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Some GTA IV Questions
By Corvus | May 2, 2008
I was going to drop it, but after the IGN video glorifying the game’s willingness to let you do all the things that make the game so unappealing for me (and evidently quite appealing to at least a handful of others) I can’t help myself. I’m not going to link to the outraged responses of people who don’t see the IGN video as the natural extension of the core values of the franchise. Or those who continue to argue that GTA is some sort of worthy cultural commentary. I don’t approve of IGN’s distillation of the worst bits of the game, but it doesn’t make me angry that they’d do so… only “sick to my heart” and more than a little sad. I do see it as a natural extension of the franchise and I’m confused at the number of intelligent people who seem to be conflating anti-GTA sentiment with pro-censorship beliefs. To be clear, I’m not saying that GTA should be censored, banned or altered. I’m just expressing my dismay that there’s even a market for this type of content.
While I’m at it, I’d also like to touch on how ridiculous it is that an AO rating spells market death. Since there is clearly a market for this type of game, why don’t we have a marketplace for it? Blockbuster carries “Youth Restricted Viewing” movies, which is a euphemistic way of saying, “too cheap or too sensationalist for review by the rating board,” and even Wal-Mart stocks the unrated slasher movie Hostel. Isn’t it a little disingenuous for these corporations to act as the moral standard by which video games are distributed?
Okay, back to my point. I’m going to ask a few questions about the prostitutes within the storyworld of GTA IV. Feel free to answer them, or argue, or just think about them for a while and make up your own mind what the answers to them mean about the franchise.
Do i have the option of using a condom?
Do they, or you, run the risk of contracting a venereal diseases?
Or AIDS?
Could I take a prostitute out to dinner at a nice restaurant?
Or pay for her to go to school?
Could I help her kick her drug habit?
Or buy her away from a violent pimp?
Could I ask her to marry me and retire to the south of Spain?
Are any of the prostitutes under age?
Are any of them male?
Do any of them have kids?
…or even names?
———
So tell me how GTA IV is social commentary, precisely. Tell me how the developers aren’t encouraging you to treat the women within the world like objects. Tell me how providing only the most base and vile of options in an interactive medium is art. Tell me how depicting an entire professional population as empty receptacles of man’s anger and hatred even comes close to the artistic expression of the Godfather movies. Tell me how my objection is to the portrayal of sex and not the atmosphere of violence in which it take place.
Go on. I would seriously welcome a convincing argument on any single one of those points.
…and while we’re at it, I’m seeing it bandied about that you can play through GTA IV without ever once being a criminal thug. Seriously? Not a single core mission needed to complete the narrative of GTA IV requires you to kill? Steal? Maim? Consider that an opportunity for extra credit.
Tagged:grand theft auto. |
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 pm
[...] Some GTA IV Questions [...]
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I can’t comment yet on how women are viewed in GTA4 ( still waiting on my copy), but I would like to go into abit more detail about the M-AO rating issue.
I’m also fed up with how the AO rating is still not being used when the game industry is at the point technology wise to create emotional content aimed squarely at adults. Or in GTA4’s case a very violent and sex filled world. I can’t help but think would GTA 4 be a very different game, content wise if RockStar was allowed to make an AO game. I wonder how much was left out in RockStar’s design because of the M rating.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
This post didn’t make sense to me. If a film critic analysed Trainspotting like you are analysing GTA4, they’d conclude that the film is glorifying heroin abuse.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Well the AO thing is because there are people who make these decisions who still think every game on the planet is being played by dear little Jimmy next door, who is only nine and simply cannot know what a hooker is anymore.
Ask the same executive why it’s OK to stock torture porn but not GTA IV and he’ll say it’s because kids don’t buy R rated movies. The concept of an R rated game just hasn’t entered their psyche yet. It’s all still Donkey Kong to them.
And of course, everything in a game is there to have fun with and make light of. That’s why you can’t have anything serious in a game - because of course it means you’re making a mockery of prostitution everywhere. Or something.
So no, I don’t think GTA IV is social commentary. I do think the franchise (I haven’t played this one yet) is a serious game for adults. I don’t think it raises the conversation on basically any topic, but I am looking forward to it.
