Grand Theft Auto IV

I bought Grand Theft Auto IV the day it came out.

I honestly wasn’t planning on buying it right away. I knew Baditude was going to pick I up, and I figured I’d let him check it out and see if it was worth it. But then I heard reports on the radio about how huge it was going to be, and read a couple of reviews that were all in the 10/10 or A+ range, and figured I wanted to be a part of it. 70% of my decision was for the game in general. 25% was that I thought the multiplayer aspect of the game sounded really neat, and 5% of it was I wanted to support Rock Star Games, and a cause that I believe in.

When I mentioned this to a workboy, he said (a touch incredulously) “What cause is that?”

“Freedom of artistic expression,” I shot back coolly. (Well, maybe not that coolly, but I meant it).

The unfortunate thing about GTAIV is that there’s simply no way for the two sides to communicate with each other. People who haven’t played the game hear reports on the news that the game generally involves murder and mayhem. There’s drinking and driving and sex and drugs and violence. Not only that, but there’s a huge amount of freedom built into the game, so the player can make some really obscene choices. A popular example is that you can hire a prostitute, drive to a dark alley and conduct your business, and then when she gets out of the car, you can run her down and take your money back. Stuff like that. The game doesn’t direct you to do this, or specifically reward you for it, it just creates a world where those choices are available.

But as I said, there’s simply no way for people who have played the game to communicate with those who have only heard about it. You read the above and are shocked, but we have ALL seen or read fictional depictions of equally depraved acts. I guess it’s the interactive nature of the game that makes it different from passively reading a book or watching a movie. I actually believe that the two are closer than most people think. When a gamer is controlling someone on the screen, it’s not “me”, it’s “him” or “my guy”. We’re in control, but we’re still primarily observers of what goes on. I think non-gamers overestimate exactly how much we gamers actually personally identify with our on-screen persona.

The second major source of confusion is that people still associate the word “game” with “children”. This needs to be addressed somehow. GTA is about as appropriate for children as the movie “The Departed” is – which is to say, not at all. (You remember “The Departed”, right? Oscar winning movie where the whole second half of the movie is people getting shot in the face, but no one blinked an eye about it?) When I bought the game from my local GameStop, I asked the drone if there were any problems with kids trying to buy the game. “We don’t sell it to kids”, he immediately responded. He even went on to say that if a kid did somehow manage to drag his mom into the shop to buy the game for him, they still wouldn’t sell it. So, kudos to that guy. A popular news story on GTA release day was that someone in London was stabbed in a line that had formed of people waiting to pick up the game. This kind of muck-racking journalism really pisses me off. I have to believe that people are stabbed and shot in all kinds of lines all the time (not to mention concerts, nightclubs, etc). Some journalist obviously said “quick, find some associate of real-world violence and this game!” and that’s the best they could come up with.

Another news story going around is that MADD is unhappy with the game because it features drinking and driving.

"Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke," MADD said in a statement released Tuesday. "Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable."

As the victim of a drunk driving accident, I couldn’t agree more. But it’s clear they never actually saw the game.

I was just playing GTA this weekend. Niko was bumping around Liberty City when his cell phone went off. It was crazy cousin Roman. “Nico, let’s go out and have some fun!” he said. So I (of course, not “I”, but Niko) picked him up and we went to a local bar. Soon after, we were standing on the sidewalk, weaving all over the place. The camera was panning around all over, and it was really hard to walk around. A little message box popped up, and said something along the lines of “You’re pretty drunk. You shouldn’t drive in this condition. Consider walking it off or getting a taxi.” Definitely something pretty strongly worded like that.

Of course, I decided to drive. Why?

I once heard a game developer define fun as “learning in a consequence-free environment”. That quote really stuck with me. Things that I think are fun are always about learning in some respect or another. If there isn’t any learning involved, then it’s just a task (no one plays tic-tac-toe once they’ve figured it out, right?) And “consequence-free” is obviously important. Given the opportunity, I’d love to get drunk and try driving a car if I was guaranteed (magically) that would be absolutely no consequences. I think part of the problem of drunk-driving is that we have no idea what .08 feels like, and can’t judge our own impairment.

So, Niko and Roman hopped in the car and we tried driving a couple blocks back to the taxi depot. The camera was blurry and panning around wildly, and the car seemed to steer on it’s own accord, and I was careening into oncoming traffic and rubbing against parked cars trying to go in a straight line. The car was a wreck, and I ran a couple people over, but we eventually made it back (real-life Adman feeling a little sick to his stomach after all the camera movement).

I couldn’t help but think that some sort of modified version of that exact sequence would be the best anti-drunk driving education ever. GIVE kids a computer game (in Health class or something) that simulates being drunk in the same way (blurry, weaving camera controlling a semi-autonomous car). Let them learn in a safe environment (fun!) about how hard it is to drive drunk. Keep a dollar tally of how much damage you cause, and how many pedestrians you killed. I have to think that that would teach so much more than watching some 1960’s filmstrip about drinking and driving. Anyways, I really think MADD screwed up, and just is trying to ride some coattails.

All that said, I’ve been really enjoying it. I read a review that lauded the choice of using Russian/Eastern European mafia as a theme, saying that it was the only crime culture left that had not yet been glamorized by Hollywood. I thought that was pretty insightful. I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface, but so far it’s been great.

And remember that line about “learning in a consequence-free environment”, and let me know if it makes as much sense to you as it does to me.