Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and MTV News' Stephen Totilo at Rockstar Games' offices in New York City on June 22, 2007

Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up and MTV's Multiplayer blog, in three separate installments, from June 25th-27th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

***

Sometimes, you've just got to roll with the punches.

Gratified by the growing, passionate and influential audience attracted by our first Vs. Mode exchange on God of War II, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo and the staff of Level Up began to loosely plan out future discussions/debates. Last month, we wrestled with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. We had always intended to tackle Rockstar's brutal stealth-horror game Manhunt 2 upon its release, because the Level Up crew very much enjoyed the first title--if "enjoyed" is indeed the right word--and we were curious to see what the company had planned for the franchise. But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.

So last week, when all hell broke loose--first with the banning of Manhunt 2 in the U.K., followed by the Adults Only rating here in the U.S., the banning of the title in Ireland, and Take-Two's decision to "temporarily suspend plans to distribute Manhunt 2 for the Wii or PlayStation platforms while it reviews its options with regard to the recent decisions made by the British Board of Film Classification and Entertainment Software Rating Board--we began to despair. But we persevered, Rockstar accommodated us, and we got to play the first third or so of Manhunt 2 on Friday afternoon, with the opportunity to play as many additional missions as we can get through on Monday June 25th, so that we can debate and discuss the game for this week's Vs. Mode.

As loyal readers know, the staff of Level Up is fond of film parallels, and this controversy certainly warrants another one. Is Manhunt 2 the new "Bonnie and Clyde," the new "A Clockwork Orange," the new "Last Tango In Paris," with Level Up and Totilo serving as the modern-day Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, valiantly defending it from the Bosley Crowther-type bluenoses who Just Don't Get It? Or is it just the new "I Spit on Your Grave," the new "Deep Throat," the new "Hostel: Part II," with us blindly playing the roles of apologists, sycophants and fanboys?

We critique.

You decide.

Welcome.

*** 

To: N'Gai Croal

Fr: Stephen Totilo

Date: June 23, 2007

Re: We Got Static

N'Gai

I guess you and I have some explaining to do for those who follow these e-mail exchanges of ours. We're doing something unusual by writing about Manhunt 2.

We're writing about a game that isn't out. We're writing about a game that, in its current form, will never appear on store shelves and has been put on hold by its publisher, even though the game is done. We're writing about the first game deemed unfit for any rating by the official board that rates games in the U.K. in a decade. We're writing about a game that, in the U.S., currently has an 18-and-older Adults Only rating, a label issued by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to just 23 porn and gambling titles, a few adventure games that have sex scenes in them, and one hyper-violent game called Thrill Kill. (The ESRB website lists more than 1,000 titles as M, which is for gamers 17 and up; more than 8,400 listings for games rated E for Everyone).

We're writing about the controversial Manhunt 2, and in keeping with Vs. Mode tradition, we're only writing about it because we played it and played it extensively. Now how'd we do that?

You were the one who kept telling me in 2003 to play the first Manhunt, the one released for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. I was leery. It was a stealth game. I find stealth games frustrating, because they ask you to skulk around for minutes and suddenly pounce on a bad guy and then sneak some more, usually with a high penalty for failure that forces you to re-play levels many times. But you said this one was a standout. I believed you could be right. The first Manhunt was made by Rockstar North, fresh off their groundbreaking work on Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

You said they did some special things with audio. As death row inmate James Earl Cash, the player wasn't just sneaking around, killing wretched-looking gangsters. He was doing this because he was taking orders from a sick-sounding voice in the headset he wore on his ear. A gamer could wear a PS2 or Xbox headset of their own, and hear the wretched glee of the Director as he pushed the player from one kill to the next and celebrated the player's skill at bludgeoning heads and inserting shards of glass into soft tissue. During tense moments, the headset's microphone could pick up a gamer's anxious breathing and send enemies to investigate a rapid exhale. That all seemed like an interesting use of sound technology, but the game didn't sound like something I would enjoy--or that I would want to be caught enjoying. I was slow to pick it up. When I did, I didn't have the patience to sneak around. I quit after level four.

Somewhere in my ongoing quest to get you to sit down and play through a Zelda game I decided I'd have to throw you a bone. So when Manhunt 2 popped up on the PS2 release schedule for the summer--and then also, shockingly, got slated for the family-friendly Nintendo Wii--I decided we could do a Vs. Mode exchange on the game. That way you'd owe me.

We pitched Rockstar a month or so ago, asking if they'd let us play the game early so that we could be done and ready to discuss it by the time it came out in early July. We got some signs of interest, but I was skeptical. Rockstar's company philosophy is to let games speak for themselves. They don't brag about their games very often. And they defend their often-controversial content even less. Then they got the AO and the U.K. rejection and I was certain our drive had failed. Somehow we got the green light.

I don't really need to tell you any of this, though. You were there. We played Manhunt 2 for a full afternoon at Rockstar's headquarters on Friday. I think we need to talk about that.

You're the Manhunt expert. Do you think we got a genuine experience of the game? The first game opened with a screen that offered a few tips:

"To best experience Manhunt you should...

"Turn off the lights...

"Close the drapes...

"Lock the door...

"Then get ready to kill!"

They don't mention it, but I think it would also have been good to play it alone. The experience of the game--and I would assume, it's sequel--is designed to instill panic in the player. You play the game for tension punctuated with rushes of action, to some extent the same reason people ride roller coasters.

We played Manhunt 2 in an office. For much of our session we sat in the same room and swapped the controller back forth between levels. I had a cup of Reese's Pieces at my side.

I wonder how the people rating the game played it. I wonder if their room was well lit or if they locked the door. I wonder if that matters. For that matter, I wonder how the people who made the game played it. What were all those people thinking? Did they absorb what it would be like to be an average Manhunt 2 gamer? Does it make a difference?

I have a lot of thoughts about the game that I want share with you, I hardly where to begin. The thing you know the least about my Manhunt 2 session is how I experienced the first level, because it's the only one I played when you were in a different room.

The first level of Manhunt 2 is the only one that matches the description most reporters--including myself--have used to explain the game: it has the player controlling Daniel Lamb, escaping an insane asylum where something has gone horribly wrong, the helpful voice of a guy names Leo accompanying him with each step. We'll talk more about this level later, I'm sure, but rest easy knowing I experienced its highs and lows. I got Daniel urinated on by one angry inmate still behind bars. I discovered another who had hung himself. I performed my first stealth kill--with a syringe--and watched Daniel vomit because of his quick-passing guilt. I learned to sneak around and figured out how to get past some characters without killing them. I learned the motion controls and swiped the Wii's movement-sensitive remote sharply one way then another to knock a man's head off with an axe. I made my escape. I played the part of a crazy man.

