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blackraven36's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PC)
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| [October 5, 2010 12:48:14 PM]
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This time I decided to do what every GTA player does at one point; enter a cheat for weapons and go commit as much destruction as possible. I entered the cheat for Professional Guns and went on to do as much destruction as possible. I held the cops off in a certain position within the city for a little while and then stole a cop car and went cross country on a chase. I died when my car flipped and while getting out, a cop ran me over in a SUV. I then did that same thing out of the hospital, but found my way up on top of a building where the parachute was. Given that the only thing that could reach me there where helicopters, I would just shoot them down one by one.
Its amazing how long it takes to get your wanted rating up. I could run over, kill pedestrians and destroy their cars for a good 5 minutes until I get a good 3-4 star rating the cops actually make an effort to take me out. What is even more amazing, is how bad they are at taking you out. You are a lunatic running around in a fully populated city and the cops will only throw a few empty attempts to kill you for the first 10 minutes.
I find it interesting, that the game encourages you to be bad. When the helicopters show up (Minimum of 3 wanted stars), they say things like "I'm out of ammo; its OK, I brought extra!".
I think this is why it becomes so fun to run around and destroy things in that game; its too easy and too spectacular. The cops themselves seem to run on very simple code, which makes them extremely dumb. For instance, if I get off the road and go cross country, all the cops that where on the road chasing me fall away and for a minute or two, no new cops show up. Or for instance, I would have a m16 armed destroying everything, and they basically find their own way into my line of fire. If you take a game like the first Mafia (Never played Mafia 2), then its not fun being bad out on the streets. The cops are too good and you can die from crashing you car hard enough, it just takes the fun away. The same happens a little bit in the most recent GTA, because cops are actually hard to battle.
The game also gives you a bunch of things to do while your running away from cops. For instance, I went to the roof of one of the buildings in the city and jumped off the building with a parachute. Or I could have gone to the airport, stolen one of the airplanes or helicopters and continued my battle on the other side of the map.
I think what drives players to most to commit these seemingly unethical acts, in the fact that one a player dies, he/she can simply just start over. What stops people from doing this in real life is the fact that once your dead, your dead. Also, the game does not make me sympathize with anyone in the game. Unless he/she is one of the story characters, who has a personality and some kind of meaning to me, pedestrians on the streets of San Andreas fail to have that. This, however, is different from the latest GTA, where pedestrians have been coded to be more lively and human-like. With GTA San Andreas I feel that if I pick up a gun and shoot a pedestrian, its like killing a robot that is exactly like everyone else.
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| [October 4, 2010 09:12:41 PM]
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For this time, I decided to not the main missions again. While starting off, I got killed after crashing motorbike. Outside of the hospital, I decided to steal the ambulance and as I got in, realized that I could do missions. The ambulance missions are really interesting, because I have to rescue people. If I crash the ambulance while the patients are in the vehicle, I am penalized by receiving less money when they are delivered to the hospital. To me this is something completely new, because instead of encouraging me to do as much destruction as possible, I lose money when I damage the vehicle. Besides to normal driving like an idiot, I have to make sure that I dont hit anyone or anything. In a game like GTA, I feel like this forces me to be more ethical. Because GTA:SA does not have strong pentalties for your actions, many players kill, steal and do as much destruction as possible. However, when the there are some firm restrictions as loss due to that kind of behavior, it encourages me to act more ethically.
Because I haven't completed any of the missions that will allow me to go to any of the other cities, I decided to sneak it. The penalty for doing so is a 4 star rating with the cops, which means that helicopters and swat teams will be after you. In order to do so, I stole an airplane from the first city and tried to make my way over to the next city, without any preference in mind. As soon as I flew over to the other island, 2 fighter gets showed up trying shoot me down. It is interesting to note, that I did this knowing that I would be chased after by cops. Some people do a lot of destruction in order to get this kind of police chase. For me, I decided to fly in to the other island because I did not want to create a large amount of destruction, but rather simply have fun running away from cops. To me, I feel as if I am infiltrating a secrete location and try to get away from the cops while trying my best to explore the area.I feel like this brings me the most pleasure because while exploring I am also caught up in a chase which makes things more exciting. In this case, I can use the utilitarian point of view. Because I am the only one able to experience please from the things I do in the game, its ethical what I do. The bots/AI do not feel pleasure but rather simply work on the bases of logical code. In a way, they do not lose anything. For instance, when I kill someone, their instance is destroyed. However, these instances are created randomly based on my location and destroyed anyways when I leave a certain area. As a result, it does not matter whether I do kill a lot of the bots, as when I shut the game down, they will be 'killed' anyways.
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