Rockstar and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Post by **Delphine** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:02 am

Because there's no blatant pornography. That's all Americans are afraid of showing their kids, anymore. It's okay to blow up shit, but god forbid they see <i>naked people</i>.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:26 am

Stab people with anything but a penis.

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 12:20 pm

I'm torn about Manhunt getting an AO. It's so obviously intended as adult entertainment, and it'll lock down the number of stupidshit parents who will buy anything for little Timmy. But then, what I want to know is exactly what freaked the ESRB out so much that they handed out the AO. (I don't care about the ban overseas - we've all known they're wussy-ass censorship freaks in Europe.) Does it really, honestly deserve this rating, or is it a testament to the fact that this is all they can do to stop morons from buying what they shouldn't for who they shouldn't?

That said,

It's okay to sell Hostel on DVD, but god forbid customers see and can buy adult video games.

Fixed.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 1:06 pm

Above what? Above objecting to censorship?

Except this isn't really about censorship. It's about an orchestrated media circus over a game that by all rights should be ignored. As I've mentioned already and which I'm sure you recognize, the controversy is exactly what the company wants. It's a three ring circus and all 3 rings are wrong. Rockstar is wrong, the politicians are wrong, and players shaking their fists in misguided fury are wrong for legitimizing this overblown (and extremely tired) debate over a game that casts an abysmal reflection on the industry regardless of how you look at it. It's pure snafu.

Senbei · Post by **Senbei** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 1:09 pm

Does the Manhunt franchise even have a "non-adult audience?" I can recall a number of eight-year-olds bragging about how their parents let them play GTA, but never Manhunt. Actually, I hadn't even known about the first game until the sequel was announced.

gr4yJ4Y · Post by **gr4yJ4Y** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 1:59 pm

It's interesting that only the Wii version has the AO rating, while the PSP version... doesn't, I assume.

As bad as Manhunt is, I don't think Rockstar wanted the game to be band. My guess is that it will likely be remade and toned down, but sell more than the first game.

I'm always split as of weather or not censorship is good or bad. Ultimately, I wouldn't want to show a group of kids something like Manhunt or Hostel. But at the same time I don't think they'd want to see them without all this pressure to hide it from them. I'm honestly a little intrigued to see how Manhunt 2 crossed the line with something like this.

Think about it this way... Someone tells you there's something in a box they have in their hands that you would probably like. But then there are all these other people who say you can't see it. Now you're probably curious to see what's in there!

I think there's actually a name for this kind of marketing technique, but I forget.

Also, Resident Evil 4 was toned down in Japan when it was released there...

Post by **Popcorn** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 2:02 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:
Above what? Above objecting to censorship?
Except this isn't really about censorship.

Why not? You say that this is 'exactly what the company wants', and while I agree with that to an extent, I'm pretty sure having the game actually banned is going to do more damage to its sales than the controversy generated by the ban can recoup. Besides, I think whether Rockstar wants the press or not is besides the point. I'm full-stop opposed to any censorship of entertainment and art, and I don't think the fact that I don't happen to care for the art in question changes that. I mean, I certainly have bigger fish to fry than the censorship of a shitty video game-- and I absolutely agree that it's the kind of thing the industry really needs to see less of-- but I sure don't think it's a good thing.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 2:15 pm

If you want to argue against censorship, though, you need a valid argument - which Manhunt 2 is not. Games like that are what gives the industry a bad rap and quite deservedly so. If you want to talk about censorship, you need more stunning examples than Rockstar's latest shockfest-du-jour. As I have pointed out again and again, throwing fuel on that fire is only serving to draw attention to a game that deserves to be ignored.

Post by **Popcorn** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:25 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:If you want to argue against censorship, though, you need a valid argument - which Manhunt 2 is not. Games like that are what gives the industry a bad rap and quite deservedly so. If you want to talk about censorship, you need more stunning examples than Rockstar's latest shockfest-du-jour. As I have pointed out again and again, throwing fuel on that fire is only serving to draw attention to a game that deserves to be ignored.

But the whole point of being against cenorship is that no-one gets to decide what is and isn't worthy of being released to the general public, what isn't good for people. (I mean, outside of the obvious influences of capitalism and the free market-- I'm talking purely in terms of 'quality' and the perceived good or bad it has on society.) You can't only be against the censorship of stuff you like. It's a contradiction in terms. It's all or nothing.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:41 pm

What I'm saying is that by using such low-grade material as your pivot point, you're hurting your own argument. If you want people who matter to take notice and/or care, you need something more legitimate to show than Murder Death Kill 3.