It was dark. It was brutal. It was horrific. It implicated me as a role-player in some vile actions. It was all exacerbated by something that may have been intentional or may have been a programming bug or been intentional, I don't know. The Wii remote has a speaker, and about halfway into my progress in the level, the remote started emitting crackling static. The pattern of the static kept switching. It didn't seem to relate to any particular action on the screen, and it bothered me. It made me uncomfortable, physically, because it was annoying. It was as if I played half the level while sitting on a thumbtack. The interactivity and design of the level kept me engaged and wanting to know what I was going to have to do next. Some would say that qualified the level as being "fun." But my innate discomfort because of the static--to say nothing of other elements in the level--prevented me from getting any joy from the level. Instead, I played it... perturbed. It made me feel a little crazy, like an asylum inmate.

I wonder if that was a good thing, for a game designed to put you in control of a crazy man. It gives you some of the feeling of going crazy. It reminded me of a building that scientist built in the virtual online world Second Life that uses that world's video-game-like technology to let people virtually walk through a series of rooms that contain sights and sounds that patients suffering schizophrenia say they experience. It's an interesting bit of role-play that may or may not have been aided by the static buzz: buy Manhunt 2, if you want to feel crazy. (Which is cheaper than going to acting school and hoping to land a part in the next "Rain Man" or "The Silence of the Lambs.") Then again, the speaker crackle may have been a programming fluke.

We played five more levels of the game's 16 total together. We need to talk about the Wii gestures that make you pantomime some brutal acts. We need to talk about the idea of horror in a video game, and what to make of a game that asks you to kill without suggesting as in, say, Super Mario Brothers, that killing is clean. I want to know what you made of things.

But there's one thing I don't want to talk about, and that's the ratings. At heart I'm still a reporter, and I don't have the facts about the content of the final two thirds of Manhunt 2, nor do I know what content made the ESRB apply that AO. I won't debate that, though we certainly can compare the content in this game to others, including the first Manhunt.

OK. Have at it.

-Stephen

***

To: Stephen Totilo

Fr: N'Gai Croal

Date: 6-23-07

Re: The Miseducation of N'Gai Croal

Stephen,

Thanks for your recap of how we came to be embroiled in what I've affectionately dubbed "The Satanic Versus."

Where to begin, indeed? I suspect that we're going to spill a lot of pixels on this one, so I hope that you and the readers will show me some forbearance as I use a big chunk of this post to clear my throat. Because with the AO rating bestowed upon Manhunt 2--which means the de facto banning of the game in the United States, because Sony and Nintendo do not permit AO-rated titles to be released on any of their systems--along with the de jure banning of the game in other countries like the U.K. and Ireland--Rockstar Games has vaulted into the rarified territory occupied by the likes of D.H. Lawrence, Stanley Kubrick, Vladimir Nabokov, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bret Easton Ellis, Larry Clark, Clive Barker and others who have seen their work banned, dropped, declared obscene or given the most restrictive ratings possible. Since this rarely so happens with games, Rockstar's own Hot Coffee controversy notwithstanding, I think it's important to look at other media to help understand what's going on here. And with film being the medium that I'm most familiar with, I'll focus on that.

The comparative media aspect of this debate is interesting to me because as a student of film during my college days, I was (and am still, somewhat) very interested in material that pushed viewers' buttons and their limits. This wasn't always the case. I didn't see a lot of movies growing up, because in addition to not having a console in the house, we also weren't much of a movie-going family. As a result, I came late not just to movies, but challenging movies in particular. I saw "Taxi Driver" for the first time the summer before I left for college. It was on TV late one night, I watched it, and being completely unprepared for what I saw, I hated it. I'd never seen anything like it, and its insinuating portrayal of one man's desperately isolated psychosis was far too much for my young mind to process--I felt like I wanted to take a bath afterwards and wash the mental grime of Travis Bickle from my memory.

When I got to Stanford, one of the campus rituals was rounding up the dorm and heading over to Memorial Auditorium to watch Sunday Flicks, the student-run film series. It was there that I saw "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" and "Wild at Heart." I watched "Henry and June," the first film to receive the then-newly conceived NC-17 rating, at an off-campus movie theater. I saw "A Clockwork Orange" during Friday night movie rentals in my freshman dorm. For a kid who'd had a light-on-movies childhood, my mind was blown, and while I didn't fully understand or appreciate everything that I saw, it opened my tastes up to a wide range of cinematic experiences, which was only reinforced by studying film from my sophomore year on. So when I subsequently watched "Taxi Driver" again, I realized that my initial hatred for the film had in fact been a mélange of confusion, repulsion and attraction to the material. It had indeed been insinuating, for it had lodged itself in the recesses of my mind like a dormant virus, and having spent a year being exposed to enough other challenging cinematic experiences, I could finally grasp what Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader were trying to accomplish with "Taxi Driver," and loved it. To this day, it's one of just a few candidates for my favorite film ever made. I had gone from despising challenging movies to embracing them; in fact, my decision to start reviewing movies for the student paper is what led to me to become a journalist in the first place.

During my senior year, I was hired to run the Sunday Flicks series. And while Flicks was primarily intended to entertain and make money, I wanted to bring back some of the provocative spirit of the kinds of movies that I'd seen at Flicks during my freshman year. So among the many Hollywood movies designed to put butts in seats, I sprinkled in Mike Leigh's "Naked" and Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel and Benoit Poolverde's disturbing satirical mockumentary of a serial killer, "Man Bites Dog." The former provoked a number of walkouts; the latter prompted a half-exodus--along with complaints, letters to the editor of the student paper, and an attempt by my bosses at the student union to fire me. Rockstar, c'est moi! (I refused step down, it turned out that they couldn't fire me without a warning, and I served out my term.) The most interesting response the night I screened "Man Bites Dog" was from a couple that walked by me on the way out. When I asked them why they were leaving, they politely answered that they'd seen enough to know that it wasn't for them, but that they'd be back next week. In other words, they'd made a decision that was right for them, but they had no interest in trying to impose their tastes upon others, a live-and-let-live mentality for which I could only have the utmost respect, and is especially relevant to those parts of the world where Manhunt 2 has been de jure banned.

I haven't written about movies much since college, but I continued to go to the theaters, and I continued to favor challenging movies upon their release in theaters. I enjoyed "Natural Born Killers," mostly for the way Oliver Stone does violence to the viewer as much with the film's editing and score as he does with its content, to say nothing of the demented sitcom flashback with Rodney Dangerfield as the twisted patriarch. I liked Larry Clark's "Kids" and "Bully," not in spite of his pruriently vampiric fascination with the bodies and behavior of teenagers, but because of the way he mines that fascination to capture the amoral confusion of wayward teens. I'm a huge Lars von Trier fan--regardless of what the critical establishment has to say, I maintain that "Manderlay" was the best film I saw last year, by a country mile. I still have problems with "Se7en"--there's still something too high-concept about its "seven deadly sins" depiction of the villainous John Doe, as compared to, say, the more straightforward cannibalism and skinning in "Silence of the Lambs"--but I have grown to appreciate the virtues of the way the filmmakers carefully place Morgan Freeman's wise, patient, despairing and ultimately renewed Detective William Somerset at the center of the story.

