next »

[fish]

Adult Only.
sent to die.

as you may know, rockstar's Manhunt 2 received an AO rating from the ESRB, just after being completely banned from retail in england.
major retailers like walmart wont carry AO titles, and now blockbuster and gamefly have announced they wont have the game available for rental either.

rockstar hasnt announced what they plan to do but one thing for sure, we'll never see an uncompromised version on Wii, as nintendo simply does not allow AO games on their platforms.

this is a nice little reminder that platform holders have power of life and death over everything. they decide what is right for us. and this pisses me off to no end.

anyway, discuss.

[Bad Sector]

The problem is, if console makers doesn't have a "right" for what things go to their consoles, then the government will step in and grab that "right". Between console makers and government nocluers, i prefer the console makers. At least they have some clue on what they're doing.

Of course it would be better if there weren't any "morality savers" around.

[ravuya]

From what I've read elsewhere, only the Wii version got AO, the other versions got M.

Absolutely ludicrous pandering to the media. Even if it's rated AO, that won't stop "journalists" from dredging up an 8-year-old to pretend he's castrating people with the Wiimote.

[fish]

thing is, i WANT to see the most depraved motion-murders they came up with for the wii. i want to see that stuff pushed as far as possible. and now i wont. ever.
ill have to play a watered-down, censored version of what might have been.

im a grown-up man and i want to rip-off someone's face with a set of keys without nintendo protecting me from myself.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Then ask them to release it for the PC. I think Nintendo's decision was the right one, it would hurt their image and sales to allow AO games on the console.

I think England's decision is a wrong one however; now allowing the game on something you own is one thing, not allowing anyone in a country to have it is another.

[Alex May]

None of this really bothers me to be honest.

I don't care about Manhunt; I think the original was a terrible game. Yeah, they probably improved the sequel to make it into a better game. I don't really mind missing out on this potential gem though. I have plenty of other games in my backlog and I'm not interested in pushing any limits or indulging in such realistic gorefests.

I'm also all right with the censorship. I couldn't really care less about it. So Rockstar's freedom of speech has been compromised by this decision, which I can clearly see is the wrong one. I'm not particularly bothered by that. I'm not interested in things like this, so whether they get banned or not is irrelevant to me. I also don't mind if my friends want to play it and can't; I'll be happy to suggest a dozen games they could play instead, they'll go off and play them, and Manhunt 2 will slip unheeded into videogame history. Additionally, I think Rockstar deliberately made this game so violent in order to get at least the M rating from ESRB. They would have known in advance that they were risking a ban in the UK and went ahead with the classification anyway. They could easily have toned back the content on the advice of the board prior to officially submitting the game for rating. I'm not interested in fighting on the side of attention whores.

There's talk that this sets a precedent and that such restrictions only become tighter over time; that may be true, as things are certainly seeming to head in that direction in Britain. I'm not really bothered. Such games could get banned in the face from here to eternity and it wouldn't really affect anything. Either the media will relax, as it always has, and such things will be released eventually anyway, or they'll continue to be banned, and that might be a problem if it happens but I'll still not be that interested in consuming such media. Even then I wouldn't be joining any demonstrations or anything.

It just seems like a lot of fuss over nothing to me.

Oh and let's not forget the media storm that's avoided by this game not getting a release. In some ways if you were wanting to play this you'd be facing oppression either way; either it gets banned or the media lynch it (either when it's released or when the inevitable Thompson-backed murder case appears).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Well-written sarcasm. I agree completely that censorship shouldn't be allowed.

But what Nintendo did was not censorship, censorship is government restriction of free speech. What Nintendo did was more like how most web hosts don't allow you to post pornography or build racist sites, they do it not because they want to restrict freedoms, but because it'd damage them as a company and drive customers away. People should be allowed to say anything they want, but they shouldn't be allowed to force others to help them do it.

If you consider both of those types of things censorship, you'd never be able to ban anyone from any forum or delete any comment in any blog entry or even prevent someone from using your phone or computer to communicate at their leisure. You'd have no right to block spam emails or block ads, nor any right to hang up on telemarketers.

[Alex May]

I'm not really being sarcastic. I really am not bothered by this infringement of free speech by the BBFC. I recognise it as such but I'm not angered or upset by it. It happened with video, and then everyone relaxed and now it's fine.

I agree with you about Nintendo, if they don't want to carry AO titles because of their image, that's fine. I've heard people arguing convincingly that console manufacturers should treat their consoles like a free market and release anything that comes by on it - let the audience decide what sells. I like that idea but I also like the idea of Nintendo's image. So both ways can work I guess. Nobody's really tried the free market home console thing.

[Oddball]

Just a note to those in the UK. It is a little known fact that local councils can overturn any decision made by the BBFC. That means that it is possible to lobby your local council to have it legalised in your area. I'd be suprised if any council would risk the media backlash on this one, but if you got enough support who knows.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think free market applied to a particular console, or to anything someone owns, is a misnomer. That's like saying I'm going to declare your intestines a free market and let everyone in the world decide what to feed you, and hope it comes out for the best. You can't declare something that someone owns public property and still consider that freedom.

