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pmurray's Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2)
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| [October 5, 2008 11:48:33 PM]
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Today, for my final GTA: San Andreas gamelog, I decided to depart from the central narrative and try something a little different.
For my 30 minutes, I decided to see what would happen, and how entertaining it would be, if I made CJ an entirely moral agent.
The rules were as follows: I could not do anything that would be considered morally wrong at all. This included stealing (cars, money, guns, etc.), killing (even if fired upon), or preforming any action that would be otherwise considered unlawful. Also, for this self-imposed challenge, I considered all resources previously acquired during game play to be fair game. This included about $20,000, a bicycle, and a car.
I began my day by going for a walk, to really enjoy my new, moral life in San Andreas. I walked for quite sometime, all the way downtown, to the mountains, and beyond. After walking back, I hopped on my bike and rode into town. I went shopping, exercised, got a haircut, a new tattoo. During all of this, I began to get bored of riding a bike, so I trekked home and hopped into my car. I drove towards the downtown area, being careful to observe all rules of the road (sans speed limit, obviously) and maintain the flow of traffic, after stopping for lunch at Chicken Hut, I got a bit overzealous, took a turn too fast, and accidentally knocked a police officer off of his motorcycle. This action earned me a star. I accepted that what I did was wrong and let the police officer arrest me. Unfortunately, this left me stranded at the police station without any means of returning home, as stealing a car would be morally unacceptable. After walking home, I tried to think of something else to fill my time, but as there was no way for me to acquire a legitimate job in an effort to reintegrate myself as a productive society of San Andreas, I decided that I had seen enough.
Overall, playing this game with the goal of being a moral agent is both difficult and boring. While trying to do this, I ultimately came to the conclusion that this game was not meant to be played morally whatsoever. Without the ability to steal a car, I couldn't effectively get around. Without being able to act immorally, I couldn't accept jobs from my fellow gang member, moreover, when I was shot at by rival gang member, I ran away; killing them would be immoral as well. Its interesting what all of this implies. CJ, by joining a gang and deciding to live his life outside of the social norms, is essentially distanced from society itself. He cannot get a normal job as he most certainly has a criminal record, not to mention a reputation as a gangster in most locations inside of San Andreas that prevents him from doing so. I found myself asking, why someone would decide to live like this? CJ's life is in constant jeopardy. Everyday could very well be his last.
The last question to ask, given what has been determined, would be why would a producer/developer make a game where being entirely moral is nearly impossible? I can answer that question with a question of my own, why would a producer/developer make a game where all you could do is be moral? Isn't that game called life? Some people may argue that this game influences violent behavior, that it glorifies it, however, I would actually argue the opposite. Games like this give a semi-accurate portrayal of what life would be like on the other side. We see how hard CJ's life is on a day to day basis, like I said, each day could potentially be his last. At the end of the day, all the blood that has been spilt, the money and cars that have been stolen rests on CJ's conscience. Games like these don't glorify behavior like this, they show the mass public how terrible it would be to live like this.
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| [October 1, 2008 09:35:03 PM]
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Several new themes presented themselves today in my playing.
Ethnicity came up in a mission for Sweet today. CJ walked into his brother's house to find Sweet yelling at their sister for dating a Mexican. This is entirely unacceptable and is just blatant stereotyping; Sweet has never met his sister's boyfriend and has no desire to do so, however, he holds nothing buy spite for him simply because of his ethnicity. Sweet asked CJ to go keep an eye on her and make sure that the Mexican is treating her right, this involved me acquiring a low-rider and competing in some form of odd hydraulic/DDR type of minigame (which was mildly entertaining might I add) The resulting cinema brought CJ and the Mexican (I think his name was Carlos) face to face over the subject of his sister. Carlos, after politely asking CJ's sister to let them talk for a moment, explains to CJ that he should give him a chance because he loves CJ's sister and takes good care of her. CJ, perhaps for a wanting of making the city a better place or maybe just for his sister, decides to agree and drops any preconceived notions he had about Carlos. This says a lot about the potential for CJ's character. Obviously racism is a part of gang life, as we can see with Sweet, but CJ decided to make the morally responsible decision both for himself and his sister. There just may be hope for CJ as a moral agent yet...maybe.
Most of my notions of the previous thought were shattered when I did the next couple of missions for Ryder. All of which involved blatant theft on an increasing level of severity. The first was out of a weapon collector's house while he was sleeping. CJ broke in, stole several crates of weapons, and took off with Ryder. This is about as far as you can push the line of "for the greater good" even in a neighborhood as volatile as CJ's. Yes, perhaps this one person didn't need all of these weapons, but regardless of that fact, that doesn't make it right to steal them, especially not to facilitate further gang conflict. The second was from a train. Ryder and CJ got a tip off from Officer Tenpenny, the corrupt cop that seems to run the other corrupt cops. Turned out that the same tip was given to other gangs, further showing Tenpenny's out of control nature and ridiculous abuse of authority and power, forcing CJ and Ryder to kill well over a dozen rival gang members, and for what, more weapons to kill more people? To me, this action is completely unjustifiable; however, I have the slightest degree of leniency in this situation due to interference on Tenpenny's part.
