Grand Theft Autonomy

The recently released, critically acclaimed videogame Grand Theft Auto IV continues the seven year tradition of the series creating uproar amongst politicians, lawyers, and parents about the games’ content.

With nearly all videogame publications lauding it as one of the greatest games ever made, and consumers following their lead, it has raked in over five hundred million dollars in just the first week of availability. The game has been declared the most successful release in history. It has fueled major purchases of both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, and has said to have entered over ten million homes in less than a month. This release clearly surpasses that of Halo 3, which was the fastest grossing game of all-time previously.

What makes this game, such a hot topic for so many people? Interest groups such as Mothers in Charge and famed anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson argue that the game’s violent and graphic content is destructive to society. They continue to say that the differentiation between virtual reality and reality is hard to come by in young people, and that they will take what they have seen in the game and apply it to real life situations. New York City officials are continuously attempting to deny that the virtual Liberty City is a direct relation to New York City. Within the game there are many monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Ellis Island that rendered extremely close to their actual real life counterparts. Officials are trying to dispel the myths that New York is an unsafe place to live due to the game’s graphic and lewd nature.

The most contentious issue with the game deals with the ability to drink and drive. Mothers Against Drunk Driving have taken a hard stance on the issue, saying that the game should be reassessed as an Adult Only game at once, yet Rockstar Games and the Entertainment Software Rating Board are not budging. Their argument is that it is a choice that you make in the game, and it is not a necessity to complete the game.

So what effect does playing in a virtual reality really have on a person's daily routine? Does criminal activity really increase when an iteration of Grand Theft Auto is released? There is no denying that the United States of America ranks number one when it comes to the number of crimes and percentage of people behind bars. Yet this game is not just an American phenomenon, it set United Kingdom sales records as well as a few in the EU. Is the game really about crime and violence, or is it about something bigger?

What makes any Grand Theft Auto a special experience to any avid gamer is the freedom (s)he gets by playing it. It is not only a fun, interesting story to follow within the game, but to have the opportunity to stray from the path for a few short minutes to perform any task humanly possible within the game allows for the type of freedom of expression people rarely get in reality. And I ask, what is wrong with that?

The game’s developer, Rockstar, has seen this before. Over the past decade, they have released five Grand Theft Auto games, each one more technically superior than the last, Manhunt, a brutal slayer game, and Bully, which takes place in a school and involves battling other bullies for superiority of the playground. Taking this evidence into account, it is obvious that it isn’t a coincidence that Rockstar games cause outrage.

The story of this most recent game places you in the boots of illegal Serbian immigrant Niko Bellic. Niko is on a quest to find a man who betrayed his squad in an unnamed Balkan war, and is well versed in the craft of killing. Despite this, the game takes a new direction by allowing players to make moral decisions. Deciding whether or not to kill an innocent man, or having to make the decision to kill one criminal or the other is the essence of what makes this game much more humanizing than the rest. Cut scenes show the pain Niko expresses as he is forced into tight predicaments. As he continues his quest to find that special someone the game constantly refers to, he plunges himself deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld. As with past Grand Theft Auto games no stereotypical criminal connection is left out. There is an Irish family always with some kind of liquor in their glass, a well dressed Mafioso who runs a trash collecting business, and a Jamaican drug dealer who is always smoking marijuana. While past games of the series have led to much racial backlash, it has been conspicuously absent in this game due most likely to the depth of each character.

People will continue to play the Grand Theft Auto series, despite the constant warnings of Jack Thompson, because there is a freedom within it no one can take away.