p2pnet news | Games:- It’s happened again.

Take-Two Interactive’s Manhunt 2, marketed by Rockstar, has been once more banned in Britain because of its “bleakness and callousness”.

The original Manunt, starring a psychopathic killer and featuring ’snuff’ movies, was taken off the shelves in New Zealand and Australia and was said to have inspired murders in the US and UK.

It’s rated Mature in America, which theoretically means only adults can play it.

However, critics say young children are still able to get hold of it by one means or another and can be influenced by it’s extreme violence, sexual content and brutality.

Described by Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick as a “fine piece of art,” it was slammed by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) because of its “bleakness and callousness of tone”.

Now the BBFC has thrown out a supposedly revised version of Manhunt 2.

Why? Guardian Unlimited has board chairman David Cooke stating:

We recognise that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version. 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.

We did make suggestions for further changes to the game, but the distributor has chosen not to make them, and as a result we have rejected the game on both platforms. The decision on whether or not an appeal goes ahead lies with the distributor.

For an alternate view, “The BBFC has clearly gone beyond its remit in even mentioning the tone of the game,” says Padraig Reidy in Index on Censorship, going on:

It has made an aesthetic criticism, when its only function, if it must function, should be to highlight ethical concerns.

Why does it feel entitled to do this? We are back at misconceptions of gamers and the nature of gameplay. The BBFC is acting as if gamers are either children, or people who deserve to be treated like children. There probably aren’t many parents among you who would not feel entitled to raise concerns over the tone of their child’s cultural intake. But I’m sure most of us who have reached our majority would at very least tut loudly if our mothers tried to confiscate our copies of L’Etranger when they came round to our homes, rebuking us for reading depressing books and trying to force The Prophet on to our bookshelves.

As for other concerns: there are some who would argue that games break through the fourth wall, immersing players in the action to such an extent they can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality, and real and imaginary consequences of real and imaginary action: interestingly, this is not a view the BBFC takes. In a report (pdf) issued earlier this year, the BBFC found that gamers were far more aware than, say cinemagoers of the distinction between fantasy and the real world. Commenting on the report, the head of the BBFC said: ‘We were particularly interested to see that this research suggests that, far from having a potentially negative impact on the reaction of the player, the very fact that they have to interact with the game seems to keep them more firmly rooted in reality.’

The final piece in this jigsaw is the moral panic argument. The original Manhunt game was subject to tabloid hysteria after the murder of Stefan Pakeerah. It was claimed that Pakeerah’s murderer had played the game non-stop. It later emerged that it was Pakeerah himself who was a fan of the game. None the less, the story stood: a boy was murdered because of this evil game, just as many claimed that Jamie Bulger had been murdered because of the horror movie Child’s Play 3.

So the BBFC would seem to have been inconsistent across platforms, unaware of target audiences, ignorant of its own advice, and influenced by red-top mania. I’m not sure I’d trust someone with that record to recommend a game, never mind decide what game I’m not allowed to play.

The ban will, of course, serve to massively boost the game’s profile.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, the games industry friendly The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) assigned these content descriptors to Manhunt 2:

• Blood and Gore, Intense
• Violence, Strong
• Language, Strong Sexual Content
• Use of Drugs.

Stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
fine piece of art - Manhunt 2 release date cancelled, June 22, 2007
slammed - Rockstar appeals UK Manhunt2 ban, August 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited - Manhunt 2: the man from BBFC, he say ‘no’. Again., October 8, 2007
Index on Censorship - Censors overstep the mark, October 11, 2007

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for the official download, and here for details. Click here or here to learn what technologies may help you by-pass censorship in your area.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

HOME

Viewed 6977 times