[Beyond Delphine]

So the Daily Mail today says that Manhunt "trained" a 17 year old UK boy to kill his classmate. The parents of the deceased are launching a manslaughter case on Rockstar games.

Think I'll attempt suicide in a convenience store by trying to imbibe the largest soda pop I can find.

See how much money I get from Sierra.

Or find a red herb and a green herb and eat the two together. Another money spinner. Capcom, call your lawyers.

OK, So im making light and im sorry because its sad on so many levels.
I'll not cover everything here. Feel free to discuss.

Watch out Lucasarts! I'm shooting myself out of a cannon.

[lakerz]

I'm gonna try to stuff a ladder down my pants. I'll let you all know how it goes.

[LeChimp]

I want to replace my hand with a chainsaw

[Beyond Delphine]

The article also said that Scarface was the killers favourite movie.
The article said that once.
The article did not expand on how one of the most notorious violent movies of its time may have influenced a 17 year old to kill.
The article made me angry...

... it made me want to kill.

Originally Posted by LeChimp

I want to replace my hand with a chainsaw

Heh. Evil Dead is great.

[g2-man]

Admittedly I don't know the full details of the story and I haven't played the game, but I have been listening to bits and pieces about it on the TV and radio all day. The call to ban all video games is ludicrous, something that we appear to hear every few months from one part of the world or another.

However, Manhunt it seems to me, more so than most other games that such criticisms and accusations have been levelled at, deserves them. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised it comes from Rockstar Games, if I was to make a cynical remark, it would be that they purposefully set out to create controversial games to boost sales. (By the way, I should mention that I greatly enjoyed GTA, which I feel had an obvious sense of humour about it.)

Manhunt from the little bits of pieces I heard about it, just sounded quite unsettling violent and rewarding not just killing but rather more evil behaviour in the game. Even more unsettling is a review I came across at Amazon:

They said that they heard the whole game is just killing. It is. You hide in the shadows and kill quite gruesomely. I love this game. It has an awesome plot, graphics, weapons, replayability, and gore. Everytime I play, I jump when someone spots me, my heart just suddenly starts racing. I'm more of an open, not stealthy, guy, but I beat this, after playing 6-7 hours a day, sleeping for about 4 hours, getting up at 5, playing for an hour, and then going to school. I played it for 10 hours straight one day on a Saturday. My mom watched me splatter a dudes brains with a baseball bat once and she turned pale as a ghost. I don't see why it's so bad. You hear of people being hacked to pieces, shot, and even worse in the news, Manhunt shouldn't bring anything new to the table. It's just the Running Man meets Friday the 13th. Good "clean" fun had by all. I give it 5 severed heads. Enjoy!

There is more than one alarming statement made by that kid, but perhaps the most disturbing for me is: "I don't see why it's so bad." Now, it's fine and dandy playing a violent game imo, even getting a kick out of it, but if you don't see why beating somebody's head in with a baseball bat is bad, something's gone wrong there.

There was also a man on BBC Radio 2 today, who's been playing video games for something like 15 years, who does play and enjoys war games, FPSs etc. and still found Manhunt to be too much.

If we get to the idea of banning the game, we get into the area of censorship, and if this is needed in this case. It's a touchy complex issue, with many arguments on both sides and it's never been resolved satisfactorily. I don't think it'll be banned, in fact I know it won't in the UK, since that's not allowed by law. A number of retailers are pulling it from their shelves, such as Game, and maybe that's a good thing, or maybe not. I'm not fully certain myself.

I do think that the certification of games needs to be enforced better, not only by the shops but also by parents. I think that a lot of leeway is given as regards film classifications, that shouldn't be extended to games due to their interactive nature.

I've rambled on much longer than I meant to, with perhaps little conclusion or even merit in what I said, but it's the first time that I haven't straightaway dismissed the charges made against a game, but maybe that's because I haven't played it.

[Tanukitsune]

We once had a similar story like that in Spain YEARS ago....
-Kids kills parents. Kid has hairdo of a certain FF character.
-The media rejoice and the next day all the news do is make parents think your kid will be a psycho if you them him/her games.
-Next day: They discover that he had several satanic books... The media die of embarrasment...

I also remember the story of an italian kid that went insane after playing Street Fighter.... FOR 3 DAYS STRAIGHT!.... and not stopping to eat or sleep!

[Crunchy in milk]

I might think Rockstar are a bunch of shit eating slimeballs who cash in on the worst kind of games ever and do nothing but appeal to the lowest of the low brow, but at the end of the day they sell shit loads of games.

Putting aside their common practice of buying good reviews and employing advertising right up there with Sony's best and Nintendo's 30 minute japadvertisemations, they clearly have a market for their games. Banning Manhunt or (oh please, oh please) every single Rockstar game from distribution will only make a few million sadists look elsewhere for their fix.

Clearly pale faced mom did a great job brining up her son by

a) buying the game for him
b) letting him buy it himself
c) not taking a baseball bat to his gaming console to see if he finds anything so bad about that.

I would be the first to cheer with great enthusiasm should one of the many court cases that get brought against Rockstar ever get anywhere, but they're just pimps preying on an existing weakness.

