US Senators call for ESRB review

via Games Industry


In the wake of the Manhunt 2 rating furor, several US Senators have called for a review of the ESRB's ratings process.

According to Game Politics, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) sent the letter to ESRB president Patricia Vance yesterday.

All four Senators have been critics of the videogame industry in the past, with Lieberman generally credited with pressuring the industry to create the ratings system after Congressional hearings in the mid-1990's.

Brownback has legislation pending in the Senate which would mandate that the ESRB play games to their entirety before assigning a rating.

The letter made reference to the BBFC ban on Manhunt 2 in which it found that the game contained "unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone." It also noted that the BBFC refused to rate a revised Manhunt 2 in October 2007.

The Senators expressed concern over the Nintendo’s Wii version of the game, suggesting that the Wii's motion-sensitive controller "permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders."

"In sum, we ask your consideration of whether it is time to review the robustness, reliability and repeatability of your ratings process, particularly for this genre of 'ultra-violent' videogames and advances in game controllers," the letter stated.

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Originally Posted by Shrygue

via Games Industry
The Senators expressed concern over the Nintendo’s Wii version of the game, suggesting that the Wii's motion-sensitive controller "permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders."

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THAT IS RETARDED. children shouldnt be playing the games that say MATURE ages 17 and up.and manhunt isnt that bad with that filter on it. ive seen worse. the punisher? changing the way a game is rated will not affect anything if parents dont check the damn ratings anyway.

Parents will buy the games if they don't pay attention no matter what the rating says. It's rated M for a reason, they need to think about it before hand. I love the quote about allowing "children to act out torture scenes and murders." It's a mature rating. I'm pretty sure 17+ isn't children. The ESRB is doing fine. They rate things rather fair. I mean I'm surprised they even gave the game an A rating the first time, but that shows they are paying attention to the games content and thinking it over. M is a very fair rating for Manhunt 2. Honestly I don't think its much worse than the first one.

It all boils down to this: Manhunt 2 is popular. So all the anti-violence nutcases have to make an example out of it. That simple. It has nothing to do with whether it is or is not the most violent game yet released. It's been hyped, that's all the reason they need.

And it really is ridiculous. The government has no business sticking its nose in the matter, they're just fishing for publicity and soccer-mom favor. 17-year-olds are not children. Try educating the parents.

Hahaha! Lieberman, whats up, man? I haven't heard of you since Running with Scissors whooped your *** in Postal 2! :rofl:

Manhunt 2 obviously does have developers that lack skill in any creative fashion, but that doesn't really mean it should get AO. Didn't we discuss this already?

I always thought Australia was retarded in not having an equivalent of R(18+) for games.

But the way the US system has such a classification that could (but doesn't for whatever reasons) allow game devs the freedom to make a truly adult title if they wanted, and have it restricted to adults in the way R rated DVDs are, is nuts.
Granted that is often quite poorly, but its better than banning the content, or shoehorning the adult themes and gratuitous depictions of extreme violence into the lower classification by removing a few of the more extreme edges.

I personally don't like the manhunt games at all, it just seems to be extreme violence for the sake of it. Not doom or quake type violence, or even Hitman (why did Thompson call GTA a murder simulator when Hitman literally is?) type violence, but the kind you can imagine a kid who likes torturing/dismembering small animals would dream of. :)

But give it an R rating and put up some semblance of a restrictions system and the world will be ok (except for the cries of a few wowsers I guess). I remember renting some R movies when I was 12-13 or so, I don't think I turned out too bad.

Nintendo/Sony/whoever the hell else really need to do something about this, games are nowhere near exclusively played by kids.

Parents and Politicians bitch and moan too much, ratings seriously suck now that they are enforced by the damn stores. Before the clerks would just happily hand over any game as long as it was payed. I hope they keep their stupid laws and ratings so people stop buying games at the stores (which means paying the taxes) and start buying online. Apparently I am not mature enough to buy a game but I am mature enough to drive and go into R rated movies.....

I have yet to even see manhunt 2 on shelves you need to ask for it and they grab it from some hidden drawer or from the back. And who is letting kids play these games? the wii has a message board that tells parents how long they've been playing what games like come on they act like buying manhunt 2 is worse then buying porn. and chances are given the review scores the killing probably isn't too sensitive and probably goofs up a bunch. As far as I can see children can find porn, and killing way easier then manhunt 2 so lay off. reminds me of how intense they were about south park being bad and now its like the highest rated cartoon on tv. Cant they leave are games alone and start worrying about the size of hilary clintons ass.