Bottom Line: Much as I love gaming, I personally cannot justify playing Grand Theft Auto. This post is an attempt to get people who will thoughtlessly pick up this game to at least consider whether it is a good idea to play. I understand the desire to play, but cannot make it work for me. Here I rehearse my (initial) thoughts to provoke conversation. I am of course willing to change my mind (as I did on the value of Buffy).
The Argument:
What is the justification for playing Grand Theft Auto?
The easy answer: “It is fun.”
Fun is a good reason to do a thing, but not good enough.
My own religion teaches that joy is a great good. I plan on spending eternity in bliss.
Fun is a good sign that there is something worthwhile about a thing. Of course, many things mix worthwhile parts with enough worthless harms to ruin them. Some good does not justify even more bad.
Does Grand Theft Auto have enough “fun” in it to justify any harm it might do me? Is there some fun there, some deep joy of soul, that I cannot get other places without potentially harming self?
I loath the attitude of some that being fun is a good reason to worry about a thing, but I equally worry that in our consumerist culture, we might justify too much in the name of fun.
The Puritanical are not, after all, particularly powerful or popular in most of our entertainment culture. Surely we should consider whether it is possible to go too far in the other direction and become libertines?
My life has been a sad story of making such mistakes and I don’t want to make them any more if I can help it.
All these questions suggest that further justification is needed beyond a game being fun.
It also doesn’t cut it to say “the game is well made as a game” since such a statement is as irrelevant to the morality of the game as the efficiency of a murder plan is to its moral status. That does not mean the game is immoral, just that saying it is a “great game as a game” or beautifully made tells us nothing about its moral status. The notion that doing a thing well means you should do it is hard to defend.
Fun can be bad and as Achilles shows being good at a thing doesn’t mean you should keep doing it.
An easy response is: “Well, it is very fun and hurts nobody.”
Let’s assume that making the game hurt nobody. (That in itself is questionable.)
The essential problem for a player is not whether the game hurt the makers, but whether playing the game hurts us . . . and by hurting us hurts those who love us. Does playing such a game make us less loving, more apt to spew hateful crudities, decrease intimacy, makes us more likely to objectify men and women, more prone to detach our emotions from our experiences?
Looking at reviews of the game makes these “harms” seem possible.
Isn’t it worth asking those questions?
If I lightly pick up the game, then harm will be done.
The next easy answer is: “It is art. It is by far the best game ever created in terms of complexity and depth.”
As a long time gamer, I am sympathetic to that argument.
I would love to play Grand Theft Auto just because it looks cool and would test the limits of my gaming system. I must ask myself, however, if Grand Theft Auto is really in the same class as a great book, work of art, or film.
I seriously question this, but let me assume (for the moment) that it is to avoid missing a good out of snobbery or being a reactionary.
Does my participation in virtual acts that everyone agrees would be wicked in the “real” world find justification by my participation in art?
Since some bad behaviors (such as hate) take place mentally, simply saying that the art of Grand Theft Auto is in “virtual reality” is inadequate. Some bad (or unhelpful) things to a person take place in the mind. Years of bitterness are not good for one, even if (or especially if) one keeps the bitterness to oneself.*
Of course, the mere presence of difficult material in a work of art (like a video game) does not mean it is bad. Gamers like to respond that the Old Testament or Hamlet contain violent themes and images in order to justify Grand Theft Auto.
True enough, but too facile.
Let’s all agree that dealing with difficult topics . . . even showing the raw side of life does not make a thing bad. It seems the relevant question is how that evil is presented. A film that presented genocide in a favorable manner would not be good for the culture. A film that showed the ugliness of genocide would be very, very hard to watch, but might be good for me.
The Book of Judges in the Bible has horrific things in it, but they are presented as the hard truth about evil.
In fact, the “cultural commentary” defense has become the chief means that corporate flaks use to defend the indefensible. If you make a movie that exploits women, then you can slow down criticism by arguing that you are attacking people who exploit women. Let’s all agree that showing evil to attack it is hard to do well . . . and runs the real risk of glorifying the thing you said out to condemn.
It takes a great artist (see Shakespeare) to condemn a thing while being entertaining.
In the case of Grand Theft Auto much of what is shown in the game is so egregious that makers have resorted to this defense. If so, then I can only judge that they are artistic failures if reading player comments on the game is any indication. If the suits meant to teach a deep moral lesson, players are missing it.
