Naomi Alderman finds something to love about the new Grand Theft Auto in The Guardian today, debunking claims that it is “horrifically violent, verging on pornographic, and that a majority of the gameplay is taken up with finding creative ways to murder prostitutes.” Her own enjoyment of the game, she says, come from the incredible graphics and the quality of the gameplay.
Okay, fair enough, but the object of the game is still to shoot people and win gang wars, right? I find it hard to fathom why so many intelligent people insist on defending this game, whose major appeal I once heard summarized as, “you can sleep with a prostitute and then shoot her so you don’t have to pay.”
Creative, indeed.
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22 comments
I was on a Feministing comment thread today where people (gamers) were strangely defending the game.
After watching a particularily offensive trailer for it, my though was, why would you defend a game where you can run a woman over with your car after you have sex with her?
Posted by Stacey May
April 29, 2008, 11:18 AM
The whole "you have sex with prostitutes and then shoot them so you don't have to pay!" line misses the whole point of the game, really. Games like Grand Theft Auto 3 (which seemed to get tagged the most with the prostitute line) are sandbox-style games where the player's given pretty much free reign to do what they like in the game world.
If you want, you can completely ignore the storyline aspect of the game entirely and do what you like. If that means racing cars down the freeway, or landing a helicopter on the tallest skyscraper and then jumping off it, or picking up patients in an ambulance and getting them to the hospital on time (this is an actual minigame in GTA3), so be it. If that means grabbing a tank from the army base and wreaking havoc in the city, you can do that too.
And yes, if you wish to pick up a prostitute and then shoot her, the game lets you do so. But note that the game never asks you to do so, nor is there really any benefit to doing it. In fact, if not for the fact that alarmist news stories keep bringing up the prostitute angle, you could play through every GTA game to date without knowing there were prostitutes in them at all.
If the objection is that you are ultimately playing the role of a criminal in the Grand Theft Auto games—one that shoots a lot of people and blows up a lot of stuff on the way to the top of the criminal underground—then I suppose the only defense to offer is that video games aren't alone in depicting and even glorifying the criminal element.
That's not necessarily to say that it's then okay for Grand Theft Auto to do it; it's more to say that it would be unfair—or at least simplistic—to say on the one hand that a game like Grand Theft Auto is nothing but filth, but then on the other hand praise, say, a movie like No Country For Old Men for its harrowing depiction of a cold-blooded serial killer. And yet if you look at how each is covered in the media, you'll find two very different treatments.
In the end, Grand Theft Auto certainly isn't for everyone, and it's definitely not for kids. And that's okay, I think. It's up to you to decide whether you're okay with the situations the game presents, or if the violence and shifty moral code isn't your cup of tea. But in order to do that, I think you have to take a closer look at what the game is about, rather than just passing it off as a video game about gang wars or shooting people.
Posted by Wesley
April 29, 2008, 1:19 PM
Regarding what Wesley said re. the ÈsandboxÈ style of the game - it also allows for amazing interventions like Jim Munroeès video My Trip to Liberty City: http://nomediakings.org/vidz/novel_am...
Seriously seriously watch this. Kind of like hipster machinima.
Posted by Anna
April 29, 2008, 1:52 PM
Anna - I'm intrigued and would love to play that vid you just linked, but have you got a link to it that isn't in sodding Quicktime?
Cate - like Wesley, I feel that videogames in general are singled out unfairly by entertainment reviewers; films with far worse, far more realistic-looking content are routinely forgiven, and books with that sort of content get a complete bye. There seems to be a general suspicion of the medium as a whole - being from the UK, I see it as part of the monsterising of young people in general (not sure that that's such a deal in Canada and the US). People who like the fantasy of winning gang wars, of lethal violence and other crimes, are under suspicion if they read books, but considered normal and even caring if they read turgid fake 'misery memoirs' to get their kicks instead.
