Sunday 26 July, 2009

GAMEPLAY
For my third session of GTA San Andreas I played for another hour. I was asked to do missions which included tagging over opposing gangs’ tags and killing crack dealers. By completing these missions I gained respect from my fellow gang members and accumulated some more money. I also learned that I had to keep my health and looks up by eating food and getting new clothes and my hair done. I also made sure it had to be healthy food or else it would lower my overall health status.
JUSTICE
Justice in GTA San Andreas is equated to respect by gaining more control over your territory. In order to maintain control over your territory you are told to kill other gangs’ members and publicly mark your territory with tags over opposing gang tags. Respect is important in the gang life and killing, tagging and stealing is how you do so. This game portrays gang life, and in gang life to gain justice over the death or loss of one of your fellow gang members or of your territory is by doing unethical acts. You are faced with ethical questions of whether or not it is okay for you to kill in revenge of another ones death or the loss of a gang member to drugs. GTA San Andreas answers this question with yes. You are rewarded when you accomplish acts which portray justice in the gang world.
It is arguable that this game promotes this act by rewarding unethical acts but, by being a character who is a protagonist it does not promote that they are in any way actions you should do in real life. CJ does not want to be a gang member anymore and in that sense you are a protagonist because although you are forced to do these unlawful act you are shown the brutalities of gang life. The other end of this argument can be supported though. Some critics could say that if you take words of value such as justice and respect and equate them with acts of killing and stealing you are promoting them together and separating them can be difficult. I do not agree with stance because once again I think the difference between reality and the virtual gang life is easily recognizable.

How would you say the game presents what we would call the traditional view of justice? As represented, say, by the police and the court system...

How would you say the game presents what we would call the traditional view of justice? As represented, say, by the police and the court system...

The traditional view of justice is that good triumphs over evil and all unjust or and unlawful acts are punished. If you were to view justice in this game with the traditional view, I would say there really isn't much of it. I guess you can say that this game eliminates justice. The introduction is a great example because it shows the corruption of cops when CJ is picked up by cops for no reason. They blame him for a crime he didn't commit and throw him out of the cop car with no remorse towards his situation. The cops pretty much are a gang of their own in a sense. They are also fighting for control over the territory. The very people who traditionally would be thought to help bring justice to the public are flipped to being the bad guys as well. I wouldn't say that this doesn't reflect real life either because there without a doubt crooked cops in reality. There are tons of crooked cop movies like Training Day, Street Kings, American Gangster, Four Brothers, The Negotiator, and etc. Its a very common theme.

I guess then that maybe what is going on is that in the absence of a "regular" system of justice, people are forced to fall back on more savage forms of justice? (ie, eye for an eye)