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There is more to violent videogames than most people think, writes Benjamin Hourigan.
Want to steal cars and shoot cops?
Then Grand Theft Auto IV(GTA IV) is the videogame for you. You won't be the only one playing it: released for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 in April this year, it's the game of 2008. In its first week, it sold over 6,000,000 copies worldwide, worth more than US$500 million. (By contrast, the final film in the Pirates of Caribbean trilogy made US$400 million in its first six days at the box office.) GTA /Vis the latest instalment in a series that has become one of the biggest brands in videogaming, a form of entertainment that looks to eclipse Hollywood's cultural and economic influence. The game is also a major instance of what some see as the depravity of modern popular culture. But more than anything else, GTAIV is an exploration of extreme moral dilemmas, and-provided that players can understand the game as an exercise in taking responsibility for their actions-its lashings of sex and ultraviolence are valuable causes for introspection.
Since the release of Grand Theft Auto III for PlayStation 2 in 2001, the series has been famous for its interactive depiction of the world of organised crime. GTA ///caused a storm because the main character could solicit prostitutes and then kill them. The later game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas created major controversy in the US when hackers found a way to unlock a sex minigame known as 'hot Coffee,' which the series' developers, Rockstar Games, had intended to cut. More recently, Rockstar's Cants Canem Edit [Dog Eat Dog], known as Bully in the US, has come under fire for supposedly promoting school bullying. People who don't play videogames usually believe that GTA IV, like its predecessors, is designed to let players revel in committing acts of criminality and violence. The fear, for some, is that the game will encourage people-particularly young men-to become violent criminals in the real world.
But as Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, cofounders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, write in Grand Theft Childhood, this fear is unfounded:
Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have...