Even having gone through my earlier conversion with "Taxi Driver," I still struggle sometimes to absorb a movie that legitimately challenges me. I hated "Raging Bull" when I first saw it during my sophomore year. (It's now one of my favorites, too.) Ditto for "Fight Club," which I absolutely despised when I watched it at a screening before its release. On my first viewing, I found it thoroughly fascistic, because I thought that the filmmakers' sympathies lay completely with Tyler Durden's creed before trying to absolve Ed Norton's narrator with the film's last act. But as with "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" before it, something about "Fight Club" stayed with me. I watched it again a few weeks later, and upon a second viewing, I was now completely on the filmmakers' wavelength. I could finally see its carefully calibrated satirical elements; how the titular Fight Club, upon the shooting death of Meat Loaf's Robert Paulsen, becomes one of the self-help groups that the film had mocked during its earlier scenes; and that while the Fight Club had been necessary to snap the narrator out of his torpor, the film's ultimate message was that he needed to grow the hell up. (Add another movie to My Favorites.)

My point--yes, dear readers, I do have one--is that I'm extremely comfortable with material that is at or beyond the outer limits of what a mass audience will embrace. One of the enthusiast magazine editors I respect the most, and whose opinion I value, very much disliked the original Manhunt. Not in a "this game should be banned kind of way," but in a "this isn't my bag kind of way." It just wasn't for him. And when I recommended it to you, I was concerned that it might not be for you either. But I recommended it to you nonetheless, because as I've said to you and others many times, the original Manhunt was one of the most memorable experiences I've had from the previous generation of consoles.

Why? Two reasons. First of all, Manhunt delivered on a purely visceral level. As you and I have discussed ad nauseum, Rockstar is practically without peer when it comes to establishing mood and tone. That's because a) they're really good at it, and b) the mood and tone of their games are radically different from just about anyone else working in this still-nascent medium today. The premise, nicked from the famous 1924 Richard Connell short story "The Most Dangerous Game," isn't really that different from, say Impossible Mission. But the decaying, rust belt locations; the subtly spooky, largely ambient soundscape that rarely tells you how to feel about what's going on; the freakish assortment of gangs, racists, survivalists, cops and SWAT teams that are out to get you; the grainy security camera filter applied to the brutal killings you carry out--it all added up to something I'd never experienced before, and, like "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "Fight Club," I've found it unshakable. Despite the broad-brush similarities in their mechanics, when it comes to stealth games, Splinter Cell is far more like Metal Gear Solid than either is like Manhunt; and when it comes to survival-horror games, Silent Hill is far more like Resident Evil than either is like Manhunt. It is singular.

The second reason I was so taken with Manhunt is because of what you mentioned in your opener: the man who has rescued you from execution and brought you to the abandoned town of Carcer City, where you must kill or be killed, all for his amusement. And as you point out, he gives you orders through your earpiece. He tells you where to go. He tells you what to do. He tells you what minimum level of violence he'll accept in the surveillance camera-meets-snuff film killings that you must commit for his pleasure before he will open the doors or gates that will let you proceed to the next area. He sounds awfully familiar, doesn't he? His name? The Designer--I mean, the Director. Yes, at the heart of Manhunt is a brilliantly twisted joke. Rockstar grabs the translucent veil of mildly disreputable innocuousness in which most action titles cloak themselves, tears it open and exposes the sinister truth that lies just beneath the surface: in an awful lot of videogames, the developer and the publisher are asking you to virtually kill an awful lot of virtual enemies, over and over and over again. Manhunt is just more honest about this than most, and cleverly, brutally so to boot.

This, like many of the movies I enjoy watching, is clearly at the outer limits of what a mass audience will sign up for. And that's a dangerous place for any artist to operate, because when some official body (private or public) or group determines that an artist has crossed a line, said artist is unlikely to find many defenders--even among their fellow creatives. We saw that earlier this year with Super Columbine Massacre RPG! And we're seeing it again with Manhunt 2, where it's unlikely that many publishers or developers will rush to Rockstar's side. Heck, Paul Jackson, the director general of the U.K.'s Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association--the trade organization whose purpose is to represent publishers such as Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two-- backed the BBFC's decision, stating, "A decision from the BBFC such as this demonstrates that we have a games ratings system in the UK that is effective. It shows it works and works well." (He later added, "I would say that I was surprised at some of the language the BBFC used when they reported on the matter, but we'll be talking to them about that separately.")

The situation here in the United States differs from that in the U.K. and Ireland. As I stated earlier, the British Board of Film Classification and the Irish Film Censor's Office have banned Manhunt 2 from being released in its current form, and based on both the language in their respective rulings and the six missions we played on Friday, it's hard to see how Rockstar could make any changes that would satisfy those organizations without completely gutting the game, pun intended. Here's what each had to say:

British Board of Film Classification: Rejecting a work is a very serious action and one which we do not take lightly. Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in the case of games, modifications which remove the material which contravenes the Board's published Guidelines. In the case of Manhunt 2 this has not been possible. Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.

Although the difference should not be exaggerated the fact of the game's unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying and the sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer, together with the different overall narrative context, contribute towards differentiating this submission from the original Manhunt game. That work was classified '18' in 2003, before the BBFC's recent games research had been undertaken, but was already at the very top end of what the Board judged to be acceptable at that category.

Against this background, the Board's carefully considered view is that to issue a certificate to Manhunt 2, on either platform, would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors, within the terms of the Video Recordings Act, and accordingly that its availability, even if statutorily confined to adults, would be unacceptable to the public.

Irish Film Censor's Office: A prohibition order has been made by IFCO in relation to the video game Manhunt 2. The order was made on 18 June 2007 under Sec 7 (1) (b) of the Video Recordings Act 1989 which refers to 'acts of gross violence or cruelty including mutilation and torture.'

IFCO recognizes that in certain films, DVDs and video games, strong graphic violence may be a justifiable element within the overall context of the work.

However, in the case of Manhunt 2, IFCO believes that there is no such context, and the level of gross, unrelenting and gratuitous violence is unacceptable.

The thing is, while I can quibble with the BBFC and the IFCO's descriptions of the game, for the most part, I can't really disagree with them.

Yes, there is a "bleakness and callousness of tone," though it's certainly not "unremitting," as evidenced by that one darkly comic sequence during our joint play session that prompted us to first drop our jaws to the floor before laughing out loud. (Since you were wielding the Wiimote and nunchuk during that scene, I'll give you the honor of describing it to our dear readers.)

