There was a big news story after the release of Manhunt in 2003. A teenager murdered his friend, and the murder was apparently linked to the gameplay. Manhunt is a horrific game without a doubt. I’ve owned and plated through the content and I was so surprised by Rockstar North. I know that Grand Theft Auto is violent, but this was completely different. Rockstar North really pushed the boundaries on this game, and it seems that their decision ultimately backfired. I found out about this whilst researching Replay: The History of Video Games, but it only stated a brief passage about it: This is what I found:
While Irlem explored the fears of acts of God, British game developers Rockstar North took the horror game in a darker direction with 2003’s Manhunt, which put the player in the shoes of a convicted murderer who is forced to kill by the director of a snuff movie. Manhunt revolved around its murders, which ranged from suffocating people with plastic bags to clumsy beheadings with meat cleavers, and rewarded players for the brutality of the executions they carried out. The graphic deception of murder and the players complicity in the carnage made Manhunt one of the most contraversial games of the 21st Century, earning bans in Australia, Brazil, Germany and New Zealand. In the UK, national papers linked Manhunt to the 2004 murder of 14 year old Stefan Pakeerah in a Leicester park by his 17 year old friend Warren LeBlanc. The police and the courts dismissed the link, not least because it was Pakeerah but Leblanc who owned the game. Leblanc was jailed for a miniumum term of 13 years for the murder. – Page 276
Links to the news stories around this topic:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-316491/Teenager-gets-life-Manhunt-murder.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/3934277.stm
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/manhunt-blamed-for-uk-murder/1100-6103718/
I want to show how violent this game actually is, so here’s a few images I’ve found of the gameplay:
Ell Roberts 