Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto. It’s been the talk of the town for the last week. Not just for the people around me, but for the American media at large. It is headed very quickly towards being the biggest selling game ever and is also on track to be one of the most controversial. Called a murder simulator by some and a revolutionary interactive masterpiece by others…where does the truth really lie? Can both be right, does one opinion hold more water or does a middle ground exist? I will attempt to break down the GTA phenomenon from my own perspective as a game developer and designer.
First of all, there will be no characters from GTA appearing at a Wall Street market opening. I am just thinking back to when Master Chief appeared in New York surrounded by the suits who wanted to attach Halo with the idea that games really do provide the financial potential to make a difference. Why Halo…well, Halo has a main character that is easily recognizable and Halo is attached to Microsoft, already a business leader. Forget the fact that Master Chief runs around with guns and kills things (because master chief is not killing humans). MC is killing evil aliens that want nothing less than the destruction of the entire universe.
Is Halo a murder simulator? Well yes, of course. Players use lethal weapons to make living things dead. In order to finish the game, players are required to kill enemies that are also trying to kill you. Players are required to choose which weapon, form an attack strategy, aim the weapon and pull the trigger. The more methodical a player is, the more successful the killing will be.
Grand Theft Auto presents a different picture. In GTA4, you play Niko, a mysterious eastern European man who will kill humans just because he can. It not hard to see that Niko and the people around him consider human life to not be of much value. Taking a life may even simply be a normal part of life.
Is GTA4 a murder simulator? Well yes, of course. Players use lethal weapons to make living things dead. In order to finish the game, players are required to kill enemies that are also trying to kill you. Players choose which weapon, form an attack strategy, aim the weapon and pull the trigger. The more methodical a player is, the more successful the killing will be.
So on some very fundamental levels of what is required to win the “game”, GTA4 is very similar to Halo. Now, herein lies the departure AND what makes GTA so controversial in my opinion. In GTA, to “win” I have to drive my car from point A to point B. While traveling to point B, I pass a large number of other cars as well as pedestrians. If I decide that driving on the sidewalk at 40MPH is going to get me to my goal faster, I will most likely do that, even at the expense of running over a bunch of simulated humans. Am I, as a player, expected to see those pedestrians and tell myself, “No, I can’t go on the sidewalk in this game because I would be running over people. I would run over people with families, maybe children and loved ones. That’s bad…so I will forgo driving on the side walk and more efficiently completing my game goal because I value simulated human life.” I mean, come on…really…REALLY? Ok, so what I am getting at is that the controversial part of GTA is not so much in the playing of the required elements to win the game, but it is in participating in the simulation of the elements that are violent or sexual that are NOT required to win the game.
So let’s think for a moment about the in-game decision to drive on the sidewalk and the result of running over “innocent” people. Let’s consider your average college aged player of GTA who has made this in-game decision. Consider this player now on the real road, stuck in traffic and late for work. VERY late for work. So late that this person is basically just driving to work in order to get fired. The driver has only one option that would enable getting to work on-time. That option is to drive up on the side walk and race along at 40MPH…not stopping for anything. Now we seriously have to say that this is the moment of truth. This is the moment that all the uproar about GTA is all about. Opponents to GTA who call it a tool that blurs people’s opinion on what is right and what is wrong must look closely at this moment. They must realize that their suggestion of GTA as a degradation of morals and respect for life will be the reason that this college student decides to roll up on the sidewalk and mow down innocent pedestrians.
Logic to me suggests that very few people in the world would take the sidewalk option. Even fewer would honestly have been so transformed by GTA that they would only have taken the option AFTER playing the game.
GTA4 is an interesting simulation, to say the least. Its topics of sex, violence, crime, drugs and alcohol are nothing new to this world. The topics can all be see in a single 60 min of watching something like the Sopranos or any number of gritty mafia movies…not to mention in literature from the beginning of recorded history. These shows and movies and texts, while obviously less interactive, are still stimuli and still get people to think in certain ways. These stimuli also numb people to the sight of violence and of pain and of death…and even at times seem to authorize violence (if interpreted as such)…yet none of these things generate the uproar that GTA4 has.
Video games (interactive entertainment) will remain in the spotlight for quite some time, I imagine. I recommend sitting tight and not freaking out too much. I know I won’t. The talk around violence in video games is a good discussion to have as long as we are mindful of the extremists.
