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Rockstar Games, whose Manhunt 2 has effectively been bannedtwice in Britain (though finally OK'd in the United States), have announced that they are appealing the most recent rejection.
The British Board of Film Classification has made further suggestions to the game's content that the developer has deemed "unacceptable." In a statement released this morning (via Gamespot), Rockstar said, "The BBFC allows adults the freedom to decide for themselves when it comes to horror in movies and we think adults should be similarly allowed to decide for themselves when it comes to horror in video games, such as Manhunt 2."
Is there a double standard when it comes to video games and movie censorship? Is it warranted? The purported psychological effects on interactive entertainment have been the subject of debate for much time now. Unfortunately, the BBFC's suggestions are not public record so we cannot debate the merits of their revisions. Will British gamers ever get to play this game?
Any hope of Manhunt 2's release in the UK now hinges on publisher Take 2 Interactive appealing the decision, but not before further changes are made to the final version of the game. David Cooke, director of the BBFC has stated that the changes made to the title thus far are not sufficient, and that the game still retains the same "visceral" and "sadistic" gameplay that warranted the original rejection.
It's unknown at this point whether Take 2 will once again appeal the rejection, or if Manhunt 2 is simply not meant for release in the UK.
It's rare that a good video game parody comes along that isn't featured on YouTube, so you'd think that developers would relish the chance to get mocked by some of the minds behind The Simpsons Game, which includes goofs on popular games like Neverquest and Medal of Homer. Unfortunately, it seems that not everyone is in on the joke.
CVG reports that some of the game's content had to be pulled because the companies were unhappy with the way their licenses were being tweaked. The only company called out by name is Rockstar, which reportedly asked during Leipzig that a poster featuring Grand Theft Scratchy be removed. The article does mention that the Harmonix staff got a kick out of posters for Sitar Hero, though why they'd be OK with others making fun of Guitar Hero at this point in their careers is beyond us.
A moment of silence for Joseph Howell, a 35-year old Rockstar dev who passed away earlier last week. He had worked on the Grand Theft Auto series as well as Manhunt. He is survived by his wife and two children. Check out the highlights for today:
Proving that his brain must be made of Teflon, IGN's Matt Casamassina played Manhunt 2 in its AO-rated version and didn't flip out and kill everybody he loved. In fact, he was so un-scarred by the experience that he went back for a second helping of the game in its newly M-rated version. Are you mad, man?
Though IGN says that the game is "mechanically identical" to its wicked AO twin, they said there are some more "cosmetic" changes. First off, the game's death strikes have been blurred and darkened to the point that the heinous act being done is unidentifiable. Like using a vending machine blindfolded, you just use a push a couple of buttons and hope that you get a Snickers. Though IGN says the kills are still fun, they say they're less rewarding in the still-not-particularly-family-friendly version.
There's something much more heinous in the changes though: You can no longer rip an enemy's testicles off with pliers. ... Hear that? It's the sound of Manhunt 2's GOTY award flying out the window. This is 2007! What's the point of even playing a game if you can't rip some testicles asunder? Oh, also: -1 to Manhunt 2 machinima.
Are you still looking for that special someone? Gametrailers user Brotha has recreated the second Grand Theft Auto IV trailer in GTA III: San Andreas. While we're impressed by the endeavor, the video has actually made us more eager to get our hands on the upcoming violent sandbox sequel by showcasing the visual improvements in the series.
We've embedded the original video after the break, if you want to try and synchronize them. (We recommending muting one video, unless you think you're fast enough with the mouse to hit play near-simultaneously.)
Not everyone is getting in the way of Manhunt 2. The Dutch Ministry is allowing Rockstar's controversial sequel to be released in Holland. According to a report from Eurogamer, the Ministry said that getting involved would "break the regional law which considers adults capable of making their own decisions."
The game will be prohibited for those under the age of 16. Additionally, Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin is calling for a unified EU ratings system and said that they are looking into new laws for safeguarding children.
