By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about Manhunt being banned in New Zealand. The Office of Film and Literature Classification of New Zealand feels that Manhunt, as a videogame, is “injurious to the public good”. Keep in mind, this is the first time the OFLC has ever banned a videogame.
We’ve had numerous discussions about videogames and violence, but what is perhaps most interesting is that violence in games have been with us since the days of the Atari 2600, but it is only within these last few years that people have really begun to take notice. And in a small way, much of the violence in the games of our past is actually worse than what is released today.
Thou Shall Not Kill (Without Cause) Manhunt -- in case you don’t know what it’s about – is a game where a prison inmate’s death is faked, only to discover that the prisoner has become the victim of a madman’s homemade snuff film. As the prisoner James Earl Cash, the player must navigate dark, gritty levels, and with the help of various weapons, eliminate any who pose a threat to his life. Make it through the night, and the player may get a chance to find out who placed him in this game of murder.
Mario Gone Deranged
Mario has been killing things for years, but people never sat up and took notice. However, if you were to put a shotgun in Mario’s hands (like so pictured above), the censors would go nuts.
Now, what isn’t apparent to those who inspect the above paragraph, is that the player has a reason for doing what he must do to survive. Rather than placing the player in a situation where he is killing for the sheer joy of it, he has a motive. In fact, he’s got two motives: survival and revenge. Most games today offer the player a scenario where they are forced to confront their enemies and kill them. But there is always a reason for doing so. In Manhunt, it’s no different. There is a justifiable reason why Cash is doing what he’s doing.
But in many games, the same amount of killing is going on, but often enough, with no motivation. What’s more, many of these games are titles you’d never imagine to be violent, but the fact is, the games allow the player to kill things without any reason to do so. Just take the NES era as an example. On one hand, you’ve got games like Contra, that had players killing aliens in an attempt to save mankind. There you have it; a clear motive. And on the other hand, there is Super Mario Bros. -- a game highly regarded as one of the industry’s all-time best (and the game that put Shigeru Miyamoto on the map) – which had players routinely killing things with the only motivation being that they’re there. Really, most Nintendo-made games – which are held to the standard that they are clean and wholesome -- still largely hold to the theme of violence in one way or another today, so it’s kind of confusing trying to figure out what is rightfully labeled as being “too violent”. Furthermore, it seems that the baddest bad word is “kill”. The image and act of killing is okay, but the word is bad, even if the word doesn’t suggest the image or the act. You figure it out.
Kill’em All Granted, Manhunt is quite a bit more violent than Super Mario Bros., but still, the concept is pretty much the same, and both games have two sides to them. The Mario games are family-oriented, but invite players to kill things over and over again for no reason. Manhunt is disturbingly violent and graphic in its visual presentation, but the player is given a reason for doing what he’s doing; in other words, the game is recognizing that the bad guys are bad, and the player is responsible for defeating the bad guys. It’s simple enough, or so you’d think. The game recognizes the good guys and the bad guys. The good guy must stoop to the level of the bad guys if he wishes to survive, which is the point.
But the OFLC’s chief censor, Bill Hastings, says that Manhunt takes gruesome to a whole new level. “It’s a game where the only thing you do is kill everybody you see”, he stated. Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but that is the primary act of almost all games today, so Manhunt isn’t much different in that regard. Most games involve killing something.
Congrats, Cash. You’ve been banned! Manhunt is just one of the many Rockstar games that have been targeted for being too violent. But take the concept away and what would you have? Quite possibly a very boring done-it-all-before kind of game.
Crossing the Line? But there is a distinct possibility that Manhunt did take things a bit too far, not because of what the game does, but what it doesn’t do. At its heart, Manhunt is a stealth title in the same vein as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell. However, in those games, the player is given the option to go through without killing, or at least, gives the player the opportunity to minimize the death that he causes. Manhunt doesn’t allow this. The player must kill, and the player must do so in a particularly brutal manner. It’s possible that the game wouldn’t have been banned if the players were given more options than to simply kill the enemy. Maybe the game could’ve even offered rewards to players who attempted to act morally responsible in select situations.
However, there are plenty of games – like many first-person shooters for example – that force the player to kill to advance. Sure, there are situations where gamers can avoid conflict, but the game isn’t made for that, and as a result, the game won’t be much fun if you’re ignoring the whole point of it. Technically, you could probably advance in some of these games without killing, but you’ll either be bored to tears, or you’ll die more often than live. This is not the developers’ intentions.
The point is, what Manhunt is doing is no different than what games have been doing for years: providing a reason to be; to give the player a challenge; to be fun. And it’s no fun running throughout the levels without any conflict of some kind. Manhunt is more hardcore with the violence than most games, sure, but it also has an intriguing concept that hasn’t been done before. The violence in the game doesn’t overshadow the gameplay if you don’t allow it to. The same goes for any game you play. We can censor certain games all we want, remove artifacts here, or modify things there. We can rally against violence in games all we want, despite the innovative ideas that the game brings to the table. We can ban games -- even from adults -- for whom the games are intended to begin with. But as much as the censors insist that their standards aren’t intended to make products bland, that is the inevitable result.
