A long, long time ago I equated Rockstar Games and EC Comics. Whether the two companies are working on the same level is arguable. I'm not sure if I've yet seen the brilliance of Bernie Krigstein or Wally Wood in the Grand Theft Auto Games, but damn if Bully isn't getting close. I think the bigger connection between the two companies is that they make adult-oriented art in a medium that is widely considered for children. They also happen to profit from that fact that children and adolescents have a rabid desire for that kind of material. But that's another story.Right now I'm thinking about what Rockstar should do about Manhunt 2's UK ban and AO rating here in the states. This is where the big difference between Rockstar and EC comes into focus. EC was in the hands of William Gaines, son of the company's creator. Rockstar is beholden to Take 2 and a butt-load of stockholders.
I've always posited that Rockstar was one gutsy move from being the Larry Flynt of video games. Larry, some say cynically, turned attempts at censorship into a key component of the Hustler brand. He's coasted on that image ever since, never really creating anything (besides the Flynt Report) that really lived up to his freedom-fighting image.
Rockstar, on the other hand, probably wouldn't coast. They'd continue to make great, beloved and incredibly risque games. Only now they'd have the mandate of the masses behind them. As 1st Amendment poster children there'd be an expectation from customers and stockholders alike that they continue to push limits.
It wouldn't take much effort to repackage Manhunt 2's censoring as a 1st Amendment issue. I can already see the bold sticker slapped across the game packaging: "Banned in the UK!" The game would be in good company too. Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange was once barred from view in England. The Rockstar marketing machine is well-equipped to pull this kind of thing off. But it's very unlikely that Take 2 would ever sign off on this kind of approach.The company's shameful silence during the Hot Coffee affair is proof of this. Rockstar is hamstrung by a crumbling company and scrambling executives. So we'll probably see Manhunt 2 watered down. Though there's a chance that that no amount of edits will please the ESRB. It could be that Rockstar now has the stink of AO on them, which may be impossible to wash off. Just ask Sam Raimi who struggled for years with the MPAA. His Evil Dead films consistently exceeded the R rating, some say because the ratings board had it out for the director.
My dream is that Nintendo is right now making a phone call to Take 2, telling the company that they'll permit Manhunt 2 to be released for the Wii as is. But I don't believe, either, that Nintendo would risk their current public goodwill on this game. And this is, perhaps, the biggest crime of all. We may never play the definitive version of Manhunt 2 -- the game as experienced with the visceral Wii remote. There's no chance for an uncut DVD here. Manhunt 2 on the Wii is our first and last chance to play the game the way it was intended. It could be that the game is cynical trash or even dangerous when played with controls simulating the physicality of murder, but thanks to censors we'll probably never be able to decide for ourselves.
Read my review of the original Manhunt.
Cross-osted from Looky Touchy.
12 comments:
I apologize to those of you who have tired of hearing this story from me.
When GTA3 came out, my friend Corey found himself standing in the checkout line behind the gentleman who was buying the last copy in the store for his pre-pubescent son.
Hoping to score a copy, he said to the man "Excuse me, sir, but do you know what that game is about?"
The man told him to mind his own damn business.
Good for the old man. Your friend Cory probably had no idea how hard life is for the guy. His ex-wife hardly lets him see his son and she fills his head with lies when she gets him back. In order to overcome the estrogen poisoning and score some 'my dad is cool' points with his contribution to the gene pool the poor guy is left with buying his son games he knows his son shouldn't play until he is older. Buying that game was the high point of that particular every-other-weekend and alternating Christmases. They had just left his studio apartment and ramen noodle dinner because she takes his whole freakin' paycheck. And then uses it to bail her new druggie boyfriend outta jail.
Tim, you write really awesome divorce fan fiction.
I never thought I'd see a sentence that contained both "awesome" and "fan fiction" that I agreed with.
I re-read your post this evening, and it occurred to me that I do know what it's like to play a game with controls that simulate the action of murder.
I did it on the PC almost ten years ago. It was a magical gaming experience called _Die by the Sword_.
The Wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_by_the_Sword) talks about using the keyboard for control, but the thing that made this game wonderful was using a joystick. You navigate with the arrow keys, FPS style, and the joystick controls your sword arm. At one point, my roommate and I were going through a Wingman Pro Extreme a week.
DbtS was a great gaming experience because it was so visceral. Fortunately for me, it did not normalize the experience of hacking off people's limbs.
If you don't mind signing up for gamespot the DbtS demo is still available at
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/diebythesword/download_2539920.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=mostpop&tag=mostpop;title;3
BTW, the demo still looks great (with all the graphics options at max), enormous polygons notwithstanding.
It's funny. There was no hue and cry over The Godfather, which had Wii controls that simulated choking. I guess EA knows how to play nice with the ratings board.
...or the people who rate games didn't imagine a twelve year old playing a game based on a 35 year old movie, whereas a more general game that viscerally simulates violence evokes the thrill of some maladjusted punk who is a philistine besides.
Not that I believe these sorts of things ought to be the yardstick, mind you.
I am not going to shed a tear just because these guys don't know how to grease the wheels so their game gets through.
Nor am I going to shed a tear for all the free publicity manhunt 2 is getting, which might have been the point after all. I don't know how hard or easy it woudl be to tone down, but 'step 2' of the process we were discussing thurs (put in something nasty just so you cah pull it when the ratings board freaks, be the scapegoat for the other stuff that you want left in) is to get that scapegoat some screentime.
I don't see how you can strech the 'Adult Only' tag into a 1st amendment issue. There will always be shops willing to sell it. You may need to buy it at Shinders rather than walmart, but then you are probably already at shinders hiding your porn dvd under that spiderman comix.
I felt the same way when whats-her-face was crying about walmart yanking her CD, and I felt the same way when the dixie chicks were crying about radio stations not playing thier songs.
Oh yeah, Andy? I'm still waiting to buy my copy of Thrill Kill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_Kill
Nintendo and Sony do not allow AO games to be made for their systems, so while this isn't a 1st Amendment issue, it is a case of institutional censorship.
institutional censorship sminstituional censorship.
You know, on another forum I hang out at some guy was trying to say that Target was anti-2nd amendment because walmart sold bullets but target did not. We all called him a moron, and asked him if he though McDonalds was also anti-2nd amendment because they wouldn't include glocks with their valuemeals.
When an independant company is deciding not to sell/do something that's their business. Now sure, the government can end run it through silly regulations to make it that a company would normally like to sell item X but the law makes it too much of a hassle, but just because they want to avoid backlash, bad publicity, or whatever, not censorship in my book
I can also list products that companies started developing then decided not to for whatever reason but I would still liked to have purchased.
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