As for the rest of Europe, it seems as though the "Banhunt" will stick.
Why have an AO rating if it can't be used? As Joystiq reported during the height of the first round in the Manhunt 2 controversy, AO rated games won't even be licensed for consoles. Forget retail and rental, the consoles themselves won't allow AO rated games, so there is a rating floating out there only available for PC games. Architect of the California game law, Leland Yee, is wondering what's going on there and why console manufacturers won't allow the rating and so is Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost.
GamePolitics got a statement from Senator Leland Yee's office saying, "The ESRB just refuses to use the AO rating for violence despite the descriptor calling for such a rating when there are 'graphic depictions of violence.' ... Combined with the use of the ambiguous term 'Mature,' many parents are left with a false sense of how violent an M-rated game may be." Now if Yee had been focused on forcing console makers to allow AO rated games on their systems instead of making unconstitutional game laws, that's something adult gamers could backup and go along with. Many games deserve an AO rating, how those determinations play out would still happen behind closed doors at the ESRB, but at least publishers wouldn't consider an AO the absolute kiss of death like they do now because the game would at least be able to play on the systems. It's a far deeper and more complicated issue involving educating retailers on what a new version of AO would mean, but at least this weird self-imposed censorship would fade into the distance.
The ESRB is moving to put out the bizarrely intense flaming body of controversy caused by rerating Manhunt 2 as M rated. The re-rating happened following review of a "modified version" of the game. Advocacy groups like CCFC and political-crusader Leland Yee have demanded US government intervention by the Federal Trade Commission. The ESRB has now released a statement (full text after break) attributed to ESRB president Patricia Vance.
Vance says in the statement, "The FTC, the national PTA, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Peter Hart Research have all found that parents are overwhelmingly satisfied with the ESRB rating system. Rather than publicly second-guessing what is unmistakably a strong warning to parents about the suitability of a particular game for children, which presumably neither Senator Yee nor CCFC have personally reviewed, we feel a more productive tack would be to join us in encouraging parents to take the ratings seriously when buying games for their children." Yee and the advocacy groups would have such a better leg to stand on if the movie industry in the US were handled in a more "transparent" way. The Motion Picture Association of America has had a secret society for decades rating movies (see This Film is Not Yet Rated for more details). It just doesn't make sense to hold the video game industry to a completely different standard than films, especially considering the prevalence of torture porn is far less in video games.
With the re-rating of Manhunt 2 from AO to M, some people are livid, some excited, others just want to make a tub of popcorn and watch the sparks fly -- then there are the conspiracy theorists. GamePolitics has a rundown of their theories following people's concerns that the Halloween release date of Manhunt 2 is just a little too perfect; many believe the game probably would have fallen underneath the radar this holiday season without its saga of controversy. One GP commenter said, "The whole timeframe stinks to high heaven ... Its gonna sell several times the number of copies than it probably deserves."
The first thing I ran into today in the PAX exhibition hall was Rockstar's just-revealedTable Tennisport for the Wii. The graphics, while obviously better than a photo taken of a TV screen would portray, are high-end PS2. That's a pretty familiar statement for a Wii game.
Here's something that's a little uncommon for a Wii game: the controls are way too complicated. There are three different control schemes (full control scheme explanations straight from the game after the break), and they varied in complexity, from Wii Sports-esque to dubbayou-tee-eff. At no point during my short time with the game did I ever feel like I had control over my character.
The standard control scheme requires players to hit A and then motion to serve, with subsequent swings done via familiar Wiimote motions. Spin, indicated by ball color, is done by holding a direction on the D-pad. The complexity comes from what felt like a significant lag between input and action. That's fine for NES Castlevania, but not for something that feigns 1-to-1 motion.
The other two control schemes assign either player movement or ball positioning to the Nunchuk's joystick, and to make a long story short, I didn't know what was going on, and the game made no indication that it knew what I was doing. Maybe with time, I could pick up the nuanced controls, but at this point I can't tell if they're nuanced or nonresponsive.