I will say though, that while I think the hooker questions could in general make for an interesting game, that a movie like the Godfather movies might portray hookers in exactly the same way GTA IV does - nameless, faceless, replaceable and even disposable sexual commodities.
Now I’m not claiming that GTA IV will anything of the cultural significance of Godfather or anything - but the dehumanizing of a subject can sometimes have as much of an effect as humanizing them.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Nihil, how would they reach that conclusion? Because Trainspotting put a human face on the heroin addict and showed the consequences of the lifestyle? Exactly the opposite of the way GTA depicts prostitutes?
I don’t mind if you argue with me, but at least think your argument through.
Josh, a movie might portray prostitutes in the same way GTA does, but Godfather didn’t. I specifically brought up Godfather in reaction to posts I’ve read around the web, but even more to the point, Taxi Driver didn’t depict prostitutes that way and it certainly dealt with many of the themes people seem to think GTA does.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I don’t feel entirely qualified to answer your questions Corvus. I bought the game because I’m a sucker for virtual urban geography.
At nearly 6 hours in I’m somewhat mystified and bewildered that I haven’t killed more people.
In the ~6% (according to game stats) that I’ve traversed I’ve been mostly a taxi for hire. If you discount the casualties of my poor Liberty City driving skills (apparently they give everyone fresh off the boat a free taxi license) and the doppelgängers rekilled after mission restarts, so far I’ve only killed two hands worth of people… Poor me. 
I didn’t even get a pistol until something like hour four and a half. I can’t decide if this is due to my usual ineffectiveness as a killing machine (in video games) or if the opening to the game really is this “slow”, and if it is purposeful I’m curious if there is an intended message there.
Meanwhile I’ve played a Match-4 game in a ganja bar and I did visit the Strip Club because “my cousin Roman” requested a trip out that way (and it reminded me of my trips to real life clubs, too much money spent for too little titillation). Surrounding those two events I was introduced to Michelle (the “tutorial date”, to the callous) and have taken her out on two dates, one to a Bowling alley (made me wish I switch over the Wii) and one to the Caberet in “Broker” that was a little lame from a game play perspective. I wouldn’t have minded some sort of martini drinking game or something to pass the time a bit quicker. She kissed me (and hit 80% on the stats fondness meter, if only I could find such meters in real life), but that’s as far as that relationship has gone. I think the story is going to kill her off, and that becomes some impetus for “crazy killer switch goes off”, but I’m hoping that’s just paranoia and not the foreshadow reading parts of my brain (which are far too honed for my own good). I’ve amazingly avoided most spoilers so far.
So I still haven’t seen the IGN video, and now its harder to see it since they took it down and apologized. I can understand that the “potential” is there to do some pretty nasty things, but right now I’m not entirely certain how to get *there* from **here**…
There aren’t any direct statistics for chauvinism or douchebaggery, but would it make you more comfortable if there were direct metrics? I think the characters’ dialog reactions to prostitutes and strippers may in fact be related to such measures, or related story points in the course of the game. And there is a “sex score” statistic. I’m sure people will brag about that and the question is how are they much different from those that brag about “real” conquests? If there were some sort of combined rating for “how big of a jerk have I been in the game”, would people try to brag about that? Would it be better for the game if I could go: “Look Mom, I’ve entirely been a gentleman to the fairer sex in this game, even given the temptation of purely escapist fantasy violence and debauchery!”?
So, to your questions:
»Do i have the option of using a condom?
Do they, or you, run the risk of contracting a venereal diseases?«
Both of these are mentioned in dialog it seems, but I’m not sure if they implemented the “condom putting on mini-game” or any sort of STD-based health decreases.
»Or AIDS?«
I’m going to assume that just as Molotov cocktails always seem to remain lit and full of alcohol up until the point they are smashed that they’ve left out AIDS for the sake of gameplay…
»Could I take a prostitute out to dinner at a nice restaurant?«
Yes.
»Or pay for her to go to school?«
I don’t know. Maybe?
»Could I help her kick her drug habit?«
Isn’t that a hypocritical stereotype, Corvus?
Do all prostitutes or strippers necessarily have a drug habit?