And it may go beyond Nintendo's image. They may also have certain ideals about what they want the Wii to mean and do for people.

[fish]

I think free market applied to a particular console, or to anything someone owns, is a misnomer. That's like saying I'm going to declare your intestines a free market and let everyone in the world decide what to feed you, and hope it comes out for the best. You can't declare something that someone owns public property and still consider that freedom.

And it may go beyond Nintendo's image. They may also have certain ideals about what they want the Wii to mean and do for people.

thats a terrible analogy.

if nintendo decided to release a new system and make it an open platform, a free market, it would solve MANY problems. many many problems. and it would be their own call. and that would be their own business.
of course they'll never do that because they would lose millions from licensing fees and devkits and all that.

a man can dream tho, a man can dream.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

The PC basically has a free market; there are porn games, fan games that copyright infringe, racist games where you kill people of particular races, etc., and no central regulation of what gets published on a PC. Anyone who wants to make a game can release it on the PC.

It's questionable whether it has led to better games overall for the PC than for the consoles. I'm willing to admit that the PC has a nicer variety of games than the consoles do, but would it really be a good thing if the consoles were clogged by porn games and fan games and games so buggy that they permanently damage the console, virus games intended to damage it, etc.? I think you're only thinking of the good things that would happen and overlooking the bad things that come along with it.

[fish]

well, yeah.

but the utopic dream here is an open platform that ISNT a PC.
because PCs are incredibly complicated, user-hating machines which a lot of people use all day long and want nothing to do with once they get home.

i can be so incredibly complicated and frustrating to get even a simple game running on a PC sometimes.

or maybe thats just me.
but i cant be the only person who absolutely loathes PCs.
drivers, frameworks, graphic card issues, etc etc.
i deal with that shit all day long, and only because im paid for it.

imagine a indie scene on consoles.
on a standardised machine, that plugs in your TV, and that you play with while sitting in your couch.

crazyness!

eh.
im a fool and ill never be happy.
dont mind me.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

But the things you dislike about the PC are all *consequences* of the free market on the PC. There are dozens of video cards and joysticks and so on because it's free. If a console system were a free market, anyone could release anything for it -- not just games, but any new controller or new chip to insert or new adapter or new anything, and eventually you'd have the same situation you have with the PC. Not to mention games that wouldn't work on *any* consoles, with no way to patch them. It'd lose the plug and play pretty quickly.

[fish]

you make a good point.

[Arne]

Hot coffee?


I miss my Amiga, but I'm gonna do a ZX Spectrum handheld mockup now.

[Xander]

"Just a note to those in the UK. It is a little known fact that local councils can overturn any decision made by the BBFC."

Quite true, in Bristol 'This is England' was released in cinemas as a 15, just because we all thought it was awesome and as many people should see it as possible. However, not really sure if there are any local councils willing to grant exception to this one, unless they have a thing for media shitstorms.

Though that said, it's fine everywhere else in the EU so far, so aslong as the game itself is english or has multiple language options there's nothing stopping you importing it, if you -really- want to play it. I quite liked the first manhunt, but for no real sensible reasons. I just like beating people to death with bricks, and urinating on brains (a fact that I will continue to announce until more games include this feature, along with musical accompaniment).

At least an AO rating means you can legally buy the game though, I honestly think it's rediculous for a collective to 'ban' any form of entertainment nowadays. It just strikes me as a really naive and irresponsible thing to do. Instead of trying to come up with a peaceful and intelligent solution with the best of everyone's interests in mind, they just simply BAN the game from being sold anywhere in the country. I mean we haven't had something like this happen in 10 years! Why now? I mean Postal 2 must've been worse right? You could stick a gun in a cats rectum and fire him into outerspace. You could set someone on fire then piss out the flames as they crawl across the floor only to beat their head off with a shovel and play a pyromaniacs version of golf using their perpetually ignited noggin. How could Manhunt 2 be worse than that, really?

[Oddball]

At least an AO rating means you can legally buy the game though

The BBFC could have done a similar thing by giving it a Restricted 18 rating. With the R18 certificate a shop needs a special license to sell it. However R18 is usually reserved for explicit sexual content. It would have certainly stopped parents buying it for their kids though.

[fish]

the AO rating is usualy given to game with strong sexual content, too.
its somewhat special for a game to be rated AO only for its violence and gore.
so it must be trully obcenely violent.
which really makes me curious.


hehe, remember thrill kill?

[PoV]

OK, I want to present something a little different about the AO issue.

The Manhunt games fall in to the same category as movies like Hostel, and Saw.  Torture films basically.  Yet, you find both films at your local Walmart.  Why?

"Unrated"

The MPAA hasn't defined a movie rating more extreme than rated R.  You have porn, but that's usually just bad.  So these movie producers get by with a theater tolerable R cut, and put the all out one as an Unrated DVD.  The film industries have sidestepped the issue by taking the Unrated classification.  No fair!

If society demands a distinction between M and AO gaming, then wake up and fix your damn movie classifications too, R and Unrated.

Then the problem becomes both a Movie and Game industry issue, and can be resolved together, instead of us having to fend for ourselves.