Sunday 5 October, 2008

When playing my final half hour of San Andreas, I began to realize that there are no moral codes within San Andreas besides the respect codes of the Grove Street Family. CJ’s moral codes are based on how he will further advance himself in his life on the streets.
While playing, I began to connect CJ’s actions with the ideas of Kantian morality. Kant believes that what a person should do and what a person wants to do are often not compatible. Kantianism is the idea of believing in doing what one wants to do which brings immediate gratification, but might not benefit the person in the long run. Also, doing what one person should do may cause instant discomfort or unhappiness. CJ deals with this issue throughout the game. When going on missions, CJ does not think about what will happen in the long run, rather he completes his missions without hesitation not thinking about the long run. CJ completely disregards moral reasoning and does not think about what the right thing to do is. Kant believes that the purpose of morality is to not make one happy, rather to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. CJ’s actions are based on instant gratification and happiness; his actions are not in any way based on what the right thing to do is.

Good analysis. You might want to review Kant's moral philosophy your explanation is a little confusing. The problem with GTA is that its called GTA, so people who buy it are expecting anarchy, so if you give them a game where your constantly helping people they might get confused and wont like the game, but I do agree that there needs to be a balance between decisions made for the hero's sake and those made for the sake of others. Maybe designers for GTA could have given the hero a Robin Hood character type? Can you think of any other ways the designers could find a balance?