Yes, the overall game context "constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing," though as you point out, the protagonist is sufficiently horrified by his first kill that he drops to his knees and vomits.

Yes, there indeed "is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged."

Yes, the game does have an "unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying," and there is a "sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer."

And yes, the game does include "acts of gross violence or cruelty including mutilation and torture."

My response to all of that is, so what? What does that have to do with adults like you, or me, or the aforementioned magazine editor making our own decisions as whether or not we want to play this game? What does that have to do with the countless number of adults in the U.K. or Ireland for whom the BBFC and the IFCO have decided to play nanny, wag their respective index fingers, and say, "We know better than you, and we in our infinite wisdom have decided that you can't play this game"? Unless they have good reason to believe that this game is an imminent threat to the public order, or that it will in and of itself incite adults to violence, their decision seems to me to be based on taste, and I will never believe in substituting anyone else's tastes for my own.

In the U.S., where many retailers would likely refuse to stock an AO-rated title, the game hasn't been banned. But that doesn't mean that gamers will ever be able to play it in the form that you and I are experiencing. Here, it's ultimately Nintendo and Sony's whose judgment is being substituted for ours, because they, along with Microsoft, don't allow AO-rated games to be published on their systems. I find this more than a little strange, because the PSP and the Wii both have built-in parental controls--as do the PS3 and the Xbox 360--which would prevent minors from playing Manhunt 2 on a properly configured Wii or PSP. (The PS2, however, does not have parental controls for games, just DVDs.) I'm somewhat sympathetic to the fact that unlike with other forms of disc-based media like CDs or DVDs, the platform holders themselves a) approve all of the games for release on their respective systems at various stages of the development process, ranging from initial concepts to gold masters; and b) handle all of the disc replication for games made for their individual machines. By being that hands-on, they're more vulnerable to external criticism than a DVD manufacturer like Samsung which has nothing to do with the movies released by, say, Vivid Entertainment. But sympathy doesn't mean approval; I don't accept their judgment over what entertainment I should consume anymore than I do the IFCO's or the BBFC's.

Their refusal to approve AO-rated games for their systems illustrates one of the useful benefits of an industry ratings system: plausible deniability when it comes to material that walks the line. If people like Jack Thompson or Hillary Clinton get upset over an M-rated game, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, retailers and publishers can point at the ESRB. If Take-Two and Rockstar get upset over the effective ban that ensues from an AO rating, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and retailers can point at the ESRB. There's no need for genuine discussion or debate--there's too much money to be made to risk upsetting the apple cart; besides, it's just those arrogant, secretive so-and-so's over at Rockstar, anyway--so they'll just issue terse statements and leave the hullabaloo to people like us. Meanwhile, the infantilization of the medium continues, unabated.

You've said that you don't want to get into the ratings process, which I understand. But I suspect that we'll find ourselves drawn into doing so as we continue our discussion, because of a couple of statements that ESRB president Patricia Vance made to Kotaku in an email interview. The first exchange that I found particularly germane concerned the Wii:

Kotaku: With the Wii, developers can now make games that allow gamers to physically act out violent acts and see them occur in a game. Games such as Godfather, Scarface and Manhunt 2 all do this. Do such controls have an impact on a game's rating? If so do you think that supports the argument that a game's interactive nature makes it more dangerous than more passive experiences like watching a movie, listening to music or reading a book?

Patricia Vance: We've always been very clear about the fact that the degree of player control is one of several elements that the ESRB considers in the assignment of ratings, including the content itself, it's frequency, intensity and realism, context within which it is presented, and the reward system. The interactive nature of games certainly differentiates them from more passive forms of media like films and televisions, which is why the ESRB system takes these other unique characteristics into consideration.

The second exchange address the fact that the first Manhunt was rated M by the ESRB (it was also approved for sale in both the U.K. and Ireland):

Kotaku: Rockstar has said that they feel that Manhunt 2 is very similar to the original Manhunt in the level and type of violence depicted. If that is the case why did one receive a Mature rating and the other appears to be on the verge of an Adults Only rating?

Patricia Vance: Obviously, Manhunt 2 is a different product from the original Manhunt. The raters evaluated the submission for Manhunt 2 and determined that the AO rating was the appropriate rating assignment. Per our statement from 6/20, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.

We've played five missions into the Wii version, so there's a lot that we can say in future posts about how its gestural controls impact the experience. And since I've played the first Manhunt in its entirety (imagine that, a game that I've finished and you haven't) I'll be able to expand on some thoughts that I'm already forming--some obvious, some less so--about why the various ratings bodies may have decided to be tougher on Manhunt 2 than they were on the original. And finally, as has been the case with our earlier Vs. Modes on God of War II and the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, I've got some ideas about what Rockstar could have done to make both Manhunt games even better than they already.

But I've said enough. (No, no, really, I have.) So I'll stop here for now.

Cheers,

N'Gai

***

 

In Part I of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo--which is also being posted on his blog MTV News: Multiplayer--Totilo explained how we got the opportunity to play the first six levels of controversial Adults Only-rated Manhunt 2, then plunged into a swift, graphic recap of the opener. (This included a disturbing crackling sound coming from his Wii remote; whether it was a bug or a feature wasn't clear, but it made him feel even more like the game's protagonist, asylum inmate Danny Lamb.) The Level Up staff, meanwhile, reminisced about how our film school education helped make us sanguine about extreme subject matter, before concluding with a full-throated defense of why a ban on the game--whether de jure, as in the U.K. and Ireland; or de facto, as in the U.S.--demonstrates a complete lack of respect for the ability of adults to determine how they would like to be entertained.

Today, in Round 2, the conversation gets more pointed. Totilo accuses us of failing to adequately describe the content of Manhunt 2 in our defense of adults' right to play it, and goes on to wonder why more videogame aficionados aren't willing to interrogate the violent nature of many of the games that they play. We return fire with an assertion that what troubles many about violent games--and blinds many gamers, developers and publishers to what should trouble them about the medium--is inextricably linked with the very definition of what games are. Read on.

*** 

To: N'Gai Croal

Fr: Stephen Totilo

Date: June 24, 2007

Re: Manhunt 2's movie moment

N'Gai,

Thanks for the Final Fantasy-length letter. I just wish you hadn't censored yourself.

No, I'm not joking.

By focusing your analysis on the decisions of the British Board of Film Classification and Entertainment Software Ratings Board you've offered a de facto defense of Manhunt 2 that you could have given--and I'm certain would have given--the game had you never played it. I respect that. But in so deftly arguing why games and gamers should be treated with the same respect for intelligence and range of taste as films and filmmakers, you managed to write 3700-plus words that never describe any of the features of Manhunt 2 that would obviously set it apart in many people's minds from any movie they've ever seen or ever heard of.

