Monday 6 October, 2008

I wrote this log a bit ago when a lot of the posts were short whines about how much the game offended them so it's a bit more reactionary than it needs to be now. Seems like tonight all my fellow apologists are out and about, and the quality seems to have gone up a bit(although a lot of us are probably a little too gung ho about defending it). Anyway, I think this is the weaker of my logs, but I don't exactly want to rewrite the entire thing.

Someone mentioned that death was treated unrealistically and how in one situation you're allowed to kill whomever you want, but in his mission, he failed for killing someone because he thought it would earn him respect. He then goes on to call this a double standard, and a failure of morality, when in reality it's a great example of the morality of characters in the GTA world. He expected beating up an innocent man working at a fast food joint to earn him 'respect' in his gang. This is a great example of the skewed

morality the players have going in to the game. It's not the violence that is rewarded. It's the violence against specific people: bad people, at least in the characters' eyes. The people you're supposed to kill are the Ballers, not the old man walking down the street. The people you kill while in a high speed chase from your enemies aren't something to be proud of. They're the unfortunate side effect of life in GTA's crime ridden world.


The characters don't get shocked by people dying in general, but I don't think death in the GTA world is the same as death in the real world. Getting shot yourself only sends you to the hospital. Characters don't even notice the deaths of civilians, and later in the game they don't mind that you've stolen 500 cars. The character says “What? You've wrecked that many cars? You should learn to drive”, not “What? You stole that many cars?” This is directly after your sister tells you to stop living as a gang leader, so it's around the time you're supposed to be 'cleaning up' again.

The point of killing your enemies isn't that you want them to die, but rather that they're you're enemies and you're beating them in a sort of game, even if they technically do die. It's exactly the same in CJ's world view to kill a Baller as it is to help his nerd defeat the other nerd in their little strategy game with the helicopter. The life of an 'enemy' doesn't figure in to it. They're an enemy. They deserve to die. It's interesting how killing rival gang leaders is considered immoral, but any game with armies in it has the same game play, but nobody complains about killing soldiers in those games.

I think one thing the GTA series does is show us how amoral we the players are when consequences are removed. Many of the blogs mention that the players, instead of doing the missions, end up just beating people up for enjoyment. The game does nothing to encourage this, although it does heavily encourage robbery. The money you get from beating people up is worth almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. People pick up the game and say it encourages violence when in reality it just doesn't discourage it like in the real world. In fact you do get punished by killing enough when the cops chase after you. Although it is fun to see how long you can survive with the national guard chasing after you, whenever getting chased by the cops isn't your goal to begin with, it's a pretty big penalty after two stars or so.

Your views here are extremely subjective, and the assignment is not to tear down the opinions of your fellow class mates but to give your own reflections. Also the problem with your issue with war games is that soldier are not innocent in real life, they live by a kill or be killed code, and can defend themselves unlike some of the civilians in GTA. I also think your avoiding discussing the many immoral qualities of the game by presenting the few moral checks and balances of the game. It seems that to you the designers have no moral responsibility at all.