f13.net

Whoops:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6172743.html

Nevermind I thought AO was only for sexual content, but whatever, we can't let the responsibility fall on parents because they would have to do something instead of plop their kids in front of the TV.

On a somewhat related note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9VqlvPT640

I must be the only one w/out a YouTube account.

I must be a bad person... That video made me crack up.

Also,

'Earlier today, the British Board of Film Classification gave Manhunt 2 a thumbs down, banning it from sale in the UK due to its "unremitting bleakness" and "casual sadism."'

What. So now games have to be chipper to make it through the ratings system?

It bothers me that they want games to have a rating system like movies, but then shit like this happens when shit like Hostel 2 and The Passion are OK.

Sorry, but this makes zero sense. Are you actually objecting to a rating system because you feel it removes the need for parental responsibility? Exactly how are parents meant to figure out the content of games before they buy if there is no rating system?

The point being that this totally removes the game from both the rating system AND parental responsibility.

It is, to use a Gulpism, a Nanny-State response.

It's also pretty much SOP for Great Britain.  How long did it take until Straw Dogs actually got unbanned in the UK?  Let alone Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that didn't get released unedited until 1999 or so.  Especially during the late 80's/early 90's they were in an uproar about "video nasties" (btw, you guys can't seem to help but give things really gay names).

The lesson is, it's good to have a written constitution that spells out freedom of speech and expression.  Well, as long as your legislators and executive actually pay attention to it, that is.

Now if someone can just explain why stores which refuse to carry AO games carry R-rated movies?

Hey, hey, hey.

You know what's hilarious about this?

Nintendo refuses to license AO games.

The first BIG third party game they've gotten since RE4 is an AO game.

What? I lolled.

I'm all against bannings and censorship but I find it hard to find words to justify charming little subgames like described above.

Yeah, there are actually two parts to this: the UK's outright ban, and the ESRB's AO rating. I was talking about the AO rating, since that was the part that Fabricated referred to in his post.
Terms like this are more about dogma than shedding light. I've never played any of the Manhunts so I'm now talking in the abstract, but is it really so unreasonable for the state to determine it isn't in society's interests to have people playing a game who's only point is hunting down and brutally murdering your fellow man? Are there no limits? Would you consider a child rape game to be protected by free speech?

We already have child pornography laws, which would be addressed by a game like that.  We don't have "general violence" laws, because that would put Hollywood out of business.  If showing violence isn't illegal, then a game which simulates it shouldn't be illegal either.  I have no problem with an AO rating and making it a pain for kids to get, but outright saying, "we're not allowing this form of media into the country" when it doesn't actually break any laws (child porn, etc) is nanny-statism.

Of course there are limits.  Just beware that there is a negative side to an over controlling state that is EVEN WORSE than harming the delicate sensibilities of a portion of the populace.  It's a fine line but one that has to be watched closely.

We, of course, have always been at war with Eastasia Southwestasia.

If their ad campaign proclaims "BANNED in Britain because they couldn't handle the gore!" they will sell twice as many copies everywhere else.  They should start printing stickers to slap on the boxes now.

I'm sure if you pitched that idea to them they'd get right on board with it. Much like the PS3 in whatever country that had "IT ALSO PLAYS GAMES!" on the box.

I don't have free speech.  Not the right to it anyway.  In fact, by a very literal interpretation of the term, I live in a Police State.

And yes, I find it unreasonable.  Because you're really not hunting down and brutally murdering your fellow man.  You're playing a game.  With Pixels.  And Vertex Shaders.  And whatnot.

I'd consider a child-rape game equally 'reasonable'.  I wouldn't expect it to sell hardly at all, however, and further I'd expect 'The Mob' to track down the developers and lynch them.

Because R is equivalent to M, while the AO equivalent for movies is NC-17.  If you find a NC-17 movie at Wal*Mart, you win.

They sell "Kids" at Walmart.

Sure, but what's it rated?  Movie ratings also keep Wal*Mart from thinking, not just parents.  If anyone actually watched that movie, it would disappear.

I assume...!

Actually, in the U.S., that game would be fine as long as it used pixel children and not real kids.  Not so much in other countries like Germany.

Germany is extremely silly and random in their ratings. Somebody seems to get blindfolded and throws a dart at a rating board.

Is it unreasonable for the state to determine it isn't in society's interests to have people reading a book whose only point is a middle-aged lech getting it on with an twelve year old girl?

