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Oct 4th, 2010 at 21:52:24 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PC) |
I think for most gamers who play modern games have realized that violence in video games has almost become a mainstay, and GTA : SA is no exception. For my second gaming session, i planned to focus on the prominent aspect of violence. It is literally impossible to avoid violence within the game. Not that i think that it is a particularly bad thing, without the violence it just wouldn’t be a GTA game. From the beginning when you are brought along to hold up a pizza joint to a mission not much later where you kill a crack dealer and several of his customers within a crack house. In that regard, killing crack users and dealers to clean up the streets is a rather sticky moral situation considering you have to perform an immoral act to solve one.
In GTA, there is absolutely no regard for human life at all. In fact, after missions where you have to kill people, you are sometimes applauded by your “homies” in regards to how well you did. However, even beyond the missions you can simply roam the streets and do as you please. This is where the player can almost become numb to the amount of violence he can dish out.
As you quickly find out, violence is one of the more entertaining things to be done when you aren’t doing missions. The developers have thought of many heartwarming activities such as plowing through sidewalks of pedestrians and killing police officers. Furthermore, they felt the need to make the player capable of picking up prostitutes, having sex with them, and if you so desire... you can kill them and get your money back.
In GTA : SA violence seems to be the focal point and after a while you really don’t mind that it is. I don’t think the amount of violence poses a moral issue for gamers within the recommended ESRB rating, as long as they can discern that it is a game and not real life. After all, people don’t want to play games in which the content is similar to their day to day lives. Gamers want to play something different and experience something they wouldn’t normally experience in their regular lives.
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Oct 4th, 2010 at 21:39:55 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PC) |
As soon as i started playing Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas i knew that a very applicable topic would be the issue of stereotyping. Right off the bat the whole game feels like one big stereotype. The art for this GTA game leads you to believe how rough the setting will be in the game. Obviously you are playing an African-American character who lives in a heavily crime ridden area where stealing and violence is the only way to make a living or solve one’s problems. This is highly stereotypical given the characters nationality and background. I can’t comment on the realism of the environment given that i have not lived in an area comparable to that. I do however feel like the atmosphere is a bit over the top give that there were multiple prostitutes walking around the houses in the culdesac giving it a very lax feeling as far as law enforcement goes.
The environment the developers chose to create where prostitutes can walk general housing areas feels rather exaggerated and further plays towards the fact that this game is based off of stereotypes to create an over the top feel for the player. To further comment on the environment, as soon as the game is started you can hear gunshots in the distance, another play on a stereotypical ghetto neighborhood.
From the start of the game you can see that there are crooked cops who run the city and abuse their power to take CJ’s money and take his weapon. Furthermore, they accuse him of murdering one of their fellow officers even though they know he just returned from the east coast. One of the very first missions has you assist an old time friend, who seems to be constantly smoking weed, in holding up a pizza place which quickly goes wrong. This is another example where instead of a job to get money, violence and robbery is the main means to make a living in this city. Once again i feel like this is an over the top generalization about the city that CJ has returned to.
I’m sure there will be many more stereotypical situations within the game but for now it is easy to see how prominent and over the top the developers have made the environment and characters.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Oct 4th, 2010 at 21:40:41.
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