Gamefly refuses to carry Manhunt 2 if its Adults Only rating sticks. Anyone who is a Gamefly member must be at least 18 years of age and have a credit card. This means Gamefly is telling its adult customers that they should not be playing adult games. Fuck Gamefly, I’m glad I don’t use their service.
Though not an exact fit, this letter I wrote to Wal-Mart regarding the Hot Coffee scandal is still apropos:
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“Thank you for being a family friendly store. Capitalism will never work if we just allow people to buy whatever they want. We need more huge corporations to stand up to products Jesus wouldn’t like and say, ‘No. Our customers do not want this.’ Freedom of choice is just a euphemism for evil and I applaud you in your efforts to cut down on evil. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 remind me of how precious our freedom is and that it cannot be squandered on things like allowing consumers to buy products that are legal, yet possibly offensive to anyone without cable.
While I am discouraged that your store still carries some corrupt products, in time I know that you will further thwart evil, leaving only the most God-aligned of options available to us. And what of the profits made on previously though pure products that have revealed their true colors? It is surely a blessing that you have been able to reap the rewards of foul products, as it has strengthened your Bible driven company and you will pass on that strength to your patrons by denying them access to things most vile.
I also want to praise you for spreading your wisdom by moving into towns across our great country. Without your omnipotent presence, many smaller businesses would still be peddling their Satan-tainted rubbish. By limiting competition, your policies that limit our choice of product (i.e.: choice of evil) are doubly effective and doubly empowering to the moral fiber of our communities. I only wish more would understand that the freedoms this nation are founded on are to be praised and held sacred in speech always, but to actually allow our actions to be influenced by respect for these freedoms is the surest path to Hell.
God Bless,
JS”
I agree it is stupid Jay, but I’ll still play Devil’s Advocate: does Netflix allow you to rent pornography? I honestly don’t know, but I think that helps frame the issue.
Firstly, I think Netflix should allow you to rent porn. Secondly, an AO game is like an NC-17 movie, not a XXX movie. Finally, porn is arguably an entirely different thing than film because its purpose is completely different. A game that still follows the same genre trappings of every other game but has some more blood is not really like porn is to film. Perhaps a snuff game that focuses on gore explicitly and makes no effort on making gameplay compelling could be considered pornographic.
Well Manhunt has been compared to snuff films, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the content really was much the same. In that case my issue isn’t “who should sell this” as much as “who the fuck actually wants to play this?”
“who the fuck actually wants to play this?”—– Me, actually.
I don’t, but that’s not the point. I don’t want to play dating sims either but they shouldn’t be banned because of that.