Why GTA 5's most controversial mission may be unpleasant and repulsive but there is a message behind the degradation:
- One almost designed to generate outraged opinion pieces decrying the damaging effect of video games on our otherwise innocent children (neatly obfuscating the fact that GTA V, like all manner of equally explicit films, is a product that, by law, can only be sold to over 18s).
- Trevor Phillips, the torturer, is a psychopathic career criminal who savagely stamps a man to death within minutes of being introduced earlier on in the game.
GTA 5: the violence debate
The gaming world has been eagerly anticipating what has been dubbed the "most exciting" event in the entertainment calendar - the release of the game which cost more to make then many Hollywood blockbusters.
Grand Theft Auto V reportedly cost around £170 million to make and market - more than films such as Avatar - and has sparked so much interest that stores will open their doors at midnight on Monday for special launch events.
The GTA series has always been controversial. Critics cite the remorseless emphasis on crime and violence and question the subtlety of its satire, while fans praise the staggeringly comprehensive game world that allows players freedom of movement and action in meticulously recreated versions of America’s greatest cities, and hail the writers’ lethally funny intolerance for American political and social exceptionalism.
The Telegraph's pro-GTA Mic Wright and anti-GTA Cristina Odone take on the debate about the video game series' use of violence.
- This video/article is a debate between two people within the same status but one is a mother and the other is a younger adult.
- The mother explains how the violence and pornography is not something she wands her kids playing.
- They both believe the game is misogynistic to its own aspects.
- They also both agree that video games help kids with hand eye coordination and thinking skills
- Ruins social skills in real life.
The Franklin Conspiracy: Why Gamers Decided The Police In “GTA V” Are Racisthttp://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-franklin-conspiracy-why-gamers-decided-the-police-in-gt#.fuxzXKJQL8
“Cops are racist towards the black character, Franklin.”
"So, I was strolling down a boulevard, innocuous as any upstanding citizen, and suddenly, a white man begins assaulting me, making me flee as he pursued me with his frantic violence. Abruptly, I have 1 star - absolutely no reason besides the fact a citizen reported the situation and I was presumed the culprit… and the cops arrive. As I’m innocent, I raise my hands, knowing they’ll understand, but they abruptly say ‘HE HAS A WEAPON’ whilst I’m unarmed, opening fire….. 2 minutes later, I’m running down an alley as eight LAPD cops are behind me, GUNS DRAWN, and I still have absolutely no clue as to why. “Is it because I am black? Is this what happens? They think I am immediately guilty? I am armed? I am a huge threat? I’ve done something?” I see an escape, a rooftop with a ladder up it, and I begin climbing, but the police murder me - shooting me in the back multiple times as an ‘armed suspect’….. execution-style as I have my back to them."
“The main thing I’ve learned while playing this game (GTA 5)”
"I was driving around as Franklin and stopped at a gas station in a more rural part of town. Got out of my car, walked up to this white trash woman. The fella she was with punched her in the face, ran away, she looks at me, calls the cops. 1 star.”
I’ve played more than 40 hours of GTA V, and I’ve experienced this kind of aggressive police behavior and emergent violence while playing as all three characters. But are these people simply extra-sensitive to the way the game treats Franklin, or are they noticing something real? “This is absolutely false, the in-game police don’t treat one lead character any differently from the others,” Rockstar said in a statement.
One answer may have to do with the area in which Franklin spends a lot of his time: South Los Santos, the game’s version of L.A.’s historically crime-plagued South Side. A higher percentage of non-player characters in South Los Santos carry guns, and a higher percentage of the dynamic events in this game region involve violence than in the areas of the game meant to simulate, say, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. If you lead the police on a chase into South Los Santos with any character, not just Franklin, the gang members who are programmed to carry guns will fire on the police, who will, of course, fire back. A lot of Franklin’s early missions take place here, and so it seems natural that more players would see this kind of emergent dynamic between his character, GTA’s gang members, and GTA’s police.
This video clip is a piece of gameplay from GTA V, the small clip is taken from a GTA v player playing as the african american lead character Franklin. In this clip he is free roaming the vast open world of Los Santos (GTA's Version Of Los Angeles). As he's roaming around he stumbles across a police station, when walking into the facility he over hears a bunch of cops swearing and talking aggressive to franklin, he then walks up to another cop and triggers the button that enables any playable GTA character to communicate with other non playable, computerised players. When doing so, Franklin greets the cop with "hey, whats up dude?" The cop then stops what he's doing and replies with "greetings" but after realising that the person in front of him is a african american he then grips his gun and shouts you're dead now" the cop then points his weapon and the player has now received a 1 star wanted level (a punishment for behaving badly in game). The player then brutally kills the cop before the cop killed him, once again opening the door to more controversy about how this game allows for cops to be killed. So from this clip we can see that a lot of detail was put into the animations of these police officers and how they react. GTA V had a total budget of £170,000,000 for the production of the game, judging from how the cops react to franklin, the makers must of come up with the idea that the cops are racist towards Franklin and that they're animations are more detailed and different for him.
