Gaming News After GTA, Rockstar released one of the most banned and controversial games in history. It was 20 years ago
Published on October 12, 2023 at 2:25 p.m
Share:
A few years after bringing to life its most lucrative saga, Rockstar wanted to try the Manhunt experience, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.
James Earl Cash, an inmate sentenced to death in the county jail, escapes execution and witnesses an even worse fate: Lionel Starkweather, an apparently deranged warden, has offered the inmate in exchange for a few wads of cash stuffed in the police chief's pocket, to make him the hero of a particularly macabre snuff film called Manhunt, “manhunt” in French. In a violent race against death, Cash is forced to shed blood and evade increasingly sinister hunters who have been promised a tempting jackpot for the protagonist's lifeAnd all of this under the gaze of thousands of cameras distributed throughout the city. This is not an unhealthy scenario taken from the horror filmography of Eli Roth or part of the Grindhouse saga, but that of a video game signed by the Scottish team Rockstar North and released in 2003, six years after a glorious first Grand Theft Auto . The studio was able to stay on the benefits of its star license, but the money from the success led to some unique ideas, certainly partly inspired by the features Battle Royale and The Running Man (1988), or probably the film Motel Hell (1980). ), from which he takes up one of the symbolic antagonists: Piggsy, a stubborn psychopath who wields a chainsaw and will make life difficult for our character.
The project is risky, rooted in a climate plagued by an ambient psychosis about violence in video games. In the media and in public, the emergence of Mortal Kombat and Doom has raised eyebrows among conservatives for many years. The Littleton massacre, carried out in part by a video game fan four years earlier, reinforced the alarmist rhetoric in the political arena spearheaded by Bill Clinton: “The media and entertainment industry has enormous power over people's lives.” “Our children, so they have to take responsibility,” he said at the time. But even before its birth, Manhunt has been the pet project of some Rockstar North developers. Sam Houser, the studio's co-founder, expressed his desire early on to create a horror game that broke away from the usual tropes such as zombies, vampires and other extremely popular monsters. The result, according to IGN, is “a demented vision of media voyeurism and the depersonalization of the modern world,” which was first proudly presented at E3 2003. The game was written by James Worrall, co-author of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Christian Cantamessa and Alan Davidson. “We wanted to create a degenerate game that used AI-controlled gangs to hunt the player, and that's where it all came together,” he says. The search nevertheless caused great concern at the company's headquarters in New York. An anecdote recalled by former Rockstar employee Jeff Williams on his personal blog (in a now-deleted post).
“It may come as a surprise, but there was almost a mutiny within the company over this game. It was Rockstar North's pet project – most of us at Rockstar Games didn't want it. We had already had a lot of controversy with GTA 3 and Vice City – we were used to that – but Manhunt was different. With GTA, we always had the excuse that the gameplay had nothing to do with it – you never had to hurt anyone who wasn't a “bad guy” in one of the missions. You could play completely ethically if you wanted to, and the game was a parody anyway.”
While GTA was parodic in its depiction of violence, Manhunt is much more graphic in its depiction. “There was only violence and realistic violence. We all knew there was no way to explain this game. There was no way to rationalize it. We exceeded the mark,” said Williams, visibly shaken by the experience.