Sorry I'm not being sensationalist enough for your holy war, but this story has been repeated ad nauseam since the birth of the industry and - fascinatingly enough - is no more relevant now than it ever was.

Post by **Popcorn** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:16 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:What I'm saying is that by using such low-grade material as your pivot point, you're hurting your own argument. If you want people who matter to take notice and/or care, you need something more legitimate to show than Murder Death Kill 3.

Sorry I'm not being sensationalist enough for your holy war, but this story has been repeated ad nauseam since the birth of the industry and - fascinatingly enough - is no more relevant now than it ever was.

This is abject bullshit. The very notion of freedom of expression-- which is, incidentally, something I very much do consider holy-- by its very nature ignores concepts like 'low' or 'high-grade material'. Quality has no bearing on the plain truth that people should be allowed to make whatever art, for better or for worse, they like. You can't just sit back and claim that a given example of said art is 'illegitimate' just because you don't like it. How much anyone likes anything has nothing to do with the argument, except for the fact that people are trying to get it banned is simply because they don't like it-- which just ain't good enough.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:47 pm

Where you draw the line between "high" and "low" art is your own decision, but if you want support for your cause, you're going to have a hard time convicing the art community at large that Manhunt 2 is worth the effort to defend. (It isn't, as you well know, though our reasoning may be entirely different than the politicians against it.)

With respect to your stance against censorship - and I agree with what you're saying - you're making a mountain out of a molehill. This has all happened before and the ramifications are not as profound as you seem to believe. This is business as usual for Rockstar and a moronic excercise in missing the point for everyone else.

Plus - and I could care less about the objectivity of this statement - it's Manhunt 2 for Christ sake. It really doesn't matter. This forum of all places doesn't need to join the hype machine.

Post by **Popcorn** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:25 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:Where you draw the line between "high" and "low" art is your own decision, but if you want support for your cause, you're going to have a hard time convicing the art community at large that Manhunt 2 is worth the effort to defend. (It isn't, as you well know, though our reasoning may be entirely different than the politicians against it.)

I don't need to convince the art community that Manhunt 2 is worth defending, because this debate isn't about art, it's about free speech and free expression and free market. What's that old quote-- something along the lines of "I totally disagree with what you're saying but will defend to my death your right to say it"? It's just a simple case of, well, that.

I say it again: the fact that Manhunt 2 sucks has no bearing on the principle of the argument. It could be Shadow of the Colossus or the Mona Lisa for all the difference it makes to the principle of the thing, which is that government-sponsored bodies shouldn't go around deciding what my vulnerable mind and soul can or can't stomach.

With respect to your stance against censorship - and I agree with what you're saying - you're making a mountain out of a molehill. This has all happened before and the ramifications are not as profound as you seem to believe. This is business as usual for Rockstar and a moronic excercise in missing the point for everyone else.

I don't think the ramifications of Manhunt 2 being banned-- and I have a feeling that this may be a temporary state of affairs, even then-- are profound at all. I think this is a relatively minor injustice. But it's an injustice nonetheless, and I felt I should kick your ass for saying it ain't.

Ngangbius · Post by **Ngangbius** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:29 pm

This discussion also makes me question the point of the AO rating if retailers refuse to carry AO games. Also, is there any equivilent in other countries for this rating? I do know that Z is Japan's version of AO.

James McGeachie wrote:If your comment has anything to do with the entire concept of motion control leading to this development that's equally as daft, as it's not like the industry can repress control developments simply because someone "might" use them for controversial material.

That and the PS2 version is also rated AO.

One Classy Bloke wrote:With a game like Manhunt, how can you not expect an AO rating?

The first game was rated M.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:54 pm

I think this is a relatively minor injustice. But it's an injustice nonetheless, and I felt I should kick your ass for saying it ain't.

You're doing a good job of illustrating the exact attitude I find so bemusing. You're so obviously wrapped up in your political crusade that it's distorted your view of the actual situation.

I can't help but associate this chicanery with the Da Vinci Code debacle. Religious groups all up in arms against a perceived heresy which compounded the attention it was already getting and facilitated a whole "counter-counter" movement and a raucous brouhaha over a bad movie based on a mediocre book. I remember people standing outside the bookstore in protest and another group of people standing across the way in counter protest and they were all acting like idiots. Of course nothing came of it all. It was just people being stupid in the course of their narrow-minded political crusades.

