Ever hear of catharsis? Look it up.
It's the critics of video games, not the gamers, who have trouble distinguishing fantasy and reality.
Posted on 05/04/2008 9:39:13 AM PDT by rhema
Grand Theft Auto IV hit the stores last week like a tsunami, and is expected to become one of the biggest sellers in video game history. Commentators agree that the game, with its sophisticated graphics, sets a new standard for realistic violence and sex.
News reports and game-related websites give the flavor of what avid gamers are getting for their 60 bucks. GTA IV opens with an S&M sex scene. Players can gun down ordinary citizens, beat up prostitutes, murder cops and enjoy lap dances from strippers. This mayhem is accompanied by what the Associated Press called a "nearly constant stream of filthy language."
"[T]eenage boys of America," wrote one reviewer, "... you can still kill and maim and plunder and screw until your heart is full," but now "the violence is no longer cartoonish." Thanks to GTA IV's new realism, when G-stringed strippers grind the main character's lap, the player's controller vibrates in response.
The launch of a game like GTA IV -- labeled "M" for sale only to buyers 17 and over -- always seems to provoke the same debate. Critics charge that the game harms children, who can easily get their hands on it.
Research confirms that violent media increase young people's aggressive thoughts and behavior and decrease their self-control and the inclination to help others. Adolescents who play violent video games tend to be more hostile, to argue more with teachers, to get into more physical fights, and to do more poorly in school, one national study reports.
Video game representatives make two arguments when faced with such data. First, they insist that parents are the gatekeepers for their children's play.
Sounds good, but ask any 15-year-old male if it's really true.
Second, industry spokespeople downplay the youth problem's relevance,
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
And when his young son looks to Dad as a role model -- well, that's the problem, isn't it?
I agree that it is probably not suitable for kids, but I don’t want to live in a country where the government decides which video games I can or cannot buy.
I’m a hardcore gamer who’s never understood the interest in GTA. I’ve always thought it lame.
“I agree that it is probably not suitable for kids, but I don’t want to live in a country where the government decides which video games I can or cannot buy”
Exactly. I am a church going Christian and my take on it is, if someone thinks that this is a horrible game not suited for their kids, then they certainly should not buy it for them.
No one ever says anything like this about R rated movies. It’s just that video games are too new and it’s mostly young men who enjoy as apposed to children now.
Hey, man, M & M Enterprises. If there’s a market, fill it. If there’s no market, create an appetite for useless or depraved crap. Where at the Wharton School of Economics do you take a class that finds this to be a bad idea?
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The product is the biggest selling entertainment title of all time. Bigger than any DVD release, than any other game before it. So, there is a market for it. The game, in the UK at least, is some £40. Add to that the console at £160 and you have a price tag thats into £200 ($380ish).
Not many teenagers are going to be able to buy that game, and if the parents are so dumb as to get it for their 14 year old, more fool them. A parent wouldn’t buy a mature film for thir kids, such as Kalifornia or 8mm would they? No, so just dont do the same here.
Also, most gamers today are professionals in their mid to late 20’s. You must be stupid beyond belief if you think that cos we can blow up 50 coppers in GTA, that we’re going to do it in real life.
Crazy people are crazy because of what they are, be it an imbalance in brain chemistry or whatever. Its certainly not because of an entertainment medium.
Was my impression correct?
Wow man, never heard ‘avid gamer’ and ‘never understood the interest in GTA’ in the same sentence before. Honestly, give it a go. There is a definite moral compass in the game, and essentially you’re rewarded for making sure you dont go too over the top.
“I killed people. Smuggled people. Sold people. Maybe here will be different,” says the main character, a superbly animated and deep Serbian ex-army bloke who fell into bad times. If you pay attention to the plot development and storytelling, you will learn alot, about the game, about the plot and about the duality of man.
PS: Sorry for the review, but I played it solid for 3 days, took work off and everything. Hehehe. Just dont tell my boss what I was doing...
wikipedia has a lot of detail on the plot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
Ever hear of catharsis? Look it up.
It's the critics of video games, not the gamers, who have trouble distinguishing fantasy and reality.
GTA games are usually a parody of pop culture. Vice City made fun of the 1980's, Miami Vice, and Scarface. San Andreas was a parody of the gangsta rap culture of the 1990's. GTA 3 was a parody of Scarface in a sense as well, but targeted the NY Mob.
