The Political Game: Manhunt 2, the gift that keeps on giving
by Dennis McCauley 
{ Nov 2nd 2007 at 1:57PM }
Each week Dennis McCauley contributes The Political Game, a column on the collision of politics and video games:
There's the Jelly-of-the-Month club, and then there's Manhunt 2.
Like the el Cheapo holiday bonus which sparked Clark Griswold's comic spazzout in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Rockstar's blood-soaked game is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Manhunt 2, of course, has provoked more than a few spazzouts of its own recently. And while the most frothy barking has originated in Miami, Jack Thompson isn't the only one riding the Manhunt 2 gravy train these days – far from it. The game has, of course, earned Thompson a few more of his precious TV appearances, even while the Florida Bar seeks to dispossess him of his license to practice law. But the media – both the video game press and mainstream variety – have had a field day with it as well.
By my unofficial count CBS, ABC, Fox and CNN have all weighed in on the game this week, along with an untold number of local news affiliates. Katie Couric and Dr. Phil were among the beautiful people who slummed it in gamer land this week in order to dish about Manhunt 2. Websites large and small followed the Halloween launch saga as it unfolded, and I'm certainly not blameless. 107% of the stories on GamePolitics.com this week had a Manhunt 2 theme.
Take Two and Rockstar, of course are laughing all the way to the bank. When was the last time that a mediocre game (USA Today's Marc Saltzman called it "a bloody average thriller") managed to dominate the media spotlight for months on end? Amazingly, the Manhunt 2 feeding frenzy has been going on since the spring when IGN's Matt Casamassina revealed that, among other atrocities, players could separate certain adversaries from their testicles with a pair of pliers.
Shortly thereafter the game was banned in Britain, where they value their manly bits and where the climate is distinctly chilly toward games of late. Moreover, they still remember Labour MP Keith Vaz's claims that the original Manhunt provoked a grisly teenage killing in 2004. On the same day that the Brits nixed Manhunt 2, the ESRB tagged the game with the infamous Adults Only rating for the U.S. market. And if you believe the timing of those two happenings was coincidental, I've got thirty million dollars in hidden Saddam Hussein gold that I want to share with you. Check your e-mail.
Manhunt 2 has also been a boon to watchdog groups which, after all, become demoralized when they have nothing about which to moralize. In fact the watchdogs have been tripping over one another this week to inveigh against the game. Common Sense Media grabbed the early lead, circulating a particularly nasty screenshot of Manhunt 2 protagonist Daniel Lamb decapitating a police officer with a shovel. Problem was, the pic was from an early Manhunt 2 build which was leaked by an SCEE employee in September. As Rockstar was quick to point out, the scene did not appear in the retail edition. Undeterred, Common Sense Media went ahead with a Manhunt 2-bashing press conference and CEO Jim Steyer even managed to get his face on Katie Couric's news broadcast.
The Parents Television Council and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood were right behind Common Sense Media in calling for parents to do their parental thing and keep underage players away from the game. The National Alliance on Mental Illness is unhappy that the violent game is set in an asylum. We haven't heard from Dr. David Walsh yet, but his National Institute on Media & Family will be issuing its Annual Video Game Report Card in a few weeks, and one can just sense that Manhunt 2 won't make the grade.
Aside from California State Senator Leland Yee, politicians haven't yet had much to say about Manhunt 2. That's about to change, of course, now that hackers have broken through to some of the banned content in the PSP version. Can the PS2 mod community be far behind? After all, it was they who revealed Hot Coffee a couple of years back. Expect video game legislation, which tailed off in 2007, to resume as a growth industry in '08. Hey, it's election year.
Nor have law enforcement groups been heard from so far. As we've seen before with 25 to Life, Reservoir Dogs and the Grand Theft Auto series, cops don't take kindly to being virtual targets in video games, and who can blame them? When law enforcement organizations tumble to the brutal police killings depicted in Manhunt 2 they will complain long and loud. And cop groups have a lot of juice with politicians.
The ESRB probably thought it was done with Manhunt 2, but that's about to change. The watchdogs were demanding to know how the game escaped the dreaded AO even before the PSP hacks were revealed. Now? Batten down the hatches and get ready for a rough ride. What could have been – should have been – a big win for the rating board seems likely instead become the subject of political attack and fodder for congressional committees for a long time to come.
Like I said, the gift that keeps on giving.