For example: the game's prime mechanic, the three tiers of stealth-murder. Other stealth games, like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell ask the player to sneak and ask the player to kill. Failing to sneak into that kill alerts the intended victim, which either makes them put up a fight and/or forces you to re-try a few minutes' worth of the game. You either pull off the sneaking well or you fail. The better players might be able to actually sneak by enemies instead of sneaking up to them and killing, but for those who choose to go in for the kill there are only two possible resolutions: a successful stealth kill or a failed one.

The Manhunt series is different. In Manhunt I can put a plastic bag in my character's hand and stalk an enemy thug who is pacing through an alley. I can tiptoe up to within a few feet of him, softly as to not alert him. My character will raise his right hand. That's the cue that I'm within range of a kill. I press a button on the controller. A targeting reticule surrounds the enemy's head. It flashes white. If, in the first game, I then trigger the kill the camera angle switches and I see my guy throw a bag on the enemy's head and suffocate him. It's nasty. But if I had waited while the white reticule flashed--if I had had the nerve to keep my guy right behind the enemy, maybe even tiptoed in step with his pacing to keep close--then the white would have turned to yellow and the triggered kill would involve not just a suffocation but a follow-up punch to the bagged head. Had I waited longer, yellow would have gone to red and the murder would have been more grisly.

You talked about your initial revulsion at seeing "Fight Club." You initially viewed the film as fascist. Then you watched it again, and as far as you're concerned, you got it. You figured out what the filmmakers were really trying to say. I think we could say you feel you played your role as movie-viewer better the second time. What reward did the filmmaker have for you? A subtler understanding of what you just watched. What was Rockstar's reward for you when you played your role as a stealthy gamer better? A more grisly murder to watch your character commit. On a deeper level there may be "Fight Club" readings and mis-readings that you could have applied to the first Manhunt. Maybe a mis-reading would have been that the game is pro-violence. Maybe playing the game in full reveals that is actually anti-violence. Whether that's the case or not, I certainly believe that games can be interpreted in their entirety, and maybe one can view understanding the game properly as some sort of super-reward for playing the game well. But the moment-to-moment rewards of Manhunt are an increasingly vicious spectacle.

From a game design perspective, this is smart stuff. The Manhunt games, like few others, have a system that actually rewards brazen play. I see a parallel with the city racing series Burnout, which gives the player extra speed boost power for every near miss and for every second they drive on the wrong side of a double-yellow line. I like the Manhunt system and think other games should reward bold displays of skill. (For those who can't sympathize because they are so put off by Manhunt's content, let me put this in terms of a made-up game: imagine a game called Manhunt that puts you in control of a woman who is seeking Mr. Right. If you have her approach a guy and just briskly say hello, then maybe you'll just get a clipped greeting in reply without the guy breaking his stride. But if you finesse that hello, maybe he'll stop and smile. And if you really finesse it, maybe he'll stop, smile, ask you your name and ask you for your phone number. That's how the real Manhunt works, but with plastic bags and, as far as I've seen, only man-to-man murderous interaction).

Given this central mechanic of the game, I don't have hard time seeing how people would find Manhunt and Manhunt 2 to be a class apart from any of the movies you mentioned. This game asks something of the player--clinical killing--and then it encourages them, but notably does not require them, to accent that killing with a butcher's callousness or even a torturer's sadism. Is this game series a laboratory for human behavior, testing how far a player will go? Is it a game that revels in the interactive nature of the medium by presenting players with opportunities that will haunt them, a horror experience genuinely distinct from horror films because it allows the player to choose how revealing of their own dark side they want the macabre experience of Manhunt to be? Or is this just violence porn? Is it condemnatory, bad-taste over-kill?

I respect defense of games as speech. But I think for too long those who write and talk about video games--and I'm thinking primarily of reviewers--have ignored the effects of ultra-violence on games and the nature of that violence as it relates to the quality of what we play. I'm not talking about anything that would affect how games are rated. The people who rate games seem primarily concerned with how the interactivity of games possibly teaches or at least desensitizes gamers to real violence. What about how gamers have been desensitized to violence in games? It seems to me that the very thing that makes a game a game--its interactivity--encourages game makers to fill their creations with an inordinate amount of one of the most reliably engaging things there is to do with the press of a controller button: squashing enemies in Super Mario, shooting them in Call of Duty, committing an act of virtual violence. As a result, gamers' entertainment is soaked in far more blood than other forms of entertainment. Is it a wonder games get such a bad rap?

Yet who would argue that Ratchet & Clank would be more fun if Ratchet went pacifist and negotiated peace deals or if the next World War II first-person game shelved the rifles and focused on repairing tanks. I don't think it's weird that so many people are freaked out about games. I actually think it's weirder that so few gamers are freaked out about games. What are we having fun with?

I played a near-final version of a PS3 game called The Darkness on Saturday. It's a first-person shooter with a twist. The twist is that you gain two magical snakes that slither in the air in your peripheral vision and can snatch a dead enemy's heart with their long, sharp teeth. But before you learn to do that the game teaches you to wield a pistol in each hand and trigger special execution kills. Just tap a button. I did. My game's anti-hero put a pistol in a mobster's mouth and fired. And that wasn't even the point of the game. The snakes are. Frankly, the gunplay felt gratuitous.

This is what I think it comes down to really: What's the point? Until the day an ultra-violent game impresses upon the world that it has a point beyond sadistic thrills, I doubt a game like Manhunt can find its place. You certainly appreciate the first as in invaluable psychologically provocative experience. That's not how most of the world that's heard of the game views it. At least, that's not how they talk about it. It's easier to decry it as crude rubbish--possibly as something evil.

I can't dismiss Manhunt 2 like that, though. For one thing, it's hard to outright reject something that exhibits craft, that exhibits the signs of being made by talented people. Craft alone is no automatic apology for subject matter--certainly not in a world where one of the most technically lauded films of early cinema was "Birth of a Nation," a celebration of the Ku Klux Klan. But if you identify craft you can at least begin to consider a work as serious and worthy of dissemination.

So a few notes on Manhunt 2's signs of craft. Graphically, it's solid. On the Wii it doesn't look quite as good as the first Manhunt did on Xbox, but it looks good. It's a little grainy and its scene transitions are intentionally scratchy. Camera work is a little wobbly. This isn't bad programming. It's an attempt to make the game feel just a bit verité, a bit homemade. It suits a game that begins in an asylum and puts you in control of a mental patient.

In some ways its craft seems superior to that of the first game. The first relied on the video game cliché of the floating health pack. Walk into this item and your hero's health meter is re-filled. The sight of a floating health pack is a reminder that you're seeing a video game on your TV screen. In Manhunt 2, the floating health pack still hovers. But it also flickers. It looks like a hallucination and suits the setting.

