Editor's note: This is a very interesting (and humorous) analysis of the Grand Theft Auto series. It dives into the "games as art" debate (don't groan yet -- Richard does a good job with it) as well as GTA4 protagonist Niko Bellic's psyche. Why is mowing down pedestrians with a sedan fun? Read on to find out. -Shoe
It's no secret that the Grand Theft Auto series has spawned countless psychotic serial killers and several rather unpleasant rapists ever since Grand Theft Auto 3 hit the PlayStation 2. This is backed up by dozens of studies done by guys in lab coats who couldn't get laid even if their disco sticks ejaculated fine wine and water from the fountain of youth. That means these studies are made of science, and science is never, ever wrong!
Still, for all the Ed Geins and Charlie Mansons that the Grand Theft Auto series has vomited onto society, I can't help but feel that throughout the hundreds of hours I have used these games to train myself to fire real weapons and steal real police cars and watch real TV, I have perhaps also engaged in something meaningful.
Grand Theft Auto never made me cry. It never made me look deep within myself and question the nature of my actions. It never passed judgment on me for choosing to spend my leisure time running over pedestrians and exploding the hell out of anything that moves. It has only ever been there for my amusement. GTA provides the tools, and I create the fun.
While some people argue that the GTA series is a deplorable sign of the steady decline of society itself into that rock-laden pitch-black sea of swirling, howling chaos that will be the end of humanity as we know it, others reply with, "Hey, it's only a game!"
This, more often than not, bleeds a bit into the "games are art" debate. I've seen an article or two about how the "It's only a game!" argument actually hurts the credibility of the medium having artistic merits. And to say that games are art then to claim that you shouldn't worry about their devastating societal effects because they're merely pieces of entertainment is hypocritical. To that, I say, "Nuh-uh!"
You can follow a number of extrapolations here. For example, just because some games aren't art doesn't mean that no games can be art. Movies and books do a fine job of being at times mindless entertainment, at other times engaging analysis of the inner workings of the human psyche, and at no times do movies threaten to destroy everything humanity has worked so hard to build.
A game that lets you blow stuff up without furrowing its brow and trying to look serious has no place alongside the Mona Lisa. What is the Mona Lisa, though? A pretty picture of an ugly woman, rife with technical brilliance from a skilled artist. Last I checked, nobody seems to know exactly who she is or what she represents. The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous pieces of art in the world, and it is apparently nothing more than a presentation of crazy skill within Leonardo da Vinci's medium of choice.
So what is gaming's Mona Lisa? Super Mario Bros. Ha! Bet you didn't see that coming.
No, Grand Theft Auto is not just a technical masterpiece, because, quite frankly, before Grand Theft Auto 4, most of it was janky and half-broken. What makes this series a work of art is simply this: The game reinforces the world, and the world reinforces the game. It's a game that knows it's a game, and it revels in this. Rather than smashing through the fourth wall, however, it does something far more intelligent. It uses its status as a video game to raise the player's suspension of disbelief to the appropriate level, then constructs entire cities that attempt to be as believable as possible.
Rockstar knows that building a city and making it feel real is the easy part. The hard part is inhabiting it with living, breathing people. As realistic as those pedestrians may look and act, they won't always respond like we would to things happening in the real world. Running over someone and then fleeing the scene in real life will obviously lead to a police investigation and most likely end with your arrest, trial, and jail time. Rockstar can't hope to even begin to replicate this, and doing so would probably end up being a lot less fun in the long run, so they hand-wave the whole thing away by making every single character in the GTA universe the embodiment of pure id.
Everyone says and does whatever they feel like saying and doing in order to get what they want at the moment -- damn the consequences. Radio and TV personalities are unwaveringly honest. A child actor loudly proclaims that he has started taking drugs and learned to be a loud-mouthed jackass from his co-stars, and the interviewer happily applauds him for it because this is normal everyday life. This interview won't lead to any consequences, because to punish these people wouldn't yield any immediate benefits to anyone. The rampant speak-before-you-think freedom on the radio cements the idea that this is a world of little consequence, and there is absolutely no reason for you not to do whatever makes you happy right now.
This exploration of the id mixed with the overt and biting satire of our own world is why I would squarely place the GTA series in the middle of the Great Art Spectrum that I think might only exist in my deluded, festering brain meat. It's also why Grand Theft Auto 4 is so unloved, relatively speaking.
Grand Theft Auto 4's Niko Bellic is the first time the protagonist has been anything more than a caricature, and to many it clashed strongly with the very ideals of a GTA game. While I can't deny that it's a little silly to lament a past filled with war-time atrocities only to jack a sports car and go screaming into a crowd of innocent bystanders, I think it's within this strange bipolar clusterfuck of characterization butting heads with gameplay where I found so much enthralling mind candy to chew on. To look at Niko as a human in our world is to see a psychopath who says one thing and does another. Unless you're one of these people, it's incredibly difficult to identify with Niko in this way.
