Socialist Gamer Review

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…