Because you've chosen to pursue the censorship angle willy-nilly (when that's only one of the issues in question here) you've ended up making a huge ruckus over a trivial matter and looking, to me at least, very silly in the process. Does it pay to throw a tantrum over a piece of candy you didn't really want just to prove that you could get it? I don't understand it, but politics in general continues to baffle me, so maybe I'm just ignorant.

I think if the game mattered and this wasn't a part-and-parcel tradition with every blessed Rockstar release ever and the same weak pattern hadn't been repeating with no consequence or conclusion since the beginning of the industry, I'd be more inclined to protest - but I really think this is just a bunch of people blowing hot air. As I said in the first place, it means nothing and that's precisely why I didn't want to go here.

Post by **Popcorn** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:02 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:
I think this is a relatively minor injustice. But it's an injustice nonetheless, and I felt I should kick your ass for saying it ain't.
You're doing a good job of illustrating the exact attitude I find so bemusing. You're so obviously wrapped up in your political crusade that it's distorted your view of the actual situation.

Dude, I'm not going to go and protest in a games shop, if that's what you're thinking. In practice of course, I don't give two shits if a crappy game is banned or not, and you're right that it's a tired non-debate that was dull the second it hit the net, but the truth of the matter is that art shouldn't get banned. The topic held no interest for me until you piped up suggesting it was okay for Manhunt 2 to get banned-- and, incidentally, are you saying that, or what? It's never been totally clear-- when I think it quite plainly is not okay. Not important, but not okay.

Yami CJMErl · Post by **Yami CJMErl** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:17 pm

This game has you killing people for what reason again? As best I can tell, because you CAN.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere about you playting an inmate at some mental asylum and you're trying to escape or something...either way, it's not very "noble' at all.

Good thing we are all adults.

Right?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

...wait, you were serious?

Hybrid · Post by **Hybrid** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:18 pm

I'm less concerned about it being banned, and more concerned about the fact that Nintendo have issued a statement reiterating their policy that they do not license AO rated games. Does this not mean, essentially, that unless Manhunt gets downgraded to an M rating, Nintendo will not allow it to appear on their system at all?

That's what I find troubling about this whole issue. Its not so much that I might never get to play Manhunt 2 (something I never intended doing anyway), its more to do with the fact that I'm basically being told what I can and cannot buy. Not just because I'm younger than 18, but because if I was older, I still wouldn't have the option.

I find myself agreeing with Popcorn a lot here. The game is probably going to be a shitty gore-fest and nobody here seems to really give a shit whether they play it or not. But that's all kind of irrelevant, which is why I'm struggling to understand where GG is coming from. Nobody cares about the game... So what? The fact that I couldn't buy it even if I wanted to is the problem here. The quality of the game doesn't affect that argument at all.

Its a tired debate, yes, but that doesn't mean it should simply be dismissed.

James McGeachie · Post by **James McGeachie** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:23 pm

Actually both Sony and Microsoft have the same policy regarding AO games. Today Sony confirmed that they would also prohibit sale of the game on their systems with an AO rating.

Post by **Popcorn** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:24 pm

Green Gibbon! wrote:
I can't help but associate this chicanery with the Da Vinci Code debacle. Religious groups all up in arms against a perceived heresy which compounded the attention it was already getting and facilitated a whole "counter-counter" movement and a raucous brouhaha over a bad movie based on a mediocre book. I remember people standing outside the bookstore in protest and another group of people standing across the way in counter protest and they were all acting like idiots. Of course nothing came of it all. It was just people being stupid in the course of their narrow-minded political crusades.

I don't think the Da Vinci Code is a relevant analogy, because those guys were trying to get it shut down when all their protest was actually working for the movie rather than against it. But my interest here is in defending Manhunt's right to exist, whether you and I like it or not. Okay, so you're saying I'm contributing to, or otherwise falling victim to, the hype surrounding a video game that we plain just don't like, but, again, I don't think whether or not you or I like Manhunt that has anything to do with anything. At all.

Isuka · Post by **Isuka** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 9:01 pm

... Well, maybe we'd all lament GG!'s somewhat ambiguous position in this non-debate when we get an actually good game banned for this very reasons. Problem is, there weren't and most probably won't be any.
As a matter of fact most of us would go through a protest about this controversy saying something like "don't ban Manhunt 2, though I'll never buy that shit anyways". It's certainly mind-puzzling in it's very self-contradictory nature on both positions.

