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Croal vs. Totilo - The Manhunt 2 Letters
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 29, 2007 11:12 AM
from the putting-your-press-hat-on dept.
from the putting-your-press-hat-on dept.
N'Gai Croal (of Newsweek) and Stephen Totilo (of MTV) once again match wits in a textual format, this time over the Manhunt 2 controversy. In Round One, the two reporters discuss the process of playing the game for the first time, and wonder what the experience must have been like for the ESRB raters. Round Two sees them take things up a notch, discussing what exactly it is about the game that's so violent. Round Three ... has them questioning the nature of gaming itself. As always, these are two smart guys with some interesting insights into the medium. Well worth your time. From N'Gai's final letter: "It's difficult to 'read' or derive much meaning from a game. That's why in our three Vs. Modes, we ultimately don't spend very much time talking about or analyzing the experience of playing a game, because it's hard to do so without turning our emails into "I went here. I did this. I picked that up." Which is, after all, what games are. So if the essence of a game is located in what we do, is a walkthrough--go here, do this, pick up that--the most truthful way to write about the experience of playing a game? I hope not. But it's something we should consider. Once again, if the essence of any game is located in its action, reaction, interaction, and the rules which circumscribe those three elements, what does the narrative do?"
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I've mentioned previously how much I enjoy the writing of Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and MTV's Stephen Totilo. All this week, then, it's been a pleasure to enjoy their witty exchange on the PS2's most recent blockbuster, God of War 2. The conversation is spread across both Croal's LevelUp column and Totilo's Player Two blog, and features ruminations on the title from a number of viewpoints. If you have some time this afternoon I highly recommend you give their full correspondence a look. More than just a discussion about a single game, they manage to capture some of the greatness of the medium, with their conversation ranging across genre, time, and content to get at some of the most fundamental elements of videogaming. From N'Gai's final post: "I've said before that we 'see' videogames with our hands. Extending that analogy further, the way cutscenes are used today is the film equivalent of title cards during the silent film era: even though the audience came to the movies to watch people move, they had to do a fair bit of reading to get the full measure of the filmmaker's vision. Similarly, cutscenes leave gamers watching when they should be playing. Sure, cutscenes can communicate critical information; they allow for dramatic and spectacular sequences that might be too difficult to pull off interactively; they provide a nice breather or bookend to lengthy gameplay sections. But just as silent film gave way to the talkies, cutscenes need to keep giving way to gameplay so that our eyes--excuse me, our hands--are constantly engaged."
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Games: Manhunt 2 Ban Fallout, Game Rated AO By ESRB 384 comments
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Games: Take Two Vows To Publish Manhunt 2 116 comments
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Games: Condemned 2 Trying to Avoid Manhunt 2's Fate 108 comments
CVG is reporting that Monolith, makers of the upcoming Condemned 2, are working with the ESRB to avoid an AO rating. As we've discussed previously, an AO ban in the states is effectively a ban on retail sales. From the article: "When asked for examples of what we might now never see in a game again, we were told, 'An example of what we cut would be putting someone's head in a vice. That was too much, you know. There are also some decapitations we've lost. But this is more Sin City than it is real world and we want people to know that this is not a real world.'"
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Games: Rockstar Appeals British Ban on Manhunt 2 56 comments
1up is reporting (via MCV) that Rockstar has decided to appeal the BBFC ruling on their uber-violent Manhunt 2 title. The 'next step' is to get a hearing scheduled, which will allow the game to be demo'd and arguments given. "Rockstar Games had been given six weeks to appeal the decision, and with that opportunity about to expire, the company lodged its formal appeal yesterday ... The appeal was filed with the Video Appeals Committee, which can overturn the BBFC decision. As noted in our first article about the ban, the VAC overturned the BBFC's ban of Carmageddon back in 1997, giving Rockstar a glimmer of hope in its current situation."
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Croal vs. Totilo - Metroid Prime 3 vs. BioShock 75 comments
Another round of considered commentary from two game journalism luminaries is now completed, and ready for your consumption. Newsweek's Croal and MTV's Totilo go back and forth on the merits of those 'other' console shooters, the ones without Halo in the title. What follows is a fascinating conversation focused on the titles BioShock and Metroid 3, with a wide-range of topics explored. They touch on the importance of a memorable opening, the sense of empowerment required for a good game, and a few words on what may have been lost in the move to 3D in the Metroid series. 'There's a very real argument to be made that something was lost in the transition from 2D to 3D, which is what the Wii's backers have been happy to talk about. While it's worth exploring why the transition ruined things for some gamers, I think little has been discussed about why other gamers didn't lose touch and what kind of tastes may have developed in those of us who stayed hardcore on both sides of the break. What do such gamers have to add to a discussion that so often deals only with the lapsed 2D gamers and the children of the 3D era, to say nothing of the outsider casuals?'"
