Sunday 5 October, 2008

Instance number 1 :

Having "abandoned" games a long time ago for other pleasures in life, I knew that this assignment would bring back memories. Finding the game was my first obstacle as the only console I own is a Playstation 3 and GTA: San Andreas is only available for Playstation 2, so I had to find a PC version. Finally, today, after 3 days of looking I found someone that was able to lend me a copy of the game for a day.

Right from the installation screen this game lets you know what is coming. Scenes from notorious neighborhoods, policemen and gang members follow each other in the various comic-like pictures on the setup screen. After the installation was complete I was already curious to see what's so good about this game that everybody talks about on every new version but I have never played any of them.

The main character, "Carl", is an African-American that returns to his home city after and absence of 5 years. The reason he is back is the death of his mother. As he leaves the airport in a taxi, the vehicle gets pulled over by a police car. Although there is no apparent reason why, Carl is handcuffed and taken into the Police car. Before he gets in though the senior officer removes a pack of money from his pockets. From the dialog between our main character and the police officer one could understand that this was about a corrupt group of policemen.

After Carl's forced exit form the police vehicle the player interaction begins. Now I had more time to observe the neighborhood and its characters.

Most of the people were African-Americans and Hispanic (I could tell that because of the accent). It looked like a place that I wouldn't want to be in real life. The language used was very strong. For example, because it took me some time to familiarize with the controls in the game, I usually bumped on people; when that happened it was, in the best case, a swearing, and in the worst case a couple of men trying to catch me. But why all African-Americans?

This was the first "ethical" question that came into my mind. Why did the game designers choose to set the game (at least in the beginning) in neighborhoods that all the notorious people were of color? It was not only that though, while riding the bike to get Carl at his house, I also noticed that all caucasian people were well dressed (usually in suites) and would act very scared every time you would approach them. In the beginning I thought this was funny, but why that combination? Was it because the designers wanted to mimic the real world or was it or because stereotypes find their way into games too?

When Carl enter his place, he looks touched and at the same time very nostalgic. Voices from the past are presented through my speakers while, the scene where Carl is slightly touching his dead mother's picture gives the game a sensitive tone. The short dialog with another man and his promise to Carl that they will find who killed his mother, put's revenge in the game too. As I think about it, the writers are giving Carl a motive to keep going as the game progresses. This might not be only it though, they are probably giving me (the player) an excuse for doing whatever I have to do in the game (Steal, fight, kill etc).

As for now, and after 3 attempts I haven't managed to go through the point where I have to avoid the gang-members that are trying to kill me after the cemetery cut-scene. I got killed (or "wasted" as the game wants to refer to it) all 3 times.

That's all for my first impression...

More, later....

Many people in the class found that the stereotypes in the game are some what satirical, meaning that the game designers were trying to show how racist our world is. However, its still speculative that the designers were either being socially aware or they were basing the character types off of racial stereotypes on purpose.