The Gamer’s Quagmire: 12th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Gaming, humor, and insanity in harmony

After reading through all of the comments I’ve made about the lunacy surrounding GTA I firmly believed that the peak of idiocy surrounding the game was over. Thanks to a union of sex workers I have been proven wrong. This was last week, so it gave me plenty of time to ponder the situation as a whole. Am I being too hasty? Am I being to picky? Am I too much into gaming to properly address both sides of the issue fairly? Well, that last part isn’t my job. Investigative journalism was never my forte (and in some cases it’s not the forte at major news organizations either).

So once again we have another instance of a hissy fit against GTA. If nothing else it gave me a reason to laugh and put some more thoughts into words. It is this type of headline that caused me to start writing about video games six years ago in the first place.

You will have to forgive me, but because my position as a columnist here prevents me from obtaining funds to properly research all possible angles of this latest GTA hoopla. Due to the overwhelming restrictiveness of the UYOM budgetary system here (use your own money) I did not go out and seek the opinions of the actual workers. Instead I had to focus on the content available online with respect to this story.

When it was all said and done I had to side with the video game once again. Rockstar is not the pinnacle of company operations or ethics but they do make some of the best video games on the planet. At this point nobody can argue about whether they make the most influential one (you have to agree with that whether you like the game or hate it). Rather than simply letting this story slide and moving on to something fresh I had to stamp down my opinion one more time on this matter.

A message to everyone in the world: stop piling on the back of GTA. We get it- people like suing GTA. It’s the lawsuit flavor of the month (or decade, as it has been attacked since the release of Vice City). There’s nothing like trying to make a point that other people have already made with lawsuits. I understand that many lawyers are just after a quick buck or making a headline, but when groups start all suing one entity it becomes boring. Here’s a tip- try to make conditions better for real prostitutes before making life better for pixelated ones. And in case your think your true motives are well disguised let me tell you something- they aren’t. You want a headline and you want to further your cause any way you can- making claims against a video game used to the spotlight is a good way to do that.

Speaking of which, hey, did you see something in the news about invisible cola? Holy delayed action, Batman! It was possible to beat up prostitutes in GTA III. It was possible to do the same in Vice City. Now it is possible to do the same in San Andreas. And over a year after the third game was released these people are now just putting a complaint together. Nice. Hey, is it too late to sue Nintendo because I smashed my head on a pipe after having my pizza delivered by a guy named Luigi? No, wait, that didn’t work. Okay, is it too late to sue EA over getting into a car accident because I played Burnout I for 2 days straight and then went for a drive?

Okay, I messed up the lawsuit idea with Luigi. That’s an honest mistake. However, we are well beyond the point of confusing what GTA is about and what it may or may not promote. The game doesn’t advocate beating up prostitutes. Any character walking around can be beaten up. You can beat up gang members, soldiers, cops, businesspeople, pimps, shop owners, and any other pedestrian. All of these can be done just walking around and ignoring the story. Have any of those groups filed a lawsuit? The game simply doesn’t stop you from doing it. If Rockstar did decide that beating up prostitutes was somehow more sinister than beating up somebody else that would be placing prostitutes on a pedestal. Any bets on whether that would be sniffed out by Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman?

And before you get on my back about not being sensitive in this issue (okay, you may already have- give me time to defend myself now) let me say a few things. I understand how serious a crime rape is. I have seen how it affects people even that aren’t involved directly in it. Rape is a very vile act and probably one of the worst acts that exists in our world. That being said, there is no way this can happen in the game. A bludgeoning? A shooting? Vehicular manslaughter? Dismemberment? Pick your favorite way to break the penal code and have at it. Better still- perform any combination of these. If every possible negative act can lead to more serious negative acts then we may as well claim that shoplifting leads to murder. Not everything is a slippery slope. In real life it’s not okay to beat up people for the sake of doing it. And once again, the game is not promoting that activity. The players simply choose to do it. You can’t blame a company for society’s actions.

Speaking of playing the blame game (does anyone remember there a game called blame? All I can come up with is the board game Sorry!. A little more info would be helpful), making a legal claim because something ‘might’ happen is against our Constitution. Remember that pesky thing? Just as you can’t lock someone up because they might commit murder you can’t ban a game because it might encourage certain behavior (the fact that it categorically doesn’t is irrelevant to this point). A quick tip: Minority Report is a fantasy. Despite how other organizations work breaking the law and violating our Constitution is a bad thing.

For this reason, and others, courts have not placed the blame of any murder or violent act on video game companies. They also have not blamed television or cartoons for real world violence. They also have not blamed gun companies for shooting deaths (even as compelling as Runaway Jury is). It is perfectly fine to ask people to not play the game and even ask developers to not put something in the game. However, making a legal claim because you want to make headlines is not going to fly. At least it shouldn’t in a country that, as I’m told, is about, among other things, free speech.

(I tried to fit more commas into that last sentence. Apologies if I disappointed you.)

And in case you feel like I have may have been unclear with what I have said let me reiterate something- nobody in the game asks you to beat up prostitutes (a point which, ironically, has been beaten to death). You can make it through the game without even interacting with them. The players choose to do it. The players also choose to shoot people, blow up vehicles, break into military installations, and disobey every traffic law in existence. This points the problem, if there is one, to the players wanting to do this. Rockstar is quite good at creating a subculture game with mass appeal. If millions of people didn’t enjoy beating up and murdering people left and right this game would not have sold. It’s not as though advertising is the reason this game sells. This is like blaming the country’s addiction to caffeine on the big coffee companies.

While reading about another group complaining about GTA does amuse me I know I have made all of these arguments in the past. The more the world changes the more it stays the same I suppose. Understand that I am trying to see more than one side to every argument, but sometimes when you make an argument enough times you start to see a lot different things the same way. So I guess what I’m saying is that this new union making this complaint sounds a lot like what we saw from Hillary Clinton not all that long ago.

Next week I promise to talk about something different. Seriously.

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