Lamar Davis – “With all that ass, nigga, she
got ass.”
Are
games such as GTA 5 racist and harmful?
Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V),
this is a one of the most anticipated games worldwide, it made “£500 million in
24 hours”[1] of its release and has
generated over £1 billion in its first three months. GTA has outsold well-known
gaming establishments such as Infinity ward, creators of Modern Warfare. One of
the reasons why GTA had so made so many sales was due to the excellent
marketing techniques; they gave teasers to the gameplay and to aspects of the
game, this made the audience for GTA “constantly searching for information on
Grand Theft Auto V.”[2] However even after great
success of the game, there has been many debates and controversy around the
game, but why?
GTA V
is a game that has been produced by Rockstar games; the institution has been
producing games ever since they released GTA. From that point onwards they have
created a chain of GTA games, such as Vice City, Sin City, San Andreas, and
many more. However “GTA 5 is this
most expensive video game ever produced, sitting at a development and marketing
budget of £170 million, or $265 million.”[3] Although Rockstar games
spent a vast amount on the game it has been frowned upon by many different
groups of people, such as parents, and feminists, as they believe that the
content of the game is not appropriate and the representations that have been shown
within the game are negative. The main concern with the game is that it is
misogynistic and very violent.
However
there are also some feminists that enjoy the game just as it is, “So why are so
many people I meet so shocked that, as a woman and, whisper it, a feminist, I
enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto?”[4], people argue that the
females that are represented in GTA
are simply used as being sex objects and that they are glorified for the way
the look, Laura Mulvey used the term ‘Male Gaze’[5] this theory suggested that
females are put into media so that men can look at them. Although the portrayal
of females in the game may seem negative however they may be true, it is
estimated that there are between 1 – 2 million prostitutes that work in the US.
And as the producer of GTA wanted the game to be life like as possible they had
to add features like this in to the game.
There
are other games that can be seen as being worse than GTA when it comes to the
portrayal of females, such as “Saints Row The Third” Within this game the acts
of violence and the outrages sub games that are included, make the portrayal of
females in GTA look like child’s play.
There is a sub game within the game that is called, ‘Whored mode’. This
is game which includes “killing armed prostitutes with a deadly,
wobbling purple dong, fighting barely-dressed angels in a
sniper-on-sniper battle"[6] this is just one of the
many outrageous aspects of Saints Row.
Another
example of a video game that is very violent and uses female’s characters to
exploit their bodies is Mortal Kombat. MK is a game that was released during
the 1990’s; it was one of the first games that contained vast amounts of gore
and violence. MK was a very successful game and went on to making many more
sequel games, over the years as the game developed and technology increased,
the game also changed. “Her strut with heels, I
might add, just in case she wasn’t fetishized enough. Not to mention how
perfectly fitting that underwear is. Is it just painted on or something?[7] The
females in the game were made more revealed, their costumes became more
revealing and the way they moved was made much more seductive. Mortal Kombat is
a very similar game to GTA in the way that women are shown, “show off in touch
with her sexuality”[8] the women in this game and
in GTA are shown to be very sexual and exploited for their looks. However in MK
the females are also shown as being as powerful as the males, “the women seem
just as capable in Mortal Kombat as the men”[9] thus
there isn’t as much discrimination of females made in this game.
However the violence and gore that is contained in this game
could overrule most games, “These are gruesome ways to meet your fate, and some
are even nostalgic for good measure.” [10] the
fatalities are what MK is known for, it’s what sets apart from other games.
Going back to GTA a vast amount of people say that it may cause “Moral panic
has a tendency to exaggerate statistics and to create a bogey-man, known as a
folk-devil”[11] due to the violence that
is shown within the game and the actions it causes young people to commit. For
example, in America a young boy murdered his brother and father and said that
he was reconstructing a scene from GTA that he had seen. However games like MK
contain a much higher level of violence, “The entire game is around overdone
violence”[12] However there has never
been any killing that have been connected back to MK. From this it is evident
that although games like GTA, Saints Row and MK contain high levels of violent
and explicit content, it cannot be said that games are the cause of violence.
It is due to the folk devils that have been created that cause people to feel
this way.
