with me. In manhunt, the entire premise of the game is to get someones jollies off by executing horrible acts of violence. I played a bit of the first one when it came out to give it the benefit of a doubt, but there was only so much I could handle. manhunt gives me a stranger look at what videogames can represent, I don’t agree in banning the game as had been done, however the AO rating should be unavoidable, regardless of how disturbing its visuals are for the reason that in essence its a game about brutality, violent extremes, and your supposed to enjoy it. Kinda makes me feel like Nintendo really killed off their standards, when you go to their website you see the light tones and cheery figures that they have nearly exclusively represented, if they are going to support this filth I believe they should stick it right on the main page, cover some of that innocence up with blood.

I think by and large the reason manhunt urks me the most is that it totally breaches my moral code relative to real life, I think one should reflect what they really believe to be morally right onto their ways of entertainment along with everything else. I couldn’t play GTA:SA for the reason that going out for a drive-by shooting was a bit too close to home, what with gangs f-ing up our schools across the US. I believe that sensible people won’t take any underlying meaning from such a shallow game, but I won’t believe that it doesn’t give some sort of support for gangs or at least the concept or create a heroic spin on vigilante homicides, people look up to tough guys right? Why not a video game character.

Anyway, I’m pretty burnt out at the moment, thanks for the article, reply if you feel up to it.

Video game violence has its place, manhunt is somewhere else.

-Noah

This got me thinking… I will post my thoughts in Part 2 of Video Game Violence, AO, Manhunt and More…