Imagine spending $20+ million on a high-profile video game only to find that puritanical film-industry censors deny you the ability to market your product, even to consenting adults.
A couple of months ago, The British Board of Film Classification, the organisation who put those age-certificates at the start of home-videos and movies decided not to award a certificate to Manhunt 2, effectively banning this product from both the retail and rental markets. This week, the British government has publicly backed the BBFC’s position on Manunt 2.
Rockstar have two options - either modify their game such that it is compatible with the BBFC’s hazy standards, or seek an alternative channel to sell their game. My hunch is that they will go for the latter.
Ultimately, the people who will be most hurt are the shops that sell games. Only this week Richard Branson offloaded his last-remaining shares in Virgin Megastore. HMV have been reportedly close to bankruptcy for a long time, and with the exception of Blockbuster, the stores that sell and rent video games are becoming rare on our high-streets.
These are painful times for games-retailers, and now the government is denying them the right to retail what would almost certainly have been a popular title.
RockStar will take the BBFC decision as a strong hint that if they want to keep both their creative freedom and their freedom to sell products they will need a new distribution channel: One that is entirely free of influence of the censors and politicians who like to meddle with the market.
Selling games directly, online is the obvious solution, simply because there is no effective means of censoring sales of software online, and given the international nature of the Internet, no one country will be able to enforce it’s moral-standards globally.
If retailers had any sense they would be petitioning the BBFC to get out of their way and let them sell the games that people want. Unfortunately I fear this will not happen since retailers are afraid of offending the “family values” groups that have lobbied for video game censorship.
In the long-term the games industry will win - retailers and the BBFC will no longer be relevant, and the games producers will have their own mature distribution systems which connect directly with the customer, free of government and censor’s interference.