Compare the first level of each game. The first Manhunt is straightforward in its opening minutes. It's a little plain, actually. You stalk people in a few alleys. It begins with the least subtlety I've seen in a game: Your fist victim stands with his back to you next to a wall spray-painted with the command "Kill this f---ing guy." The second Manhunt begins as I described it in my first letter, weaving its tutorial through the asylum's progressively madder halls and cells. You play the first level of Manhunt 2 with a decent enough goal: escape that crazy place.

Another example of craft is that one scene that had both of us laughing.

[SPOILER WARNING: Skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want to read about a scene that may or may not remain in any possible edited version of the game.]

I was in control of protagonist Daniel Lamb in the last full level we played. I walked him down a staircase with a pistol in hand. The game gave me a cue, instructing me how to kill the man at the end of the hallway ahead of me with a stealth pistol kill. What struck me was that he wasn't looking my way. He was half-turned away from me, watching something through an open doorway. Whatever he was watching sounded like a couple making love. Taking advantage of his distraction, I followed orders and killed him.

Then I walked through the doorway expecting to see a TV playing a dirty movie. Instead the camera angle switched, and the TV you and I were watching was filled with a movie screen showing a pornographic movie--a watered down one, that is, with a virtual man and a woman hot and sweaty but revealing none of their most private parts. Daniel Lamb was standing right in front of it, fully armed. Then I walked a couple of steps and the camera angle changed (players don't control the angles in Manhunt 2, which is a change from the first game). Now the movie screen was to his back. I couldn't see it. I could just hear it. The lovemaking continued. I looked out at the rows of empty seats. I was in a movie theater. A group of hit men rushed in. Suddenly I was in a tough firefight. The whole time the guns were blazing, those sounds kept on playing. Do you think that scene was crafted to say something about sex and violence, by any chance? After I took out each of the hit men, they lay there and the movie kept on playing. I could hear the rattle of the film projector and see the dusty beam of light it projected over Daniel's head and onto the screen. I looked over to you and to the Rockstar employee who had walked in to see what we were laughing about and said "I'm going to put an end to this smut." I pointed my Wii remote at the film projector and fired. The sound from the movie warbled. The room went dark and quiet. That was quite a moment--and one that I think is worth grown-up gamers experiencing.

[END SPOILER.] 

I'm anxious to hear more of what you thought of the game. And I'd still like to know what your experience of the first level was like (you never answer my questions right away, do you?). Also, how do you think this game compares to the first? People are focusing on the M vs. AO rating of the two titles. Whether you agree that they deserve different ratings from each other, do you find one game edgier than the other?

-Stephen

***

To: Stephen Totilo

Fr: N'Gai Croal

Date: June 25, 2007

Re: It's Not Violence, It's Pixels

It's not blood, it's red.

--Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, responding to criticism of the violence in his film "Weekend"

Stephen,

Are you sure that you don't want to join Greg Kasavin and Luke Smith among the recent ranks of journalists-turned developers? Your alternative take on Manhunt as the videogame equivalent of "Sex and the City" is very intriguing. Perhaps the Alpha Moms who have made the Wii such a hit could use your game as an escape from the quotidian routine of their suburban lives. But given all the ratings troubles facing Rockstar at present, allow me to suggest that your version of Manhunt focus less on the sex and more on the city.

You're absolutely correct that I spent no time describing "any of the features of Manhunt 2 that would obviously set it apart in many people's minds from any movie they've ever seen or ever heard of." Then again, wouldn't the word "features" obviously set it apart from any movie that people have heard of? Or any book, play, TV show, painting and sculpture, for that matter? In that sense--among many others--movies aren't games, games aren't movies, and I fear that you may have misunderstood why I spent so much time reminiscing about my film-addled college days. The point was to explain how I became so relatively sanguine about a variety of extreme subject matter, both in terms of form and content. But implicit in your challenge is that the "ultra-violence," to use your subsequent term of art, is the only thing that many people would have a problem with.

I submit that that is not the case, particularly when it comes to people who are not gamers. What they often have a problem with, whenever a videogame stray beyond the bounds of the relatively childish, and what they can almost never articulate, is a fundamental objection to what a videogame is at its most fundamental level. Violence is not the basic unit of gameplay. Rather, it is repetitive action, reaction and interaction. Repetitive action, reaction and interaction, along with rules, are what define all games, whether they're digital or analog. In basketball, the ball is passed, shot, rebounded, blocked and stolen--repeatedly. In football, the ball is hiked, passed and kicked--repeatedly. In poker, cards are dealt, discarded and laid out--repeatedly. In Monopoly, dice are rolled, pieces are moved, and properties are bought and sold--repeatedly.

This is the essence of a videogame.

But because videogames look like narrative media--particularly film and television--people are often tempted to compare videogames to other narrative media. This is why we have to be careful to use the right analogies at the right time, because videogames are fundamentally not a narrative medium. A film is narrative; it's always about "What happens next?" A game is interactive; it's always about "What do I do next?" Just as something is always happening on a movie screen from moment to moment, beat-to-beat, in a game, you always need to be doing something; otherwise, it's not interactive. Hence, repetition.

As long as videogame creators confine themselves to the stuff of Friday night action movies (PG-13, please), Saturday morning cartoons, Saturday night Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer 40,000 sessions and Sunday afternoon sports, repetitive action and interaction generally don't pose an image problem. After all, who's going to get their nose out of joint over a lightsaber duel (no blood, please), a butt stomp, a defeated orc (again, ixnay on the ood-blay) or a 360-degree windmill jam? It's when developers transgress beyond those boundaries--when they aspire to the stuff of "Aliens," "Black Hawk Down," "Saving Private Ryan," "Goodfellas," "Night of the Living Dead" or, in the case of Manhunt and Manhunt 2, "8 MM" and...well, let's say a cross between "Memento" and "American Psycho"--that they run into more and more trouble with citizen's groups, ratings boards, censors and even some gamers and some of their peers in the industry.

The mere fact that developers would dare to tackle this subject matter is enough for the rejectionists to take umbrage. But their ire is compounded by the fact that the action, reaction and interaction that they're objecting to is repeated over and over and over again. Moreover, this is where they can convince even fans of the abovementioned movies that games based on similar subject matter are beyond the pale: the sheer amount of repetition required to make a game, well, a game, translates into an experience that is quantitatively far more violent than a similarly-themed movie-and if that weren't offensive enough to their sensibilities, said violence takes place over a longer running time.

If for example, you were to quadruple the five battle scenes in "Saving Private Ryan"; turn them into playable missions of 15-30 minutes apiece; and strip the narrative of all psychology and subtext, reducing it to premise, tone and attitude; you would have Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor: Frontline. Do the same thing with the escape-and-retribution-focused last 30 minutes of "Hostel" or "Hostel: Part Two"--movies that were approved both in the U.S. (with an R rating) and in the U.K. (with an 18 certificate), and which Manhunt and Manhunt 2 superficially resemble--and you have, well, just ask Rockstar and Take-Two.