[Marek]

I think there's nothing really objectionable about Manhunt. What is objectionable is that it's such a widespread game among teenagers. Manhunt really takes the violence up to a higher level, which makes it part of a genre that should normally be pretty cult-ish and restricted to adults. It's a bit wrong that Manhunt is a game that seemingly every teenage kid has played, instead of something some kids might have heard about from their older brother and maybe played a couple of times.

Yesterday I watched this obscure Japanese movie (forgot the title I'm afraid) in which lots of people get killed in the most sadistic way, with almost no moral core to the story. I liked that movie a lot actually. It was a good and interesting movie, but it's not like every 12 year old out there has seen it, and that's a good thing.

That said, all too often connections with video games are too easily made, and games are turned into scapegoats way too often. That kid had to be pretty f---ed up in the head for doing what he did.

I also don't think Rockstar should be getting the blame, unless there's evidence that they're conciously marketing the game towards those it shouldn't be marketed at. From what I've seen, I don't think they're doing that. I think they should have the right to make games for a mature audience, whatever you think of them.

[Beyond Delphine]

Man, thats a lotta words... kinda zoned out there for a while.
Got the impression not a lot of you have actually played the game.
I own it. It rocks. Killing people in video games is very satisfying. The game is slow to begin with but surprisingly well structured as one progresses.

Come on, when you get bored of playing "action game #45" whats the last thing you do before you switch off the machine?

Damn straight. You shoot some poor SOB in the head or run over a random innocent. Then you sigh, stretch your legs and totter off to bed. Satisfied that having shot someone you didnt need to, you have explored as much of the game as you care to.

You can probably guess, my beef isnt with the game. Its with the press.

[pleto4_ryan]

Manhunt is one of the worst games...
only created to draw attention...
only created for the masses...

But...the game has no fault if a stupid 17 year old, who should have been in an institute from when he was 10, gets out and starts shooting people.

"Manhunt doesn't create murderers , it just makes them more creative”

and for the obvious thingy...

RATED MATURE....

17 < Mature

DUH

[nordic_guy]

I partially blame Rockstar. Because they know who their target audience really is. They know that by making a game like Manhunt they will attract underage kids, and they depend on it to make profit.
Manhunt is not a game for adults, you may say it is based on what it contains, but at the end of the day, Rockstar knows that a lot of kids will end up playing it. Simply because of the nature of the game.
If they don't know this, however, they are doing a very poor research job.

With that said, the biggest blame is to put on the parents. If you can't control what your kid is playing, then surely your kid shouldn't be playing.

[CrimsonBlue]

Give Rockstar a break! Creating cute Lemmings game year after year must of course eventually break anyones mind enough to want to create violent and immoral games!

[CrimsonBlue]

Originally Posted by nordic_guy

I partially blame Rockstar. Because they know who their target audience really is. They know that by making a game like Manhunt they will attract underage kids, and they depend on it to make profit.
Manhunt is not a game for adults, you may say it is based on what it contains, but at the end of the day, Rockstar knows that a lot of kids will end up playing it. Simply because of the nature of the game.
If they don't know this, however, they are doing a very poor research job.

With that said, the biggest blame is to put on the parents. If you can't control what your kid is playing, then surely your kid shouldn't be playing.

Oh, just thought I'd mention, the kid was 17 years old. I know he's still underaged, but I doubt anyone would give much of a damn if their 17 year old kid played a game meant for 18 years or older.

That said, he was also a drug-addict, obsessive teenager with an unhealthy interest in violence. Which means, it's not even remotely relevant to blame it on the game. If only this was a normal kid, I could perhaps have seen the link. But, nope... not this time.

[Erwin_Br]

Blaming Rockstar is hypocritical. Parents should learn to look at themselves, before pointing their idle fingers to whatever they want to blame. With their logic, you can practically ban everything!

As for GTA3; It was an original game which I quite enjoyed. I don't see why they should be punished for it.

--Erwin

[Scoville]

Well, Mature rated games are clearly labelled "17+". The kid in question was not underage. Of course, with his obvious mental problems, he shouldn't have been allowed to play the game whether he was of age or not. But hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Personally, I see no problem with Mature rated games being marketed to minors. The rating system is optional. Granted, the government coerced most retailers to only carry rated games, but the publishers still have the choice to go unrated, just as with movies. Ratings exist purely as a guideline. Parents are the ones who have to make decisions about a game's acceptability. Now if a child is allowed to play some or all M rated games, why couldn't they be marketed to that child?

[Melkor]

I haven't read the whole thread, so I apologise if this has already been pointed out.

I seriously can't see the problem. Why are people screaming to ban anything? What about just upholding the ratings? If you need to be 18 to play the game, you need to be 18 to play the game....

And as a sidenote; all the 'researchers' blaming this on computer games need to take psychology 101... they don't know jack...

[Swordmaster]

Caution call on video game storm (BBC News)
Manhunt game withdrawn from stores (BBC News)

[jannar85]

The mother of this teenager should never bought a concole to the kid in the first place, because of the illness. Everyone knows that there's always SOME kind of action in every concole game.