To look at Niko as the product of the GTA universe, however, is to possibly understand the weight he must deal with. Niko Bellic isn't a human with a conscience that nags him as he wreaks havoc. He, like everyone else in the GTA universe, was born with only the base instinctual desire to find happiness as quickly as possible at the cost of everything else. Like everyone else, he is secretly miserable, and his life is empty.
Unlike everyone else, though, he's slowly waking up to this fact. He's growing a conscience. Perhaps the first real conscience ever grown in this universe. He doesn't know how to react. He knows he must change his ways and slowly work his way to a better life, but old habits die hard. The allure of a quick fix is still ingrained in him, so for all the bitching and moaning he does about regret and revenge, he is a prisoner to his baser instincts in a world all-too-happy to reinforce his old lifestyle. It's in this way that I was able to identify with Niko, because I am all-too-familiar with the fear and difficulty that comes with change, even for the better.
Basically what I'm saying is that it's really hard to stop killing hookers once you've gotten started, and GTA was just the gateway drug.
While the games as art debate has been beaten worse then a dead horse. I find the art in the creation of the product. Everything in a game is created by a person, physics, art, voice acting, etc. In away developers are playing God and creating virtual world's. In a movie you don't need to create the physics, and tell characters how to jump, they have the advantage of using humans. In games everything needs to be written in code. Art is in the creation.
"Art is in the creation" Enough said. I totally agree with Rich.
@Roberto: You sir are a genius.
As a disabled vet I have an extrordinary amount of time to fill up, and having been appalled by the reviews of GTA IV since release night (I was one of the people at gamestop at midnight, so I'm a definite fan of the series) I finally came upon this article and felt so annoyed with what I was reading that I simply had to register and write some, albiet limited and rushed, response. You obviously took some time to write this article, and I felt it was only fair that I took a few minutes to respond, since Rockstar cares not a whit about my opinion.
First off, I just want to say that my opinion here doesn't reflect on the military at large. As a former Marine, I can safely say that most of my fellow Marines would disagree with my personal opinions on violence and the use of force. Let's just say I'm rather more violent and have less morals than they do, and that's a frightfully low moral standard to begin with, so to be beneath that makes me rather nearer to the serial killer parts of society than the average.
Looking at GTA IV as a "real life crime" simulator is flawed beyond words, so I'm not going to bother to say much about it, other than that to further try to extrapolate serious conclusions about the nature of the criminal element is seriously misguided. I know a lot of criminals, very hardcore, the type that go around every night stealing anything they can get their hands on, stick up kids, car thieves. I know several gang members (although to be fair, who doesn't these days). None of them are experiencing any of the transformations you talk about here, and certainly not because they "suddenly start growing a concience". I think the reason you identify with Nico is that he's basically you: he doesn't want to commit crimes, he doesn't know much about commiting crimes, it just looks easy and the cars are flashy. As you play the game you see the holes in that line of thinking, and you, not Nico, develop according to Rockstars (rather flimsy in my opinion) slowly emerging moral compass, as written in by people who obviously know gaming better than the streets. The reality is you do some dirt the first time, taste easy money, and it all becomes easier. That's why you don't see any large banks standing up and returning the money they pocketed during the housing bubble: crime does pay and successful criminals have no reason to develop any form of empathy. In fact they tend to lose whatever empathy they have. I realize that prison, middle and old age, etc, reform some people, but these factors are not at play in GTA IV's sandbox.
"It's no secret that the Grand Theft Auto series has spawned countless psychotic serial killers and several rather unpleasant rapists ever since Grand Theft Auto 3 hit the PlayStation 2. This is backed up by dozens of studies done by guys in lab coats who couldn't get laid even if their disco sticks ejaculated fine wine and water from the fountain of youth"
I'm psychotic so I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but that last line made me think this entire article was a troll. I'm still not convinced it isn't.
"I can't help but feel that throughout the hundreds of hours I have used these games to train myself to fire real weapons and steal real police cars and watch real TV"
Ok so you are being sarcastic. Great. Pretty much cancels out everything that follows, doesn't it?
"Grand Theft Auto is not just a technical masterpiece, because, quite frankly, before Grand Theft Auto 4, most of it was janky and half-broken"
So driving Roman around, being a "psychopath" that cares about what his friends think, how about a dude who thinks him plus a few friends can take over New York without a small army of hoods to back him up... none of that was, as you so eloquently put it, "janky"? I realize nothing I say here is going to convince you or any of the other GTA IV fans out there, so I won't type much further, I just want to say that I, in the strongest sense, disagree completely with what you've written here. You start out like it's 4chan and end up like it's slashdot, but I'm sitting here reading it like it's failblog, with my hand over half my face to protect it from the schizophrenic pacing of your article.