»Or buy her away from a violent pimp?«
I don’t know. (In Saint’s Row you could become her new violent pimp, sort of…) If you can meet the pimp I’m sure you could certainly beat him up and take his money and maybe even spend all that money on the prostitute.
»Could I ask her to marry me and retire to the south of Spain?«
Considering that the game’s characters are enamored with “The American Dream”, I would think that that would be a bit of a stretch for the characters.
»Are any of the prostitutes under age?«
No. I don’t know for certain, but knowing the ESRB and the prevailing Western view of “lolis”, I can bet that not even Rockstar would go that far to shock their audience.
»Are any of them male?«
I hope so. I’m hetero, but I do believe in equal rights for Virtual America’s sex workers. I actually would get a kick out of playing some sort of “strip for the gals” mini-game for easy cash…
»Do any of them have kids?«
Probably. I’m sure they would mention them if you asked. I don’t think they have the option to ask, though. No dialog trees, eh?
»…or even names?«
All of the “dates” do, from what I’ve heard. Do the prostitutes? I haven’t met a prostitute yet, but I’m thinking that they probably do have names, or at least “stripper names” that they don’t mind sharing with you…
Like I said, I haven’t seen much of the game, and I don’t think the game is anything of the end-all/be-all on relationships with women, but even in what I’ve played there has been surprisingly more depth than what I expected.
There’s definitely a hedonism to GTA, but at the end of the day, if we can’t let our hedonistic tendencies out in the virtual worlds, where should we? Is violence-based hedonism really any more or less “bad” than sex-based hedonism? Wouldn’t you rather sexual hedonists get their jones from GTA than wandering the streets bad mouthing and shooting actual prostitutes? Maybe we should start something like the midnight basketball leagues for such sexual predators and force them to play GTA until they are altogether sick of beating up hookers?
Sorry for adding more questions to the mix, but I do think there is an interesting dialog here.
Image macro: http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/7448/hedonismbot800bis4hp.jpg (”I apologize for nothing!”)
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
For reference, each of the questions I asked is based upon a situation in a movie that features violence and/or prostitution. Many of them from movies that I quite liked, incidentally.
You say that you’ve taken a prostitute out to dinner and later say that you’ve not met any prostitutes yet. Which is the accurate statement?
I wasn’t asking about men who strip for women. I was asking about young male prostitutes who have sex with men.
Maybe not, but it would certainly be a truer sandbox, now wouldn’t it?
If I thought it was an either/or scenario, yes. Sadly, I don’t. I think one activity builds upon the other.
Another thing I’d like to point out here. I’m not saying that GTA needs any of these elements to be a good game. I’m saying it would likely need at least a few of these elements to be art, or commentary.
Thanks for your perspective, Max!
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
»You say that you’ve taken a prostitute out to dinner and later say that you’ve not met any prostitutes yet. Which is the accurate statement?«
I have not met any “street prostitutes” at this point in my play. I’ve seen strippers, but I have not seen any offering actual sex for money. Anyway, it wasn’t a “prostitute” that I took out on dates. I thought that point came across. This a “story character” that is not a prostitute, or at least is certainly not introduced in that capacity, being more of the “just a good girl from Iowa” sort of thing in Liberty City looking for a piece of the American Dream that seemed to escape her back home. Not a new story by any means, but certainly interesting in the context of what the news media thinks this game is about…
The first female character, Mallory, you meet is a secretary working in a bad, low end job for Roman, the main character’s cousin. She spurns Roman’s advances and seems to have some interest in mafiaso sleaze bag Vlad. I’m not sure where that’s going or what the commentary is behind that, but it’s interesting so far. So Mallory needs a taxi to pick her and a friend up somewhere and she phones Roman who owns a taxi service where she works and Roman sends you out as the driver. In the car you are introduced to Mallory’s friend Michelle and Mallory suggests you buy some new clothes (introduction to the just as boring as everywhere else in life shopping mini-game) to further spark Michelle’s interest and Michelle ends up calling Niko (main character) and giving Niko her number after you make that first token purchase… Then you follow up and take her on dates over the course of the in-game days,
So on the one hand the game has “good ole fashioned relationship simulation” where you have to “work” for your sex, which I’m trying to point out to you seems an interesting counter-point to the obviously puerile “pleasure” from paying prostitutes. I’m not sure if I find the actual mechanics of this frustrating or enjoyable, but it’s definitely an interesting set of choices that seem set apart from previous GTA games and well apart from the hedonism shown in quick YouTube montages.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Corvus: I’m right with you on the general objections to the backdrop of savagery and hate that on which the game is built. If they offered a path through the game that didn’t require that I abandon all concepts of conscience and empathy, well - I’d buy a PS3 and play the game until my thumbs fell off.
