GTA and You: Conversations With the Game World, Your Avatar, and Our Society

Ryan Martinez

Thu., June 11, 11:00–12:30, Class of ’24 (4th floor, East Central)

While Grand Theft Auto (GTA), in both its 2D and 3D incarnations, has always generated outrage and controversy, parents, teachers, and academics may forget to examine the game narrative and social commentary throughout the playable landscape. Now with the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar Games takes what was once a game franchise with over–the–top characters and tongue–in–cheek humor to a level of real-life seriousness rarely visited in videogames.

With the newest GTA release, your main character suffers from a crisis of conscience brought on by a past of bloodshed with parallelisms to the real world conflicts in Kosovo. In many of the missions, killing is no longer forced upon you but a choice with future repercussions. When the smoke clears in the game, you are not a ruler of the city as in the other versions, but instead a man with a broken life still getting by. The avatar’s past combined with his present actions make for his bleak future, and the player cannot help but notice that this game lacks some of the more “flighty” approaches to violence found in previous versions. The game franchise, once a Technicolor exposition in violence becomes muted in somber browns and grays, much like the psyche of our eastern European avatar. Much of the humor that the franchise is famous for remains in the game, but now with the timeline set in the present day we are reminded of among many things, topical criticisms of 24–hour news networks, the financial crisis, and the general apathy of people in large cities. GTA IV is no longer an escapist’s fantasy, but with a pulse on the present and a stoically disturbing character, becomes a darker reflection of our society from a louder virtual reality.

This presentation will examine how GTA IV and the new content add–on, The Lost and Damned, highlight what games such as these have to say about our society through the avatar, ancillary characters, and auxiliary content (radio, television, non–vital NPC dialogue, etc.). Mainly disregarding the violent content and focusing on the narrative elements on hand, gamers otherwise enamored with the gloss may finally get better insight into the substance that makes up this richly textured game. Teachers and media scholars who are interested in using games not as integral parts of reading and writing but for cultural reflections through media may be interested in attending this session.