Is there really a connection between playing games that let you, if you really want to, have sex with a prostitute and then kill her, and real world violence? Read this. Correlation ain't causation, but it sure as hell indicates that gamers are not a violent bunch.
Posted by Thene
April 29, 2008, 4:21 PM
I thinkoed - meant to say that people who like violent and criminal fantasies are not under suspicion if they read books but are if they play games.
Posted by Thene
April 29, 2008, 4:22 PM
Sorry, only have it via Jim's website. It's basically a video that uses the "set" (don't know the gamer term) of GTA as a backdrop for a kind of banal story of a guy trying to find the kinder, gentler side of Liberty City: he looks for some parks, falls into the canal a bunch, tries out being a street mime for a while... it's extremely funny and kind of obliquely makes some good points about using media against the grain.
Posted by Anna
April 29, 2008, 4:58 PM
You know what? I hate censorship, and I hate people blaming video games/Marilyn Manson/South Park/whatever for all the world's problems.
Still, Grand Theft Auto is pretty disgusting. I can't imagine wanting to play something like that - and I can't imagine what kind of perosn would. Then again, most people understand the distinction between what is real and what is imaginary - so even if people enjoy really violent, messed-up video games, it doesn't mean they're going to go out and kill people.
Posted by Lindsay
April 29, 2008, 7:13 PM
I think games come under fire more often for their violence because if you're playing a game you're much more involved in it. You're not just watching two people beat each other to death; you're actually pressing those buttons and causing that cartoon blood to fly, and feeling that adrenaline. And the fact is that young boys are playing GTA, and I think it desensitizes some of them early in life so that real life violence does start to seem a little less shocking.
That said, I'm among the first to comment when a movie is excessively and gratuitously violent. I haven't seen No Country For Old Men so I can't comment on that specifically.
Thene - agreed, I know a lot of gamers and they're the most peaceable folks around, but gamers aren't the only ones who play video games. Video games aren't regulated for age the way film is, and I feel like parents are less likely to notice what their kids are playing than what they're watching.
Posted by Cate
April 29, 2008, 7:41 PM
Video games aren't regulated for age the way film is, and I feel like parents are less likely to notice what their kids are playing than what they're watching.
Not so. There's a Wikipedia article that charts the different game rating systems you find around the world; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_ga...
If games do desentisise people to real-world violence, why are non-gaming boys more likely to be violent? (see link in my last post)
(Sorry if this comment posted twice.)
Posted by Thene
April 29, 2008, 8:50 PM
Hey Cate -- Actually videogames are rated for age the same way films are, and in many ways it's a more transparent and consistent system than for movies.
More on the rating system here: Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)
Posted by Catherine
April 29, 2008, 9:13 PM
Fair enough on the No Country For Old Men tip. My point was just that if you're going to take issue with the level of violence and sex, I think the standards should be similar across media.
As for how video games are regulated, there actually is a rating system—just as the MPAA hands out film ratings, the ESRB rates all video games and assigns them ratings based on content. Grand Theft Auto 4 is marked as a Mature game, one level below the extremely restricted Adults Only rating (which almost never gets used because no major retailer will stock an AO game and no console manufacturer will sanction one). Most retailers will refuse to sell Mature-rated games to kids unless with an adult, though because it's a voluntary system (like the MPAA ratings) it's easier in practice for a kid to buy a mature game without their parents around.
Several lawmakers in the United States, including Hillary Clinton, have proposed various bills designed to turn the voluntary system into an enforced one, doling out penalties to stores that sell M-rated games to minors and the like. Here's an interview with one such lawmaker. But even in the absence of a penalty system for stores that break the ratings guidelines, there's an easy way for parents to keep the games out of the hands of their kids if they so wish—pay attention to the big rating label on the front and back of the game, which tells you not only the general rating but also specific issues that triggered the rating (for example, GTA4 lists "Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, Blood, and Intense Violence").
Posted by Wesley
April 29, 2008, 9:18 PM
Yeah, the voluntary system was what I meant about games not being so strictly rated.