Dennis McCauley is the Political Editor for the Entertainment Consumers Association (www.theeca.com), tracks the political side of video games at GamePolitics.com and writes about games for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Opinions expressed in The Political Game are his own. Reach him at
There's the Jelly-of-the-Month club, and then there's Manhunt 2.Like the el Cheapo holiday bonus which sparked Clark Griswold's comic spazzout in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Rockstar's blood-soaked game is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Manhunt 2, of course, has provoked more than a few spazzouts of its own recently. And while the most frothy barking has originated in Miami, Jack Thompson isn't the only one riding the Manhunt 2 gravy train these days – far from it. The game has, of course, earned Thompson a few more of his precious TV appearances, even while the Florida Bar seeks to dispossess him of his license to practice law. But the media – both the video game press and mainstream variety – have had a field day with it as well.
By my unofficial count CBS, ABC, Fox and CNN have all weighed in on the game this week, along with an untold number of local news affiliates. Katie Couric and Dr. Phil were among the beautiful people who slummed it in gamer land this week in order to dish about Manhunt 2. Websites large and small followed the Halloween launch saga as it unfolded, and I'm certainly not blameless. 107% of the stories on GamePolitics.com this week had a Manhunt 2 theme.
Take Two and Rockstar, of course are laughing all the way to the bank. When was the last time that a mediocre game (USA Today's Marc Saltzman called it "a bloody average thriller") managed to dominate the media spotlight for months on end? Amazingly, the Manhunt 2 feeding frenzy has been going on since the spring when IGN's Matt Casamassina revealed that, among other atrocities, players could separate certain adversaries from their testicles with a pair of pliers.
Shortly thereafter the game was banned in Britain, where they value their manly bits and where the climate is distinctly chilly toward games of late. Moreover, they still remember Labour MP Keith Vaz's claims that the original Manhunt provoked a grisly teenage killing in 2004. On the same day that the Brits nixed Manhunt 2, the ESRB tagged the game with the infamous Adults Only rating for the U.S. market. And if you believe the timing of those two happenings was coincidental, I've got thirty million dollars in hidden Saddam Hussein gold that I want to share with you. Check your e-mail.
Manhunt 2 has also been a boon to watchdog groups which, after all, become demoralized when they have nothing about which to moralize. In fact the watchdogs have been tripping over one another this week to inveigh against the game. Common Sense Media grabbed the early lead, circulating a particularly nasty screenshot of Manhunt 2 protagonist Daniel Lamb decapitating a police officer with a shovel. Problem was, the pic was from an early Manhunt 2 build which was leaked by an SCEE employee in September. As Rockstar was quick to point out, the scene did not appear in the retail edition. Undeterred, Common Sense Media went ahead with a Manhunt 2-bashing press conference and CEO Jim Steyer even managed to get his face on Katie Couric's news broadcast.
The Parents Television Council and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood were right behind Common Sense Media in calling for parents to do their parental thing and keep underage players away from the game. The National Alliance on Mental Illness is unhappy that the violent game is set in an asylum. We haven't heard from Dr. David Walsh yet, but his National Institute on Media & Family will be issuing its Annual Video Game Report Card in a few weeks, and one can just sense that Manhunt 2 won't make the grade.
Aside from California State Senator Leland Yee, politicians haven't yet had much to say about Manhunt 2. That's about to change, of course, now that hackers have broken through to some of the banned content in the PSP version. Can the PS2 mod community be far behind? After all, it was they who revealed Hot Coffee a couple of years back. Expect video game legislation, which tailed off in 2007, to resume as a growth industry in '08. Hey, it's election year.
Nor have law enforcement groups been heard from so far. As we've seen before with 25 to Life, Reservoir Dogs and the Grand Theft Auto series, cops don't take kindly to being virtual targets in video games, and who can blame them? When law enforcement organizations tumble to the brutal police killings depicted in Manhunt 2 they will complain long and loud. And cop groups have a lot of juice with politicians.
The ESRB probably thought it was done with Manhunt 2, but that's about to change. The watchdogs were demanding to know how the game escaped the dreaded AO even before the PSP hacks were revealed. Now? Batten down the hatches and get ready for a rough ride. What could have been – should have been – a big win for the rating board seems likely instead become the subject of political attack and fodder for congressional committees for a long time to come.
Like I said, the gift that keeps on giving.
Dennis McCauley is the Political Editor for the Entertainment Consumers Association (www.theeca.com), tracks the political side of video games at GamePolitics.com and writes about games for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Opinions expressed in The Political Game are his own. Reach him at
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
F. Rocker or Fernando R.? @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:08PM
Well... any publicity is good. This game (mediocre) is going to sell a lot.
Vegnagun @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:10PM
Welcome back. Linebeck is ftw.
F. Rocker or Fernando R.? @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:14PM
Libebeck is one of the most well made characters in the Zelda series.
Vegnagun @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:20PM
I can't believe how much I liked his character. I agree with you.