(PS: If you say "well that's totally different," you need to explain how, and you need to do it in terms that are unambiguous enough to put into law.)

I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about, since the first one was a terrible game - so exposing less people to a sequel (which is liable to be just as bad) is not exactly a bad thing.

That's pretty stupid that Britain banned the game, but the ESRB giving it an AO rating makes sense to me.  It's unfortunate that getting an AO rating pretty much dooms your game to failure since most retail brick and mortar places won't carry it, but not too many games tested that since most AO games are PC games.  But a lot of places don't carry NC-17 anyway.  Like it or not most videogame stores though are geared for kids so it sort of makes sense.

I don't think the ESRB does as bad a job as the MPAA at least.  The ESRB is a least a bit more consistent and transparent.  Plus the the MPAA has a bad history of overlooking stuff from major studios and punishing independents.  I'd greatly prefer they get rid of the MPAA and let the government come up with a ratings board, at least then there'd be some accountability and transparency.  But that'll never happen.

Note that I stopped reading this topic when I got to your post so I could respond.

The game was flat out banned in Britain, and an AO rating in the US is NOT letting the rating system work. AO may as well be the scarlet letter, because retailers WILL NOT SELL an AO game. It's effectively banning the game. This is especially fucking pointless since the Wii has parental controls built in. There's nothing worth the AO rating in there, make it MA, let parents use the controls.

F that, Gamestop will have my Manhunt 2 (for the PS2) on Day 1. If not, Fry's.

Have fun sawing crotches.  Sounds like a hoot.

I'm gonna saw more crotch than you can shake a stick at. It's going to be AWESOME.

I don't know if graphic evisceration can get me excited about another "Shake wiimote to do X!!" minigame.

Of course it can't. Buy it for the PS2. I betcha it's wiinis-free.

You're not wrong, but I fucking hate this. Most of the people who buy games are adults, who are buying it for themselves.

Personally, my store does a lot of business with kids (either directly or with parents), but it's mostly trade-in shit. Sometimes I really wonder how they make any money from such lax trade policies; the bulk of the stuff we take in Will Never Sell. It's the adult gamers who actually drop the real money, in my experience.

Strazos. You're just wrong. There's a reason the 2nd most selling game last year was Cars.

Schild, I think Straz is saying that kids mostly do trade to make their purchases therefore EBStop isn't making THAT much profit on them especially when the bulk of the trade isn't stuff you'll turn over any time soon.

If this is referencing Humbert Humbert in Lolita by Nabokov, you are completely wrong. Nabokov's book is not about the lechery, rather, it is about writing that is both beautiful and disgusting. This writing forces the reader to engage both disgust and beauty at the same time while sifting through a carefully crafted plot. The book is not pornographic; it is a novel explicitly engaging the art of reading a novel.
To refute your pornographic claim: Nabokov skirts the issue of man having sex with child by writing lines like, "She had bruises on her wrists..." and the like which reveal that there is pedophilia occurring. Trying to compare this book to governmental control of what we should/should not read more or less slams the door on all politically or sexually deviant novels. Just to make a short list, 1984, Animal Farm, Ulysses A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Slaughterhouse-Five are just sample examples. Note that even the great Italian writer Dante was in love with Isabella, a girl of eleven.

I don't think that's so ambiguous. I very much believe that (at least in the United States under law) the government has no business telling me what I should and shout not read or have access too. Granted, I will agree with you that making child pornography widely available is terrible, but the government telling me what I can and cannot read is totally busted.

Yes, I am.  Gratz.  So you believe we should be able to read what we like.  I do too. 

Back to the topic at hand: do you believe we should also be able to play what games we like?  If so, I'm not sure what your post was about, since you're just agreeing with me in an unnecessarily verbose way. 

If not, pretend I just splatted out a few paragraphs of verbal diarrhea about how Manhunt is forcing the player to engage something or other and it is therefore not really about violence but about beauty and puppies, and that it follows in a proud tradition of violent video games that were also beautiful.  Now explain to me some sensible means by which a judicial body who was not familiar with any of the works cited could determine that your diatribe is valid and mine is not.

I think I'll use Doom 3 as an example. It was the first game I played on my new gaming rig when I bought it. I booted it up, starting playing, and was scared shitless. Call me a carebear pussy or whatever, but I was scared shitless. But what did I expect? It was Doom 3. I knew what it was going into the game. So you can hook up with a prostitute in GTA? So what. It is ultimately the decision of the person purchasing the game to decide what he/she wants to play.

