Gore Backlash Affecting Video Games

Is it any suprised that Take-Two's ultraviolent videogame Manhunt 2 has been slapped with the restrictive, sales-crushing "Adults Only" rating by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, causing the company to temporarily suspend it's July 10th release? I remember the first game, which was released by Rockstar back in 2003 with an "M" or "Mature" rating, as the most screwed-up, nihilistic game I had ever seen. In the first version, you play a prisoner named James Earl Cash who's forced to kill gang members for the evil "Director" who captures the footage and makes snuff films. One of your first weapons is a plastic bag which you use to suffocate victims. Manhunt was banned in New Zealand and made adults-only in other countries like England and Canada. Manhunt 2 sounds like more of the same and it's already been banned in the UK. And with an "AO" rating, most major retailers (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc.) won't carry it and Sony and Nintendo won't allow it on their platforms (it wasn't planned for Microsoft's X-Box). So that basically limits it to a PC game, according to ZDNet, unless Take-Two, the studio which also made the controversial Grand Theft Auto series (where players can have sex and beat up prostitutes), wants to alter the content. The game was expected to bring in about $40 million in sales for Take-Two, which had more than $1 billion in total revenue last year, according to Wedbush Morgan research.

Meanwhile, some doctors are lobbying to making obsessive video game playing an actual medical condition, diagnosing it as an addiction. The American Medical Assn. is scheduled to debate such a proposal in Chicago on Sunday, then vote on it early next week according to the LA Times. The proposal would have doctors suggest that parents limit their children's use of the Internet, television and video games to two hours a day. In addition, it would have the AMA lobby the Federal Trade Commission to improve the current system for rating video game content. The $30-billion-a-year gaming industry is already on the defense.