The third and final mission I played today involved Cj and Ryder breaking into the local National Guard depot to steal weapons. Yes, I know, I was just as shocked. Not only is the very idea of this beyond stupid, but it is just blatant theft, not to mention that you're no longer stealing from an abandoned train or a private collector, you're stealing from the national guard who is there to protect the city of San Andreas should some terrible tragedy befall the city (i.e. terrorist attack, Russian attack, rabid bear attack, etc) Not only were CJ and Ryder morally wrong in every sense of the phrase in committing this crime, but they were endangering the entire city, not just their run down area. I know that I killed at least 20 National Guard soldiers, not to mention the ones that Ryder killed. What about their families, their lives? These three missions kind of made me lose a bit of hope in CJ's character, as it would seem that he is simply acting on an Ethical Egoist, or even amoral, level. These kinds of actions, behaviors, and decisions don’t really help anyone at all and serve no purpose but to further the degradation of CJ’s self and neighborhood.
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| [September 29, 2008 10:33:23 PM]
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Today I started playing GTA: San Andreas. When the game starts out, I find out that my mother has been killed from my brother and decide to fly back for the funeral and to find out who killed her. This is the first moral dilemma the main character is faced with. We find out that he left his hometown to "clean up his act" in Liberty City and we can assume that he is doing so. However, all that changes when he comes back to San Andreas to not only bury his mother, but also exact revenge on whoever was responsible for his mother's death.
Upon arriving in San Andreas, we can see that, at least in CJ's neighborhood, a different set of rules apply. As he is taking a cab back to his hometown neighborhood, he is pulled over and nearly dragged out of the car by police. It is then that we are made aware that the police may not be a shining paragon of justice in CJ's neck of the woods. They handcuff him, steal his money, tell him that when they need him, they'll contact him, and throw him out of the car in rival gang territory. Obviously race plays a big role here; we can assume that a white person would've been treated differently in this situation.
Once CJ finally makes it home, via bicycle, he is reunited with his family and friends. From this scene on, it is made very apparent to the player that family, accountability, and respect are very important to the overall success of the main character. This is solidified by the next few missions, which involve CJ reuniting with his friends and family and "proving himself" by spraying over rival gang tags with his brother, being the wheelman for a trip to a fast-food excursion turned drive-by, and so on.
CJ, after completing a few tasks with his old gang comrades, decides that the neighborhood is in much worse shape than when he left and that he should stay in order to help clean it up. The concept of the gang presented here is, more or less, family. Ryder, Big Smoke, Sweet are all CJ has, and vice versa. They need to stick, and work, together if this neighborhood is going to be clean again. Its very obvious that the police don't care about the neighborhood that CJ lives in as I was able to beat at least a half-dozen people to death in CJ's cul-de-sac with a baseball bat and never even got one star.
One of the more interesting missions involved Ryder, who discredits CJ for moving to the east coast and becoming "soft". CJ and Ryder are discussing the increasing drug problem in their neighborhood and decided to go "send out a message" informing people that this is unacceptable on their turf. Now, if you or I were to decide to do this, we may go put up drug awareness fliers, or perhaps try to get a community outreach program started. CJ and Ryder's plan, however, is a bit different. They decide to go rough up one of the local drug dealers and do just that. Shortly after, they recognize the dealer and know where he lives. This ends up being a crack house. CJ and Ryder bust in and kill all of the drug dealers inside, thus removing a large influx of drugs from the streets and, overall, making their neighborhood a little safer/better. Is what CJ and Ryder did right? In a place where the long arm of the law cannot, or refuses to, purvey justice in the conventional sense, is it morally acceptable for self-appointed guardians to take justice into their own hands? In this case, to be honest, yes, I believe it is. You can't just sit around and hope that things will get better when you know for a fact that they will not. Especially in their case, where they know for a fact that the police aren't going to do anything about it. If they don't stop drugs from leaking onto the streets, who will?
In a mission after that, brotherhood was once again thrust into the spotlight. Sweet called CJ up on the phone asking for his assistance, he was pinned down by a rival gang and was in desperate need of a rescue. There were a few things that I felt were interesting about this mission. The first was the fact that you have a time limit; there is a life bar on the screen that belongs to Sweet. Since he is under fire, it decreases over time, indicating the urgency of the situation. The second was that you do not get a car given to you right away and are also informed that if you need a gun, you can get one before you go to save Sweet. The player is thus faced with a choice. You can run there on foot, or go steal a car in order to save your brother. Once you arrive on scene, you're thrust into a gunfight and have no choice but to take the lives of a half-dozen rival gang members in order to save your brother. Also, in the hurry to get to Sweet's location, I know I ran over at least 3-4 people and smashed into several cars, possibly injuring more. Do the ends justify the means in this situation? Is saving my brother worth the lives of almost a dozen people and property damage to even more? In conventional society, lets say Lincoln Park, the answer would be no. However, one thing to keep in mind is, the hood of San Andreas is not shining Lincoln Park. The hood of San Andreas appears to be a dog-eat-dog world. This is not surprising considering that even the police cannot be trusted to make morally sound decisions. Also, with his mother's death, Sweet is all CJ has left, therefore it is not surprising that CJ would risk life and limb to save him, knowing that, in doing so, Sweet will probably return the favor. (And given how this game is going, will probably have to)
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Oct 1st, 2008 at 21:11:04.
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pmurray's Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 29 September, 2008
GameLog closed on: Sunday 19 October, 2008 |
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