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IGORANDR's Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2)
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| [July 26, 2009 10:34:17 PM]
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For my third session I decided to play like I would play any video game as if it were for enjoyment as opposed to it being an assignment for homework. On a very basic level the game is thoroughly enjoyable because there is a defined storyline, well thought out characters and an unparalleled amount of freedom. The fun comes with the creativity that can be put in by anyone playing this game making the characters look or do what you want them to do. When I was playing for fun, I’m not focusing on the stereotypes or the skin color of the gang members or the type of languages or actions involved. While this type of violence and gang activity is a genuine and serious problem, the way the game is put to together it can almost appear as a sketch on Saturday night live.
The fact that you can keep starting over after you die or fail a mission makes this game similar to a Mario concept. The difference between this is that there aren’t stars or creatures in this game. Grand Theft Auto is filled with human goombas and machine guns instead of mushroom power ups. The immediate scenery in the game is designed to look like South Central Los Angeles in the early 1990s. There are various different missions that you can play which is comparable to any role playing game. The fact that gang members are being killed during these missions is only troublesome because it is rewarding the player for reckless disregard of human life.
There is a difference when you talk about death in terms of massive people being killed in a war or when you humanize each person’s story. Since the war in Iraq many television stations have been trying to portray the fallen heroes as unique individuals by giving small pieces of their life story to the listening audience. This makes each persons death more meaningful and emotional. When random numbers of deaths are announced, it’s easy for a person to get numb when they keep hearing year after year about the people being killed. This same type of response can occur after playing a game like this if you just keep seeing masses of people being killed with no repercussions. The fact that the characters are humanized still doesn’t change the nature of the actions in the game.
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| [July 26, 2009 02:49:36 PM]
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For my second game play I decided to approach this as a science experiment. I wanted to keep some variables constant and test out other aspects of the game like the missions. The first thing that I noticed is that when you take on a mission, there is a story line. There isn’t just random killing involved, there is a goal that is supposed to be accomplished. It’s almost like a mafia type of setup where there is a controlling person who tells you what needs to be done to keep the honor of the gang. When I completed a mission I was rewarded with a stat for my character called respect. In other words, the better you are at evading the police and killing the so called “bad guy” the more respect you get.
My mission when I started was from the very beginning of the game. The first mission is just to go to your house. A cinematic will start once you enter the house and you find out that your mother was killed by somebody and you go to the cemetery to find out more. At the cemetery your character meets his brother and other friends. After this cinematic you are to follow them back to their houses. At the end of the cinematic there, one of the characters mentions to you to “get some colors”. This is a reference telling you to represent your gang’s colors. You go with a character named Ryder to get a haircut and it explains after that your character will need food for energy or else you will get tired. If you eat too much your character will get fat. You are told to go into a pizza restaurant and Ryder holds up the place but the worker pulls out a shotgun. I was told to run away from this but I decided to kill the person and took their gun.
There are two ways of looking at this game, the first is somebody who is subjecting to the training and the scenario of gang life and figuring out how to ambush and avoid being caught. The ability to change what your character looks like, style of dress and tactics is what might lead somebody to think that the user is putting their own personality into a bad situation which will trigger the same type of response in real life. On the other hand, it is possible to see the humor in the predictable set up and the fun of role playing in a situation that is so obviously unrealistic. You can run over somebody in a car and sometimes they may not even be dead and will continue just walking down the street. Like everything else in life, perspective is everything, you can see what you want to see.
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| [July 25, 2009 10:26:43 PM]
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It has been several years since I had previously played any version of Grand Theft auto. When I played it this time I wanted to approach it as if I had never played it before and I was unaware of the type of game play and the characters involved. It is very easy to just jump into the game because it is like any other action game where a character is trying to get from one point to another. The difference between Grand Theft Auto and other action games is that there are a bunch of side characters creating a game family in the mission mode. However, I decided not to partake in any of these side missions because I just wanted to just get a feel for the game. The odd thing about this game is that you get a reward for being violent.
Generally you associate points or rewards in game when you have a mission and you finish it or achieve a certain goal. In Grand Theft Auto you are given rewards for anti-social behavior. It’s a situation that when you allow yourself to really identify with the character, it’s you in your game against the world. From this point of view it almost makes the player feel like there is a warped perception from right and wrong. What would normally be deviant anti-social behavior becomes acceptable because it is done as part of a goal for your gang in your side missions.
When I played I just started to wonder around and not get involved with the missions. I started by assaulting random people on the streets and taking their money and guns that they dropped. After I had killed two people, I had a star at the top part of my screen indicating the amount of trouble I was in with the police. It started with just one police officer trying to arrest me but I quickly stole a vehicle and began to run over the other pedestrians in an attempt to get away. After I had racked up 4 stars from stealing vehicles and killing police officers I had died. After I died I restarted with nothing.
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