Vegnagun @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:09PM
Rockstar infuriates me. Here I am trying to defend gaming as a media and Rockstar comes out with this. Violence for the sake of violence is trash. A game thats selling point is "you can actually stab people" is just giving the video game paradigm more backbone. Rockstar can't craft a truly fantastic story, all they can do is make controversy.
I haven't played Manhunt 2 and I have no intention of doing so. It has an uninteresting story (imo)and generally abysmal gameplay. Then again it isn't all Rockstars fault, since the media loves to talk about the "Sony Wii" and botch all their facts.
CaptNink @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:22PM
I have to agree with you. Creating a "killing for the sake of killing" game might mean great publicity for Rockstar, but it's not doing the video game industry as a whole any good.
If I was the other big publishers, I would tell Take 2 and Rockstar to knock-off producing this shit!
Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:24PM
Saw and Hostel say "hi" and good tidings from the film world.
This game is just murder porn, but its no different (as a matter of fact, its less graphic) than the murder porn on the silver screen.
If the ESA gets called into congress for questioning, they need to bring a copy of a gruesome scene from Saw and play it before showing off a gruesome scene in manhunt, and then demand congress launch a probe into hollywood as well.
That will either shut them up, or we'll get less murder porn. In any case, society wins.
Vegnagun @ Nov 2nd 2007 3:18PM
I have a lot of friends who aren't gamers. Just today my friend asked me "Did you buy that game Manhunt", so I said no and that I was disinterested. Then she goes into this whole story about how she saw it on the news and there is going to be kids stabbing mothers and babies, and the world is going to collapse because games keep getting more violent.
Now how do I defend my favorite hobby? I've been playing games since I was 5, and how do I defend that I'm not just playing video games because I like murder porn. Idiots who get all their news from some unintelligent reporter who doesn't even know what a "Sony Wii" is probably think I just curl up in a ball and drink goat blood when I play video games.
There are games out there that have storylines that trounce any movie you've seen in the past 10 years, and then there is Manhunt. It plays right into what older people think about video games and it's amazingly solid grounds for some anti-video game legislation. Congress doesn't have to know anything more about video games, just that now there is one where you pretend the controller is the murder weapon.
gg rockstar you're really doing something for the industry.
censorman @ Nov 4th 2007 9:45AM
I used to work for 2k and a lot of people share your sentiment, but here's the flaw in it.
1 - research proves there is no tie between video game violence and morons reproducing the real thing.
2 - they never used 'real stabbing motion' as a pitch. You made that up.
3 - have you played the game? The 'real stabbing motion' and such in the kills consist of moving the wii mote sideways, then up, then the other nunchuck. If you try to kill someone with these motions, you probably won't succeed.
4 - While not on the level of it, where would comics be without Watchmen? Video games and comics share a lot. They are both viewed as kid-stuff...but if you've ever read a Vertigo comic, you'd understand these are adult oriented subjects.
5 - I grew up playing video games. I am an adult. Are you going to force me to keep playing mario with the other kiddies or can I enjoy subject matter targetted at an older audience?
6 - In gears of war you saw humans in half with a chainsaw....they show everything. Why don't you QQ about this game? Brutal head shots are a staple in the FPS genre. Where do you draw the line? Are comics next? Then literature? Perhaps you should go to a communist country where everything is nice and government regulated so they can control what you experience. I'll buy the ticket. :)
Zoidberg Jesus (a.k.a. Jebo) @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:13PM
This whole thing reminds me of that Michael Moore film about the media, specifically, how American media is positively obsessed with pandering to their audiences for ratings. Americans just love non-news, and the media loves to provide us with fear.
playwhutyalike @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:20PM
I like how Marilyn Manson puts it:
"Fear, fear, fear, now it's time for a commercial break, buy the Lexus, get this zit cream or girls won't ef you"
Hmmmm either get stabbed by a pshyco, get the superbug, or have a terrorist blow me up. What a bunch of exciting ways to die.
Dash @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:28PM
Vegnagun has a point. Yeah, we all want to play games without being bothered by censorship, bans and anoying politians down our throats (after all, I don't see this craziness for the Saw and Hostel movies), but at the same time, its hard to defend the game. Not because its violent, just because it's not good.
Reminds me of Monthy Pithon's Life of Brian line: "What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?". Why bother with a game that most people wouldn't care about anyway? Rockstar is gaining with this discussion, since people are now kinda of curious to see what the fuss is about.
Oh yeah, another thing. This game is played on a tv, at home, with sound. You don't want your 5 year old son playing it. Fine, take it away from the kid, buy him Mario or Romance of the Three Kingdons 7 (if his a crazy genius). Live the rest of us play what we want (although I'll be playing Mario and Romance anyway).
Ryan @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:46PM
Tired of this, next game please. Seriously, didn't Rockstar learn last time. This should be a non-issue, but of course won't be.
