Manhunt 2: Take 2's Top Man Comments

Manhunt 2 isnt a game its a sadistic twisted extremely violent game that should NEVER have been made in the first place.

How can we Brits know this if we're not legally allowed even to sniff a place where its box once sat?

How can we form any moral judgements if we're not allowed to make choices based on what we can experience?

Or are we merely supposed to believe what we're told? Now that would be a sick, twisted world.

Tim

The whole ratings system needs a review if a game's being refused a 18+ rating. There's no way that they are actually suggesting this isn't suitable for adults - the problem is that they don't trust the system to keep this away from children.

This is now a "moral" battle, there's no profit left in Manhunt 2 after this but Take 2 aren't giving up that easily. I think we need to take this opportunity to change the system, it's clear that it doesn't work if nobody trusts it. Maybe parents should be forced to play trough a demo before they are allowed to purchase age limited games. I don't know whether or not that would work out, that's not my job.

Sorry, I'm with SS4 on this. I'm not a fan of all-out censorship, but that doesn't mean you should allow anything out onto the streets for the sake of upholding a principle. You don't need to be able to buy child pornography to know that it's wrong, and I don't think that a 'game' encouraging you to violently kill people is as far away from that as some would like.

The argument about child porn is often thrown in as some kind of show stopping ultimate argument when it comes to censorship. The problem with that is: firstly, child pornography is actually illegal. Secondly any child involved in it will have been suffering. Thirdly, it actually involves real life people.

Manhunt 2 is not illegal. Is virtual. No one actually gets hurt.

In the last 30 years, I can think of one outstanding example of how a created work lead someone to kill someone else. That work was 'The Catcher in the Rye' which Mark Chapman states as part of his stimulus to shoot John Lennon dead.

Then again, Lennon was involved in the recording of Helter Skelter, apparently the impetus for Charles Manson's Family to murder Sharon Tate...

Maybe A Clockwork Orange could be chucked into the mix or maybe Taxi Driver, Jodie Foster, John F. Hinckley Jr and a shot Bonzo Reagan?

So, we ban two novels, one song and one movie? I don't think so. The Manhunt 2 debate concerns the BBFC refusing to allow me the choice to buy something totally legal with my own money and at my mature years. I am waaaay over 18.

As it is, I would had to get hold of a hooky copy in order to see what all the fuss is about. If I could get hold of a dodgy copy - then so could my teenaged old niece. She's also far more likely to want to go and get the forbidden fruit.

Oh, for the record, from what I have seen of MH2, I wouldn't touch it with someone else's axe handle. But I find games in which you wander around blindly killing people intensely dull and childish.

Oh, for the next record, according to Malcolm McDowell, Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange because his family was getting death threats. The BBFC rated it as an .X' on December 15th 1971 - it's now an 18.

Yours, listening to the the Ninth!

Tim

(Let's ban every single John Wayne movie ever made banned (well, not Red River or True Grit) because they 'teach' people to hate and kill Injuns, Vietnamese people, Japs and so on and so forth.)

You make a good point Tim, but...

All the examples you mentioned (plus Lady Chatterley's Lover to, whilst we're at it) are all shining examples of their respected mediums and top notch works of art to boot. As has been said over again, Manhunt 2 isn't even any good! It's not needling societal conventions or underpinned by satire - it's just sociopathic violence for it's own sake.

If this was GTA 4 we were talking about, it would be very different as that is a game series universally held to be worthy of merit and is definitely worth fighting for. Also, if Manhunt 2 hadn't been made by Rockstar or wasn't a sequel to an already 'controversial' game, then gaming would have less to risk by facing tabloid scrutiny head on.

Manhunt 2 is hardly a first-rate example of gaming as a medium and pushes no boundaries within gaming, unlike Child's Play 3 (or Saw, or Hostel) did within cinema. Is such excessive, sociopathic violence really worth defending when you risk *all* games being tarnished by the same brush by the tabloid media?

How can I know this if it's banned? (sure, we all know how I can know this... but I'm talking 'legally' here)

As well as making my mind up about 'pieces of art', I also want to be able to make my own mind up about pieces of trash.

Also, I don't intend to be made to live in fear of the tabloid press and its reaction to games.

Finally, to say that putting out an obnoxious game will tarnish (with the same brush, I like that) all other games is absurd in the extreme. It's like saying the fact that James Blunt and Coldplay exist tars the entire music industry; or the fact that Julian Temple's Sid and Nancy exists tarnishes the entire film industry; or the fact that anything by Clive Barker or Anne Rice exists blackens the entirety of literature. It's simply not true.

Cheers

Tim

I think a fairer example could be found within the medium of comics, another art form that the mainstream don't really 'get'. In the 1950s, the meainstream lumped all comics in with each other, regardless of content, because they thought horror comics represented the entire medium. The establishment confused one genre with an entire medium - please refer to Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Fredric Wertham for more info. Things have moved on since 1954 and comics now fly completely underneath the censors' radar, however I do see strong parallels between comics then & videogames now (not to mention between F. Wertham and J. Thompson). Of course, the parallel ultimately falls down because we're talking about dear ol' Blighty and not the US of A, but it's still worth noting.

