03-30-2005, 03:52 AM
>I would never purchase, nor condone a "game" like GTA for children because worse than moral ambiguity, it encourages anti-social behavior as a means to "Win".
I definitely agree with you on the first part, for the same reason I wouldn't let kids watch movies like 'Goodfellas' and 'Boyz in the Hood'. I do however disagree with the notion that GTA encourages bad behaviour as a means to win. I asked my friend if I can try out GTA3 and GTA: Vice City on his computer, to see what all the hullabaloo is all about. (Yeah it's not the recent San Andreas, but I just wanted to get the gist of it.)
I asked him if it's as violent and 'bad' as some people are saying. He said it's definitely violent, but bad as in only psychopaths would enjoy the game, hell no. It's possible to kill cops, but it's not exactly a cake walk to do so. It's also possible to do something other than just random violence, a lot of players enjoy the freedom of just roaming around.
So I tried it out, fired up a new character, and here is a brief description of my virtual carnage.
- Saw a fight going on between a security guard and some dude. The guard went down and dropped his pistol.
- I picked up the pistol, did a little impromptu target shooting in the street.
- Some stray shots apparently angered some of the people, because they came over to try to take me down.
- After emptying the pistol and killing some more people, I picked up a police baton. At this point sirens and cops seem to emerge. Who called 911?
- After getting a shotgun off a dead officer, the heat seems to really be on me, now SWAT teams are coming out, and I'm running for dear life to find a car to jack.
- Now I'm in some damaged sedan weaving in and out of traffic trying to avoid pursuit, but the car is handling badly due to all those pedestrian and other obstacles I've ran over. Just as I thought I was going to lose them near a bridge, I steered left when I should've steered right and I wound up on the river beneath. A watery grave with police sirens serenading my brief and violent end to my digital life.
Total time: approx. 14 minutes.
Now if the game truly rewarded all my random violence, I would've expected maybe a cutscene, or an advancement in the general storyline. But instead I got a watery grave. And in this virtual world, 'justice' was meted out to my nooblar behind in 14 minutes. Police showed up in minutes at the scene of my crime. In the real world, in my neighbourhood I have a better chance of getting a pizza delivered under 30 minutes, than having police show up when I call them.
I'm not disagreeing with you that the GTA series is violent, and definitely not for kids. But to dismiss them because some people think it's morally ambiguous. I don't believe that to be true.