So when you ask me about my reading(s) of "Fight Club" and whether I may have a similar reading of Manhunt, all I can say is that there really isn't much there for me to read. Again, videogames are not a narrative medium. What I praised the first Manhunt for in part was the depth of its formal qualities, not the depth of its content; the content of a game being the actions that you undertake. This lack of depth makes games that deal with taboo subject matter--or more accurately, deal with typical gameplay mechanics in taboo ways--difficult to explain or defend. It's hard to argue that games have anything approaching the depth of theater, novels, movies or television given the medium's newness; its requirement of repetitive action, reaction and interaction to maintain the player's interest; the thinness of its characters; the perfunctoriness of its plots; the lack of complex or even complicated psychology. It would be like arguing that an activity--a mountain hike, laps in a pool or a game of chess--is profound.

Any meaning ascribed to an activity comes from two places: the doing and the context. For games--unlike other narrative media--the story is merely the context, the backdrop and the stage upon which the poor players strut and fret, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Would "Macbeth" have been as deep had it been a Manhunt-like action-adventure? (Sneak into the chambers of rivals like King Duncan and Macduff and murder them, while being urged on by the whispers of Lady Macbeth over your headset!) A Grand Theft Auto-ish open world game? (Rise from lowly squire to King of Scotland!) Or an Oblivion-esque role-playing game? (Carry out quests for the three witches! Solve their riddles! Battle the enchanted trees of Birnam Wood!) I'll let you imagine what Super Paper Macbeth and The Legend of Lady Macbeth: Twilight Queen might have been.

Let's return to my sports analogy--or is that your sports analogy? If I'm having trouble explaining my experience in critical or aesthetic terms, could that be because I'm trying to take an activity and contemplate it as if I had somehow been outside that experience, like a critic of movies, TV, theater or books? Maybe I'm more like one of those basketball players or coaches you see interviewed at halftime who speaks only in clichés--"We've got to control the tempo," "They're going to come out with a lot of energy," "We have to get stops," "This is a game of runs,"--because how else can you describe a fundamentally repetitive activity when you're the player? (Ever interviewed an actor about his or her "process"? It's pretty much the same thing: cliché-ridden.) Or as Pauline Kael wrote, perhaps more presciently than even she realized, in her 1962 essay "Is There a Cure for Film Criticism?":

Art is the greatest game, the supreme entertainment, because you discover the game as you play it. There is only one rule, as we learned in "Orphee": Astonish us! In all art we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond a new way. Why should pedants be allowed to spoil the game?

That's what Manhunt did. It astonished me. Or, to paraphrase myself paraphrasing my friend, screenwriter and journalist Cheo Hodari Coker, it made me shake my ass.

You're right to wonder why more of us aren't freaking out over our chosen form of entertainment--and by extension, more of the developers who create these videogames and the publishers who distribute them--but isn't the answer by now self-evident? We can't. The very fabric of videogames--their repetitive action, reaction and interaction--is the original sin for which censorious organizations like the BBFC, the IFCO, and, ultimately, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, would have us either a) repent, then go forth and sin no more; or b) confine our blasphemy to acceptable form and content. But as Kael wrote, "Why should pedants be allowed to spoil the game?"

I am a man: I hold that nothing human is alien to me.

--Publius Terentius Afer, the Roman comic playwright

So now, at long last, my throat being well and fully cleared, it's time for me to tackle Manhunt 2.

You asked me what I thought of the first mission, which centers on escaping from the mental hospital. I'm going to hold off on answering that question for now. Because if you skipped the Execution Tutorial, which I'm guessing is exclusive to the Wii (kudos, Reggie!) for reasons that will quickly become clear, you missed another sick joke from the boys at Rockstar. Since gamers are still getting accustomed to the Wii's gestural controls, many titles include modes that let you calibrate the controller and/or practice the required moves. Rockstar Toronto, the makers of the Wii version, use their Manhunt tutorial to cycle through a series of icons displayed in the upper left hand corner of the darkened screen indicating which gestures I was supposed to perform. As I did so, I heard the sound effects of the various weapons, the sounds of my victims, and saw blood splatter against the black screen and slowly run down its surface, backed by an ominous electronica score. But I didn't see my victims, nor did I see my weapons. For that, I would have to play the game proper.

The first mission was well designed, as you pointed out. I understand why you would feel that the craft in the second game is superior to the first, especially with changes like the flickering film filter applied to the floating health packs; it's very much in keeping with the sequels sanity-or-insanity themes. And I get why you'd prefer the comparatively more subtle opening of Manhunt 2, with fellow patient Leo Kasper urging your former family man Danny Lamb through the now-overrun mental hospital, to the blunt-force introduction to Manhunt, with Brian Cox's malevolent voice urging your death row convict James Earl Cash to, as the spray painted sign on the wall says, "Kill this f---ing guy." But I think you're wrong.

We've learned that after Manhunt, Rockstar wanted to tell a more complex story in Manhunt 2. James Earl Cash just wants to stay alive, escape from Carcer City, and maybe get some payback against the Designer--I mean, the Director--while he's at it. By contrast, Danny Lamb is trying to solve the mystery of how he ended up in the mental hospital, what happened to his family and what experiments were performed on him. Manhunt is told straightforwardly, from beginning to end, in one straight shot; we never find out why Cash was sentenced to death. Manhunt 2 uses flashback missions to reveal Danny's backstory and provide clues to his current predicament. The Director is the voice inside your ear, but Leo Kasper is the voice inside your head. So far, so good...

...but for the fact that, as I've said time and time again, videogames aren't very good at telling stories. It's hard for a videogame to get me to care--really care--about who a character is. But it's not very hard for a game to get me to care about what a character does. Even though Manhunt 2 has a more sophisticated structure than Manhunt, it comes at the expense of the single-minded focus that gave the original its power. You accused the first game's opening of lacking subtlety; it reminds me of what one critic said when one of his peers leveled similar charges at Oliver Stone: "Subtlety is just a choice. It's not inherently good or bad."

The same is true of what I would ordinarily praise fulsomely: the fact that players have more choice in Manhunt 2 than they did in original. In Manhunt, you couldn't complete certain missions until you accomplished a specific goal set by the Director: kill everyone in the level; complete a certain number Level 2 or Level 3 kills; etc. For Manhunt 2, we were told that you don't have to kill everyone; you can try to sneak past them instead. That's great...in theory. In practice, it doesn't hold a candle to the rigid structure of original, which, when married to the context of the Director's orders and Cox's unctuous, pitch-perfect voice acting--a performance that was in and of itself as precise and evocative as a well-crafted radio play--delivered an experience that I haven't had before or since.