I guess we are saying the same thing overall, but anytime someone makes the analogy with Lolita, I have an indefatigable urge to cockslap him/her. It's a moronic argument and the only people who make it are those who don't know jack shit about the book in question. They just see man+girl+sex=censor it.

Yes.  That's the point I was making.  Again, gratz.  If you start saying that it's okay to censor material that deals with icky-sounding themes (like brutal murder, or pedophilia, or communism), you can't really stop people from censoring a book like Lolita as well.  The people who are up in arms about GTA and Manhunt are just this generation's version of the people who were up in arms about Lolita and Catcher in the Rye and every other book, movie, et cetera that ever made someone feel uncomfortable.

People who want to censor Catcher are doubly-morons. It's a kid's book about trying to KEEP innocence goddammit. He's trying to scrub FUCK off the wall. Sigh.


Sorry. I'm a lit major who is just getting ready to enter grad school and whenever this stuff comes up in conversation I feel like I want to vomit profusely.

So you're preparing for your future career of asking people if they'd like to supersize their order?

You really need to state which system you're talking about, Samwise.

In the U.S., an AO rating may be the same as a ban, but it is done by the industry and retailers. For most U.S. courts, this is a good thing, because it keeps them from having to regulate an industry. Believe it or not, courts generally prefer industries that are self-regulating. 

In the U.K., the game is utterly banned. However, the Euro nations tend to be a bit more pro-censorship than the U.S.

However, to answer your question about Lolita v. Manhunt 2, were I an attorney arguing this case (as opposed to an attorney running his mouth on teh intarweb), I'd say that Lolita is clearly protected by the First Amendment, as is Manhunt 2.  I would then point out that the publishing industry doesn't have a self-regulating entitiy like the ESRB. I would point out that allowing the game industry and retialers to regulate themselves is good for public policy. I'd further argue that it's in the interest of judicial economy to dismiss any suit claiming that the ESRB's AO rating is a defacto prior restraint on speech since there is no goverment actor, etc.

Also, the analogy fails in general due to that whole "industry self-regulation" vs. "government saying NO SALE, HOSS" thing.

Not so much. I have a panel presentation in November for one of my papers and that's a pretty handy thing to tack on a resume.

Oh, and around where I live, Technical Writing is a pretty handy career path. The current company I'm with offers $45k USD to start. This is mostly because people in this company who have reached higher positions cannot write to save their lives. Editing ftw.

Edit: Redundancies!

I was simply trying to reply to Baldrake's query:



by saying in a slightly roundabout fashion "yes, it's every bit as unreasonable as the state determining it isn't in society's interest to have people (reading|watching|playing) a (book|movie|game) whose only point is (insert any controversial topic here)".  My answer seems to have acquired a lot of baggage since that time, though.  I blame cmlancas.

Heh, fair enough.  I figure that if an industry self-regulates and some content doesn't get as much shelf space as a result, then that's fine.  Government regulating, not so much. 

I agree that outright government censorship is pretty much the worst possible evil, and I'm familiar with the circumstances surrounding the creation of the MPAA ratings board (I wrote a research paper on it for an undergrad history course, narf) and that when it was created it was largely a defensive measure against real censorship.

I can still see an argument being made for a "ratings" board (like the MPAA or ESRB's) being a government entity (or some other third party that's accountable to the public at large but not easily cowed by the occasional random nutjob), provided that all it's allowed to do is stick labels on things, and none of the labels say "banned".  Especially after watching This Film is Not Yet Rated, whose message I found very disturbing but completely plausible.  Even if it's not backed by law, the amount of control that can be wielded by an anonymous board that isn't answerable to anyone other than the heads of the industry seems... off.

Samwise, have you looked into how much the conglomerate Viacom owns as far as media outlets? I'm not one for the tinfoil hat, but it still strikes awe into me.

From a legal standpoint, they're nowhere near being government entities. There's a whole "state actor" standard, and they don't even come close (at least the ESRB doesn't). I see what you're saying, that there's a lack of "due process" for people who get a shitty rating. The thing is that if an industry decides to self-regulate, we need to encourage that. Do you really trust the people in D.C. to do a good job regulating things? I think the ESRB has a very transparent process and is a decent entity. Could there be a better one?  Sure, but I thinkt he ESRB is so entrenched that we won't see that any time soon.