But I’m curious about one thing: In the past you’ve mentioned that you enjoy taking the “evil” path in a game which offers you the option. How do you reconcile this with your objections to GTA? Why are you okay with killing a peasant with a lightsaber on Dantooine, but object to killing a bum with a baseball bat in faux-New York? Is the game too “real” or too close to home? Is it something about the setting or the characters, or the nature of the violence itself?
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
“Is the game too “real” or too close to home? Is it something about the setting or the characters, or the nature of the violence itself?”
I’m not afraid of sarlaccs but I’m terrified of Joe Pesci.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Shamus said: »If they offered a path through the game that didn’t require that I abandon all concepts of conscience and empathy, well - I’d buy a PS3 and play the game until my thumbs fell off.«
Interesting. What sort of a path are you looking for? There is certainly plenty of opportunity to play the game without leaving your conscience behind… up to your definition of conscience. There are mini-games galore. You could treat it as an extremely detailed taxi simulation with bar sports (bowling, pool, darts, match-4, dating, shopping, radio, television, internet) and you won’t get rich in the game and you won’t see much of the story, but you aren’t required by the game to kill anyone or steal anything (just use the taxis from your cousin’s company, and there is public transportation and for hire taxis as well) or do anything you don’t want to do. It’s actually sort of interesting as a “taxi simulator”, and that’s a large part of the game’s design really.
On the other hand the story does seem to be about the slow descent into violent madness. Once you reach your tolerance of violence the story ends and you don’t see how it plays out… But you are free to stop watching Casino or Kill Bill when you think those get too violent and you won’t find out the ending to those either without checking the internet for spoilers.
As far as I know the story itself has no requirements for you to interact with prostitutes themselves, and if it did, that could be the point *I* quit, depending on how the narrative contextualizes it. That is if I don’t get bored with the game before that happens.
It doesn’t **force** you into doing anything that you don’t want to do, it simply encourages it by doling out story in relation to specific missions of mayhem. There’s nothing really in the game that you couldn’t do in real life, only the wonder of virtual hedonism is that the consequences are often vastly different to real life.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I was considering purchasing GTA IV for the simple reason to compare what the mainstream media has told me about this game and what the reality of the situation actually is. I do not like sandbox games so the GTA series has never appealed to me whatsoever. However I saw the IGN video and knew right away that this was not the game for me. To each their own.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Firstly, yeah, it is a bit two-faced for WalMart to carry Hostel and then freak out about AO games… Though maybe this should just encourage Rockstar to release an M and an ‘Unrated’ version of things like Manhunt? Skip the ESRB altogether and see what the pundits say? Jack Thompson would shit a brick house.
Also, Corvus, I totally get what you’re saying about the representation of prostitution in GTA. I’ve also not picked up any prostitutes yet in the game; the thought just hasn’t occurred to me. But I did find a little humor in the line “Nihil, how would they reach that conclusion? Because Trainspotting put a human face on the heroin addict and showed the consequences of the lifestyle? Exactly the opposite of the way GTA depicts prostitutes?” I mean, if any game ever discourages people from becoming prostitutes, I’d like to think it’s the one where the ‘optimal path’ (from a gameplay perspective) is for the ‘hero’ to have sex with the prostitute and then kill them. Though, it does it by putting a very inhumane face on the situation, rather than a human one.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:38 am
I was asking myself that same question yesterday afternoon. I think it’s because in the good vs. evil games, there’s always chances at redemption along the way. GTA has no shot at redemption, only the, “slow descent into violent madness.” Which, if that slow descent offered moments of escape other than, “well, I just don’t want to continue the story any more,” might be of interest.
