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+--- Thread: Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB (/showthread.php?tid=4579)
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 3rd November 2007
http://kotaku.com/gaming/breaking/esrb-manhunt-2-is-no-hot-coffee-318363.php
Read this article. It's... weird... ESRB is saying THIS mod, which only removes a filter, is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than the other mods that allowed one access to previously unaccessible stuff like the "nude" thing in Oblivion or that "Hot Coffee" mini-game.
They try to explain that it's different because... well they used different words to describe it. Sorry I'm not buying it. It's the same thing. My argument? They should NOT have put higher ratings on the previous games and this mod is no different than the previous. About the only thing I can see is this time that "hidden content" was told to the ESRB beforehand, and the other content was not (and really, it's not really "in the game" anyway so I didn't see the big deal in not revealing dummied out code). ESRB can say what they will, but it seems like they are really just grasping at straws to defend themselves and really just sending a not so subtle message to developers that all dummied content must be revealed to them.
Frankly, I'm sick of the ESRB. Can a parent honestly not tell just by looking at the cover art for something like God of War or Doom that maybe this isn't the game for little Suzie? Those crazy fees don't help, and Japan's got their own new ratings board that is taking out all our beloved decapitations from their games, which is going to affect our versions.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 3rd November 2007
Oh come on, the reason for this is obvious.
Manhunt 2's unlocked content is violent. GTA San Andreas's unlocked content is sexual. In America, the latter is far worse...
There's only one other part to the explanation: that they KNEW about this content, while they had no idea that the GTASA stuff was on the disc. That does make a difference... though this is content that they said should make the game AO-rated when uncensored, so that's not a good excuse. :)
Oh yes, and weren't a couple of things cut out of the game completely? Would their removal explain it, when compared with the "Violence is okay" thing?
You could say something silly about how the two mods are somewhow different, but minor semantic differences like that really don't explain it.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 3rd November 2007
ABF, that's exactly it. It would be one thing if the knowledge of this unavailable but still present-in-code content made them change the rating, but it didn't. They even said they would have made it a higher rating and more or less strong armed the company INTO censoring the game in this way. No, that's not a really good excuse. It COULD have been, but not this way.
Sex worse than violence? Sometimes it seems that way doesn't it? However, I have yet to see Leisure Suit Larry get any media watchdog focus of any kind. I think with video games it's still this. I think that hot coffee thing might have just been "unexpected" or something, like caught off guard. I think with games at least the violence is still the bigger attention getter, and that at least makes more sense but it's still pretty stupid.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 3rd November 2007
Huh? Of course sexuality is considered worse than violence in games. I mean, think about it. Sure it's blurred but Manhunt 2 is an incredibly, incredibly violent game where you are a serial killer who kills people in just about the worst ways the developers could imagine. It got an M. Games with sexual content, though? Have anything beyond suggestion and a fade-out and there's no way you'd get away with an M... sexual content is incredibly tame in games (in America particularly) in comparison to violent content, and a lot of that is because of America's residual Puritanical culture.
As for Leisure Suit Larry, yeah, sometimes things slip through... presumably if the series had become a big hit it'd have gotten negative attention. Obviously it just never was quite successful enough to get to that point... like how it was Doom and not Wolfenstein that really set people off, perhaps. Wolfenstein isn't exactly nonviolent or lacking in disturbing imagery...
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 4th November 2007
Again though I never see anyone complain about sex in games aside from the hot coffee thing. Part of it, I think, is that they just don't PUT sex in games, aside from I guess Leisure Suit Larry.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 4th November 2007
Quote:Part of it, I think, is that they just don't PUT sex in games, aside from I guess Leisure Suit Larry.