Anyway, you make a valid point and I agree with you. It probably is jumping to conclusions to think that non-gamers can't distinguish between games of different types, intended for different audiences. Fair point.

However, I genuinely am in fear of the tabloid press and it's reaction to games. I'm scared by how easily public opinion is swayed by the tabloids, and how the government panders to public opinion whenever it suits them. I'm sacred (and angry) that Hodge [i]<spits>[/] is far more eager to appeal to the masses than take the intellectual high ground - especially over a game that principally appeals to the lowest common denominator. Things were bad enough over Manhunt 1 - a sustained assault could turn all gaming into the national media's new pariah.

I don't like being afraid, but I am. That's why I hold this view about Manhunt 2. I just wish things were different!

So by that rationale, if Rockstar made a game based on child pornography, and even further, set it in a country where there weren't any laws against the most repugnant acts ever which you were being asked to perform as a player, you'd be okay with that?

And even if it was a high quality game by whatever rationale you'd define that, you'd champion it in the face of the rightful barrage it would get from those outside the industry, and how much damage it would do to the industry's reputation?

In a sense, whatever you think about this particular game, the time isn't right to be insisting it gets released - especially when for all I can see it probably isn't any good.

The games industry is currently under review and scrutiny and we should all be responsible enough to know that the content produced and played does have some effect, even if it's yet to be fully measured. And until it has been, games shouldn't be produced simply for shock value to make a quick buck - and nor should we be doing our best to help them.

So you've played it, then?

If I lived in a place in which a company could make money publishing such a game, I'd move because I would be living in Insane Land. The game would not sell. The people concerned would be sacked and then lynched by the public and by investors alike.

The reason it would not sell is that people have decided that child abuse is worse than adult rape or murder. This is why child abuse becomes the Non Plus Ultra of any discussion of censorship. I imagine this is because children are innocent and defenceless whereas adult rape and murder victims are obviously gagging for it. I am being incredibly sarcastic there. However, that is what has apparently occurred.

However, the argument never seems to concentrate on what good censorship has ever done; what benefit there is to being castrated in terms of one's ability to make decisions; or even the sheer weight of the public saying, "Actually it might be available but I'm not buying it". Someone inevitably brings the argument down to child abuse.

Not this time. This one's about my ability as an adult to make my own decision based on advice provided to me by a public body. I am then quite capable of deciding not to purchase the item based on reviews or word of mouth from people who have been dumb enough to pay for it.



I am not now nor have I ever been a champion of Manhunt 2. What I have played of it suggests to me that it's a trashy, empty, morally questionable piece of dreck. I've said that before.

I certainly would not champion a game revolving around child abuse. I would support a game that revolved around the smashing of a child abusing (women abusing, men abusing, animal abusing) ring. However, such a game would not be made because it would have to mention child abuse. People would then jump up and down screaming loudly, as simultaneously they are happy to condone the strangulation of funding for the disabled who equally cannot defend themselves but aren't as cute as children.

Frankly, I think that most games, books, theatre or movies which are focused on dealing death like it was pudding at a game of pudding poker, are boring tat.

However, it's not up to me to make sure you only share my taste. If it was I'd ban stuff like GTA, Stranglehold, Saints Row, Scarface, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, as incredibly dull mind-sludge.



This is exactly the time to say, "Rate the bloody thing as 18 and let's move on. Let's stop giving it any more publicity than it's already got."



As I say, ban Catcher in the Rye, Helter Skelter, Clockwork Orange... and especially ban Lolita (about a paedophile) and The Bible (features actual child murder!) for gods' sakes!

Good debate though... certainly making me think about the positions I'm taking.

Cheers

Tim

I think this is an appropriate moment to institute a branch from Godwin's Law, known as Edwards' Law, which states;


As with Godwin's Law, whoever raises this lame ass argument automatically "loses", and we all move on to another discussion - or perhaps more mince pies and mulled wine.

Or maybe it's just convenient to sound clever and ridicule it, because no sane person on the side of complete non-censorship would dare support child abuse?

Note: I'm am not, and never will be, a Daily Mail reader.

As an aside, do you really think that's true? If a game existed which approached the subject in a sensitive and mature way - it would be dark, but with the right writer it could be done - I don't think it would be condemned.



But these are not comparable examples. These are generally accepted as high quality works of great value in spite of the subject matter. Okay, maybe not the Bible. But either way, I don't think you can put Manhunt 2 in the same category.

A point I've probably not yet made is that yes, you're responsible enough to know the difference between whether something is worth buying or not and whether it should be tolerated, so yes, it's fine for it to be out there on the shelves as long as the world is filled with people like you and me. But it isn't filled with people like that. There are very dumb and impressionable people out there who buy The Sun and who are influenced by it, who like to eat £1 readymeals containing every additive under the sun, and who with repeated exposure to repetitive actions of questionable moral content, might just be that little bit more likely to commit a violent act.

As I've said on related topics before, it's still likely in my eyes and unproven otherwise that playing violent games desensitises you to violence, and I don't think that's a particularly good thing in an increasingly violent world.



I wholeheartedly agree.