Bans galore
While Jeff Williams can't explain the meaning of “Manhunt,” others seem to be very successful. “We want to create a game that provides scathing social commentary on media voyeurism, the proliferation of violence as entertainment, and the inherent inaccuracy of the American penal system,” says Christian Cantamessa, lead level designer on the production. To others, the title will only ever represent a display of abject violence, a scripted murder simulator. A simple trip to a Reddit forum looking for user feedback is enough to get an idea of the experience that a portion of players have had. “I got my PS2 late and it came with this game. I remember my dad watching me choke the first guy with a plastic bag in the tutorial and wondering what the hell he had just done to “buy,” Jayarr recalls Earthscribe telling: “II played it for a while and then decided I couldn't take it anymore. I feel like the creators tried to desensitize you to undeserved violence.” Another user complains: “The violence in the game is extreme, but it's self-aware and part of the game. The snuff movie aspect works well.” Many of the segments act as classic rock star-style satire. “The results on Metacritic are ultimately positive, the game achieves a more than decent score of 76.”, which is partly complicated by potentially boring stealth mechanics, shaky controls, and a general lack of deeper gameplay elements. The praise is mainly expressed by journalists who are convinced that they have seen a remarkable double reading in “Manhunt”. In September 2003, for example, GamesMaster wrote that the game “has a twisted subtlety that calls into question the reality of the game…It creates a dry, harsh, violent experience and then infuses it with something twisted and darkly comic,” Game Informer points out points out that it is “a frightening premise that puts players in a psychological bind.”
But for political areas such as high authorities it is too much. Manhunt is banned by the Film and Literature Classification Office in New Zealand, but also in Germany, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Australia. In Canada, it was Ontario's first video game to be classified as a film and was restricted to adults. And in England, He is the subject of heated controversy after a morbid news story. A 17-year-old lured his friend to a park to brutally kill him with a knife. The victim's parents accuse the video game, which is forbidden for minors, of instilling in him this terrible project. They've even hired a lawyer to represent them in a lawsuit against Sony Computer Entertainment and Rockstar Games. But the judge places sole responsibility for the murder on the teenager and the police announce that the game was never found in the murderer's bedroom, but in the victim's bedroom. And ultimately, none of these disappointments will stop Rockstar Publish a second part of Manhunt in 2007However, it is much less appreciated than its predecessor.
“The Game We Deserve”?
In its first month of sales, Manhunt sold just 75,000 copies in the US, barely a fraction of the copies sold by GTA III and GTA: Vice City. Five years later, thanks to phenomenal media coverage, the section sold 1.7 million copies worldwide. On this subject, author Levi Buchanan rightly said in the Chicago Tribune columns: “If “Manhunt” is sold successfully, it will say more about Americans’ fascination with violence than any political speech or social debate. This is what “Manhunt” does best.” important video game of the last five years.
Even today, the title remains a source of reflection on violence, at a time when strong censorship is reducing the violent content of video games.. This was still the case in 2022, when the game Martha is Dead hid its body horror scenes from PlayStation users. An example that recalls the parallel between gratuitous violence and “positive negative experience”, terms founded by the author Markus Montola (2010) and which refer to an intense, restrictive experience, but which is nevertheless enjoyable because it is new perspectives opened; A concept that can easily be compared to the masterpiece Spec Ops the Line, whose author Richard Pearsey once said: “People won't be mad at you… if what you do is consistent with the game universe.” Finally, in Manhunt it is not primarily up to the player to judge the ethical value of their actions within the moral framework established by the game. The title invites us to control a man forced to commit murder while testing how cruel we can be to the victim. When it's time for the execution, the camera switches to the point of view of the director, who holds the player hostage and leaves them wondering whether they should be horrified or entertained by the spectacle instead. A deeply cynical experience that “we probably deserve,” says journalist Javy Gwaltney.
Manhunt is deeply cynical, but not superficial. It presents a particular vision of humanity in which people compete for survival, for entertainment, and for control over others, and it never deviates from that vision, no matter what the player thinks. At a time when a pharmaceutical executive can increase the price of a drug that many people use to treat a dangerous infection by more than 5,000%, when horrific shootings are tragically commonplace, Manhunt may have a point. Maybe this is the game we deserve.
About GTA VI
Gaming News
GTA 6 Leak: Rockstar Video Game Trailer Leaked and You Will Surely Be Disappointed!
Gaming News
Some will have to be more patient than others before playing Rockstar's new video game. GTA 6 will not be available on all platforms upon release
Gaming News
GTA 6: Will the game be too serious compared to GTA 5?