When it comes to the MPAA, yes the government could do a better job.  But I'm generally satisfied with what the ESRB does.  I don't know why you speak so highly of self regulation.  The very principle is inherently at odds with capitalism as a corporation must as a fiduciary responsibility always seek to externalize costs.  I can think of many more examples of self-regulation not working than when it has worked.

There's nothing wrong with the ESRB.

There's something seriously wrong with parents around the world though, so much so that governments feel they need to BAN the game in some countries. It's called fucking MANHUNT. OF COURSE IT'S NOT GOOD FOR KIDS.

It's really not a complicated situation.

One wouldn't have to make an argument in favor of it if it were already the case, would they?   :wink:

I do agree the ESRB is quite a bit more transparent and generally sensible than the MPAA board.  OtOH there have been instances in the past (the Hot Coffee scandal in particular) where I've been perturbed at how readily they bow to pressure groups.  It seems like a government agency wouldn't have as much trouble in that particular regard, since it's a lot harder to boycott or sue the government.

I hear that a lot too.  I have a Lit and Lang Degree also and I make more money than Jesus.

It really taught me to communicate properly (honest) and to pass interviews and tests.  Also, there was the whoring and drinking for 4 years since actual work wasn't required.

:)

I say this as somebody who wanted to study literature and German as well and those are studies dear to my heart.

All of that can be learned in courses ranging from days to weeks.

Except the whoring and drinking. Thats the whole point of studying anyway!  :-D

No shit.

I could even give you the internal prices for our bank employees for those courses. Its the "Pathway to management" package. That and time management. I always find if funny that we peons don't have to manage our time and our bosses do!  :-D

I'm confused, as usual.  It seems that you guys are making the same point.  Both from the Lolita side, and the Man Hunt side.

Also, I just thought of a new reality series.  Can you guess what it is?

Uh, industry groups like the ESRB externalize costs for individual publishers -- they're not part of the publisher after all.  The last I checked, capitalism still thrives in a laissez-faire environment. So how does less governmental interference make self-reg suck?  The places where self-regulation fails are where the fox is watching the henhouse. When regulatory bodies fuck up, that's when they get hit with the legislation stick (Sarbanes-Oxley for example).

CCP->BoB  /duck. No, you're absolutely right here.
Isn't there always a big uproar in the movie industry when movies push the ratings board to get a certain rating? I seem to remember something about LOTR pushing for PG instead of PG-13. I think I remember some sort of unpleasantries for The Matrix receiving an R rating too.

I would expect a government agency to be more, not less, vulnerable to the Liebermans and Clintons, but I can't say for sure since I didn't study government a great deal.  I do know that Government is a Necessary Evil and more of it is hardly ever preferable to less of it.  Problem is, many people have been trained to see the government as a parental figure and society at large seems to be close to living in Mom's basement, figuratively speaking.  Lazy fucks.

Cat Monkey Fuck Party?  Might have trouble getting the FCC to approve that one.

I didn't see it mentioned in the thread, but it probably should be:

Yesterday Nintendo announced that they would not allow Manhunt on their consoles. Shortly afterwards, Sony said the same thing.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/original/nintendo-nixes-ao-manhunt-270741.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/top/adults-only-manhunt-2-homeless-270768.php

So either MS gets a world exclusive hot-potato, or Rockstar have to eat their pride and tone it down.

I was thinking about that, Microsoft has released AO games before (hell, child porn!) with The Guy Game (remember, one of those girls was 17). Frankly, I think Sony fucked up not letting this on their console. Because really, who gives a shit. SCEI has allowed this stuff before. But, whatever, up to them, would have sold an absolute shit ton on the PS2.

I wish Crescente would credit his sources.

That's not going to happen.

The Guy Game was rated M.  Maybe they were threatened with an AO rating and cut a bunch of stuff?  As far as I can tell the only AO games were for PCs and Macs, and San Andreas for a time.

Hard to credit what doesn't exist.  :rimshot:

The major complaints about the ratings system is that it has become very inconsistent. You cannot tell where the dividing lines for some movies are versus others. I have seen movies that were listed as R that made no sense in comparison to other movies, but then I see movies rated PG13 that should be R rated as well going by the MPAA guidelines. If you are a big studio, your pictures basically get the rating you want, but smaller pictures get ratings more in line with the guidelines. Hell, most of the uber-realistic horror flicks released now should be rated NC-17 by the MPAA guidelines, but violence is given a pass in most cases these days. I guarantee that had they been made in the late 70s they would have gotten the X that The Deer Hunter was originally given.