Wow. Didn't expect to make it to the front page. This is awesome, and I really like the edits, even if they did replace one joke near the beginning (which I wasn't in love with anyway) and replaced the picture of the Ron Howard "Grand Theft Auto" movie poster with a picture of GTA4, which is not as funny to me but probably a better thing. Obviously I'm not a professional writer and don't have any aspirations to be, so I've never been edited before, but it was painless and totally made for a better article dealy!
I want to apologize for taking a bit of time to reply, as I am currently without internet access save for the times my girlfriend drags me kicking and screaming to her parents' house.
To Senor McGrath and Mr. Flores: Totally, man. Totally.
To Mr. Velfield: I'm sorry to hear you don't like the article, but I'm glad you took the time not only to read it but to reply and the very least I can do is reply back. I do think you may have misinterpreted just a few minor points here and there and I would like to see if I can explain myself a little better. To be honest, I'm a little worried that I may come off disrespectful, so if I sound that way please note that I really do appreciate your feedback and you have my utmost respect. I never served in the military, but I did work with the military for nearly a year as a doughy nerd on training software. All the soldiers I worked with were incredibly friendly and easy to talk to, but oddly enough, the vast majority of the civilians who worked there were douchenozzles.
"Looking at GTA IV as a "real life crime" simulator is flawed beyond words, so I'm not going to bother to say much about it, other than that to further try to extrapolate serious conclusions about the nature of the criminal element is seriously misguided. I know a lot of criminals, very hardcore, the type that go around every night stealing anything they can get their hands on, stick up kids, car thieves. I know several gang members (although to be fair, who doesn't these days). None of them are experiencing any of the transformations you talk about here, and certainly not because they "suddenly start growing a concience"."
I don't believe I ever stated that the GTA series is intended as a "real life crime" simulator. That wouldn't be fun, or at the very least it would be a completely different game. And I definitely never state that real criminals who steal and murder have consciences. If they did, they probably wouldn't be criminals.
"I think the reason you identify with Nico is that he's basically you: he doesn't want to commit crimes, he doesn't know much about commiting crimes, it just looks easy and the cars are flashy. As you play the game you see the holes in that line of thinking, and you, not Nico, develop according to Rockstars (rather flimsy in my opinion) slowly emerging moral compass, as written in by people who obviously know gaming better than the streets. The reality is you do some dirt the first time, taste easy money, and it all becomes easier. That's why you don't see any large banks standing up and returning the money they pocketed during the housing bubble: crime does pay and successful criminals have no reason to develop any form of empathy. In fact they tend to lose whatever empathy they have. I realize that prison, middle and old age, etc, reform some people, but these factors are not at play in GTA IV's sandbox."
I agree with the vast majority of that.
"I'm psychotic so I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but that last line made me think this entire article was a troll. I'm still not convinced it isn't."
It wasn't a troll, although I don't really like that bit about the scientists not getting laid. It's a horribly lame joke that I wish I was intelligent enough to replace with something funnier, or with a picture of puppies. I want people to laugh with me at the absurd things I said, and the original sentence was actually a bit more absurd before the editors got their grubby, power-hungry hands on it.*
"Ok so you are being sarcastic. Great. Pretty much cancels out everything that follows, doesn't it?"
You know, I actually worried about that. I wasn't sure it was a good idea to start with a rush of ridiculousness before attempting to transition into making an actual point, but I wasn't hating what I was writing for once so I just went with it. I don't feel it negates the rest of the article and I really hope it's not difficult to tell when I'm being serious and when I'm not. I have that problem in meat space, too.
"So driving Roman around, being a "psychopath" that cares about what his friends think, how about a dude who thinks him plus a few friends can take over New York without a small army of hoods to back him up... none of that was, as you so eloquently put it, "janky"?"
It's totally janky, but I was just taking a moment to speak about technical jankiness. You know, controls, mechanics, physics.
"I realize nothing I say here is going to convince you or any of the other GTA IV fans out there, so I won't type much further, I just want to say that I, in the strongest sense, disagree completely with what you've written here."
Right on, sir.
"You start out like it's 4chan and end up like it's slashdot, but I'm sitting here reading it like it's failblog, with my hand over half my face to protect it from the schizophrenic pacing of your article."
The pacing is rather schizophrenic, isn't it? Makes me wonder how this managed to get to the front page. The editors really shit the bed on this one.**
*Thank you for the perfect edits, O Wise Editing Warrior Gods who are perfect in every way and all have chiseled physiques made of pure some abstract concept that is wonderful, comically sound and not at all cliche.
**The only beds you shit are the beds of your enemies, and you do it with such thunderous force as to vaporize all who oppose you. Then you sing songs so beautiful that for mere mortals to hear them would literally explode the skin off of their entire bodies.