Posted by Cate
April 29, 2008, 9:52 PM
I linked to this in one of my recent posts on videogames, but to Thene's point, the best book I've ever read on violence and videogames is Killing Monsters by Gerard Jones. It's exceptionally well researched and written, and deals specifically with children and violence, videogames, and the role of fantasy.
(Though that's just background for discussion. Like Wesley and the ESRB, I'm certainly not saying that GTA is suitable for kids.)
Posted by Catherine
April 29, 2008, 10:11 PM
Dang unwanted line breaks... the posts I was referring to are:
http://shamelessmag.com/blog/2008/04/...
and
http://shamelessmag.com/blog/2008/04/...
Posted by Catherine
April 29, 2008, 10:16 PM
Both the ESRB and the MPAA are voluntary ratings bodies, so your statement - Video games aren't regulated for age the way film is - doesn't make sense; either voluntary regulation is regulation, or it isn't, and either way film and videogames are both covered the same way in the USA and in most other nations (Canada uses the same ratings body for games as the US, which is the ESRB).
Posted by Thene
April 29, 2008, 10:21 PM
It's not suitable for kids, but it's played by kids - I first learned about GTA because my friend found her ten year old brother playing with a hack that makes the prostitutes irresistibly attracted to you, even as you shoot them. What if the game allowed rape? What if its "open format" made child abuse possible? Would that option be okay?
It's not worth trying to ban this stuff, because ultimately parents are the only ones who can keep tomorrow's rapists from being indoctrinated. But this is part of a fucked-up woman hating culture of violence, and that's worth criticizing, even if it ruins your fun.
Posted by Allison
April 29, 2008, 11:03 PM
Allison, you just clarified the whole argument for me.
I was never comfortable with GTA, but got caught up in all of the (valid and well articulated) arguments like those outlined in this thread.
But your point about "what if its 'open format' made child abuse possible" or "what if the game allowed rape" crystalizes it for me: There are certain boundaries that define what we will morally tolerate a) in reality b) in fantasy and so on. Violence is fun and cool. Violence against women is bad (thus no mainstream rape game or domestic assault or child abuse came), but prostitutes are fair game. Awesome.
Posted by Erin Elliott
April 30, 2008, 1:22 PM
Allison, Erin - maybe I'm on the fringe here, but I honestly think that any fantasy is okay as long as it remains fantasy. I don't believe there are moral boundaries within the human imagination, and when imagination involves a game - where there are no real people to be affected by your actions, not even actors - I can see no reasonable argument for holding the imagination to the same standards as reality. I just read a Slate article about how GTA4 explores morality, and makes violence more morally difficult than in previous versions of the game. Which made me think; if we can't explore morality in games, if we can't choose between bad deeds and not bad deeds, can't see the consequences of the symbolic blood on our hands, where the hell can we explore that?
There's clearly two extremes here; games that always make the right choice for you, so you never have to consider what the story means; and games that truly let you do all the bad stuff without consequences. GTA is neither. I'm still not inclined to play it - but it's in that middle ground where I tend to prefer my games. (There are many games I'm more interested in that share that middle ground).
My one beef with GTA as a concept is that it's so male-centred...but so is almost every other game I've ever played. :/
Posted by Thene
April 30, 2008, 2:33 PM
Here's what I think is where the disconnect lies between "average gamer defending GTA" vs. "average person attacking GTA" is.
The game world is only so free; technology and community standards place restrictions on what's possible. Try having a stimulating conversation with one of the pedestrians in GTA—ain't gonna happen. But there's a limited range of activities you CAN do with any person in the game—brush past them roughly on the street and they'll tell you to watch where you're going. Bump into them with your car and they might try to fight you. Shoot them, and they'll run away—or die.
The key here is you can kill anyone in the game world, pretty much. If you so desired, you could walk into a mall with a giant machine gun and shoot everyone in the mall. You can shoot police officers. You can shoot taxi drivers. You can shoot women on the sidewalk. And yes, you can shoot prostitutes.
