Why all Grand Theft Auto apologias are bullshit

[prog]

Or anyway, most of them; I roll my eyes every time someone puts forth the argument that you only kill hookers and run over little old ladies if you want to play the game that way.

This statement is literally true, but it carries the false implication that the game offers you alternative interactions with these non-player characters. Lookie, here are your two options for communicating with any of the random people walking around the game world:

• Ignore them

• Beat / maim / kill them

That's it. The controller doesn't have a "talk" button, but it has an array of buttons dedicated to punching, shooting, and breaking into things.

Your character in GTA is Frankenstein's monster. He wants to talk to the little girl with the flower, but he just doesn't have the facility, and ends up drowning her instead, because his action-range is so limited. Sad.

Comments

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Don't forget "threaten them", if you just aim your gun at them.

That ended up being one of my criticisms with BioShock as well. I also thought that game had a lot going for it, but yeah, you essentially have "the hurt button" (h/t shatterstripes) and nothing else.

[jazzfish]

Your character in GTA is Frankenstein's monster.

This? Is an awesome metaphor.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

And here I was thinking the Frankenstein metaphor was going to be "You, society, created this monster, this fascination with brutality, and now that it's alive, you want to kill it." :)

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

That is one of the more beautifully stated realities of the game.

But damn, keep it to yourself unless you want some state senator to mangle the meaning behind it for political points.

Hmmm... needs an alternate metaphor for senators that want to protect children from bad influences...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

The thing I thought fascinating is that if one steals a cab one starts running fares, and that if one steals a fire engine one goes around putting out fires. (Long conversation the other day with someone who's into the game.)

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

You could talk to people in GTA San Andreas by pressing left or right on the d-pad. They took that out in the latest one for some reason. It was funny because you could accept compliments from passers-by if you were wearing a sweet outfit, or insult people back when they swore at you.

But, yes. I'm a little sick of people claiming GTA is anything other than what it is: titillating gamer porn. The whole series is one long joke. I LIKE that, I get the joke, and I don't think it needs excusing.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

This is just a more graphic form of the same issue in a vast number of more traditional games. My kids are big into Twilight Imperium, and one of the things that bugs me about the game is that it's set up to force everyone into an all out galactic war. There just isn't any other option.

I think that's bad gamecraft in TI, and I think it's bad gamecraft in GTA. In both cases the raw complexity of the gaming system could easily sustain alternative goals, but the makers have chosen to rig it for violence. Not that violence isn't fun, but it gets kinda boring after a while.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

This is why I'm still thinking that my post on the game may amount to concern trolling.

Even assuming I have a valid point, I may be side-stepping the issue of the violence in the game.

Trying to think about this is continuing to tie me in knots. Maybe I should just let it go.

[keimel.livejournal.com]

PUTTIN ON THE RITZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!

[jonny-law.livejournal.com]

Do you then support the analogous argument that non-combat flight simulators are nothing more than terrorist training tools?

There are two options for interacting with the world in a flight simulator:
- Ignore it
- Crash into it

That's it. The controller has an array of buttons dedicated to ignoring the world (ie. not crashing) which also used to interact with the world (ie. crash).

I would assert that any argument about "exploration", which falls under your broad category of "ignore it", would be equally applicable to flight sims and GTA.

[mr-choronzon.livejournal.com]

wow good response. It's totally true. Much of the fun I get from GTA is either running the actual missions, or simply playing in the environment by doing ridiculous driving off of buildings etc. The whole violence against people thing gets old real quick, since the one-on-one combat is WAY less sophisticated than an FPS.

Same with flight sims, the actual fun is flying around, even though you can have fun at first by crashing into the Sears Tower. That gets old fast though, and then you get interested in the real game.

[mr-choronzon.livejournal.com]

addendum:

Also the media loves to freak out over video games. GTA is a pastiche of the action movie genre, which generates virtually no controversy.

[prog.livejournal.com]

The way you interact with scenery in a flight sim is exactly the way you interact with real scenery in a real plane. Reasonably good flight sims have been published for over 20 years precisely because the range of (plane-related) actions you can perform while sitting in a cockpit is so limited, so it doesn't take an enormous amount of computing resources to simulate almost all of them.

Because it's currently impossible to computationally simulate everything that a person walking around a city can do, a "sandbox game" like GTA must choose what direction of activity to focus on. The GTA games take place in the criminal underworld, as seen through an intentionally cartoony filter. Therefore, the infinitesimally tiny subset of all possible walking-around actions that the game grants you is limited, basically, to moving around and performing mayhem. This presents a cynical and nihilistic experience, and one that's entirely appropriate to the game's chosen theme.

You can postpone the violence as long as you'd like in order to quietly walk around and explore, but the game is very well designed to continually remind you to get back into the swing of things. (Ooh, look at that ramp. I bet you could jump clear over the canal from here. Hm, that's a mighty fine sportscar coming this way...)

Looking at the way you started your comment, I fear you're misreading me into the "GTA is a murder-trainer and must be destroyed" camp. No, I know it's just another violent video game, and it's hardly the first one. I have played and enjoyed many violent games. I just take issue when people claim that GTA is anything but.

[mr-choronzon.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah. It's a stupid action movie, beautifully executed. That's all.

Though I don't understand what you mean by saying that it presents you a limited set of actions on the city street. It pretty much matches my experience walking down the street. Hell, I got up to 3 stars on the way back from cambridge common the other day.

[jonny-law.livejournal.com]

Again, my point was that a flight sim also limits you to basically moving around and performing mayhem. It is the player's choice as to how the game is played.

I think your example of the ramp underscores my point. The design of GTA does not encourage the approach "Ooh, look at that ramp. I bet you could beat/maim/kill random people." The design of the game encourages the approach "Ooh, look at that ramp. I bet you could ignore the random people/explore."

I will grant that the carjacking and auto theft aspects in GTA are fundamentally different than pushing a button to start over in a new plane in a flight sim. If you want to push the point, I could argue that a player could choose to only take parked cars that are unoccupied or use a cheat code to create a car, rather than engaging in carjacking. However, after that the exploration vs. mayhem decision still rests with the player.

But I may have missed your point. If your point is limited to the fact that interactions with the non-player characters are limited to a) Ignore them or b) Beat / maim / kill them, then I agree with your assessment.
However, your allusion to Frankenstein's monster seems to suggest that, as you see it, the only way to play the game is by interactions with the non-player characters, which is limited to b). My point is that a) includes the exploration aspect of the game and does support a reasonable argument that there are different ways to play the game, ways other than killing hookers and running over little old ladies.