Banning Manhunt 2

OK so we all know this by now. Manhunt 2, the game that promised to vent all your anger without having to dress like slipknot, has been called off shelves. From the coasts of the US to the British Isles, the people who think they can decide have made a verdict: This game is not for you.

First things first. Who are the ESRB or BBFC to decide? How come they get to play mommy, when my own mother doesnt do that? Well leaving birthing problems and teenage angst aside, how can any one make this decisin for me? Yes games are violent, bloody and have sexual connotations. But hell, so does life in genral. When are they planning to ban that? sorry boys, you cant say blood, gore, sex or something of that sort, before getting a rating from ESRB.

Also the only difference between the gaming and all other media is that it is not passive, you cant just sit in a corner and read or watch. This is active, and real, if you dont react you cant play. And thats not new either, has the ESRB ever heard of sports? well even cricket, the gentlemen's game, has sledging. Maybe they will ban that too.

Gaming does not make us blood thirsty zomies, with sky rocketing libidos and a coke habit. It is just like reading a book, exept the book reacts too. If gaming were such an evil technology, it would never have grown to become the force it has. All the neigbourhood kids would have been running around mass murdering the local population. Think bout it, atleast the real estate prices in Delhi would have fallen to affordable levels!

Banning Manhunt 2 will not change anything. We want some brutal action and we will get it. Guess who will provide it? The ESRB. If the market says that it wants brutality and murder, ESRB will have to relent, bend over and satisfy it. Or else, the grey markets of the world will do it for them.

Wake up people, this is the information age, you cant stop it from going where it feels like. And if you try to stop it, it will just burst out. Welcome to an era where information is Piss; You cant stop it no matter what you do.

As for me, India does have any laws to control computer gaming. The black market provides us with our usual dosage. And I know there are copies out there, just itching to be bought!

Zapak.com: 'Gaming' gone wrong

The Bollywood actor, gloved hands, glowering expression, battle stance ready, challenges you to fight him at Zapak.com, from a hoarding many feet above your car. Then, two heroines come to promote the website in your city. More advertisements mushroom all over the roads. More celebrities seem to come out of their heavy televised closets to reveal their ‘gaming’ activities. ‘Gaming’ booms, most of the forums on Zapak.com, praise the site for delivering the users’ doomed souls from the final, brutal end caused by acute boredom.

Ok, wait a minute, something seems very wrong here. It takes one look at Zapak.com, to realise that the site claims a lot more than it can deliver. Yes there are games that you can play, and yes, you can play against other human opponents. But, that’s if you want to play games that basically range from mutated variants of Tetris, to games that your average low end phone would play. If you wanted to enter a ‘gaming portal’ and have a truly exhilarating experience, then you might as well return to the PC/Console games you were playing.

Zapak.com, has no titles that would remotely challenge a casual gamer, leave the avid gamer a side. The site has many genres of gaming, right from ‘sports’ games to ‘strategy’ games, many of which make ‘Mario’ look like a marvel of cutting edge technology. In an age, where consoles like Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have entered the arena, the trend in the industry responded by bringing in a wider variety of game playing options, along with interactive environments, realistic graphics with story lines that appeal to mature audiences (17-35+ years). Instead, Zapak.com seems to take you to the past, rather than create a portal where Indian MMORGS (massively multiplayer online role playing games) may be launched.

But then again, the site is owned by Adlabs, which primarily deals in the movie industry. That may explain why the .TV part of the site boasts of playing movies. The user uploaded movies and short clips of game reviews do the obvious: review games for advanced consoles or of computer games, games that ‘gamers’ do play. But even these clips suffer from shallow content and below par production.

Till Adlabs realises the meaning of ‘gaming’, and the users decide to actually be treated as adults, expect more hoardings with smiling Bollywood actors and retrograde content.