Why GTA 5's most controversial mission may be unpleasant and repulsive but there is a message behind the degradation
"Given GTA V’s potential for player improvised violence on an unprecedented scale you wouldn’t think developers Rockstar would need to manufacture controversy of their own. And yet, reasonably early on in the game’s main narrative, comes By the Book, a mission in which you have have to torture another character in the most graphic and gruesome ways imaginable. For a series that’s had more than its fair share of past run-ins with tabloids and watch dogs, this seems like a strange move. One almost designed to generate outraged opinion pieces decrying the damaging effect of video games on our otherwise innocent children (neatly obfuscating the fact that GTA V, like all manner of equally explicit films, is a product that, by law, can only be sold to over 18s). It’s unlikely that the authors of many - or, indeed, any - of these pieces will have actually played the game, especially now that footage of said scene is freely available on YouTube, so here’s a little context to counterbalance the inevitable hyperbole.Trevor Phillips, the torturer, is a psychopathic career criminal who savagely stamps a man to death within minutes of being introduced earlier on in the game. There is no small degree of dark comedy to his character, but it’s ultimately the pitch blackness of a moral vacuum. By the time of By the Book, he and the rest of your GTA gang are being manipulated by the FIB, the gameworld’s feckless and fraudulent equivalent of the FBI, and it is they who task him with torturing Mr K in the hope he will help them identify an alleged insurgent hiding out in Los Santos. The segment is every bit as unpleasant and unsettling as the leaked videos suggest. Playing as Trevor, you must select an instrument in turn from the array of sledgehammers, jump leads and pliers, and then perform a series of mini-games to use them. If your assailant’s heart stops beating while being waterboarded, say, then you can give him an adrenaline shot and carry on. There’s no way of skipping these sequences and I’ll admit to feeling repulsed when I played through them, Trevor’s matter-of-factness in the face of his victim’s distress adding to the degradation."
Mary Poust discusses the video game, Grand Theft Auto, whose latest ‘upgrade’ allows kids to have sex with and kill prostitutes, and concludes that we should not be playing or supporting these games.
"The audio alone should be enough to make any parent rethink this as an entertainment option for their kids — no matter how old they are."
"The icing on this controversial cake is the ability players have to then gruesomely murder their prostitute and take back their money. Still not convinced that this game is not only bad for children but bad for adults and bad for women and bad for society?"
"I am so beyond offended by this game, as a woman, yes, but as a human being even more. I’ve always been offended by this game, not just for how women are portrayed and treated on screen but for the over-the-top violence that is rewarded with points. And that was even before this latest version put sex into the hands of the controller, prostitutes were part of the on-screen world. Now it’s just a lot more graphic and offensive."
"How is it possible that we find this okay, that this is a bestselling video game?"
"Where are the feminist voices speaking out against this kind of misogyny? I’m dumbfounded."
"When people spend hour upon hour using their controller to kill people, steal things, hire prostitutes, beat women, it begins to blur the edges of what’s okay in real life."
"I sort of insulate myself from this sort of thing. We don’t allow it in our house, and to a large extent I don’t allow it into my mind because letting it into my mind puts images of violence and murder and beating of women there, and that’s not good for me, or anyone. Which is why it’s bad for society."
"The icing on this controversial cake is the ability players have to then gruesomely murder their prostitute and take back their money. Still not convinced that this game is not only bad for children but bad for adults and bad for women and bad for society?"
"I am so beyond offended by this game, as a woman, yes, but as a human being even more. I’ve always been offended by this game, not just for how women are portrayed and treated on screen but for the over-the-top violence that is rewarded with points. And that was even before this latest version put sex into the hands of the controller, prostitutes were part of the on-screen world. Now it’s just a lot more graphic and offensive."
"How is it possible that we find this okay, that this is a bestselling video game?"
"Where are the feminist voices speaking out against this kind of misogyny? I’m dumbfounded."
"When people spend hour upon hour using their controller to kill people, steal things, hire prostitutes, beat women, it begins to blur the edges of what’s okay in real life."
"I sort of insulate myself from this sort of thing. We don’t allow it in our house, and to a large extent I don’t allow it into my mind because letting it into my mind puts images of violence and murder and beating of women there, and that’s not good for me, or anyone. Which is why it’s bad for society."
"It desensitizes us to violence, which is why the the military uses video games to help soldiers get over the innate human aversion to killing. "
"Video games—especially first-person violent video games—do affect us, even if we don’t realize it at the time.
"Video games—especially first-person violent video games—do affect us, even if we don’t realize it at the time.
GTA 5 review: Satire, parody - and gameplay to show Rockstar have cracked combat in breathtaking Grand Theft Auto V
"You’ll directly control them all, switching freely between them between missions and at opportune moments while on the job."
"Plus, being able to dip in and out of Michael’s dysfunctional family life, Franklin’s turf wars and Trevor’s trailer park empire eliminates the element of grind that occasionally prolonged progression in past GTAs."
"In fact, it’s surely the best world created by any games developer at any time. It’s not just the eye-watering size and scale, but that way that every square foot feels handcrafted for your enjoyment. This is a world so believable and full of life that even the likes of Skyrim feels like a corridor in comparison."
