Manhunt 2 Part Deux
November 2nd, 2007I will stipulate that the absurd firestorm over Manhunt 2 was both ridiculous and pointless. I will go further and agree that the game should never have been given an AO rating, and that even had it been given such a rating it should never have been censored. Yet for all these facts, I cannot conclude that simply disabling offensive content was anything other than unmitigated stupidity.
Has Rockstar learned absolutely nothing from Hot Coffee? The big lesson of GTA III was that regardless of what merit the gaming industry’s arguments had, including content like this is asking for a PR nightmare. I can accept that such a nightmare wasn’t particularly foreseeable back when this occurred, since it was isolated content that few people knew existed and wasn’t particularly offensive to begin with. But not knowing that this would happen now - after everything Rockstar went through to get the game released in the first place - is inexcusable. Rockstar already knew that gamers would likely eventually discover how to enable disabled content. They already knew that people were gunning for their company and the industry as a whole based on the previous Manhunt content. And they knew that they were dangerously close to getting the industry regulated because of their love of foolish publicity stunts. This kind of stunt manages to keep this silly debate alive longer while undermining everything the ESRB and gamers have been saying about the effectiveness of self-policing.
Someone at Rockstar should resign for this, and if they don’t resign, they should be fired. Immediately.
Posted in Geoff, Idiocy, PSP |
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:29 am
did you read that long blog article from a Rockstar ex employee from this summer? I can’t remember the name of the guy nor the name of his blog, but it created a fair splash. The gist was, working as the web editor for Rockstar gave him bad stress from the inefficient, incompetent higher ups he had to deal with. and he eventually quit.
he also mentions he knew discreetly, about the hot coffee thing before public discovered it…and he also mentions he was dumbfounded by the suicidal ‘it’s all the hackers’ fault, we didn’t put the sex content inside the game’ PR response. He basically summarized the Rockstar corporate structure was fucked up.
A shame that i can’t remember teh blog name…
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:48 am
I actually completely disagree with this and that author of the Wired article clearly doesn’t understand how Manhunt 2 was “censored” for the M rating. This is not just a case of “Rockstar didn’t cut offensive material in order to get the M rating, they simply disabled it.” More on that in a minute.
This is completely different than “Hot Coffee”. With Hot Coffee there was extra gameplay content, never accessible without some kind of “Action Replay” like device (at least for the PS2), which had no reason to basically be on the disc except for sheer laziness and/or controversy. As far as I know, there’s no extra “content” that’s unlocked on the Manhunt 2 hack (unless the ball-ripping comes back with the hack as well, which would be the ONLY way this would be similar to Hot Coffee). Instead, the content remains the same, but the hack just removes the “blur” filters that were apparently enough to reduce the rating to “M”.
If Rockstar had been forced to, as the author of that article puts it, “remove” instead of “disable” the “content”, they literally would’ve had to actually remove the entire death animations, basically voiding the main purpose of the game anyway. Perhaps that’s what this author expected, but the ESRB was well aware that these “scenes” were still happening under the “blur” since they saw both versions.
Let’s also keep in mind that in order to see the “uncensored” content you need a hacked PSP and knowledge of editing game files or downloading and burning an illegal UMD (the hack isn’t available on Wii or PS2 yet). My guess is that this is an extremely small demographic. But I suppose that to the Joe Shmoe public will only hear what the media reports. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we, or Rockstar, can do about that except try and state the facts.
This is much closer to that stupid Oblivion “hack” that removed clothing from some of the female models. The models are built in a certain way and then clothing is added on top of them. Seems like a perfectly reasonable way to build artistic assets, but the ESRB changed the rating because apparently they thought they were in charge of policing every possible hack someone could make for a game. Perhaps this time, the ESRB has finally learned that they can’t predict what people will do with a game. Rockstar has nothing to apologize for (unless, like I said, the “ball-ripping” came back, in which case, they messed up at least a little).
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:53 am
One more thing about this… The ESRB has already responded and basically says the same thing I just did:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/breaking/esrb-manhunt-2-is-no-hot-coffee-318363.php
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Jeff -
I agree that this would have been fine in any other situation. The problem is that Rockstar was pretty clearly aware of how incendiary an issue this was and that people were going to be staring hard at them afterwards to ensure that there was no offensive content whatsoever in the game. To the extent that Rockstar had to go back and actually create a different, less “mature” series of death animations, they should have done it. As they did not - no doubt to try to avoid losing even more money here - someone needs to be responsible for the media firestorm.
In both this case and in Hot Coffee, there was content that was placed in the game that a careful hacker could access, but that isn’t accessible to anyone not trying hard to get to it. I agree that it’s ridiculous to punish a company in either situation. But given the incredible scrutiny that Manhunt 2 brought to the market, Rockstar should have been beyond careful in addressing the issue.
The bottom line is that the negative effect in PR terms is just too significant. Do you really think that a bunch of politicians ignorant of gaming - or organizations whose sole mission is to attack games for any content whatsoever - are really going to appreciate reasonable distinctions? That issue is what’s behind my call for heads to roll.
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:50 pm
“Do you really think that a bunch of politicians ignorant of gaming - or organizations whose sole mission is to attack games for any content whatsoever - are really going to appreciate reasonable distinctions?”
Unless they actually scrapped the game entirely or perhaps changed it to that “E for Everyone” edition that someone photoshopped, I think controversy was inevitable. Is this going to cause more? I don’t know.
The fact is that the “hidden content” in this case had a reason to be there (ie, the models and animations were required in order to show a “blurred out” representation of your actions) whereas in GTA:San Andreas, Hot Coffee did not. They could have completely wiped out the code and art assets for Hot Coffee (which they eventually did to get the “M” rating back) but wiping out the code and art in Manhunt case would have broken the game.
November 4th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Of course it was bound to be controversial… controversy is what Rockstar does. The point is that although the controversy couldn’t have been predicted beforehand, it was pretty evident thereafter that this was a Big Deal and that people were paying extremely close attention to it. “Is this going to cause more” is a moot question; it’s *already* caused more.
Re: the models, I understand and appreciate that this content is required in the game. What I’m saying is that instead of blurring the models and thus exposing themselves to this issue, they should have entirely redone the death scenes to make them less offensive, rather than just blurring them. I know it’s expensive and time-consuming… but that’s the price you have to pay in a situation like this. Rockstar shouldn’t get to freeride on the industry’s reputation.
November 4th, 2007 at 4:33 am
Geoff-
What I meant by “more controversy” is if it will turn into another “Hot Coffee”. Hot Coffee dominated a news cycle… So far, that hasn’t happened with this yet, and probably won’t for a few reasons. First, the game wasn’t very well received so probably isn’t being played by that many people to begin with. Second, ESRB didn’t change the rating because this is, as I’m arguing, simply different.
I’ll also mention that this is violence related instead of sexually related. Whether or not that should make a difference is debatable, but for the most part, sexual stuff tends to get people more riled up than violent stuff.
I just don’t see this as Rockstar’s fault, though. It’s like getting pissed at your cable company for having a scrambled pornographic channel that maybe your motivated kid can unscramble by using a “black box” or something. Should the cable company pull the channel or pornography producer change their content just because some kid might figure out a way to unscramble it?
November 4th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
YOU GUYZ ARE WORSE THAN NGAI!!!! ;P