There is also the whole "unrated version!" DVD market now. I have seen the supposed not able to get an R versions of a lot of movies and I can safely say that they would not have been given any harsher a rating had they just left the stuff in originally. Of course, some of that shit should have just stayed on the cutting floor anyway but whatever.

There's a T rated game coming out for the PS2 soon with the word "shit" in it. Written out and spoken.

Thank you, NiX.

If it is a JP game, I can understand why.  Besides that, the ESRB doesn't actually play the games it rates, likely it was just missed.

It's in the first 20 minutes. ^_^

http://www.capalert.com/

This guy has been keeping me amused for years by finding new and creative ways in which all movies offend Jesus.  Apparently he got tired of paying for a ticket to every single movie coming out, though, because now he needs to be "sponsored" to review one.  Someone should pay him to do Hostel 2.

The ESRB has been whacked for years. I remember when I was a child my family wouldn't let me play Mortal Kombat because it had blood in it. The horror! The horror!


I loved Road Rash 3, and the Road Rash series for Genesis always got teen ratings, but c'mon, all the cop swatting with the mace/nightstick at 140MPH? That's cop-killing if I've ever seen it. And what was that, 1993?

I can understand why games with explicit sex/nudity get AO. You have to be 18 to watch pornography legally in the US, so I think it logically follows that you should get that rating. But with violence? I think that a 17+ (Rated R movie) rating is generally acceptable. How about not so sexually explicit games like SL? What kind of rating does Second Life get -- none, it isn't even rated! Yet, any child can download and be ready to play in minutes and ready to potentially be exploited by others in this community. Granted I know they are cracking down, but what's done is done. I still remember that Chiquita was partially financed by Colombian drug cartels every time I see the bananas in the grocery store and the same goes with SL. So what is the answer with the ratings system? If ridiculous, gratuitous violence in one media outlet gets an AO (NC-17) rating, then shouldn't things like Hostel, Kill Bill I+II, etc. get the same treatment? Hell, people like Bubba the Love Sponge (who was based out of where I am from) and Howard Stern can't even talk about sex and strippers on the radio.

I really think that this more or less comes down to a first amendment issue. With the courts the way they are and shit like the patriot act being passed, are we sure that now is the right time to make a stand for the first amendment? I firmly believe in end-user responsibility, but I'm not sure how well my view would stand up in a legal battle.

Second Life doesn't have an ESRB rating because they never applied for one.  They don't need one.  They have no retail presence (client is free), have no radio or TV presence (relies on internet banners, word of mouth, and journalist circle jerks), and isn't applying for a license to any console.  It's not a game, it's a virtual world.  And everything bad that can happen there can happen anywhere else on the internet (IRC, IM, forums, Yahoo groups, etc..).

So because it is a virtual world, it doesn't count as a game? I'd have to disagree.

You should move to a free society if your radio hosts can not talk about sex and strippers anyway.

How does that work? Freedom of speech only if it suits the government?

Well, it's not really a game. The most die-hard SL adherents will pitch a bitch if you call it a game.

I think the point is that SL doesn't have an ESRB rating because they're not mandatory.  They are essentially mandatory if you want to sell games in teh store, but SL has a free client and doesn't try to sell stuff in the store. Hence, no rating.

I don't consider an IRC client a game because it isn't.  I don't consider Second Life because I don't think it is, it's an online community with content creation.  But that's semantics anyway, my point is Second Life didn't apply for a rating because they didn't need one.

Freedom of Speech is not some all encompassing pass that allows people to say what they want, wherever they want.

That is not to say that the whole "indecency" thing isn't just a load of Puritanism seeping out in the genes of their decendants 300 years later. Americans are, in general, malformed psychologically.

Yeah, its that inconsistency that you can spread hatred and bigotry and be protected by Freedom of Speech, but the same people allowing that get a collective heart stroke when a nipple is seen on prime time TV. I know its there, but it surprises me a little each time I read how far that bigotry is still reaching.

Good thing these puritans fled Europe. Real troublemakers with lasting gene material  :-D

I'm sure, but really the ESRB does not play the games.  They are given footage by the studio, and the studio chooses that footage.  Unless things have changed since Hot Coffee, that is, but I suspect not.  The big flaw, if there is one, with the ESRB lies in this fact.