Additionally, most good vs. evil games allow you to be evil in non-violent ways as well and I it’s typically those options that I play evil for, not the slaughter of innocents. Also note that immediately after playing through as purely evil, I play through as purely good. And if I’m still interested, I play through a third time as “me” and generally end up mildly good with the occasional bout of frustrated unpleasant behavior.
It’s probably of interest that I couldn’t bring myself to play Black & White as evil. Slapping around my creature wasn’t something I could stomach.
@Max A lot of people suggest that you don’t need to participate in the violence of the game. Unless, of course, you want to experience the plot. And from the sound of your posts, all the mini-games that aren’t related to the plot are boring. So while Rockstar seems to be sticking to a design precept I tend to like, “reward desired behavior, discouraged undesired behavior,” the desired behavior isn’t something that sits well with me.
Good conversation, everyone!
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
[...] like the Boston Globe, was happy taking the game to task on its own merits; some bloggers, like Man Bytes Blog’s Corvus Elrod and Feministing’s Samhita Mukhopadhyay were more concerned with why something like Grand [...]
May 4th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Do i have the option of using a condom? NO
Do they, or you, run the risk of contracting a venereal diseases? NO
Or AIDS? NO
Could I take a prostitute out to dinner at a nice restaurant? Haven’t tried!
Or pay for her to go to school? NO
Could I help her kick her drug habit? NO
Or buy her away from a violent pimp? NO
Could I ask her to marry me and retire to the south of Spain? NOPE
Are any of the prostitutes under age? NO
Are any of them male? NO, BUT GAY MISSIONS
Do any of them have kids? NO
…or even name? NO
I don’t know why you would want any of these options in this game. You can however hang at the Strip Club and get a lap dance, if you pay for 3 in a row you get two ladies instead of one. Oh and the controller vibrates when they rub on you. As for the prostitutes when you pick one up it will cost $30, $50, or $70, you get head or ridden in the car, both the club and hoes are viewable from different angles.
This game is like all of the others, the biggest disappointment was they took out garages so when you want to save a car you can only save two in front of a safehouse, no mansion.
You can also change what happens in the gameplay and if you replay you have a great chance of experiencing new dialog.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Alright, here’s my defense of GTA, prostitutes and all, as social commentary:
The most important behind-the-scenes fact about the GTA series is that it’s not made by Americans—it’s a bunch of Europeans (Scots, to be exact) creating a fantasy of America. As such, the comparison is less to The Godfather and more to Brecht’s “Jungle of the Cities”, which was set in a Chicago that’s never existed anywhere but in Brecht’s head; the objective is to send up the ideas that America incarnates rather than convincing anyone that this is the “real” America.
This has a lot to do with why so many GTA ripoffs have come and gone—games like Saints Row are in love with thug-life mythos, and caught between glorifying street violence and pro foma deploring it. But the mistake those games make is getting caught up in some kind of mimetic relationship between the game and real life—essentially making the same mistake as even fans of the game, treating GTA as a realistic drama rather than a satirical comedy. GTA has very little to say about violence, but it has a lot to say about a world that thrives on the depiction of violence.
The context for everything that happens in the game is driving around and listening to the radio—that’s really how you spend most of your game time—and the parodic advertisements and DJ commentary make it clear that the game is meant to be a fun-house mirror, not The Wire-style street drama. The portrait of America found on the radio is the context for everything else, and that portrait is a gleeful grotesque. Comedy is a vital concept in critically evaluating the GTA series—anyone who doesn’t deal with comedy as a genre, and how it affects our reception of what we see and do in the game world, is like a viewer horrified by the suffering of Elmer Fudd.
The game reinforces that reaction throughout—the NPC behavior is carefully calibrated to be goofy and “alienating” (in the Brechtian sense), and although the painstaking cityscape conveys a feeling of reality, the game mechanics and world keeps reminding you that this is a bunch of pixels. The effect is to produce a very visceral experience which keeps reminding you of its own unreality, and the push-pull between those two contradictory impulses produces laughter.
