Brutal and violent
"You get to meet – and brutally kill – some very interesting people" – Caption under a pic on CNET Networks’ GameSpot.
In Manhunt, Rockstar games’ Sony Playstation 2 production, the player ‘takes over’ death row inmate James Earl Cash and once that’s achieved, must "survive".
But New Zealand’s Office of Film and Literature Classification says the game is so bloody and violent that it’s been banned – in New Zealand, anyway.
Another Rockstar game, Grand Theft Auto III, is already being blamed for inspiring two brutal murders in California.
There, deputy district attorney Darryl Stallworth wants death penalties for reputed killers Leon Wiley and half-brothers Joe and Demarcus Ralls, "the most malevolent members" of a gang linked, "to about a half-dozen slayings, scores of robberies, and a set of shootings," says the Alameda Times-Star today.
It goes on, "The gang evidently craved media attention and shared a fascination with the video game ‘Grand Theft Auto III,’ police detectives concluded. Members of the clique ranged in age from late teens to some in their 20s".
Back to Manhunt, "Apparently," the promo goes, speaking of James Earl Cash, "the voyeuristic weirdo has a ‘thing’ for disturbing video and is hell-bent on ensuring that you provide him with what he wants – hence his request to be addressed as ‘Director.’ To that end, he will offer you some direction on how to survive, not that you’ll need many pointers (it’s not like Cash was on death row for a speeding ticket). However, his twisted pointers are helpful in their own way, as he’s basically directing you in his own personal snuff film."
"his own personal snuff film" …
In New Zealand, the OFLC’s Bill Hastings is quoted in the New Zealand Herald here as saying, "It’s a game where the only thing you do is kill everybody you see. It gets worse. Not only do you have to kill everybody you see, you can choose to kill ‘mild,’ ‘medium’ or ‘hot’" and that ‘hot’ kills are particularly gruesome with death coming from weapons used ranging from shards of glass to garrotting wire, plastic bags and machetes.
And, "When you go for the ‘hot’ kill you actually see the snuff film … you see the person being killed in close-up. With the plastic bag, for example, you see the victim’s mouth gasping for air inside the bag."
In its 12-page decision, the New Zealand classification office ruled Manhunt depicted and dealt with matters of horror, cruelty, crime and violence in such a manner that its availability was likely to be injurious to the public good.
"The only way you can accommodate the game’s images is by an attitudinal shift," Hastings says in the NZ Herald story.
"You have to at least acquiesce in these murders and possibly tolerate, or even move towards enjoying them."
And senator Orrin Hatch and his friends and colleagues pretend to be worried about file sharing?
October 28th, 2004 at 6:00 pm
i love manhunt because i love violence and brutal murdering.i am proud that rockstar games has came out with it because of the violent behavor on it.its a kool game
October 20th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
While the article provides good points that the game is grusomely violent, shouldn’t it be the parent’s responsibility to review the games their child bought, or is looking at, before it’s even played?
On Amazon, Grand Theft Auto (the mature version) is being sold for $100, while the mentioned game, Manhunt, runs for $50. I’m not sure about your kids, but now that i’m $20, and even before then, the only way I even owned a $50 game was as a gift. So parents are allowing their kids to have these games by giving them the money and not looking at what they buy.
On another note, the kids who did these murders planned them before they actually did the action, and probably before they even bought the game. Owning a violent game does not make a person a murderer, it may give them some strange dreams at most, but it won’t make you a murderer.
Take me for example. I love to rent shooter games. First person shooters to be exact. I also love music like 50 Cent and Eminem, but you havent heard of a mulatto girl walking around her college dorm shooting people after playing a game or listening to 50.
That is another thing I’ve been wanting to get to. The Blame. Since the murders were predeterminded, with a medium possibilty of being planned before the game was bought, what better way to shift the blame than on something violent they own. Something their parents should not have let them own.
Please, before you go blaming the gaming companies, the music industry or movies, please remember it’s for entertainment value only. The people who ‘take it too far’, have planned their actions for a long time, or at the very least, have a higher percentage of dormant violence than the rest of the human population. If games and other ‘entertainment’ were as horrible and influencing as you think it is, we would all be lying in pools of our own blood as our killer gets shot from behind, or something of that manner.
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Salutations,
The Sane One