And for the Wii version of RE4, aside fom the overly marvelous fact that you can already play the GCN game in the system, maybe the control won't suffer as much as it does in most FPS because you never get to aim to the TV's corners and/ or borders, so it should work just fine. Not that I care, everybody and their moms jizz all over any RE4 rerelease.
Oh, and that reminds me, the very first Resident Evil, piece of spectacularly flagrant crap that it was, happened to also be censored though not banned. Stupid, pointless but also unimportant.

Post by **Esrever** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:13 pm

I don't think that anyone can say that Manhunt 2 getting slapped with an AO rating is "what Rockstar wants." Sure Rockstar are a bunch of shameless attention-seeking controversy whores , but they didn't want THIS much controversy. An AO Manhunt 2 is a Manhunt 2 that can't be released on any home console, at all, ever. And that's what the real story is here... a game being sunk by the ESRB.

Mature games are appropriate for ages 17 and up. AO games are appropriate for ages 18 and up. Why does that distinction even need to exist? What magical transformation happens between the ages of 17 and 18 that suddenly makes a person capable of handling more explicit content?

None, of course, and everyone knows it. The "AO" rating doesn't exist to protect 17-year-olds... it exists to obliterate games from the face of the earth. It's a shovel that ESRB can use to bury titles. Oh, they're not banning games... they're just giving them a "rating" that prevents them from being released on any console. That's totally different!

The ESRB is only supposed to rate the content of games. They are not supposed to have the power to stop them from being released, but now effectively they do. AO is an imaginary, meaningless rating that is only ever applied when they want to bully game developers into removing media-unfriendly aspects of their games that might damage the reputation of the ESRB.

And sometimes good games suffer for that... like when the sex was removed from the US version of Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit. It was completely innocuous, no worse than a pg 13 movie, and the developers were forced to remove it because the ESRB didn't have the balls to give the game the M rating it deserved when it still had nipples in it.

aso · Post by **aso** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:09 pm

Yami CJMErl wrote:
This game has you killing people for what reason again? As best I can tell, because you CAN.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere about you playting an inmate at some mental asylum and you're trying to escape or something...either way, it's not very "noble' at all.

It doesn't really matter, but the story's a bit more complicated than that - essentially you play as a guy sentenced to death (for reasons unknown) who is unexpectedly freed by a shadowy snuff film 'Director' who wants you to kill people (the armed gang members you meet over time, who steadily get tougher and smarter as the games goes on) in exchange for your freedom. There is an asylum, but that's one of the later levels, if I'm not terribly mistaken. So, no, not 'noble', but 'justified'.

I'm not entirely sure why Rockstar thought a sequel was even necessary, as I'm fairly sure Manhunt didn't do all that well in terms of sales anyhow.

... oops. Now I realize you guys were referring to the storyline of Manhunt 2, which does follow along those lines. Ah well.

Hybrid · Post by **Hybrid** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:11 pm

Isuka wrote:... Well, maybe we'd all lament GG!'s somewhat ambiguous position in this non-debate when we get an actually good game banned for this very reasons. Problem is, there weren't and most probably won't be any.

On that, didn't the guys behind No More Heroes say that they wanted it to be more violent than Manhunt? I'm not sure what the general opinion around here is on Killer 7, but it went over fairly well with most critics and I'd hate to see what might actually be a good game get its balls busted by the ESRB.

And that's basically why this whole censorship argument exists: We might not particularly care when it happens to Manhunt, but the fact that it can happen is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Frieza2000 · Post by **Frieza2000** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:18 am

Esrever wrote: The "AO" rating doesn't exist to protect 17-year-olds... it exists to obliterate game.

I was under the impression that it was to prohibit the illegal sale of pornography to minors. That should be the only use of this rating.

I don't see the AO rating as an evil in and of itself. The problem is that none of the console manufactures will license AO games. That's almost analogous to Blu-ray Disc Association prohibiting certain movies from being distributed in their encoding format. I'm not sure, but if the game could be released I bet at least some game retailers would have no problem putting it on the shelves. As far as I can tell the ESRB have accurately judged the game according to the standards they claim to use, but their rating would and <i>should</i> be meaningless outside of PTA meetings but for the activism of the industry triad. I understand there's some self-interest in their position, but I think the fears that it's based on are largely unfounded. As long as the content is rated I don't see any grounds for legislation on gaming (in America).

Our real enemy in all this is the continuing notion that games are for kids. If not for that, it would be no different than the movie industry.