"what is likely to become one of this most controversial of series’ most controversial moments yet; a supremely unsettling mission entitled By the Book, in which you subject an innocent Asian character to prolonged and graphic torture. The segment is all the more disturbing for the evident delight Trevor takes in his work.
As a rule, criticising Rockstar for their violent content and moral ambiguity is ultimately as facile as lambasting their cinematic equivalent Quentin Tarantino for his: the medium is the message."
Trails and teasers: Marketing GTAV
"But what is interesting about Rockstar's early marketing strategy is that it appeared to focus primarily on the hard core fans. Without searching for the information, the average video game consumer would not be aware that a new game had been announced."
"Rockstar released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto V. At barely 1 minute and 15 seconds long, this gave very little away about the actual plot of the gameplay, but emphasised the vastness of the landscape - the mountains, desert, the beaches, the city itself"
"One is having a mid-life crisis and feels bored, one is young and feels trapped and unfulfilled by his economic circumstances, and the third is psychotic and bored, turning to murder and arson for the sheer hell of it."
This article explains how GTA V didn't need to put a lot of marketing techniques into introducing the game to people, they knew that they're trailer and new concept for their brand new addition to the franchise would enable a strong impact on "word of mouth". They simply posted their trailer to their website and YouTube page, so only the hardcore fans and subscribers would see first. This caused a bang on social media, many gaming fans and even high valued institutions were stunned by how the game looks. Rockstar shocked everyone with this one minute trailer, they fit just enough in to get everyone talking.
Media Magazine 40: Play, Pleasure & Panics.
AQA examiner Steph Hendry considers the long history of public concerns about both the dangers of popular culture and the attempts made to control and sanitise it.
"The history of the mass media is littered with examples of censorship, banning, moral outrage and controversy. Self-defined guardians of ‘moral decency’ such as tabloid newspapers"
"The hypodermic syringe theory. This theory claims that the media ‘injects’ its passive audience members with ideas, values and attitudes that can directly influence behaviour."
"Clearly some individuals are more easily influenced than others, but the idea that the media can corrupt or be the direct cause of violent behaviour seems actively disproven by the fact that we not living in a lawless, violent dystopia."
This article gives a lot of references to how the media has had an effect on people and how governments have placed bans on certain texts, although it also goes on to explain how its just a big moral panic in which people believe violent video games, movies, tv shows etc will affect peoples minds. In the cases where this has happened, its only ever affected mentally unstable people, such as the cinema shooting killer that was inspired by the joker. Also how the music from Marilyn Manson and the video game Doom inspired the Columbine High School Shooters This idea that the media is responsible for violence and antisocial behaviour can be seen as scapegoating – attempting to apportion blame and reduce a complex problem to a simple solution.
Censorship - the debate
"Most forms of media, from video games to DVDs, both rated by the British Board of Film Classification, give a specific age rating if their content is deemed unsuitable for everyone"
"The popular Grand Theft Auto series is frequently linked to violent behaviour in teenagers as they try and repeat things they do in the game"
"The game creators get away with labelling the game with an 18+ rating: they assume only people who are over 18 will play and are smart enough to realise the difference between games and life. "
"It is still very easy to get hold of the game if you are under 18"
"very few shops bother to ask for ID providing you look like you could possibly be 18"
"They steal a car in-game instead of in the real world"
"The amazingly realistic graphics that some of the newer games have seem to fuel such worries about their impact on young people".
Why audiences REALLY play video games?(MM40)
"A growing number of people worldwide of all ages are spending increasing amounts of time playing games."
"the global gaming audience at between 450-700 million people with an average 11 hours of gaming per week."
"Sandbox games are called this because of the ability of players to freely create situations from a blank canvas environment, the most popular of these games are the Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row series."
"the options of undertaking criminal missions or behaving in a violent and anti-social manner whilst evading the virtual city’s law enforcement"
"Masculine dominance and emotional detachment in committing crimes for the sake of personal gain is rewarded with notoriety within the story world."
This article discusses how there is a high number of audience in the gaming community and how sandbox games such as GTA can impact thier minds. Also how the audience pleasure of escapism is becoming more and more realistic and more immersive than ever before.
This article discusses how there is a high number of audience in the gaming community and how sandbox games such as GTA can impact thier minds. Also how the audience pleasure of escapism is becoming more and more realistic and more immersive than ever before.
Ideas About Story Telling, The Narrative Structures Of GTA Vice City & La Noire: (MM 44)
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0i5diL3vrEiSGxRNHIyZmM4Ums&usp=sharing
"whether gamescan be labelled ‘interactive cinema’ or if they should be considered within an entirely different paradigm."
‘non-linear game-play with a character driven narrative.’
"game narrative is becoming more filmic"
This article discusses how the gaming industry are starting to produce more and more filmic narratives into the genre, its starting the debate whether gaming is now becoming interactive cinema. Games such as LA Noire also used many actors in order to produce the game, Thats w much gaming is evloving.
This article discusses how the gaming industry are starting to produce more and more filmic narratives into the genre, its starting the debate whether gaming is now becoming interactive cinema. Games such as LA Noire also used many actors in order to produce the game, Thats w much gaming is evloving.