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Obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's an example of a writer trying to sound smart by taking something obvious and "deconstructing" it to make it look not obvious. ("Deconstructing" is in quotes because that's not actually what deconstruction is, but it's how some writers define it if they don't know any better.)
The answer is the narrative guides your action, reaction and interaction, and it describes the rules which circumscribe those three elements.
There - happy? It really is that simple. The narrative exists for the purposes of guiding you to various places to do various things, and to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to do in those places and with those things with which you can interact.
Which is just a fancy way of saying what we've all known narratives do since time began. Questioning it now doesn't make it any less true.
(You can question anything - is the sun hot? Is ice cold? Does gravity = 9.8? But those questions don't in themselves form indictments or arguments against tradition or fact, which means they really have no point.)
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As for the 'political' motivation... What political motivation is needed to rate a game? They didn't sit down and say 'Well, we hate them, and AO will basically ban their game, so let's do that.' They watched the video, it was beyond M rating, and they rated it appropriately.
Without
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And as counter argument I give you God of War 1 and 2, both of which have naked breasts at multiple points. And both have "sex games" to earn experience.
Let's face it video game ratings are just done using a bag of popcorn a 10 sided die factoring in the phase of the moon, just Film ratings.
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As for the 'political' motivation... What political motivation is needed to rate a game? They didn't sit down and say 'Well, we hate them, and AO will basically ban their game, so let's do that.' They watched the video, it was beyond M rating, and they rated it appropriately.
You're correct, without having played it myself I can't say for sure. However, my point was that the controversy that had already erupted over the game prior to even being finished or rated very well may have resulted in clouded judgments. Raters go into work with "this game is sick and disgusting" already repeating in the back of their mind because of the reputation that it may have already developed from not only being what it is (a sequel to a controversial game) but also coming from a company that seem
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"...As for the AO rating itself: What point is there in having that rating exist if they aren't allowed to use it when warranted? I seriously doubt they are flippant with their ratings. They don't just watch video while eating popc
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You know, I'd do a better job than the ESRB just by looking at the cover art and back of the box. Sure there'd be a few titles rated AO just so they wouldn't get released (like if they
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Here's an example of a writer trying to sound smart by taking something obvious and "deconstructing" it to make it look not obvious.
Sorry, couldn't resist!
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It's "obvious" but at the same time it's obfuscated. How often when playing games, or at any time for that matter, do gamers stop and consider the "obvious" in full detail? Despite the fact that the repetitiveness of many games is clear to the player and any viewers nearby, how often does anyone bring this up?
Despite being "obvious", or perhaps because it is, no one stops to actually talk or discuss these things. Decomposing the essence of video games in
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Here is an example of a slashdot poster trying to sound smart by taking a snippet of someone's work and "pwning" it to make him look superior. ("Pwning" in quotes because that's not actually a word used in association with Slas
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I defend because I can sympathize.
Wit? MTV? (Score:1)
Re:Wit? MTV? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. After all, it's not music...
Parent
Ouch... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Please tell me that the rest of his words don't come off as an uninformed diatribe to those of us who are able to appreciate gaming..
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That said, here's my limited understanding.
Croal's position is not that video games, hiking mountains, etc. can't be profound or deep. It's that they are not analogous or similar to movies, books, theatre etc. in that regard. In movies and books, we are merely viewers who are plunging the depths of someone else's co
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No. Croal is pretty much straight on the mark with his assessment of the current artistic value of video games for two reasons:
1. Video games have only been around in any meaningful form for about 30 years. Television has been around for over 60 (disregarding the fact that it's a fairly natural extension of cinema anyway), cinema for over 100, theatre since centuries before the birth of Christ, and prose (whether spoken or written) since the dawn of civilization. In
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Yes. A lot of people would argue that those are closer to movies than games. Certainly the literary aspects of both generally require little to no interactivity (offering a "choose your own adventure" style of plot branching at most), while (for example) the plot elements of FPSes tend to progress during gameplay with few cutscenes breaking up the action.
In other words, the fact that most of the games that have strong liter
I know what the raters were thinking! (Score:1, Flamebait)
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If the people rating games decide to give a game a rating of AO there needs to be some sort of appeal process that forces the raters to actually play the game and work through the levels, ra
Actually... (Score:1, Informative)
interesting read, makes me want to play it (Score:2, Interesting)
speculation (Score:1)
"Unless they have good reason to believe that this game is an imminent threat to the public order, or that it will in and of itself incite adults to violence, their decision seems to me to be based on taste, and I will never believe in substituting anyone else's tastes for my own."
As far as I know, there is no true scientific evidence that videogames are indeed the cause
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Perhaps the most entertaining and also most insightful comment in round 3. Enough said.
I was disappointed to hear that N'Gai found Manhunt 1 a more engaging experience
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