Censorship is one of those topics that will have everyone from the right wing, the left wing and everybody in between get all frothy at the mouth. Video game censorship has been done to death, and it’s hard to write about it without retreading well worn ground. What’s odd for me about Manhunt is that I find it hard to get worked up about it. Explicitly represented violence in any medium has always made me a bit uncomfortable, and yet when I look over at my shelf o’ games, I’m surprised to see the number of 18-rated titles I have. Owning most of the GTA games bumps up the count, Yakuza is another adults only, and so is Killer 7, though I must admit to not having played that yet – I’m prone to having dreams about games I get into, and I’m a little worried about having nightmares of murderous split personalities.

Should that little nugget of information worry both myself and anybody else out there? Perhaps. I’d never consider myself a violent person – I wear teddy bear pyjamas and get upset if I stand on snails by accident – but it is obvious by my sometimes murderous dreams that some of the games I play have an affect on my subconscious. I’m entirely confident that I’m not going to go out with a golf club and start beating people with it, and I know that is the case for 99.99% of gamers out there. I’ve always been of the opinion that if someone is going to go out and commit violent acts, it doesn’t matter what they’re exposed to, they are going to do it anyway. I may be right, I may be wrong, no-one seems to know yet – but there’s people out there who are determined to censor anything that involves interactive violence.

I am not a fan of Jack Thompson. I find his views on gaming to be ill-informed and the manner in which he conveys them to be puerile. Unfortunately, he is an easily accessible mouthpiece of anti-gaming drivel that is music to the ears of conservative adults all over the world. His rants against Manhunt II on the Wii being a simulator for training future killers is easily digestible, and yet there’s a small part of my mind that feels he does kind of have a point.

I must confess.… I do quite like CSI: Las Vegas. New York I could take or leave, and Miami makes me want to throw things as David Caruso. Anyways, I like to watch and figure out what’s been going on before the characters do (who, frankly, are not the brightest bulbs in the box at times), and I find myself coming up with curiously clever ways to potentially do away with someone and then hide the evidence. Having watched far more CSI than I care to think about, I sometimes wonder just how much cunning crime-committing knowledge I’ve learned. These programmes revel in the explicitness of their clever crimes, and then reveal them to an intrigued viewer. The viewer then learns how to commit a crime, and potentially how to amend where the on-screen criminal failed. This is not to say that everyone who watches CSI will use their new found knowledge to rob banks, bump people off and elude the finest that forensics have to throw at them, but it’s worth bearing in mind when we come to consider Manhunt II.

Violence isn’t the only thing people get funny about. Drugs are a no-no, nakedness is the sort of thing only people lacking in common moral decency would portray, and sex…well, that could finish off your grandma. Whole governments can get panicky about it, especially if there’s two people of the same gender involved. Singapore almost banned Mass Effect for its girl on girl involvement. At least now you can find it on the shelves with an eighteen certificate…

The Wii has the unique selling point of this generation, and I’m not surprised that Rockstar wanted to use that to their advantage. There was a lot of excitement before Red Steel came out that we’d all be able to become expert swordsmen and women via the wiimote, and notably no concern that maybe we’d all go out and do nefarious things with our new found abilities. Good – because that’s the way it should be. We’re not idiots…and yet, Manhunt II’s very interactive control scheme makes me uneasy. The odd thing is, I can’t find a definitive reason why this should be the case. If I am, as I stated earlier, confident that regular people will not go on murderous rampages just because they’ve played GTA, then what is my problem with Manhunt? I don’t get uncomfortable with Red Steel or Twilight Princess, and I’m of the opinion that adults should have the right to play what games they want. Theoretically, I’m against the banning of Manhunt II, but at the same time I’m ambivalent about its not being on the shelves. I’ve watched the trailers of the various murders, and the thought of being able to physically enact them just doesn’t sit right with me. There’s something a little off about being able to saw someone’s limbs off, as reported in one of the UK magazines who managed to review a pre-release copy of it.

Sex in videogames gets the same sort of shifty looks that violence gets because of all that pesky interactivity. If gamers could be affected by violence, then all hell could break loose if we expose them to copulation. I have far fewer issues with representations of love, be it physical or emotional. It’s nice to think that games can positively represent such complex, abstract comcepts, but sex and love are generally lumped in with violence by those not in the know, so naturally it’s going to be graphic and offensive.

Thankfully, a game hasn’t yet been banned because of representations of sex and love (though San Andreas flew very close to the wind) and as heterosexual love is still regarded as being dirty and obscene, homosexual love is facing a long, uphill battle. At least when storylines get more sophisticated, the way ahead does have a light at the end of the distant tunnel. Violence, however, will always be violent, and will always upset people.

I know I am firmly of the opinion that there are some games that simply should not be played by children, in the same way that there are some films that should not be seen by children. I am well aware that there are plenty of twelve year olds who have played each game in the Grand Theft Auto series, because some parents have failed to recognize that gaming isn’t just for children, or because kids are sneaky and they get their hands on things that they shouldn’t. Perhaps it’s knowing about these GTA kiddies that makes me so ambivalent about censorship when it comes to Manhunt II. Whatever happens, I shall watch the debate continue with interest.