Manhunt 2 mods reveal ESRB shortcomings

Stephen Withers
Monday, 05 November 2007 02:26

Your IT - Entertainment

The availability of instructions for restoring the controversial Manhunt 2 to its original 'glory' (or should that be 'gory'?) brings the ESRB's processes into question.

Rockstar's game was first given an AO classification by the ESRB, which meant the console manufacturers would not licence it and that most major US retailers would not stock it.

The game was also effectively banned in the UK and Ireland.

Rockstar subsequently submitted a revised version to which the ESRB saw fit to grant an M rating, but the game was so far outside British Board of Film Classification guidelines that the Board was unable to recommend changes that would allow Manhunt 2 to receive an 18 rating.

The problem with the M version of Manhunt 2 is that the offending content is still included in the game, merely filtered with colour and lighting effects. Not surprisingly, people have worked out how to patch the game (at least in PSP form) to remove these effects.

Since it is necessary to make several modifications to the game, and because the PSP itself must be modified to enable patched games to play, the ESRB believes that its rating is still correct and that Rockstar did nothing wrong.

That is sophistry. If a game (or other work) includes content that breaches the requirements of a given category, it should not be granted that classification.

The ESRB's argument seems to be that while the 'Hot Coffee" unlock for the hidden scene in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was easily applied, the mods needed for Manhunt 2 require sufficient work that neither the Board nor Rockstar can be held to have done the wrong thing.

It's rather like saying that the 'sealed sections' beloved by some women's magazines for dealing with racier content are OK if you need a knife or a pair of scissors to open them, but not if the edges are perforated.

The ESRB isn't even claiming ignorance - it seems that the board knew the offending scenes were still present in their original form, and that all that had changed was the way they were presented onscreen.

While there's no good reason to penalise developers and publishers when outsiders add content that someone considers offensive, any attempt to conceal content included in a game is just asking to be hacked. Indeed, there will be some that consider it part of the game - or maybe a meta-game - to reveal it.

Whether games should be subject to these sorts of classification processes is a separate issue. While they exist, participating publishers must be held to the spirit of the schemes if the classifications are to remain meaningful. Rockstar could have changed the underlying images to conform with the ESRB requirements and then it would not have been possible to undo the changes. Instead, the company took what I suspect was a cheaper and quicker route of adding filters to the offending scenes.

Rockstar was aiming at a relatively sophisticated audience - can the company (or the ESRB) now claim to be surprised that it found one?