I have the movie Scarface. It is 25 years old. I never shot, chainsawed, killed, or did drugs because of the movie. Go back 10 years before that, and it was the Godfather and Dirty Harry movies. Miami Vice was another one of those evil destroy the world things.
Speaking of video games, this is nothing new. Before GTA, there was the Doom series. Before that, there was Wolfenstein. Before that, it was Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers. Before that, it was Leisure Suit Larry. Before all of it was the movie Untouchables....
GTA is also rated M. That means it is rated R for all intents and purposes. It is not for kids.
If I ever get a PS3, I'll get a copy of this game.
It’s one of the best driving sims out there. The lawless havoc has some fun too but under the covers it’s a really good driving sim, one of the first (and still one of the few) to really get turbo lag and how much airflow it takes for spoilers to accomplish anything.
my generation grew up on the three stooges.
funny those nonpurists are also willing to ban video games.
what’s next for rino’s freespeech
oh, never mind heir mccain already has that issue covered.
So is Niko Bellic a Serbian Christian or a Serbian Muslim?
Grand Theft Auto will turn "average" 32-year-old hard working, faithful, loving family men (and moms, women play too) into A MONSTER??? YIKES!!! Where's the label!!!!
So, after reading all this I went on a mission, "obsessively" scouting for a cigarette health Warning Label to in part plagiarize, attach and start the ball rolling.
Suddenly! as if an Omen, what do I find:
"Computer games to get cigarette-style health warnings".
"The report, commissioned by the Prime Minister in response to a growing moral panic about video games, will conclude that they can harm the development of children’s beliefs and value systems and desensitizes them to violence. It will also recommend that retailers who sell video games to anyone under the age rating on the box should face a hefty fine or up to five years in prison".
On Xbox 360 there are parental controls. See Xbox 360 for Dummies.
"Oh, Nanny...Why, I?"
Source: My Obsession with Chess
;)
I completely agree. I’m an avid gamer (mostly RPG’s) & my kids play as well. If I buy a PS3, I’ll buy this. When playing games, it opens up communication with my kids on all types of subjects. I wouldn’t recommend this for children, but I don’t think this makes them want to go kill or maim people. It’s a game. I don’t feel like hurting someone because I’ve played one.
Neither, Niko Bellic is a Rorschach test.
Agreed. Any technology has, in the most simplistic terms, the potential for both a productive use as well as a counter-productive use. I play violent games all the time and I've never been in trouble with the law, pay my taxes on time, vote, socialize with the neighbors, throw parties, etc.
Whether it's firearms, music, movies, books, etc., the bottom line is:
It all boils down to the individual that utilizes it. If that individual has an effective moral center to properly distinguish between fantasy & reality, then his or her actions in the real world won't ever be influenced by that in the non-real world.
Castle Wolfenstein was pretty good for its time, and best of all, it was free.
But it got into trouble with the liberal establishment because it involved shooting those German police dogs. It’s OK to shoot the Gestapo, but not their dogs.
What’s somewhat comical about this is liberals whining about a violent, sexy computer game, when it was liberals and their twisted Supreme Court justices (with more recent help from McCain) who declared that pornography is a basic free speech right, whereas no one has a right to talk about politics near election time without a license.
Personally, I think pornography is destructive and dehumanizing, and that older people should not be watching it any more than kids. It is poisonous.
But can you get your own NPR radio show afterwards? If not, then I guess GTA4 isn't that realistic after all.
Niko = Nikolaus, a Orthodox Christian name. Serbs as a people (not as citizens of course) are by definition Orthodox Christians. The GTA character is supposed to be a criminal like they come from all ethnic varieties from the Balkans.
GTA ViceCity helped my driving skills and overall reflexes big time. Great series. To date I have not murdered any prostitutes.
I play the game and im not a killer. I love it. :P
Unreal Tournament, Tribes Shifter, TFC....basically fast paced, strategic, multiplayer chess games.
Games against an AI, or requiring a long-term, online "life" bore the hell out of me. Give me a multi-armor-classed 12 against 12 game with a few hardcore capture the flag (or points or base) maps and I'm happy as a clam.
