(Untitled)

[dayan]

So "Manhunt 2" is finally coming out this week, in a slightly redacted form (M rating) of the version that received the Adults Only rating from the ESRB last year. In today's "New York Times," Seth Schiesel does a pretty good job analyzing the implications of the rating change and the necessary amendments to "Manhunt 2" that the game's developer,

Comments

scattered thoughts

[lastclearchance]

I remember reading an article examining the implications of Japanese gamers playing Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. The critical theorist in me wants to speak to the other-ness of the enemy and the implications of the frequency of certain sorts of characterizations, but the (admittedly extremely infrequent) gamer and ex-psych major in me wants to say that to the extent that it would make a difference, it would be playing off pre-existing prejudices, and would be determined not at the stage of game design but of game purchase

Re: scattered thoughts

[dayan]

Nah, full credit to djswifty for pointing me toward the RE5 controversy (can't say I've ever been into the series); the joke was a totally gratuitous tack-on. As for Schiesel, yeah, he does a really perfunctory job of actually spelling out what the issue is, but that might just be a factor of editing. Not that the NYT arts section is particularly good at dealing with "low culture" at all (though they def. liked the new Project Pat album!), but that's hardly news.

Part of me wonders how much of this conflict is strictly generational. A lot of the arguments against violence, sex, etc. in video games come from this third-person paternal "someone won't be paying attention to the games s/he buys for her/his kids" instinct that I imagine will begin to lose traction (although similar issues with the MPAA obviously indicate that the moralizing aspect will never completely disappear).Depends whether or not you buy into the unspoken idea that the gaming audience aging = "adult" content as more than a niche. The generational idea has total merit, and

Re: scattered thoughts

[dayan]

Or, if you want to play the Feud: what percentage of 14-year-old Americans know what "Superman that ho" means?

Re: scattered thoughts

[lastclearchance]

That's got to be proportional to the number that have internet access on the regular (a high percentage) and any level of curiosity about song lyrics (much lower) because in my understanding of the world, every 14-year-old American with internet access knows what Urban Dictionary is.

More on your response above a bit later when I have time.