New Gameplan Monday, June 25, 2007 : 12:00 AM EST By: Chris

Manhunt 2 has certainly garnered a lot of attention lately. One wonders how the game will be changed to escape its current adults-only rating since the guidelines that define that threshold are, in a word, wonky. Sometimes it's a matter of deleting a few frames worth of gore from certain parts while other instances call for major overhauls of the content. Seeing as how the game has become a vehicle for so many agendas now, I think it will be something closer to the latter.

That's not the only game tidbit in the mainstream news right now. The AMA has suggested that video games are addictive. Hey, I agree. Just like gambling is addictive, sports are addictive, and collecting ceramic cats is addictive. The point is that anything in the world CAN BE addictive to some subset of people on planet earth. That shouldn't be surprising. The difference between a person hooked on a sport and one gripped by a videogame is the fundamental discrepency in how the public views their relative addictions. Therein lies the problem. If I tell your average person that bowling is addictive, that person will most likely automatically assume that, yes, bowling is quite fun, a lot of people do it, and hardcore addiction to bowling is reserved for the fringe. Now if I tell that same person that videogames are addictive, the response will probably be much different. It seems like the default response to that statement is to assume that anyone playing a videogame is most certainly being sucked into the hideous vortex of addiction and only a strong minority escapes being pulled across the event horizon. Why is there a polar shift in how people view playing videogames compared to most other activities? I don't know, but I suspect it will disappear as generations shift.

I'd like to say thank you to the many people who emailed me with their advice on 360 games. Most all of the responses were very thoughtful and persuasive. Some people even wrote veritable essays on the subject, giving point-by-point analyses on their games of choice. These responses were of a quality far exceeding anything I'd be able to get off a message board and they were very helpful. And as a bonus, I now have enough gamertags to instantly flesh out my friends list once I get the system. Thanks again.

To end on a sour note, there won't be a comic this Thursday since I'll be out of state for the rest of week.