That’s why we chuckle every time a pedestrian goes flying over the hood of our car, or when our in-game e-mail account starts getting porn spam, or when we send a flaming car careening into a crowd. We’re shoved two ways at once—shocked by the violence and sexuality, but instantly pulled out of engagement or identification by the many cues that remind us that this is a completely artificial universe (driving your car off a six story building and walking away brushing your jacket is a perfect encapsulation of that dynamic).
That back and forth is also central to the satiric point that drives all the GTA games—a fantasy of America as the ultimate capitalist playground, where all people are never more than assistants or obstacles in your quest for riches. Part of why Vice City was such an apex for the series is because it drew inspiration from the Oliver-Stone-penned “Scarface”, one of the best cinematic wrappings for the message that drug sales are capitalism with the mask ripped off, which is the message of all the GTA games.
The world depicted on the radio is a world where everyone’s looking for products to make problems disappear, and trying to blame immigrants, media, or politicians for creating a city where selfish violence is the only way to get ahead (underlined when conservative talk-show hosts mistakenly explain disasters your character has caused as terrorist attacks). Each major character is a monster of ambition, and each will be used by you as a ladder-step and eliminated the instant you outrank him. The themes of ambition and competition, and the moral rot that results, is reinforced over and over in the game’s dialogue, when characters talk about how drugs are just another business, brag about the people they’ve screwed on the way to the top (assuring you that “you’re different”) and rattling on about their grandiose fantasies of how they’ll spend all the money their bad decisions will keep them from ever enjoying.
The world of a video game, however much you might try to dress it up in narrative distraction, is fundamentally a neocon fantasy—you, the player, *are* the center of the world, everything *does* exist entirely in relation to you—that’s just how the medium works. What makes GTA such a smart game is how it acknowledges the medium’s underlying biases (in this case, towards solipsism), and makes that part of the game’s satiric text, similar to the way Don Quixote constantly foregrounds its own status as both book and fiction to tell the story of a man driven mad by fiction and books.
Finally, turning to the original point: That’s why the prostitutes, without background or biography and subject to constant violence, have always been kept in the game even as they get less and less important from a gameplay perspective. A nameless, brutalized individual, used as a receptacle for fleeting desire and then crushed, is the perfect symbol for how the game sees every person being treated in a capitalist America, and the sheer goofiness of pixilated, low-res sex, which reduces that most unpredictable and fleshy of acts to a cliche (in the original printer’s-devil sense of the word) is the perfect summation of the game’s caricature-driven aesthetic.
May 5th, 2008 at 5:30 am
I have to confess that’s the single best defense of the franchise I’ve ever been presented with. Bringing Brecht into the discussion is a particularly nice touch.
I’m still not convinced that GTA’s efforts really rise to the satirical level of Brecht, however, and consider them more a parody along the lines of Scary Movie.
May 5th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I was going to write a defense of the satirical worth of GTA IV, but That Fuzzy Bastard not only beat me to it, but articulated my thoughts better than I could. I really do think the GTA series is a sublime satire (and I do like me some Brecht!).
May 5th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
@ Corvus:
No, no—Grand Theft Auto is Airplane; Saints Row is Scary Movie!
To be a little more precise: The difference between satire, a la GTA, and parody, a la Scary Movie, is expressing a point of view. When a killer plant smokes a joint in Scary Movie, it may or may not be funny, but it doesn’t really have A Point. GTA, by contrast, is *extremely* pointed in its consistent satire of American hypercapitalism—if anything, it can be a little ham-handed in its satire.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Now see, GTA as Airplane I can buy far more easily than GTA as Brecht.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
[...] Corvus has Some GTA IV Questions. [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
It’s a fun game for a lot of people. It appears that it was fun for a lot of people to make the game as well. A large majority of these people are intelligent people that clearly know right and wrong just as much as they know virtual from real.
It’s not like I’m fantasizing about killing a real person when I shoot someone in the game. I’m curious what happens in the simulation. I get pleasure when the simulations responds to my actions. I have control. This is the same feeling with Mario Kart as it is with GTA.
The sex part, so far for me, has been such a minimal part of the game. You do, in fact, have to wine and dine the woman to get to the option of even asking at the end of the date. The prostitutes are something you have to go seek out. Is every little detail and option simulated and accounted for? Hell no. Just like how the cops don’t care if you speed by them on the wrong side of the road and clipping a few pedestrians. It wouldn’t be FUN with all that realism.