Also, remember that there are no "bad" words in Japanese.  Certainly it's bad form to talk about feces in many situations, but there is not a list of bad words in the language.

Someone should pay him never to do web site design ever again. My ocular cavities are still sore.

Even Jesus himself wouldn't put up with that website.

It is funny, you would think with how image savvy the conservative media outlets are in radio, tv, and print your right-wing nutsos would at least have some of that image sensibility rub off on them.

But almost every wacko bible-thumper website uses the same glaring white with rainbow colored header template it seems. I can make a better site than that and I have not made a website since before flash was more than a neat toy for intro movies.

Manhunt 2 has been shelved.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6172931.html

Time to get my preorder money back. Sucks. I was looking forward to ripping off testicles as an over 21 consenting adult.

Those Gamespot user comments made me weep for the fate of literacy and intelligence in the world today.

the internet is the great equalizer.

It is making us all dumber by reading it.

I begin to think every poster should be issued a grammer monkey who tosses feces at them when they try to post with words like "tword" in their post. Goddamnit, is that extra "O" and a correct "A" so goddamn hard to add?

Wut u meen dood?

Die in an alphabet fire.

I wonder what such a glorious incident would look like...

And for 'shelved' read 'sent back to Rockstar to remove the one or two scenes which pushed it over the line to AO/banned, then reissued with "The game they don't want you to play"-type PR'.

It's not like Rockstar have ever done anything like this before, amirite?  :roll:

Don't roll your eyes at Rockstar on this one. I'm no fans of theirs, but this banning of a video game shit is just plain abhorable. Yes, while it may have been DISTASTEFUL to make the game itself, it's even more disgusting that retailers and politicians decide what I get to fucking play.

I don't get the fuss.  If they'd just release the game, it would be so much easier to figure out who the terrorists are.

I'm going to open myself up to all sorts of ridicule here by admitting to owning Rumble Roses XX for the 360. It was only $20!

The reason I mention it, is that I get a kick out of the content that appears to have been pulled from the Japanese version of the game before it came to North America. It appears they removed two unlockable characters from the game. One appears to be a manservant/gimp type of guy, and the second is, get this, a bear.

Apparently women wrestling a bear was considered far too harmful to the childrens of the US of A.

(Once you get past the DOA style T&A, its actually a pretty good wrestling game. Honestly.)

I saw you playing this on XBL and decided I would not rat you out.

As for Manhunt 2, too bad it hasn't yet gone to duplication.  That would have been fun.

But in the US, it isn't the retailers and politicians deciding, it's Nintendo and Sony. They've both said they won't release a game that gets that rating on their systems. Without them, the game ain't going anywhere. It's shitty, but what is Rockstar going to do? Pull a Postal, i.e. make the game for PC and release it to the Internet for direct download?

In this case, I think Rockstar has finally gotten the dickslapping they've been asking for since GTA3. The great thing about pushing at social mores with shocking material is that eventually, society pushes back. It isn't like they didn't know they were making an adult-oriented game. They knew full well that they were very very close to pissing off the ESRB and anyone else who could or would defend them since that Hot Coffee incident. Surprise, the ESRB grew some sack and gave the game its deserved AO rating.

The shitty part is that AO shouldn't be a death knell for games. We SHOULD be able to have games made specifically for adults, whether that be games with hot sex action or the ultraviolence. But since no one can imagine a scenario where retailers do their fucking duty and don't sell adult game material to kids, we don't get to have nice things.

Rockstar can still release Manhunt 2, they either have to change formats to one that isn't dependent on prudish hardware, or change the fucking game to fit within Rated M standards. That's not censorship, that's a self-regulating industry.

It's not just that, but the image that the stores and consoles may get by allowing the sale of adult products.  Nintendo and Wal-Mart in particular have always tried to cater to a "family friendly" sort of image.  About any other large retail store is going to follow suit.  No one likes adult stuff, because the more adult content gets the smaller the market (to the point that even R movies tend to not do as well as PG / PG-13 movies).  No retail store is going to toss its reputation in with adult-adult stuff, because it can't afford to miss customers buying more normal products in order to cater to the tiny, tiny minority of more adult content customers.

