That guy's a Maniac...

You have probably all seen this by now, the thing about the burnout ads. By probably I mean I know because I have spoken to Richie and the other reader of the blog and you've both seen it. Also, the blackhole of all gaming news kotaku has also had a post about it so all the stupid people have seen it too. Basially 37 people complained about the posters for the new burnout claiming that it might inspire people to vandalise or crash cars or somesuch. My initial reaction is to flinch into a rage because it's something negative about gaming and I'm a gamer and it makes an easy post to write and everyone else is writing about it. However, I've had a think about it and the thing that really irks me is the 37 London commuters who think that they are some kind of moral guardians for society. What kind of person, whilst waiting for their no doubt late or packed tube train, glances up from their London Lite and sees the ad and thinks "Jesus Christ! No. Not again. Don...

They Stole My Word!!!

So controversy week last week what with the Jamie Bulger thing in the new Law and Order game and Manhunt 2 being banned etc. etc. So why do video games attract so much controversy? Books, works of art and films are allowed to portray almost whatever they want. 9/11, racism, people who have their mouths full of cockroaches: many of which are dead but those that aren't are throwing up on themselves and each other and so on. But as soon as games do these things they are labelled as disgusting, evil, exploitative, cashing in on tragedy or just simply wrong. This very quickly gets backed up with all other lazy arguments condemning video games to create a nasty impression in the public media. The reason that this is allowed to happen in books but not games because stupid people don't read books but they do play games. Sorry stupid people. But it's true. Stupid people watch films too but films are 'high art' so for every mother on a crusade there are 40 LA film ...

Guess who's back. Back again..............

Ah well, doesnt matter what BBFC, Ther daily Mail or JT say... Sony spokesperson said: “It's currently our policy not to allow the playback of AO-rated content on our systems.” A Nintendo rep said: “As stated on Nintendo.com, Nintendo does not allow any AO-rated content on its systems.” From Gizmodo

We have another update from resident thatgirler Kaiser.Tia : Yeah, there's a confusion of the different issues with the three big game stories recently - the Law and Order case was just stupid - the developers should have known better then to use real-life stuff like that (it wasn't even a funny easter egg - just a dim-witted, under-researched example of a stupid development team). The whole Manchester Cathedral story is actually quite interesting - with games technology becoming able to render real-world locations in realistic detail, are games that showcase real locations going to have to ask permission first, like the film industry? I have a lot of sympathy for the CoE in this case, because I can't imagine they'd ever give permission to a Hollywood movie to film on location, especially a movie involving soldiers, aliens and shooting. I wouldn't be surprised if the games industry has to jump through similar hoops that Hollywood does when it comes to ...

Yeah I’m sure we have all heard it, “Manhunt 2 – Banned in the UK”, for its Casual Sadism blah blah blah. Yeah the game uses a pretty nasty format, stalking and killing but hey I would like people to remember that it is a game. I would like to draw comparisons to Deerhunter: sneak up on the poor defenceless animal, blow its brains out… “Rejecting a work is a very serious action and one which we do not take lightly,” BBFC director David Cooke stated. “Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in the case of games, modifications which remove the material which contravenes the Board’s published Guidelines." Where do the differences lie then? Rather than a VIRTUAL generic forest, the game is set in VIRTUAL, dark, sordid, rust world. And rather than kill VIRTUAL mighty stags, the player can kill VIRTUAL human beings in VIRTUAL brutal ways. But yeah, we all know the generic formulae of Manhunt, stalk, sneak, kill. Seen a million times before, since the first stalk-em-ups on the or...