After temporarily suspending release of the AO-rated game back in June, Rockstar Games today announced a modified, M-rated version of Manhunt 2 will be release for the PS2, PSP and Wii on Oct. 31, 2007. "Manhunt 2 is important to us, and we're glad it can finally be appreciated as a gaming experience," Rockstar founder and president Sam Houser, said in a press release. "Manhunt 2 is a powerful piece of interactive story telling that is a unique video game experience. We think horror fans will love it."
Whatever effect the controversy had on the game's content, you can bet that all the drama will have a positive effect on the game's sales. Remember, 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be sold over two million copies despite being patently awful, all thanks to the magic of controversy.
The latest issue of Develop Magazine features an interview with Rockstar Leeds studio head Gordon Hall, who professes a desire to move on from portable ports – his studio was responsible for the PSP ports of Rockstar staples like Midnight Club, and The Warriors as well as two portable Grand Theft Auto titles – and develop their own new-gen IP. Hall said, "We're going to be branching out further into next-gen - we've done original work on an existing franchise, but now we want to work on new IPs, and are looking at what we can do on Xbox 360 and PS3."
Hall's team – who previously worked on mostly GBA titles as Mobius Entertainment before being acquired by Rockstar in 2004 – has been relegated to the handheld "ghetto" for some time. Current development on ports of Bully and Table Tennis for the Xbox 360 and Wii platforms should be decent practice for their next project, of which Hall says, "... it's a short development cycle, just 18 months, and it really excites me." An 18-month dev cycle? Maybe something for XBLA and PlayStation Network, then? And what about a San Andreas Stories game? And what's with all the questions?
British novelist and journalist John Lanchester has penned a piece for the London Review of Books discussing the Manhunt 2ban. While not taking sides, Lanchester does opine that the BBFC's decision will help the industry if it gets developers to focus more on pushing video games as a form of art.
The article gets some important facts right, specifically when it comes to how the public and news outlets can unfairly blame video games for acts of violence.
However, others facts presented seem based on a lot of FUD, particularly with Rockstar's history. Lanchester wrote that the infamous sex sequence was "unlockable," implying it could be done in-game without modifications (not true). He also talks about Bully (or Canis Canem Edit in the UK) in a manner to imply public outcry was justified, when anyone who did play the game realized it actually punished bullying and rewarded you for being a good student.
With Take-Two remaining tight-lipped about what's really behind the Grand Theft Auto IVdelay – they're going with the vague "almost strictly technological challenges" defense – it's up to the pundits, analysts, bloggers, and anonymous tipsters to give us the skinny on what's really going down. First up to bat is video game analyst extraordinaire, Michael Pachter who told our pals at GameDaily BIZ, "We think it is likely that the Rockstar team had difficulty in building an exceptionally complicated game for the PS3, and failed to recognize how far away from completion the game truly was until recently." Of course, he means really recently, since Take-Two did just reaffirm their plans to ship the game in October as recently as E3 (yeah, the one last month).
We know what you're thinking: Why not release the game for Xbox 360 in ought seven, and ship the PS3 release whenever it's ready (everyone else seems to be takingthiscourseof action)? Pachter further surmises "that Take-Two had a contractual commitment to Sony that it would not favor competitor Microsoft by launching the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV prior to launching the PS3 version," calling it "the only plausible explanation." Guess he doesn't think much of our theory that the targeting was too accurate and intuitive and needed to be retooled.
[Update: Newsweek's N'Gai Croal takes a slightly different approach than Mr. Pachter, surmising, "We believe that Rockstar is having difficulty with both versions of the game, not just the PS3." In other words, no deals enforcing a consistent launch date across platforms, just difficulty in getting it ready on either. "It wouldn't surprise us if Rockstar and Take-Two had already all-but-delayed the PS3 version to triage the Xbox 360 version for this holiday, only to have their hands forced when, at yesterday's product review, it became clear to both sides that even the 360 version could not be completed this year to Rockstar's exacting standards."]
