Taking Out Manhunt 2: A Look at the Failings of the ESRB
By: Nick ArvitesThe views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of VGGEN.com as a whole or any of its affiliates. This is simply one writer's opinion, and should be accepted as such.
Since the news broke last week that Manhunt 2 picked up an AO rating, you’ve probably read dozens of editorials where people blasted the decision amid cries of censorship. This particular editorial is not one of those. Instead, the point of this article is to look at the failings of the ESRB system and the game industry as a whole, using Manhunt 2 as the primary example and starting point of discussion to show that the AO rating is ultimately useless in the real world and that the M and AO ratings need to be overhauled.
When the news broke that the upcoming title Manhunt 2 picked up the AO rating from the ESRB, I wasn’t shocked. Really, who could be shocked? Normally, when activists against violence in games throw around the term “Murder Simulator,” I just roll my eyes. Yet for the game Manhunt and its upcoming sequel, the term works. Manhunt, for those of you not in the know, is a game where the objective is to brutally kill other characters in order to survive. Taken from the vein of graphic horror movies like the Saw or Hostel series, Manhunt is in no way intended for children due to its graphic violence. Manhunt 2, on top of being a sequel to an already violent game, offered an interesting control scheme for the Nintendo Wii. Players would use the Wiimote to mimic the killing motions on screen. Again, even though the Nintendo Wii has an incredibly large amount of family content, and the system is marketed as the system for everyone, there was never a question of if Manhunt 2 should wind up in the hands of children.
If there was ever a game that should have picked up the AO rating from the ESRB, it is Manhunt 2. Yet, this rating comes as a shock and has since sent the developer and publisher into damage control because the AO rating is a retail death sentence. The on-paper reason for this is because stores like Wal-Mart refuse to carry AO titles, and rental giant Blockbuster refuses to rent them. Further, Nintendo and Sony both reminded the public that AO titles are not welcome on their respective systems. The AO rating for Manhunt 2 has effectively killed the game. Rockstar has a few options. They can appeal the rating, and they can tone down the content of the game until it gets an M rating.
One has to wonder: what exactly was going through Rockstar and Take-Two’s heads when they greenlit this project? They had to know that using a controller to mimic killing blows would cause a massive backlash from psychological groups and the anti-gaming violence crowd. Rockstar and (by proxy) Take-Two have fully believed in the “there is no such thing as bad publicity” theory, and the cynical mind can look at this move as intentional. By pushing a game through the works that gets labeled AO and banned from several countries, Rockstar has planted its title all over the mainstream press. People that don’t know an Xbox from an Atari 7600 have heard about “some game where you murder people.” Yet, there is a firm point where too much negative publicity is a bad thing, and Rockstar should be familiar with this. While the fallout from Bully was almost negligible in the end (though one could question their reluctance to disprove the “Columbine simulator” claims through most of its development cycle was a bad move), Rockstar and the industry as a whole is still on its heels from the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee scandal.
Somehow, making a sequel to a game that many thought should have been AO in the first place doesn’t seem like a good way to follow up the Hot Coffee scandal. Even further, in a stretch where the industry is being challenged on its self-regulatory rating system, Manhunt 2 faced two fates. The game could either get an M rating and the industry risk a massive public backlash from politicians and the family-orientated special interest groups, or it would get an AO rating so the ESRB could point at it and say “Look! We enforce our ratings system!”
I liked that the ESRB actually dealt out an AO rating for something other than sexual content or real-world gambling. Yet there is a problem with the ratings system that is rarely talked about, but it drives straight to the core of the gaming industry. That problem is, of course, that the ESRB rating system is broken.
Posted: 07/02/2007