You want to be disappointed with Man’s bloodlust and greed? Look elsewhere in the REAL world. That’s where the really sick stuff happens.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Okay Paul, I’m going to call you on your comment.
First of all, I’m not discussing whether GTA is going to turn people into killers or rapists. I’m discussing the content of the game and whether or not it qualifies as art and/or social commentary.
Secondly, I’m of the opinion that video games are worthy of this sort of dialog (even the ones I don’t personally care for) and the “look elsewhere in the REAL world” attitude doesn’t fly with me. This video game is a part of the real world. It was made in the real world, it is sold in the real world and it is being played and talked about in the real world.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Short of time, but I wanted to briefly comment that these questions are worth asking. There is clearly a market justification for the kind of violent social escapism on offer, but the issue is wider than the commercial aspect alone.
“If a film critic analysed Trainspotting like you are analysing GTA4, they’d conclude that the film is glorifying heroin abuse.”
I just wish to note that many critics did indeed reach this very conclusion in respect of this film.
And, while we’re at it, I knew the odd heroin addict who felt the same way - in fact, one guy I used to know in London who was a light heroin user (but warned people not to follow in his footsteps) was livid at the film for precisely this reason.
So I suppose my natural question is: what do prostitutes think about GTA?
Best wishes!
May 7th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I’m about 6 hours in and I can’t fully comment yet on the story, but I can already see that this isn’t the game you want to play with your girlfriend or wife in the room unless they can keep an open mind. I can’t decide if some of the dialogue is either meant to be very satirical or just plain juvenile. The strongest element of GTA4 so far is the city itself which is just amazing to drive around .
May 7th, 2008 at 6:06 am
In other words, if I’m not willing to keep an “open mind” about misogynistic media I should just avoid it.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Corvus: Good luck to you if you ever decide to avoid misogynistic media. It’s incredibly difficult.
People out there who try to defend GTA as social commentary on prostitutes… is that anything more than a kneejerk defense? Yes, the prostitutes are a background scenery to the commentary as described by The Fuzzy Bastard but the games have never been ABOUT prostitution in any way, shape or form. IIRC, the prostitutes have always been background scenery, along with pedestrians, homeless people and your fellow drivers who exist only to have their cars stolen. Even the much-deplored mechanic of running over prostitutes to get your money back was a result of emergent gameplay in a world where running over 90% of the population gave you some money. I’ll admit that I’m a little uncomfortable to see that, so far, hardly anyone drops money in GTA4 except for prostitutes and drug dealers.
RockStar have been repeating the same theme of Individual Against [satirically conservative fantasy] USA ever since GTA3. GTA4 is (so far) no different. They may swap the main protagonist’s skin colour and accent but as yet, I haven’t seen ethnicity make any difference to the basic turf wars story (disclaimer: I never played SanAn).
The strip clubs? Even though Roman will invite you, you can say no. You can play pool instead. Or get drunk. Or go bowling. OTOH I believe there’s a later mission which forces you into the strip clubs and there’s the usual Male Gaze and 90% of characters are male. But that’s in Mass Effect and pretty much every other game ever, so Meh…
You’re right that there is no way to progress the plot without criminal violence. As with all GTA games including Bully, it’s set in a world where the authorities are NOT on your side and you have well-armed enemies. Either you fight back or you die. At the same time, it does offer at least one opportunity for “redemption” within the first few missions.
*minor spoiler alert*
You’re ordered to kill someone who has angered your boss but when it comes down to it, you can choose to let him get away. I haven’t seen the outcome of that choice yet, but it’s more than was available in the previous GTA games.
*end of spoiler*
I have hope.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
@weefz Well, I can at least minimize my direct involvement with it, eh?
May 9th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Part of me, having read through this discussion, is wondering if transgressional* video games would work. Would the desired effect be possible? Would the desired effect be, um, desirable? Would it be best in a more structured game? Or could it work in a sandbox environment?
But then I’m one of those people who quit playing Wolfenstein 3D when I found out I’d have to shoot the dogs.