Gangsta Smurf @ Nov 2nd 2007 2:46PM
"players could separate certain adversaries from their testicles with a pair of pliers."
I'm all for freedom of expression, but goddamn!
Jake @ Nov 2nd 2007 3:03PM
It doesn't irritate me that people believe video games cause violence in those who play them. People believe a lot of stuff.
It just irritates me the way mass media tries to shape our mind on the subject. That is, the way they argue it just pisses me off.
They use anectodal evidence (see Columbine) coupled with shoot from the hip evidence like "see, it is more immersive than movies because you move your thumbs and or hands". It irritates me that gaming has been proven to have no statistical link to violence, yet these pundits constantly repeat the one study about how kids had more aggressive states of mind immediately following a fragfest, as if that means anything anyways.
Ugh. Here is the just of what is going on. Gaming has no statistical link to violence. Fact. Over 90% of studies on gaming have shown it doesn't cause violent behavior. Fact. One study showed a link with aggressive, though non-violent behavior. Fact.
Everything else is just assumptions and BS. When has it been proven that a game with waggle controls and crappy graphics will affect a kid worse than a movie with effects so real it causes nausea in some that view it? Has our country gone completely mad?
Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Nov 2nd 2007 4:18PM
yes, our country has gone completely mad.
Its time for a revolution. Grab your automatic weapon so we can liberate ourselves from this government that no longer represents us.
Oh, wait...
Ghen @ Nov 2nd 2007 3:18PM
I'm renting it for the Wii, its part of my monthly $$ from gamerang so thats not -as- bad as just handing rockstar money ;) But I pretty much agree with the crowd.. if it were a fantastic game with a story that makes you want to keep playing past the point where you were supposed to wake up in the morning then I'd be all for protesting against the naysayers... But since it's probably a mediocre game as reviewed my personal opinion comes to a grand "meh".
Hawtsawce @ Nov 2nd 2007 3:19PM
Rockstar needs to play it safe and stick to making ping pong games. I joke I joke, I kid I kid. But you would think that after gta getting so much flak that they would try to stay out of the media inferno. Oh well, FREE ADVERTISING FTW!!!!!!
Gumbydunzeeto @ Nov 3rd 2007 2:04AM
Sorry, the more Dennis comments about this, the more hits his webiste will get.
I'm starting to equate Gamepolitics with the National Enquierer.
Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Nov 2nd 2007 4:20PM
I'm convinced R* knew this game was going to be mediocre and flop, so they helped create this huge controversey to help push public awareness of the games existance, and thus sales.
And that idiot Thompson is dumb enough to fall for it EVERY FREAKING TIME!.
JT is R* unofficial advertising department.
mrbiggsndatx @ Nov 2nd 2007 4:29PM
Rockstar should make a game where we get to be NYPD!! the achievement lists would be as follows:
Fiddy: Shoot innocent person 50 times
Zap Zap: Tase 15 unarmed, subdued "SUSPECT"
Raising the Bar: Go into bar and beat the living SNOT out of female bartender 1/2 your size!
Congress has their own house to clean, like Senators trying to solicit sex in the bathroom of airports. Stop Whining and bring our troops home!!
Mobat555 @ Nov 2nd 2007 5:56PM
The best part of all this, these organizations will have to get there hands on a modded PSP and edit the game. Violating Sony's EULA and making themselves the only ones responsible for being able to see the gore.
Someone should send them a UMD version of SAW and tell them its uncut version of man hunt and to just keep pressing buttons!
TBoneTony @ Nov 2nd 2007 9:31PM
Why dosen't the media try to consentrate on other videogames rather than just focusing on Manhunt 2.
All they are doing is Videogame bashing
I can mention many other games that are out that are not really that violent at all.
Wii Fit, Super Mario Galaxy and many other games like the Simpson's game that has its own take on how society tries to bash violent videogames with their own real life violence.
If the media never comments on great games like Wii fit and also Super Mario Galaxy, it just shows that they are only interested in ratings and also they are just videogame bashing that does not make it any easier for parents who want to buy non-violent videogames for their parents.
Mind you, I do agree that Manhunt 2 is never for younger kids, that is why it is given an M-rating.
Shows that even if the game was able to be sold with an AO rating, the media will still be bashing videogames,
Darkseid @ Nov 5th 2007 3:53PM
Take Two and Rockstar need to get back to making good games and stop making crap that will just drawn attention.
And as for those who are buying this crap, your only hurting yourselves. Because if they see that they can sell bad games just by making them controversial, why bother putting effort into making good games.
Manhunt 2 makes me VERY concerned about how much effort is going into GTA IV. Will it be good, or will it be just another shot across the bow of Jack Thomson from Take Two and Rockstar?