I used to be an avid gamer. I was really into age of empires years ago when it first came out. I played AOE, AOE2 and AOE3. I lost interest quickly with AOE3 though. It's not the same game as the first two.
None of the gameboxes interested me much. I bought an Xbox360 when they first came out. I had it for about 3 months then gave it to my nephew. I really liked ghost recon on the first xbox. That game was pretty cool. But other than that, game consoles are kind of boring imo and overpriced.
Well that is teh sux0r.
I don't know if Jim Robinson will allow me to say this, but if Niko Bellic went around busting caps in towelheads, then I could see rooting for him.
Which begs the question: If this title is so popular in the UK, is it because the caucasian Chavs are pretending to be Serbian Christians killing Serbian Muslims [i.e. killing UK towelheads vicariously], or is it because the UK towelheads are pretending to be jihadis killing infidels?
Or, for this very reason [i.e the inherent undecidability of the above question], does Niko Bellic represent the ultimate triumph of Rorschach test marketing?
I don’t think it is necessary at all to have filthy language or “simulated sex” in video games - UGH.
Considering you are the first person I've ever seen make this connection, even though the war on islamic fascism is one of the biggest stories of the time, I doubt it.
Be careful. Too much play may desensitize the boy, and sooner or later he'll take to chucking turtles at other cars on the freeway during the ride to school.
I agree. Therefore, I will not purchase the game, and not worry if anyone else does purchase it.
Katherine's a moron.
Space Invaders 30 years ago; then Pacman was considered 62% violent in game(I still have scary visions of a monster mouth eating everything in sight, right up their with "clowns"...am running, running, being chased!!!).
The classic board game of chess: (I mentioned above)
The goal is to assassinate, overthrow, or trap a head of state, using a combination of church (bishops), mercenaries (knights), and mobile military bases (rooks). Based on a medieval serf economy, with monarchs (kings) controlling serfs whose rights are so frowned up that are explicitly called pawns — to their faces! The game reinforces patriarchal model, with a man always holding the power (women cannot be head of state) — but with a weird twist: the sole woman, wife of the monarch, is depicted as having sweeping powers although she often must sacrifice her life for the sake of her husband. Even worse, even monogamy is denied in this game — when a pawn advances to the eight row, it can be promoted to a "polygynous status" as a "dual wife" of the male monarch.
It is racist too. One team is all white, the other all black.
What would Dr. Thompson AT SLASHDOT make of the risks to children of chess? This is not the worst of it. Other games? Go — a game about naked acquisition of territory. Backgammon — a game about isolating individuals and hitting them. Monopoly — don’t ask. Poker — doesn’t the name tell it all?
"Clearly, continues Doug Tygar, professor of Computer Science and Information Management at UC Berkeley (Yes, Berkeley), "if we value our children, we should isolate them from the adverse influences of these so-called games (not to mention literature and music — such as “operas” and that filthy filthy Shakespeare — they only promote poor family values).
"My recommendation: let them watch TV all day long."
I played Frogger as a kid, and it made me want go right out to the nearest interstate and try to run across five lanes of rush hour traffic.
LOL
heh....Pacman. Reminds me of one of the best lines ever on MST3K: I can’t remember which movie it was but the camera pans acress a Turkish flag and Tom Servo says, “Huh. Pacman’s got his own flag.”
GTA is a storyline action game with a lot of parodies.
It isn’t necessary. But when you get right down to it video games aren’t necessary. It’s a form of entertainment just like any other, some comedians are clean some aren’t, some song writers are clean some aren’t, some movie makers are clean some aren’t. We have various forms of ratings and a society that pushes info around at quite a clip so you never need be surprised.
Well then you need to see that TV commercial I watched the other night, because they were hitting the immigrant angle really hard.
Serbs are Christians, Orthodox Christians. Same ethnic stock, and Latin Christian is called Croat, same ethnic stock and Muslim is called Bosniac.
I hope that helps.
Oh, and names derivative from Nicholas tend to be Christian.
No, you play what seems to be either a Russian or possibly Serbian immigrant.
That, and one of the first missions is to save your cousin from an Albanian loan-shark... so you get to beat the cr@p out of an Albanian (aka... the same muslims that gave us Kosovo).
Okay, that is teh r0x0r.
Seen it, just reminded me of many of the recent mafia styled movies like Lord of War, Boondock Saints, Snatch, etc.
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