@harrison25:

Interesting.  I know much of what you wrote was satirical, but I think all the AO ban still just makes games that aren't appropriate for children simply get slapped with an M label.

I am a GoW fan and I think it is obvious that the game is not for children.  Sure, the M rating means parents have to buy it (depending on the cooperation of retailers to enforce an R-like ban on children's purchases, but the ESRB also rated Halo 3 M.  That is ridiculous.  The "violence" in Halo 3 is shown in many PG-13 movies.  How Halo is not rated T is beyond me.

But really, I guess that doesn't matter.  What matters is the glass ceiling of M.  Just push the envelope, chainsaw humans in half and blow off their heads, get your M and get on the shelves.  It doesn't really matter if your game is appropriate for kids or not.  It's all lost in the sea of M.

You hypothesize a dark future, but the movie industry has porn and snuff films that you can buy online or in off-brand video stores.  The sky already is the limit in the movies.  Are you seeing a glut of porn and snuff movies in Target or at your house?  Are they advertised on television?  And if you did... isn't that your right as an adult?  I don't understand why my personal choice to not purchase a movie like that plays into them not being allowed to exist.

All the AO ban does is put Gears of War in the hands of children.  Parents can't tell the difference between a good M game and an inappropriate one because they are all rated the same.  You don't have to be on Xbox Live very long to understand a lot of kids got Gears of War for Christmas.  Why wasn't there an AO rating that would tell parents to stop and take a second look at this game?  Oh yeah... money...

In the interest of fairness I concede your point about Manhunt 2's graphics.  I can't comment fully as I do not have the game nor the PSP to unlock it on.  It's also a fair point to say that parents should learn more about a game before blindly purchasing it.

for me, the significance of the manhunt 2 AO rating is that the graphics in the title are so poor, that even in the AO version the game is laughable.

There are parts of saving private ryan that i can't stomach watching, like the knife kill near the end of the film, but manhunt 2?  so poorly animated and so pixelated that it's impossible to empathize with things happening on the screen...

so what i'm saying is, if ESRB gives manhunt 2 the highest rating, higher than gears of war, a much more graphic and violent game...

what will ESRB give manhunt 4 on the ps5?

What will ESRB do when videogames truly are photo realistic, when you can shank someone and pull out their intestines and start chewing on them?

Is that kind of game going to get the exact same rating the unedited manhunt 2 received?  I mean, yeah...  =)

Since the ESRB placed the context of the killing over the realism of the graphics, that means that no matter how violent a game gets, it's still going to get the same rating the unedited version of manhunt 2 received...

While it saddens me that none of the console manufacturers stand up for AO games... just think....

Once the first AO game has been released on a console and is a commercial success despite some retailers still boycotting the game.... the sky's the limit.

Because there is no worse rating than AO, once the first AO game succeeds, developers are free to put as much violence, porn, language, etc etc into a game that they want =)

so it's really too bad that manhunt didn't retail at AO, because that would really lead to some... 'inventive' games.

Personally, i think games have the potential of being more graphic, more horrific, more sadistic than any film... one day when it looks so real you can't tell it's a game, it'll be just like murdering someone in real life... instead of just watching it done in a film, you'll be doing it yourself...

disgusting but yet intriguing, to test out being a murderer in a perfect facsimile of our actual existence...

sick huh?

I think the console manufacturers should reconsider bans of AO titles, just like movie exhibitors should reconsider bans of NC-17 titles.  All it does is force ratings boards to give out more M's and R's and less appropriate ratings.

Adults should have the freedom to watch what they wish and play what they wish, but there is a right of parents to be able to decide what is appropriate for children.

A game like Gears of War deserved an AO rating.  In the multiplayer mode you chainsaw other human beings.  You shoot their heads off.  If Halo gets an M for cartoon violence, then GoW clearly was an AO title.

But adults should have had every right to buy and play it.

By the same token, this is twice now that Rockstar has intentionally shipped content but "obscured" it.  The likely intention is that it gets out anyways.  As a software engineer, I understand very well that if you didn't want something to be in your software, it wouldn't be there.  They can hide behind the difficulties of asset management, but I don't buy it.  What kind of development house doesn't have simple tools to pull content and manage it (in the case of Hot Coffee)?  In the Manhunt 2 case, yeah they tried to do some simple frame postprocessing rather than rebuild the game code.  Still... they are responsible.  If they wanted it to be non-viewable, it would have been.

This is a case where Rockstar's business model is shock and sell to kids.  It's no different than Joe Camel... and yet no one believes cigarettes should be marketed to children in cartoons.  There's no freedom of speech or expression issue here.  Adults should be allowed to buy and play as they wish.  The game should be AO, and adults should be allowed to purchase it.