Politicians will of course claim it's all for the children, but business doesn't give a shit about children.  Business would sell crack to babies if there was money in it; that's what business does.  Businesses aren't selling adult stuffs because there's no money in it (Edit to add, obviously small specialty stores and online places do.  That's not who I'm referring to here, and only makes my point).  Further, business tends to like rating systems because it insulates *them* from accusations that they're being sly with adult content.  Instead, it pushes the difficult decisions to the MPAA / ESRB / etc so they can avoid risk.

A blanket policy against allowing AO content on your system is fairly stupid, especially given that M is 17+ and AO is 18+, literally a 1 day difference in some cases. And the whole point of ratings is that you know in advance what the game is like and who it is appropriate for.

I agree.

If Rockstar actually had the balls to release a game they knew was going to push the boundaries, this decision shouldn't have phased them one bit. They are a big company with big name recognition of the series (compared to a lot of other games). They've got financial backing to make adult-orientated games and get then distributed at locations other than badly designed websites that hold specialist titles.

Instead, they folded like a house of cards in a weak breeze when they wouldn't be able to put the game on mass distribution channels. Rockstar like to play with controversy, but apparently can't handle it when they get their hand slapped for doing so. Poor babies.

I shed no tears for Rockstar over this.

You're not getting it.  It's not about trying to decide what the reasonable difference is between a 17yo and 18yo.  It's PR, public perception, and the bottom line.  You seem to be under the impression that people decide things based on the reasoning they actually provide to you.  It's not.  It's sugar coating, it's sheep's wool, it's whatever metaphor you like for hiding the real reason.   There is some fuzzy line where content becomes not ok for most people, but they need a hard line because fuzzy lines are no good when you're making a binary decision.  The line is needed at all because carrying stuff that's WAY over the line tends to piss off customers, and that's bad for business.  Nor does it really matter where you decide to draw it, because people are going to push it no matter what since that's what happens when you force something subjective into an objective framework.  The businesses don't really have a choice but to play along, and the consumers never get exactly what they're after, but they're meeting in a very arbitrary and unsteady middle that's about the best they can do for minimum effort.  That's why it's M=17 and AO=18.  It's the point of least energy.  It's more or less where the most people are pissed the least amount.  That's not the same as the a point that's a rational middle.

Uh, Rockstar is in the business of selling games.  Making them is incidental.  They don't exist to test corporate boundaries of free speech, that too is incidental.

My point was that with ratings parents already know not to buy certain games, and stores know not to sell to certain age groups. No need for any restrictions on top of that.

I know you mean well, but in practice this doesn't hold up. You have too many fucking idiots working at Wal*Mart, or Target, Best Buy, or EBstop.

The worst is when a parent drops off a kid. Kid comes in wanting to buy a M-rated game, and I inform them that their parent needs to come in and buy it for them, so I can inform them of what they are buying. Kid goes and gets said parent, who then comes in and bitches up a storm about me "holding them up," and that I should "just do my damn job." I proceed to try to inform the parent anyway of what they are buying, but they don't care and just want me to ring the stupid game up.

Most parents really don't care to be educated on what the ratings mean. For fuck's sake, we even have a little bookmark-thing that explains the entire system. I even try to drop them in the bags from time to time.

The best is when said parent comes back, bitching at us for selling a M-rated game to little Timmy, who is only 9 and is far too immature for the content (Gears of War if you are wondering), and that I should not have sold them the game. I then proceed to remind the parent that I sold that very game to them myself, and tried to explain in detail what the M-rating meant, but that they didn't have the time to listen for 27 seconds or so.

I swear to fucking god, there should be a license to breed.

While the ratings system is nice and has the ability to Actually Work, in breaks down in practice; the employees selling the games don't know shit about the ratings and don't care what they are selling, and the parents are too fucking stupid and/or lazy to care about the "kiddy shit" they are buying for their hellspawn.

This shit almost gives me a damn conniption.

Parents need to be parents and pay the fuck attention to their children.

That is the root cause of all of this shitstorm. Parents who are shirking their own responsibility blame the people who made/sold the game to them instead of taking the 30 seconds to actually care what their kid is doing outside of being the "star" of the diaper dandies soccer league or part of a nice picture to hang on their cube wall at work so people will compliment them.

Why?  Sony and Nintendo own their platforms, they can decide what they allow on them.  There's no censorship going on here (at least in the US), there's just the free market working as intended.  If Rockstar wanted they could release the game on the PC via digital distribution, but apparently they don't want to go that route.

