Sunday 5 October, 2008

I am extremely relieved that my duties of playing Grand Theft Auto are finally over. Even after playing the game for only about a total of two hours, I have already tired of the excessive, unnecessary violence. Not only the violence, but the stereotypical nature of the game has reaffirmed my dislike for violent video games in general.
In a way, the game exemplifies life that is basically without any sense of right or wrong. Under the social contract theory, every citizen enters into an unspoken agreement that there are a set of moral rules to be followed in society, and that a government will exist to enforce these laws. This is not the case in Grand Theft Auto. Yes, there is the police force so when CJ wreaks too much havoc the officers of the law do come after him, but it is possible to escape them. There are no automatic repercussions for just shooting all the police officers down, and even being an inexperienced player, I could still escape the police officers. The police officers represent some form of government meant to enforce moral law, but, in the game, are not reliable to provide justice in the city. Basically, Cj’s gang and their rival gangs provide the only source of “”government” to the city, which is really no government at all, leaving everything in partial anarchy.
Overall, in my opinion here is no way to look at this game in a moral light, only an immoral one. There are very few positives in the game. I could find no way to actually act in a moral manner, and if I did so by not murdering and stealing there would basically be no point to the entire game because I would be unable to earn points and win.

You've arrived at a great conclusion that many of the game mechanics of the GTA series are morally questionable. I recommended that you play Assassin's Creed, if you haven't played it. Its an opened ended like GTA where the player can do anything they wish inside the scope of the game, however the player is forced to abide by the rules of society, if the player kills and innocent the game gets harder to beat. If you play Assassin's Creed and compare it to GTA, you'll be able to see some games show violence as a reflection of society and others use gratuitous violence to shock its audience.