BBFC goes to court over Manhunt

I class myself as quite a broadminded person, I also own and enjoy playing PS2/PC/Xbox games, I have enjoyed the gameplay and freedom of the whole GTA series which interestingly enough, was also "banned" by some countries when it was first released, 
with regards Manhunt, I bought the game when it first came out and played it for around 20 minutes, not only was the gameplay somewhat linear and jerky, I found myself wincing at the plot due to it being somewhat disturbing. I haven't gone back and I probably won't. However I don't see the problem with the game. Horses for courses and all that.
Yes, agreed, it's not the sort of thing you give to your 8 year nephew to play. 
To me, it's all a bit like the whole "mary whitehouse" thing when I was growing up and I feel that people should have the right to make their own minds up. 

As I see it there have always been people who, only when caught, will look for all manner of excuses to blame for their actions.

There are even dummer people who think that banning a video game will stop these people.

Then perhaps you'd like to explain the huge swathes of circumstantial evidence such as: the army using video games for training, the measurable perception distortions you get after playing Wipeout for an extended period, the fact that Brain Training actually does sharpen some categories of your problem solving skills, the superior tactical evaluation abilities displayed by strategy gamers, mmo addiction, and even people confusing real life with game situations in some cases... the famous case of the driver who plowed his car into a tree and told the police that he 'expected it to vanish just like in his game' comes to mind.

The fact that there are no 100% definitive academic studies out there doesn't mean that the effect is not there. You can find scientists who will argue that aliens landed in the deserts of Chile as well.

Yet again people have to take a blow against there rightful freedom of choice. People are so worried about children acquiring copies of the game and then trying to re-enact scenes from it and its absolutely ridiculous. 

I live in the North-West of England in small town which is full of drugs, criminal damage and assault. I can tell you now none of that is because of games or films which feature gore and horror.

In my point of view, teenagers who play these games are less likely to want to become a public nuisance like most of the countries youths are. Why would they want to loiter around bus stops and take aways or feel the need to fight and run a riot when they would be in there homes or round there friends houses, inside, playing games.

For one this would most definitely keep them off the streets, aimlessly walking around, pissed up drinking underage and committing acts that can be brutally disgusting. 

How many games allow the user to rape? None, yet it still happens and 1 in 5 women in this country have been sexually assaulted, should we not be more worried about that?.

Games do not cause children or teenagers to commit sickening murders or cause them to assault people, it already happens. there are endless reasons why people turn out the way they do as they develop there own personalities and traits. It has always happened and GAMES do not influence it. 

Many people say it is up to the parents how youths act and are these days, and it has always been right. It is up to the parents to decide whether or not there children can play a game such as Grand Theft Auto or even Call of Duty, the modern warfare game.

Another thing I'd like to bring up, it's going to court right? Why waste valuable resources battling against a game developer, something that is tangibly the same as a DVD case and disc? Are there not rapists awaiting trial? on probation? roaming the streets? because surely that would be much more useful to everybody as a country than to ban one ONE computer game. What happens if more are released? What will happen then? More wasted court time? It's absolutely ridiculous. 

The game development companies aren't the criminals, they're extremely talented people who bring pleasure to hundreds of millions of people. The amount of effort they put into games to be denied the right to making they're living through, what is purely entertainment.

And to those people who think the games is crap and not very good, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't buy this game. I'm not a fan of horror myself but there's a lot more to it than it just being a horror game. Everyone deserves the right to freedom in all its forms.

I think It's a complete waste of resources, time and effort and i hope the developers win the right to sell there game to the public.


Theres no need to ban this game. Sure its going to be violent. Thats the aim of the aim, the genre its going for. But to ban it claiming that it is too violent is rediculous, and here's my point. 

There is a film (quite old now) called 'The Running Man' it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now this film was all about a gameshow set in the future where a convict or someone was released into an arena type place and had to escape. He escapes or he dies; a manhunt. There are some graphic scenes in this film, chainsaws, electrocution and so on. My point is this. how can the BBFC justify giving that an 18 and banning Manhunt 2? 

Nobody forces you to watch the film, just like nobody forces you to play the game. It comes down to choices, in this case it seems the BBFC have forgotten we can choose if we want to play the game. It is treating games as though they are for children. The average age of a gamer is now 20-30 or something like that. 

