The uprising kicked up in by the de facto banning of Manhunt 2 had some folks scratching their heads. They wondered: why all the ruckus over Manhunt? The original wasn’t all that great, after all. Though I count myself among the angry masses, I was never really concerned with the game itself so much as I worried about our ability to, y’know, make our own choices about the content we digest. Y’know, like adults. I just hope it was a one-shot sort of deal and nobody else starts pulling cont–
The ESRB’s decision to give Manhunt 2 an Adults Only rating in the US seems to have already sent shockwaves throughout the industry about what it can and can’t get away with. Condemned: Bloodshot senior producer, Constantine Hantzopoulos, tells CVG that a few features have already been pulled from the game in light of the ESRB / Manhunt situation.
Crap. Granted, this kind of thing has gone on for years — in the same CVG article, Hantzopoulos notes that he was the one who removed the sex scenes from Indigo Prophecy in its journey to US shores — but after the Manhunt debacle, the process looks to be becoming much more transparent, much more public. This can go either way; on one hand we get to see the ways in which the influence of the ESRB and soccer moms everywhere changes the course of a game’s development, but we’re also playing a big part in the circus by virtue of our complacency.
What’s changed isn’t anything terribly huge — I can’t put a dude’s head in a vice, and some instances of decapitation have also been striken from the title. I just wish I had the option to choose whether or not I wanted to see that stuff for myself. Hope you’re developing a feel for this sort of thing, gang — having already made an example out of Rockstar, the ESRB shouldn’t have any issue putting the big squeeze games of comparable maturity.
Nick’s got a preview of Condemned 2 on the way, so keep an eye out for that.
[Via CVG; thanks Trevor!]
