Posted on 11/18/2004 9:40:03 AM PST by red_is_beautiful
This time, the blood spills in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," which looks, feels and sounds a lot like its predecessors. That means you pull off drive-bys and other hard-core criminal goals, while killing cops, prostitutes and hundreds of innocent victims on the side. Some people complain that the game could desensitize children to murderous images. But it's rated M for Mature. Kids aren't supposed to have access to it, even though we know that many will. [...] There's sex in "San Andreas," as there was in "Grand Theft Auto III." For a small amount of money, you can pick up hookers and drive them behind a bush. The car rocks. Talk is exchanged. [...] The game is smart like that, but the characters aren't. The one thing I can't make happen is intellectual reflection. Characters point guns. Characters kill one another other. Not one stops to think.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
The Party of Churchgoing Americans, which is what the GOP is, has no difficulty understanding that there is nothing conservative in the least about libertarian ACLU-style moral anarchism. Conservative means a committment to protecting civilized values, not the libertarian, Hollywood, ACLU values of endless, no-consequence cultural experimentation.
Just as war is too important to be left to generals, values are too important to be left to corporate mass marketers. The corporate mass marketer has no use for civilized values. He does not want moral character, deferred gratification, hard work, and concern for others. He wants laziness, narcissm, selfishness and cowardice. He wants a nation of permanent adolescents who see the world as one big high school where they have to have the "right" clothes or the "right" sneakers or the "right" whatever to belong to the cools. He wants shallow, rootless people who follow the crowd. Haven't we become a nation where adolescence begins at 8 and ends at 40 ? The Christian revival we as a nation are experiencing is a fight against this.</P>
Nope. It's set in the near future, in a three-way war between the US, China, and the global terrorist network. You get to use suicide bombers and anthrax when playing as the terrorists. It's rated "T" and played by millions of teens, most of whom can tell the difference between pixels and reality.
Ankle holster.
W would have lost had he not also received the votes of social moderates.
Sheesh, when I want to read inane anti-business screeds I can go to Slashdot. The "corporate mass-marketer" wants exactly one thing: profit. If he's producing sex and violence, it's because we're buying it. Be honest; your problem isn't with Hollywood, it's with your fellow Americans who like things that you don't.
"Are you a professional moron? Or just a gifted amateur."
However, if you are a parent, and your youngter is playing this game, then you are a bad parent. It is not for kids. The average age of a gamer is now 28 and mature enough to play this game.
Is Laz in the new game?
Havign trouble with Vice City? Go to gamefaq.com.
Let me guess. The racing mission, and you're stuck with a #@^#ing "Sentinel"(BMW) and not a Comet(Porsche) or a bike???
You know, the anti-gun lobby uses the same argument. Maybe we should start banning guns too. After all, it is the govt's responsibility to tell us what is and isn't right.
/sarc
Those civilized values include a strong desire among true conservatives (rather than RINOs who worship the state) to be left alone by the government to the greatest extent possible. You want the state to poke its head into your life and protect you and your kids from naked women and violent videogames. The state can do that, but once you give it the power to ban some things people read, watch and play you'll soon find that the state will go much further and try to control EVERYTHING you read, watch and play.
You want the GOP to turn into a right-wing version of the Dems.- using the government to control people's lives.
Just as war is too important to be left to generals, values are too important to be left to corporate mass marketers.
And your solution is to leave values to the GOVERNMENT? You might as well let NAMBLA babysit your kids.
I vote Imperial Army. No way I'm playing as a bunch of left-wing terrorists.
The GOP isn't JUST the party of Churchgoing Americans. The other two planks of the GOP are fiscal conservatism, and small government/ Constitutional Constructionalism. And the problem is censorship runs 100% contrary to that 3rd plank.
No war is too important to be left up to the politicians. When we don't leave war up to the generals we wind up with Viet Nam, 11 year half-assed involvement in a war that the otherside says we could have won in under 2 months at any point during the war. The decision to go to war is political, once you're in it the decisions belong to the generals, they're the ones who know how to win wars. Show me a politician that knows how to win war and I'll show you a politician who once was a general or at the very least respects them.
Yeah, and TIE Figher was one of my favorites many years ago. It actually had good propaganda portraying the Empire as supporting peace and law and order.
Executive summary: there's a long history of games that let you play as the bad guy. Civilization has not collapsed as a result.
Apparently you brain has never heard of "The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism" by Joseph Schumpeter, the man who created the concept of "creative destruction".
When Schumpeter wrote, he only foresaw that the modern mass marketer would destroy the thrift, deferred-gratification, hard work, no frills 1750 Scottish Presbyterian values that had created capitalism in the first place. He could not have forseen that they would destroy adulthood altogether and replace it with permanent adolescence dominated by high school fears of rejection.
The messages and images of the mass marketer, the values behind them, didn't just happen. They were created by very capable people who spent a lot of time and money researching your fears and wants. If they've got your mind, your wallet will follow. If they've got your children's minds, your wallet will follow because it will be the price of peace.
"Um..."Manhunt" was played by the victim, not the killer."
He was a victim who also happened to be a murderer and then proceeds to kill other killers with a variety of improvised objects. (And the basic premise of the game is that someone is filming all of this for use as a snuff film.)
The slow time cheat code is the best way to handle those racing missions... actually it's the only way I can handle them. Steering is a lot easier when time is slowed. I had to triple up on the slow time cheat (each use halves time) to do that $%^& model helicopter mission, and it still took me 2 tries.
ok, maybe i'm not familiar enough with the variety of games, but i find it precarious that a game like GTA (and obviously others) allows to take the perspective of criminals, terrorists and other freaks and kill the good guys. of course i'm not that stupid and believe people mistake reality for virtuality... but the problem is not a rational one, it's about effects on the subconsciousness (of children) which undermine fundamental social rules and moral values and provide at least an indifference for social problems (and the rights of consumers (esp. children) not to be "manipulated" in that way.)
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