What thoughtful criticism of videogames looks like
You’d think there weren’t many examples. And you’re right. But when you do find it, it looks like what Stephen Totilo and N’Gai Croal are doing with their dissection of Manhunt 2 (The MTV version: part one, part two; the Newsweek/MSNBC version: part one, part two, hopefully more to come).
Not having played the game, it’s near impossible for me to comment on the game itself. I’ve publicly commented that much of the Rockstar output seems to me to simply enjoy pushing buttons and boundaries, rather than really reach for social commentary or redeeming value of any sort. Today at lunch, I had the odd experience of describing Manhunt (the original) to a table full of people — and oddly, the description sounding more artistic than the actual game was.
Lots of comparisons to film are used in the discussion between Croal and Totilo; the question comes up as to whether Manhunt 2 is comparable to a Bonnie and Clyde, a Natural Born Killers — or whether it’s just the equivalent to a snuff film. In the end, we probably won’t get to decide, because pre-emptive censorship (both from the governmental and the platform-holder side) means that debates like the one that Croal and Totilo are having simply won’t be had. And that in itself seems to leave us all impoverished, regardless of the quality of the game.