But when Rockstar set out to make Grand Theft Auto, they didn't say "hey, we should add in some code that specifically lets you shoot prostitutes." The worst you can say is that Rockstar DID put in some code that specifically allows you to have sex with prostitutes, and not random pedestrians. (Later versions of GTA allowed you to take out and have sex with girlfriends, and I'm not even sure if there are prostitutes in the latest version, GTA4.) In other words, the ability to kill prostitutes is likely an unexpected side effect of the sandbox environment, NOT an intended ability. Being able to kill prostitutes, or police officers, or random people on the street, is simply an emergent property of being able to kill anyone.
Posted by Wesley
April 30, 2008, 3:07 PM
(Part two. You know you probably care too much about the discussion when the comments system tells you you're too long-winded.)
What if the open format made rape possible? Take the example of The Sims, a game I'll bet most of you have heard of. Basically, you control a virtual person called a Sim—you decide when they eat, what they say to friends, what job they get, even when they bathe and go to the toilet. Sounds fine in practice, but if you wanted to be truly sadistic, you could just as easily wall off your Sim in a tiny closet with no windows or doors and watch them starve to death. You will even be kept informed of when the Sim has pissed his pants because of a lack of a toilet, or was unable to sleep because there was no bed. Do we then decide The Sims is a bad influence because the possibility of torture is available?
Should you be able to do more than just kill people in GTA? Absolutely, though I think the problem here is technological. Should you perhaps not be able to kill people at all? Maybe—there are plenty of games I know of where you cannot kill people, either intentionally or simply because no one ever bothered to create the ability to die or kill others. There was, in fact, supposed to be a Streets of SimCity game years ago that, in hindsight, probably would've looked like a non-violent version of GTA3 (the game was eventually cancelled).
But I really don't think the game promotes violence against prostitutes at all. I think it's too easy an out to use that as an explanation for why this game in particular seems to make so many people uncomfortable, when there are plenty of violent games out there and even some with sex minigames (hello, God of War) that don't get nearly the same amount of attention.
Posted by Wesley
April 30, 2008, 3:07 PM
I don't think your position is so fringe Thene. If it is, then I'm out there with you.
If I morally object to the content of a game like GTA, I should have the right not to play it (which I have). It should be labeled to indicate that it contains disturbing content (which it is). As a parent, I should be able to tell in the store, from reading the box, whether it is age-appropriate for my child (which they can).
As people trying to nudge the world forward, we should of course be discussing what constitutes "good" and "bad" content. What direction we would like games to go in (or move away from). We can buy and promote games that are well-made. You can lobby Rockstar to take their head out of their ass if you think their content is objectionable.
If we play, or encounter firsthand, a game and find it appalling, then we can absolutely spread the word in a "WTF are they thinking" way. But there is a very important line there (that I feel is getting blurred) between a well-informed critique and saying they don't have the right to make the content in the first place.
Posted by Catherine
April 30, 2008, 5:26 PM
Wesley, your arguements are very well laid out, and I applaud them. I would also like to add that on top of the fact that not only is the game's open style what allows most of the questionable behaviour mentioned, and does not encourage it, what the actual plot suggests you do is no more distasteful than what you would see in The Sopranos or No Country For Old Men. As for Allison, the cheat you saw did not have the express purpose of torturing prostitutes, it is just another tool in the sandbow experience. The game is not open source, you cannot alter it in any significant way. there are no children anywhere in the actual game, and you cannot make it so. Nor is the game itself "woman hating," as Wesley said killing women is something you CAN do as a result of being able to kill any one IF you choose to. The actual plot has love interests which the game actually encourages you to treat well. Is the game suitable for children? No. Does it deserve its place in modern culture? Absolutely. It is a great piece of storytelling and design, and neither it nor its fans deserve to be judged.
Posted by Taurus
June 8, 2008, 11:25 AM
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