Jack Thompson's Next Big Thing
Written by Mark Osborne
Published on 02/10/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

There’s a preview out for Manhunt 2 now, which is getting much less attention than the fact that it’s being ported to the Nintendo Wii.

Although it’s ridiculous that the Hot Coffee incident has been Rock Star’s most controversial moment yet, Manhunt was definately their most daring game in pushing the envelope in how realistic and brutal the violence was, as well as how immersive the game was. I personally found the game difficult to play from the standpoint of what you were called on to do in terms of killing people. It’s one thing to play Halo and fire a railgun or whatever at aliens, or even play Goldeneye and shoot it out with soldiers, but knocking the top of someone’s head off with a baseball bat or cutting their head off with wire is totally different territory. I still remember that when my friend and I rented it to investigate the thing and I made mention that there would be wire decapitations coming up at some point she said “Well you’d have to slip it between the vertebrae, it’s be hell to saw someone’s head off with wire.”

Aside from being slightly freaked out about how she might know that or have thought of it, I said that I doubted it would go that far. Turns out she was right.

Of course now with the announcement of it going to Wii, it opens a whole new potential world of controversy. The wiimote will make the game infinitely more immersive if used to it’s full potential by the developers. Imagine using the wiimote and nunchuck to simulate slipping that wire around someone’s neck and sawing their head off.

If Jack Thompson hasn’t been disbarred by then, he’ll be all over it as being a “murder simulator,” which will be more accurate than ever before. I’m not saying the game shouldn’t come out, but it has the potential to push virtual reality and gaming in general into entirely new territory and spark a major ethical debate that until now has mostly been confined to hyptheticals and science fiction.