We are stupid for allowing this games creation. - I reported about Rockstar Games video game title "Manhunt" back on 2003.12.18.
Describing the game I wrote:
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.
New Zealand banned the game from being sold on it shores and I had hoped that other countries would have followed the same course of action. To date I know of none that have.
But I do know of an incident where a 17-year-old boy named Warren Leblanc appears to have been heavily influenced by the game to the point of luring a 14-year-old boy, Stefan Pakeerah (pictured at right), into a park where Leblanc stabbed and then beat Pakeerah to death with a hammer.
Colin Blackstock, for The Guardian, reports what Stefan Pakeerah' mother, Giselle, had to say after seeing Leblanc plead guilty to the murder:
"I think that I heard some of Warren's friends say that he was obsessed with this game," she said. "To quote from the website that promotes it, it calls it a psychological experience, not a game, and it encourages brutal killing. If he was obsessed with it, it could well be that the boundaries for him became quite hazy."
Blackstock also quotes a nurse who says Leblanc's "Manhunt" game was seized by the police as evidence.
The BBC is reporting that some stores in England have pulled the game from their shelves in light of the recent murder. But others have not and, disturbingly, the news of the murder link has increased the sale of the game. The spokesman for one of the stores still selling the title said that up until now the game's sales had been minimal, but now they are "flying off the shelves."
It boggles my mind how a supposed civilized and free society can willing condone and even propagate such madness.
