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Censorship Hypocrisy; Games vs Movies
By Ravenhawk | October 29, 2007
In a recent gamesindustry.biz editorial Johnny Minkley discussed the grand hypocrisy and controversy surrounding the British Board of Film Classification presently. A rather commonly known story by now; The BBFC refused to give a rating to Manhunt 2, even after the game was revised and reapplied for rating. Effectively this means that the game, which recieved a M rating from the ESRB, is banned in the UK.
Despite their excuses, this is rather obvious censorship, not merely on the grounds of it being disgustingly violent. At a time when the argument between games censorship vs other forms of media is at it’s peak, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn’t banned because it was violent but because it was a violent game. The BBFC also recently rated the film Eastern Promises, which is worse in content than event Manhunt. The game was given an Adult rating on the grounds that, it ‘isn’t the BBFC’s duty to censor, merely to rate and adults can make up their own minds about what they watch’ (Paraphrase, the GI.biz article has the actual quote in it)
But alas, apparently, being an adult doesn’t mean that you can make up your own mind about what you play.
There have been no studies that weren’t already out on a vendetta that have actually come to the conclusion that games have any effect on violent behavior, let alone having a larger one than movies. Their claim is the protection of children, but isn’t that what an adult rating is for? An adult rating already says that children shouldn’t be playing it. If children get their hands on it, that isn’t the fault of the people making the games; it is the fault of the irresponsible parents who buy the game for them, or of the corporations for not having their wage-slaves check IDs.
We put our trust in ratings groups so that they can tell us what the content of games are before they’re purchased, not so that they can censor our access to content…
Tags: Video Games, Politics, Games, BBFC, Censorship, Manhunt 2, Movies
Topics: Video Games, Politics, Games |
October 31st, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Absolutely spot-on calling hypocrisy! I think more “children” will see movies like Hostel, Saw and the Passion of the Christ (which I only heard was disgustingly violent, like the people protesting this game have never played it)than will ever play either Manhunt game.
When these people use the term “children”, they mean it in the broadest sense to include anyone under 18. I think their precious children should be under constant supervision anyway, if they have that much of a problem distinguishing reality from a video game.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:02 pm
It is no government’s business to legislate morals…that includes what people watch, play, put into their bodies…people have brains for a reason and just because some might be a bit more retarded than others doesn’t mean that everyone has to suffer and be dumbed down to an even level of intellegence
November 4th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Thanks for your comments.
@Richard: Quite true, honesty, the chances of people running into this sort of content is way larger coming from the movie sector than games. And the number of people who would actually want to play a game with the horror and gore is a lot lower than the number of people who watch the movies.
@Alison: It disturbs me how few people seem to realize that the best way to further society as a whole is for all of it’s individuals to be working in the direction of their maximum potential for the good of society.
Alas, straight capitalism says instead that you take a select few and raise them to their potential and drop all the others.
Mixed: or sadly even the half-assed attempts at socialism were hitting in the wrong direction; going for the lowest common denominator.