Anyhow before i ramble on much longer here is a list of entertainment with graphic content. 

Saving Private Ryan (15)
the Saw series
We Were Soldiers
Soldier of Fortune (the latest game in that series has huge amount of gore)

and my final point is the internet. If someone wants to see really bad things it can all be found here.

i like to play games, all of them over 15 & 18 but i've seen this game and i think it should be banned or made over 21s, i don't find the game atractive at all. to much violence, i think its stupid that amount of blood and gore, it reminds me of "Evil Dead" the movie or something like that where someone that gets murdered as about 20 litres of blood inside them.

I remember at school when we learnt about habituation.. we tapped a snail on the shell with a pen and it withdrew inside, after 6 or 7 taps, it realised there was no danger, and stopped withdrawing inside the shell. This is habituation.

I now turn to Pavlov and his famous dogs. This guy had some strange experiment going on with dogs and their saliva (which he was extracting with a tube for some reason) and after a while he noticed the dogs were salivating before the food was in front of them. He realised that the dogs were recognising the bell which rung to indicate it was time for the dogs to be fed, and that they knew food was coming, and hence, they salivated. This is conditioning.

Neither of these apply even closely to the playing of a computer game. Yes, playing a game is different to watching a film, but who's to say that people who watch Saw and Hostel don't fantasize about being the bad guy anymore than one might when playing a PC game.

Decision to ban it was wrong. 18 Cert is the way forward.

I support the decision. There is no valid reason for this game's existence other than to promote the homicidal fantasies of its creators. If you want to murder without reason or moral, sign up with Al Qaeda instead.

I find it incredibly stupid to ban a game... ok it is violent, so what, as said above there is loads of horror and violent tv / movies around.
i tend to enjoy watching a good slasher film, that does not make me want to go out and slash people up because i saw it in a movie. if 
someone was going to do such a thing they'd do it anyway... even without playing a violent game. it is just that, a game.
i've spent my entire life listening to extremely violent, aggessive music. i've also watched countless extreme violent movies, yet i'm the most chilled out person one could meet...
so whats the big deal??

The BBFC is trying to obey the law and it is the law that is saying that the game shouldn't be permitted, they simply assess something based on the law. 

In addition, I would like to point out that it's not the violence itself they are fighting, it's the extent to which violence is the focus of the game. In Gears of War, mentioned above, you kill bad guys who would kill you if they could. Yes, the deaths are bloody and nasty, but they're in defence

It's strange that everyone defends the 18 rating that games get. I think this is not the issue. Stores still sell rated games to under 18s/15s etc. So really this seems to be a lack of faith in the BBFC's own rating system.

i think the BBFC need to get a better perspective of gaming there will be games at either end of the violence spectrum. 
GoW for example although has an 18 you can finish off your foe with a stamp to the head and watch his brains skid across the floor which could be seen in a light hearted manner.
the BBFC view of this relentless violence fest game is that it will trigger something off in the gamer to replicate the game in the street, i find this hard to believe as my mate bert loves these sorts of games and really couldnt envisage him picking up a lead pipe to bludgeon someone for the simple fact that he is too weedy and i would kick his arse anyway

people are always getting beat up and killed in eastenders should we ban that aswell ..maybe not the strongest argument because eastenders is crap anyway but you get my point.

As far as I'm concerned the original decision was the right one. There is a fundamental difference between movies and games - in the first you're passive, in the second you're not. That means that all kinds of effects like conditioning and habituation kick in, essentially you get used to doing things, rather than merely seeing them. Yes, there is a disconnect because you press a button rather than wield the saw which chops off the guys head, but you still get used to the idea of you chopping off a guys head... lovely. The effect of these things is not well understood right now, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if ratings on games would become tougher, not looser over the coming years.


With a 18 rating this should be enough, they are basically worried that people younger than 18 would play the game, now thats down to the parents to decide.
The rating is there for a reason and in todays society we can hardly say that this game is something that is shocking, there are movies ie Saw etc that have a similar "horror" attached to it so think its time they get down off their high horses and be happy that its a 18 rating as I for-see in years to come something like this will slip to a 15 and so on.