Um, that's exactly what my point is: that it's not put in because it's a bigger taboo than violence is.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 4th November 2007
Well also it wouldn't make for a very fun game would it? Or, maybe most if not all of the games we play just have no place for it. Except Beowulf.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 4th November 2007
Well, not really as a major game element, but look at what happened with Hot Coffee... if it'd been some hidden 'extreme violence' mode or something, I just can't see it getting THAT amount of attention. It was because it was a sex minigame... forget that in the rest of the game you go around killing huge number of innocent people, running over people, robbery and murder, etc, that's all fine for 17-year-olds, but a (quite tame graphically) sex minigame? Now THAT'S going too far!
But yes, it's mostly self-censorship, not censorship imposed on later.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 4th November 2007
Um, but it WASN'T "all fine". The media has been yelling about GTA for years, and they still are, and they seem to have pretty much forgotten the "hot coffee" thing.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 4th November 2007
My point is that if you compare the amount of violence allowed to the amount of sexuality, the amount of allowed violence is far, far higher. This is a fact. You're right, people do complain about violent content sometimes, with certain games used as scapegoats, but the games are made... games simply do not include the sexual content most of the time. Yes, this makes sense given that games are generally about violent actions of some kind, but even so it's true. And games have this harder than other media forms -- stuff allowed in movies can't always be in similarly-rated games... I mean, R-rated-level sex scenes, in a game? They simply do not exist in the US (outside of a very few online-distribution AO games and a very few also online-distributed translated Japanese hentai games). Maybe they could get away with a PG-13-ish "brief flash of partial nudity and anything beyond that is implied" moment somewhere (like God of War), but going beyond that? You'd be seriously limiting your chances of actually being able to sell the game.
Anyway, yes, violence and sexuality are both contraversial topics. However, in the US people are much, much more concerned about the sexuality side of that than in most other first-world countries, and much less concerned about violence. This reflects American culture -- America is a much more violent and dangerous place than any other first world nation. Just look at crime rates to prove that. America also has that Puritan legacy pushing it more conservative sexually than most other first-world nations, though in fields of stuff like birth control and abortion it is ahead of many Catholic nations...
As for Manhunt 2, it's essentially the videogame equivalent of a Saw or Hostel film... except with less sexual content than a film like that would have, because as I said videogame ratings are harsher on sexuality than movie ratings are... and, of course, that censorship blurring on the violence. R-rated movies could show most of that stuff without any blurring.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 4th November 2007
Yeah a lot of people care too much about the sex stuff, but I've never met anyone when pushed that actually said sex was WORSE than violence. At most they cop out and say "well I think both should be censored", which shows, among other things, a lack of any real thought. One thing I'll say though is I really don't see people running around screaming about prostitution nearly as much as they scream about how violence is "out of control". Also, last I checked violence is actually lower than it's been in a while, so they just like to SAY it's out of control as a matter of belief. That's not just hyperbole. When I call them on it and note the violence statistics, they literally defend their view as just what they BELIEVE is the case. Yeah, I know... Makes me want to implode my head on a wall too, because of video games.
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 4th November 2007
They may not SAY "sex is worse than violence", but look at how much of each they think is appropriate in games or movies and I'm sure you'll find that, if they actually give an answer, it'll almost certainly be towards allowing much more violence than sex, because that's exactly how our media is.
Quote:Also, last I checked violence is actually lower than it's been in a while,
Absolutely true. It's still far higher than the levels of violence in other first-world nations, however.
Quote:One thing I'll say though is I really don't see people running around screaming about prostitution nearly as much as they scream about how violence is "out of control".
I don't know if that's a fair comparison... "violence in the media is out of control" vs. "sex in the media is out of control" would be (and you hear both a lot). What would be a good comparison to prostitution in the violence spectrum, though?
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - Dark Jaguar - 4th November 2007
I'm actually talking about people talking about real world violence being "out of control". You know, because of "kids today"?
Manhunt 2 mod not a problem with ESRB - A Black Falcon - 4th November 2007
I know what you mean, but I'm talking about something somewhat different... as I said, yes, violence in America is inarguably down overall compared to the past, in contradiction to the "American society is so violent and awful and it's all the fault of [INSERT SCAPEGOAT HERE])" people. It's just much lower in many other nations.