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Next-Gen has a story on US Senator Leland Yee, who is warning parents about picking up games in which players "torture women and racial minorities" this holiday season.

In a recent statement Sen. Yee commented that, "Unfortunately, some parents don’t realize that in many top selling games, the player actively participates in and is rewarded for violence, including killing police officers, maiming elderly persons, running over pedestrians, and torturing women and racial minorities."

The Senator claims that "If there are violence and sexual themes in the title and cover picture, you can assume these themes are also in the game. Avoid the 'first-person shooter' and 'third-person shooter' killing-machine games."

Sen. Yee also seized upon the Manhunt 2/ESRB "issue" and took the opportunity to state that not only is the game on many a child's Christmas list (sounds like some fact checking is in order) but that "It was recently revealed that the game – which many [be] called the most violent videogame ever produced – has accessible content designed for an Adults-Only (AO) rating."

He continues, "Despite the graphically violent scenes which were supposedly removed in order to receive the downgraded Mature (M) rating, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has refused to re-rate the game."

I will admit that I don't like certain companies (Rockstar) bullying ratings boards and pushing out crap titles like Manhunt 2 just to shock the senses (and, consequently, worsen matters for the rest of the industry), but someone tell me where in Call of Duty 4 I was forced to torture a woman or racial minority?

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Following Rockstar's ranting at the BBFC Monday, the panel has issued its own statements defending its original decision to ban Manhunt 2.

Andrew Caldecott, representing the BBFC, has remarked: "In a Utopian society, you would have effective measures where the over-18s could play what was suitable for them without being cluttered by the fact minors will see them. But you can't make classification decisions without regard to the social prevalence."

Caldecott then turned his attention to differentiating between film and video game mediums.


Apparently the message is that the BBFC is willing to let a violent film, such as Hostel or Saw, through while a violent game is pushing the limit, as (according to Caldecott) a violent game is much more likely to be experienced by a minor than a violent film (read: censorship floodgates now open; prepare for debate).

The BBFC is now promising that a certification decision will be made promptly.

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I suspect it must suck if you're a member of the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) today, as Rockstar and the BBFC have engaged in a heated discussion regarding Manhunt 2 and the BBFC's refusal to certify the title - allowing it to release to gamers in the UK - at Rockstar's appeal of the decision.

Eurogamer has the full scoop and details Rockstar's defense of the BBFC's rejection of Manhunt 2 as delivered by Geoffrey Robertson, who suggested that the BBFC be renamed to the "British Board of Videogame Censors" (oh, snap).

Continue reading...

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Next-gen and other sites are reporting that Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Evan Bayh(D-Ind.), and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) have sent a letter to the ESRB encouraging the ratings board to "review the... ratings process."

The letter apparently follows the foursome's anger over Manhunt 2 receiving a Mature, as opposed to an Adults-Only, rating (it also might have something to do with that hacked content).

Here's a quote from the letter as posted by Video Business:


Someone tell me how controller technology is the ESRB's business as well as violent?

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As we mentioned earlier, some crafty hackers figured out how to unlock the edited content from the PSP version of Manhunt 2 using modded software. People began predicting this would be a repeat of the Hot Coffee... incident wherein the sex scene in GTA: San Andreas could be unlocked through equally devious means.

Maybe not. ESRB head Patricia Vance quickly stepped up and released a statement acquitting Rockstar of any wrongdoing in this Manhunt 2 hack.

Basically, she says, Rockstar never intended for people to unlock this content so they're in the clear.

One could infer from this that Rockstar also did nothing wrong with Hot Coffee, since it's virtually the exact same situation. For now, I'm going with that being the case.

You have to wonder how many times this can happen before it stops being not-Rockstar's-fault and starts becoming a trend.

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What was a rumor as of yesterday has now been confirmed by Rockstar: hackers have accessed part of Manhunt 2 deemed "Adults Only" by the ESRB.

The game had previously been given the dreaded-by-retail "Adults Only" rating only to see Rockstar edit the game down to receive its current "Mature" rating.

However, utilizing a modified (read: not Sony approved) PSP, hackers were able to illegally modify the game and access the portions edited out (but apparently not completely) of the final release. Rockstar was mum on details of whether or not hackers would be able to access this verboten content on the PS2 or Wii versions.

Hot Coffee, anyone? Perhaps the scope is not the same as a completely hidden sex minigame, though this begs some questioning: are developers responsible for content not accessible by legal means? Is Rockstar leaving this content in and counting down the days until someone opens the virtual magical door and leaks the details to the masses?

Click "read" to jump to GamePolitics and get the full story.

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Jack Thompson has seriously lost it. I'm not quiet sure if he is just doing this for attention or he is seriously thinking that he is going to win by trying to literally shut down the gaming industry. Back to the story, according to Game Politics blog, Jack is suing Best Buy, ESRB, and whoever gets in his way for selling M-rated games to minors.

ESRB does a great job by putting the ratings on the games. Now, it's up to the "guardian" to take note of those ratings and enforce them.


Jack Thompson is one determined fella.

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It looks like it's that time of the year again, when everybody becomes up-in-arms about stores selling M-rated games to minors. TV news crews send kids with hidden cameras and have them try to buy M-rated games, newspapers write about all the stores' different policies, and then GameStop et al release statements saying they're working on ending underage sales.

According to Destructoid, GameStop now says that selling such a game to a minor means you're fired. What was it before? A congratulation?

I worked in the games department at a CircuitCity a back in 2003-04 and there was not one instance where an underage kid even tried to buy an M-rated game. If anything, their parents are buying these games for their kids without having any idea what they're doing.

Oh well, anything is better than all this proposed legislation floating around. If a misguided kid wants to buy an M-rated game and his misguided parents don't care, and a misguided GameStop employee lets him -- should the GameStop employee, probably just trying to work his way through public highschool, be the only one of those 3 people to be punished?

I guess so.

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This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor.

On Wednesday, June 14, 2006, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, a subcommittee of the US House or Representatives, held a hearing titled (why do these things need titles?), "Violent and Explicit Video Games: Informing Parents and Protecting Children."

As you may have heard, the outcome of this event was not entirely in the best interest of gaming as a whole. The gist of their conclusion, after questioning the head of the ESA, the President of the ESRB, the Director of the FTC's Consumer Protection bureau, Wal-Mart's VP of merchandising, and three game/health experts, was that violent videogames are akin to pornography in their harm for children and that the ESRB is at fault for letting something like Hot Coffee (which was a terribly isolated incident that would be nearly impossible to reproduce) defile our children.

I watched most of the hearing live, before the video feed suddenly cut out once things started getting good, and throughout the whole hour and a half of viewing I was consistently flabbergasted by the ignorance and misinformation that the Senators conducting the hearing were dealing with.

It is extremely apparent that these people, the ones wielding the power of the entire Legislative branch of our government, have little to no experience in the actual "world" of game playing. Every bit of evidence or material they used in their favor was misrepresentative, illogical, or flat-out wrong.
Congressman Stearns

Take, for example, the video clips that the Senators showed after each of the attending introduced themselves. Congressman Cliff Stearns (R. Florida) prefaced the video with something to the tune of, "this should give you an example of the type of material found videogames today." A series of clips then played, mostly from various Grand Theft Auto games, one from San Andreas where the player flew a plane into a building, another from the same game where the player stood on a street corner and shot civilians from a distance with a sniper rifle (even, gasp, police officers), and then a cutscene from Vice City where the main characters complete a drug transaction in a comically farcical way.

Continue reading...

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