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Monday 26 July, 2010
One my third time playing Grand Theft Auto, I decided to look at health in the game. I was trying to get myself killed to see what would happen with the hospital bill once I ran out of money. A quick way to do this was to attack someone with a gun and have them shoot me. As I was walking down the street, I was looking at the characters and deciding whether or not they had a gun. Essentially, I was using stereotypes to determine whether or not someone had a gun.
The issue here is that the San Andreas game is based off of real cities. Los Santos is based on Los Angeles; San Fierro is based on San Francisco, and Las Venturas is based on Las Vegas. By basing the games on real cities, and presumably their inhabitants, the game perpetuates stereotypes grounded in real racial and political issues.
One of these stereotypes is gang members. As far as I’ve seen in the game, every gang member is an African American male. At one point in the game, I ran into a man whose accent sounded Middle Easter who said, “I’m allowed to be here”. At another point, some sort of news announcement was made saying that all immigrant green cards are banned in the state. In the game, there are stereotypes that African American men are gang members and that immigrants are foreigners. If a game is based on a real case, is it ethical to represent that case, and its negative components, in its entirety? Is fictional entertainment exempt from being politically conscious? I don’t think it is exempt because societal ideas go into the making of the game and get released back out into society. It is a reflection of our societal ideas in a simplistic form. More importantly, it strips the political aspects of these ideas. It is then seen as entertainment rather than as an ethical issue.
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