Why ban Manhunt 2? The reason, according to BBFC, gaming's regulatory body who yesterday declared they were refusing to rate, thus banning, Rockstar's sequel in the UK, is that it 'would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors... [that] would be unacceptable to the public.' Their reasoning, vague assessments about stalker gameplay and dangerously bleak tone, is as shallow as the recent howling denouncements of violent videogames that we suspect influenced the decision: any able-minded person can see that. Whether games are violent or fluffy, good or bad, comfortable or upsetting, a ban is never the answer. Censorship is never acceptable.

We live in violent and unsettling times. Teachers are searching students for knives, children barely into double figures are hurting perfect strangers for kicks and then posting the video online so others can get some entertainment on their break and post banal comments, before getting it on their phone and laughing in the pub with their mates. Many young people are involved in shootings and beatings, fueled by a culture of drugs and alcohol, the newspapers regularly report horrible tales of pensioners being attacked for change, or some urban youth maimed for walking on the wrong side of a neighbourhood.

And we live in a culture that tolerates and celebrates violence. But the problem is not with the games, films and music that replicate and fetishize violence, it's at the core of the common modern condition. Excessively violent societies are caused by apathy, by a political system that discourages action and involvement, by a post-Thatcherite asocial attitude that says there are no ties between you and the people you live near and interact with, by schools that, with under-funding and a weary workforce, cannot instill a sense of shared values in their students, by the slow destruction of the family unit, by over-worked and complacent parents, by a empty consumerist ideology that says everything's a commodity and you don't have to actually believe in anything anymore, by a high availability of guns and other weapons, by economic deprivation and social immobility that force the use of gangs and violence to get ahead in life. This is a culture that often breeds alienated, apathetic, bored individuals, with few values and litte respect for those around them.

In this culture, a single game, any game, is the tiniest drop in the ocean.

The way to cut violence is to rebuild the ties of community and the family unit, give kids something to aspire to beyond owning the latest piece of blinged nonsense, increase social justice and make proper, safe schooling a national priority. Banning a game will do nothing: it is a distraction, recasting the problem in unrealistically simple terms that do nothing to address the reality of the complex world.

That is why the banning of Manhunt 2, for all its worrying implications, can be cast as pointless and pathetic: banning the game will do next to nothing to alter the public's attitude towards violence, since playing it would do next to nothing either. And if you really want the game, you will get the game outside the UK and Ireland with little difficulty. The BBFC's action is more posturing than anything.

Should kids play Manhunt? No. But kids shouldn't be playing Grand Theft Auto either, or watching Hostel either. Why? Because children's understanding of the world is a work in process, and they lack an intellectual firmness to really comprehend the consequences and factors shaping violence, and to know that no slick soundtrack and white shirts makes mutilating another human being cool or fashionable. BBFC knows this: hence the 18 certificates on games and films with the potential to warp children's attitudes towards violence and sex.

The Manhunt ban is the equivalent of the BBFC saying they don't have faith in their own rating system, despite ELSPA director general Paul Jackson's ludicrous claim that it demonstrates an "effective" games ratings system in the UK: that making Manhunt an 18 somehow won't isn't enough, so much so that the only option is to stop it hitting shelves. This says more about the ability of the retail industry to enforce age certificates than the content of Manhunt 2. After all, it is not the concern of game developers what the potential effects of some stranger playing their title is. That task is with the state's regulatory bodies, the retail industry selling the title, and the parents or guardians that are supposed to be monitoring what their children are viewing.

The age limit - for smoking, voting, sexual intercourse, whatever - is drawn because we accept that there is a fundamental difference between adults and children. Children have not yet been fully educated, are still developing emotionally and physically, and so many of them cannot be trusted to deal with certain things in life safely. Obviously the distinction is sometimes arbitray and incomplete - I know many under-age persons who are mature and level headed - but we accept that some sort of general distinction is needed. With that acceptance is the assumption that above the limit we gain the capacity to make our own decisions about how we live our lives. By denying Manhunt 2 a release, instead of simply applying an 18 rating, the BBFC are robbing us of the autonomy to decide if Manhunt 2 is something we want to, or should, be playing. Is Manhunt 2 really too sadistic? Brutal? Bleak? A good game? A shallow game? I don't know. Maybe the game does go too far, but that is something I should be allowed to decide myself. The BBFC, in their condescension, have decreed that I am unable to be trusted with this responsibility.

Other problems will be dissected on the boards, blogs and main site in the next few days. Why does this game deserve a ban when all of the previous decade's hyper-violent titles have avoided one? Can the BBFC really claim that no outside pressure forced this decision, after all the (unfair) controversy the original and the developers have received from the media, 'concerned' groups and a certain loud and stupid lawyer? At what point does 'bleakness' become illegal? Is the game really that harsh? (Our boy Mike has been at Rockstar's offices this month: once the embargo runs out this week expect his verdict on the tone and content of the title.)

But for the moment, there are some certainties. Banning games doesn't work. Censorship, the weapon of the small-minded and weak-willed, hurts us all. Adults should be able to make their own decisions about what they play.

And, however offensive, adolescent, unoriginal and intellectually vapid Manhunt 2 might be, the opinions of the few should not be allowed to govern what pieces of art and entertainment the rest of us adults have access to.

Conor Smyth
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