Thusday, May 8, 2008
In her column released today by Creators Syndicate, columnist Susan Estrich lambasted Rockstar Games and its employees for creating Grand Theft Auto IV, saying she writes from the perspective of the mother of a gamer.
Well I write from the perspective of a gamer, the brother of a gamer, the friend of many gamers, and, incidentally, a sane, rational, and mentally sound person. And I say she's wrong.
To explain: I find the Grand Theft Auto series distasteful; there are plenty of other ways to get in a good gaming fix without playing a mobster. But where she's wrong is when she says Rockstar's designers are wasting their talent, in essence. The thing is, they're not.
Why not? Well, as Ms. Estrich so astutely points out, Rockstar is rolling wheelbarrows of money to the bank off of the GTA series, and have a large segment of an American generation playing their games. She says they're wasting their talent because they could be using this influence for other things (presumably designing more wholesome games), but this ignores one fact: They have all this money and influence because of the kinds of games they produce. If they were making games with GTA's graphics and complex level design but with a different premise, would they have such a wide audience? Probably not. Grand Theft Auto is a proven game concept, like it or not, and as a for-profit company, it is not a waste for Rockstar to profit by capitalizing on it. Saying that they should use their money and influence to make different, less violent games is putting the cart before the horse. In games, violence sells. Whether this is a bad thing or not is up for debate, but as Ms. Estrich also notes, there is no proven correlation between playing violent video games and an increased rate of actual violent crime.
I have to commend Ms. Estrich for refusing to blame GTA for real violence in society, but on the whole, she has completely misunderstood the gaming market.
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2 comments:
I don't quite agree with this. Sure, they wouldn't have as much money and influence if they weren't creating GTA, so saying that they should use that influence to make more wholesome games is a little nonsensical.
On the other hand, Ms. Estrich's call for them to create less violent games is well-founded, I think. We could live without some of the worst violent games, like GTA. Just because Rockstar is making money off it doesn't make it right to do this.
Also, there is some psychological research supporting the idea that playing violent video games increases violent tendencies in the people who play them. Not sure how reliable it is, but I did see it mentioned.
I think what he's getting at is that it's not a waste of Rockstar's time, because they're making money at it, and that's their job.
I know I could certainly live without GTA, but if other people (who are capable of separating fantasy from reality, i.e. are mentally stable) want to play it, that's their business. *Shrug*
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