Too bad for them that they rely on stores to sell their stuff and proprietary platforms to run their games, but that's life.  The government isn't involved in this in the slightest.

Our government isn't. Yet. But you can bet they would have followed Europe's lead if this had hit the market at AO.

Look, if I can go to Fry's and buy scat porn and put it in my PS3 or PS2 and watch it, I sure as shit should not be stopped by Sony, Microsoft, Britain, Ireland, the ESRB, Wal-Mart, or some other bunch of pussies from buying Manhunt and liking it even less than the first title.

Edit: I bet at least one state bitches and moans after it hits the market at M.

Selling an AO game to a 14-year-old isn't different to me from selling an M game to a 10 year old.

The problem we've had with NC-17 movies being essentially unshowable anywhere is that while most NC-17 films are trash, some are not. The rating is supposed to be a rating, not a value judgement. In the US NC-17 is synonymous with "evil movie."

If parents are going to mindlessly expose their kids to crap then we're fucked either way. The ratings system is predicated on the notion that parents will get involved. If parents aren't getting involved at all then ratings as a whole are useless.

Guess they shouldn't have made a torture porn game then if they wanted to sell it to the mass market.

Making games is not incidential to selling games if you are also the production studio.

Look, I'd love it if more games came out with adult material in them, but it's very hard to talk about such things to non / casual gamers when the best examples of such current games are spree killer simulators or a pretend-we-iz-gangstas games.

Did you notice that his point didn't have anything to do with the marketability of the game (and obviously Manhunt 2 is very marketable, btw) it had to do with their stomach for legal battles over nebulous 'rights'.

Had the game hit the market as an AO title, any government involvement would have been a bunch of bloviating for the camera. Nothing more. I think a good example is the failure of every game sale regulation statue to be tested in court so far. "Following Europe's lead" is all fine and dandy, but we have a bill of rights that thankfully includes protections for free speech.

Since you figured you'd hate Manhunt 2, I don't see why you're getting all salty over platform owners (not the government) refusing to allow the game on their systems. This isn't the beginning of the end for "adult" themed games, it's just one game that isn't getting released for console. Assuming that, based on this one thing, the government would have stepped in to utterly banninate the game is just tinfoil hattery. People would have said a bunch of shit (Hillary, Lieberman, etc.) and then nothing would have happened -- just like with Hot Coffee. And Judas Priest. And porn.

Like Gulp said, this is just the free market at work. The game isn't banned, even if that is the practical effect, it's just not available on the formats you'd like to see it on. Rockstar has decided to cry into its beer instead of release for PC, so you're just not going to see a game that you'd likely not have liked. Hell, it's not even anywhere near abhorrent (abhorable? heh) it's the industry regulating itself.

But hey, at least you can watch scat porn in Blu-Ray.

No he can't, porn went HD-DVD.  Maybe he's bitter.

Y DEW U H8 FREEEDUMB R*

Rockstar needs to stop being whiny bitches. They aren't Larry Flynt, who at least had a goddamn point when he went to the Supreme Court. They are just a bunch of geek developers with a Rockstar mentality who think they can create anything they want and because of their past success, the Sony's and Nintendo's of the world should just bow down.

While I don't agree with Nintendo's stance that they won't allow an AO release on their system, it's their right to do so. The government MAKING them release Manhunt 2 at AO would be government intervention and it would be bad. And this is coming from a guy who fucking hates free market capitalism's exploitative nature.

The industry regulated itself in this case, keeping the government from interfering in the future. That is a GOOD FUCKING THING. Rockstar has been abusing the system for years, and it's about time they got dickslapped for it. I still want to play Manhunt 2 on the Wii, whether it's AO or M.

Meow, meow, we love Rockstar tears.

(http://members.arstechnica.com/x/ratstomper/cartman_tears.gif)

That was the best South Park episode ever.

Which episode was it?

The one where Cartman killed Scott's parents and turned them into chili.

My final word on the whole Manhunt thing is that ratings exist so that parents can keep certain games out of the hands of kids. Manhunt was rated AO, the system works if the parents hold up their part of the bargain.

Rockstar could have had a market, just one restricted by its classification status. They could have launched in the US with an AO rating and tested that marketability you say this game has. That would have required no battle over 'rights'.

Instead: they got their ball and went home.

As for government intervention: Rockstar can rework the game and bring Manhunt 2 out in a G version at this point. There are still groups who will want it pulled off the shelves.