On the other hand, it can be said that it is due to the fact
that MK is so fictional that younger audiences know that the game is not real
and that it is all made up. However because GTA has been made to imitate the
real world, younger audiences may see that committing crimes that they see in
GTA easier as they can see it happening the way it would happen in the real
world. Furthermore in the game there are six heists that take place, each with
a high level of planning that takes place before the mission. It is small
aspects like this that can have an effect on younger audiences, the fact that
they have carefully planned out each heists and the player choses how it goes
down, makes the game even more real and easier to imitate.
When it comes to games such as GTA there are also many
problems with the racial stereotypes in the game and other stereotypes that are
shown and portrayed throughout the game, “Stereotypes are cognitive structures
that contain the perceiver's knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about human
groups”[13].
“Franklin is treated differently from the other two, white, playable
characters, by the Los Santos Police Department” [14] looking
at the game there is a vast amount of racial stereotypes that are shown
throughout the game, for example Franklin the black male character in the game,
is shown in the ‘hood’ with a single mother and he is involved in the wrong
business, “the linkage between Blacks and crime was galvanized.”[15]. The
portrayal of the character himself is very negative as he is shown doing crimes
and handling weapons; however his story in the game is to make something much
bigger and to get out of the ‘hood’. However when people look at GTA they think
the game is all negative, but when looking in to the game and its deeper
meaning, it can teach us more than we know.
The producers of GTA have created the characters so that they
feel as real as possible; this allows the audience of the game to relate to the
characters to some extent “people may choose to consume media texts as a source
of personal identity. The consumer could choose to watch or read something that
helps to reinforce self-values and behaviour”[16] The
characters in GTA have been made to copy the actors that did the voice over to
the actual game, which made the characters even more life-like.
When people look at GTA as a game and games like GTA, such as
Call Of Duty, they seem to focus more on the negatives of the game rather than
looking at it from a positive point of view. “When your child plays video
games, it gives his brain a real workout.
In many video games, the skills required to win involve abstract and
high level thinking. These skills are not even taught at school.”[17] When a
child or even an adult plays games that require them to do more than one task
at a time, it requires the brain to work more and thus they are able to
multitask. “Games have internal logic in them, and the player figures it out by
recognizing patterns.”[18] When
games such as COD are played they have a lot more to them than just going and
killing other players online. It requires a set skills to be used in order you
the player to achieve something, within each game set there is an objective or
a task that has been to achieve, thus the player must think of all the possible
ways for them to achieve that goal without letting the opposition interfering. However
It cab said that it is games like COD that are also blamed for high levels of
violence “stimulations like Call Of Duty have been used by the American police
force “American police force and army train their recruits to use deadly force by having them practice using videogame
like point-and-shoot devices, known as Fire Arm Training Stimulators.” [19] The same can be said for GTA, as a game there are specific
tasks that are set to be achieved, and as a gamer, the player will do whatever
it takes for them to achieve that goal.
GTA can also teach you the life lessons, such as the
consequences of doing wrong and doing good, “if you do bad things, bad things
generally happen to you in the game.”[20] When a
crime is committed in GTA, the police are after you as soon as possible. This
shows young kids that committing crimes has its consequences and you cannot get
away with doing bad things.
In conclusion, after looking at GTA as game and games that
are similar to it, it is evident that the game does involve vast amounts of
violence, stereotypes and it looks at women in a negative way. However, when
people are able to see past all the negativity of the game, it opens a whole
new world of gaming. “GTA allows for more innocent and even banal pleasures
tool: cruising through the city listening to the radio, people watching on a
busy street corner, bowling with friends, surfing the web.”[21] As the
story doesn’t follow a narrative the player is able to create their own
narrative, allowing them to have a game that individual to them and how they
play.
“The staggeringly detailed city changing weather and traffic
patterns, pedestrians dashing out of the rain with newspapers over their heads,
cabbies flicking cigarette butts out of their windows – provide a vast
“sandbox” for unstructured, nonlinear gameplay.”[22] I agree
that there is violence, sexist and violent, however I also believe that the
game also has a good moral side to it, for example, when following the story of
Michael, it starts off with him having a broken family and everything starting
to fall apart. However he gets his family back together and they have a
complete family in the end. It is the factors like this that make the game
morally correct, and teach the younger generation what is right and what is
wrong. Looking at everything that has
been said it is evident that GTA V does have some aspects of violence and
sexism however due to the content that is shown and the moral views and values
that are portrayed in the game, it could have a harmful effect on the
development of the younger generation.
Bibliography
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62, No. 1 pps80 – 81
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Green, L. (1998 – 99) Stereotypes:
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