All of this comes with the following caveat: the circumstances under which I've been playing Manhunt 2 are entirely different from the first. I'm under the gun, because I'll have only had Friday and Monday to play the game, rather than experiencing it at my leisure over a few weeks. I didn't get to experience the introductory level for the first time all by myself, because Rockstar chose to demo it for us before our play session could begin. After I got kicked out of Rockstar's plush demo room with the big screen TV and the 5.1 sound system so that they could show Grand Theft Auto IV to some unspecified VIPs (c'mon, Devin; hook a brotha up!), we had to take turns playing on a single machine in their conference room. And we were playing it on the Wii, which, as you know, is not my console of choice, and as a veteran of the DualShock 2 controller, I didn't find the Wii controller a more immersive substitute, simply because it's not yet second nature to me. Particularly during the stealth kills, the Simon Says-like gesture matching meant that I was always conscious that I was playing a game, whereas the thoroughly familiar Dual Shock 2 would often feel like an extension of my thoughts. (So much for the BBFC's claims that there's exceptionally little distancing.)

I have some ideas about how Rockstar could have improved the executions on the Wii, though I suspect the company would get a Seniors Only rating were it to adopt them. I've yet to explain my other thoughts on how Rockstar should have expanded its formal critique of videogame violence in Manhunt, and how it could have embedded its premise of sanity vs. insanity into the gameplay of Manhunt 2. But we've only played a third of the game, and hopefully we'll get to play some more later today, so perhaps I'll find that they've anticipated my improvements.

And with that, I bid you good night.

Cheers,

N'Gai

***

In Round 2 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo--which is also being posted on his blog MTV News: Multiplayer--things got a little testy. Totilo got in a dig about our failure to grapple with the morally dubious range of actions Manhunt 2 asks its players to undertake. That pushed us to examine the first principles of games, and question whether the problems that many have with videogames are perhaps more fundamental than a little bit of the old ultra-violence. Thankfully, no blood was shed over this disagreement.

*** 

To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: June 26th, 2007
Re: Who are we?


N'Gai,

Sometimes you make me sad.

One time you made me sad recently was yesterday. That's when you told me once more that "videogames are not a narrative medium."

Before I could even grab a box of tissues you chopped a few more rhetorical onions in front of my face. You said that the newness of games and the medium's "requirement of repetitive action, reaction and interaction to maintain the player's interest; the thinness of its characters; the perfunctoriness of its plots; the lack of complex or even complicated psychology" made it hard to argue that games have depth. You said, "It would be like arguing that an activity--a mountain hike, laps in a pool or a game of chess--is profound."

You know what I have to say? Something I've wanted to say for years now, Croal: "Go take a hike!"

The world does not believe that repetitive actions lack the profundity of a book. My brother-in-law certainly doesn't. He is hiking the Appalachian Trail–Georgia to Maine--this summer. I think he could spot some deeper meaning amid his repetitive actions.

I also bet the people who like long pieces of classical music that repeat the same musical themes find artistic beauty inherent in repetition.

I suspect our fellow gamers who killed giant after giant in the majestic but sorrowful Shadow of the Colossus and will soon blast psychopath after psychopath in the drowned utopia of BioShock will have little trouble identifying deeper meanings in their favorite entertainment.

Not all games can be as shallow as Tetris (nor as good, uh, coincidentally?) Sometimes some meaning will get in there. And the more game designers figure out how to embed it not in between moments of gameplay (Final Fantasy X, Half-Life 2) but actually into gameplay (Silent Hill 2) or in the background while gameplay is occurring (the voice-over during the platforming action of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; the value systems expressed through real-time graphics changes in Fable) the more meaning has the chance of seeping into some games. I don't want deep meaning in all my games. I don't think I even want it in most of my games--certainly not in my racing games or any of the descendants of Pac-Man that I play (except GTA, but not Crackdown).

I'm just an optimist, I guess. I think games are still evolving and that there's hope for profundity yet. Now I thought I was supposed to be the curmudgeon in these exchanges!

Back to talking about the game: so there I was hacking and slashing with my arms while seated in the Rockstar offices last Friday and I thought, "this Wii sure makes me feel more involved with this Manhunt 2 game than I thought I would." At one point I had the lead character, Daniel Lamb, leaping off a roof and down onto some victim that must have deserved it, because… why else would that victim been in the game? Anyway, Daniel had garden shears in hand. Holding the Wii's nunchuck and remote in my two hands I followed on-screen cues and hoisted my hands up (Daniel lifted those shears) and then drove them down (Daniel, shall we say, forcefully gave the shears to his victim). In another display of Wii-enabled immersion, one of the Rockstar guys in the office held the Wii remote like a saw handle and sliced it back and forth while Daniel sawed something other than a 2x4 in the game. You talked, rightly so, about how the repetitious actions of games weird non-gamers out. But how many repetitions of these actions do you think it would take to wig out the non-gamers--and maybe even some actual gamers? I'm guessing one each.

I think the ultra-violence we see in a lot of video games today is the product of an upped ante that start rising as soon as developers noticed that it is action--space ships blasting other space ships, for starters--that can make a game interactive and therefore fun. Those repeatedly raised stakes have brought us to Daniel Lamb's raised shears, and in an unexpected twist, my simultaneously raised hands. It's going to be a long time before a gamer can describe Manhunt 2 and not have some explaining about themselves to do. I know I'd wonder why a person who was into Manhunt couldn't just settle for the gentle swings of "Wii Sports" tennis.

In September I interviewed Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime and asked him if he'd try to get Rockstar to support his company. The developer's owner and publisher, Take Two, hadn't produced its Grand Theft Autos for Nintendo's GameCube. What about Wii? "I'll be spending some time later today with the folks over at Take Two to see what type of support they can give our console," he told me. Look at the support he got! He might as well have asked 2 Live Crew to re-write the Super Mario theme song.

But I say, thank goodness they made Manhunt 2 for the Wii, because it provides a new way to think about where games are going. Let me quickly establish that I think the Wii controls in Manhunt 2 are quite effective. They don't force you to imitate exactly what Daniel Lamb does on-screen, but the spirit of the player's and Daniel's actions are the same. A sharp move from one is a sharp move from the other. A powerful swing from me is a powerful swing from whichever hand Daniel is holding his axe. You pointed out that the Wii was not your console of choice and that the reliance on gesture controls made the game feel unnatural But I've played a bunch of Wii games and feel comfortable with the system. As a result, I felt my moves were in sync with the game. Without meditation, I can say I, at times, felt one with it.

When Manhunt 2 asks the player to trigger the game's signature stealth kills it slows down the passage of time in the game. This gives players time to do the right move and not worry that what's happening on screen is passing them by. Then, once the gesture is properly done, the action reverts to normal speed and the animations of the stealth kills reach their gruesome climax. In other words, the game finds a way to both ask you to take the time to focus on your own physical actions and then restore your attention to what's happening in the game