Hopefully More Countries will Follow Suit - My brother gave me the heads up on this article. Apparently, a game titled 'Manhunt' is so violent and lacking in any kind of redeeming quality that the country of New Zealand has banded it from its shores.
It is no surprise to me that this game comes from the creators of Grand Theft Auto and all its sequels, Rockstar Games.
This game is atrocious and is doing nothing more than conditioning players to be violent murdering predators.
The New Zealand Herald reports:
"It's a game where the only thing you do is kill everybody you see," he said [chief censor Bill Hastings of the Office of Film and Literature Classification]."It gets worse. Not only do you have to kill everybody you see, you can choose to kill 'mild,' 'medium' or 'hot'."
Mr Hastings said "hot" kills were particularly gruesome. Weapons used ranged from shards of glass to garrotting wire, plastic bags and machetes.
To play the game you wear a headset that plugs into the game consol. As you move through this town populated by criminals, a voice comes over the headset and tells you to go kill a character you see on the screen. You get points for how gruesome a kill it is. If the kill is of the 'hot' variety than you get to see a close up replay snuff film of your kill.
The New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification decided that this film could cause harm to the public.
Mr. Hastings said of the game:
"The only way you can accommodate the game's images is by an attitudinal shift. You have to at least acquiesce in these murders and possibly tolerate, or even move towards enjoying them, which is injurious to the public good.
It's amazing to me that a company would even be allowed to produce this kind of stuff.
One wonders how the creators can look at themselves in the mirror and just what voice they are hearing?