It seems absurd for anyone to argue that Grand Theft Auto presents an argument for a moral universe or condemns ugliness by showing it. Instead, the thoughtless “non-politically” correct violence and sexuality is what most gamers I read praise about it. Grand Theft Auto is either a monstrous artistic failure or corporate types growing rich off the gamers are merely trying to distract attention from the game’s content by posing as thoughtful artists.
Does Grand Theft Auto encourage bad mental (or virtual) dispositions?
I can think of at least three such mental harms that are a part of Grand Theft Auto : lust, crudity, and detachment from experience.
First, one will have to decide what one thinks of pornography since it is no more virtual in Grand Theft Auto than anyplace else.
Does pornography harm the soul? If so, then Grand Theft Auto is bad for a player. As someone who wants (however difficult it is) to have a great love and share intimacy with just one person, my answer is “no.” The pornography in Grand Theft Auto is not virtual. There are, if the favorable reviews are to be trusted, scenes that warrant the “mature” label on the box.
Some will say that worrying about the “soft” porn in Grand Theft Auto given the freely available content of the Internet is silly.
However, the fact that there are worse things one can do to the soul does not mean that this highly popular means of distributing porn is good.
Is porn harmful?
If one is a romantic, then the answer must be “yes.” Keeping some things intimate, between the beloved and the lover is impossible in a “porn” relationship. Forget a Jane Austin marriage.
If one is a Christian, then the answer must be “yes.” God reserves sexual expression for persons who are married. Traditional Christianity has always thought porn spiritually harmful.
Scientifically and culturally, we have never had such an explosion of availability to porn in the life of a culture. It is a complex behavior and so (it seems to me) it is difficult to make a definitive case that will convince skeptics at present. There is after all good reason for skeptics to want to challenge the evidence. However, initial evidence does not look good for porn use for our culture.
The response that a player is so jaded that the level of suggestiveness in Grand Theft Auto cannot stimulate should worry the player. Is being jaded good for us?
My initial conclusion is that participation in porn and lust in Grand Theft Auto is not virtual. Players should consider moral objections to porn before playing. If one thinks porn is bad (or generally bad) as I do, it is bad to play Grand Theft Auto.
Second, the crudity of the game is real and not virtual. The foul language and the ugliness are part of nearly every moment of the game.
I live and work in an urban area. When I am abroad in L.A., the level of “swearing” and “crudity” is nothing like that found in Grand Theft Auto (in clips I have seen). Even in the most difficult communities in L.A. there are havens of civility not present in the game.
My exposure to the crudity is real and not virtual in the game. Does it impact me? Of course, it does. If innocence and gentleness of spirit are good, then games like Grand Theft Auto make such attitudes hard. It is sad that adults must face crudity and evil. We gain a certain worldly wisdom, but such lessons will come in time. Forcing myself to this tired wisdom seems like intentionally aging my soul.
Why would anyone do this?
It is a perverse culture where we Botox ourselves to recapture the innocent look we have helped destroy by becoming jaded.
Third, one will have to consider the impact of “virtual violence” on the soul. Again studies are mixed, but (in my judgment) do not look good for virtual violence. There is cause for serious concern. Just as nobody should lightly start drinking given the potential for harm, evidence suggests that nobody should lightly pick up a remote and play violent games.
Given this, it is hard to see how engaging in virtual acts of violence for fun is worth while . . . given the plethora of other ways to have fun. Do I really want to think mugging an older woman is “cool” in a game?
Fourth, is the worry that at best gamers like Grand Theft Auto encourage distancing oneself from ones own experience. Gamers frequently say that highly realistic games do not make them killers or thieves. This is true. It does, however, encourage (like the consumption of all media) distancing oneself from what one sees and hears. How much of this before one is harmed?
Gamers often say to me that they play just for the challenge and because the game is a puzzle that needs to be solved.
This does not seem sufficient to me. Is it good for a person to be able to distance himself from material that was designed to draw him into a virtual experience? Of course, it is necessary if one is to justify this game, but is it good for other relationships?
I am not sure anybody knows, but surely the “distancing” in a healthy person playing a game like Grand Theft Auto should and will be greater since the acts are worse than in a game like Brawl.
As the game violence becomes more realistic, the distancing must also be greater in order to maintain mental health.
Do we really want to make ourselves distant from our experiences? What if we cannot “turn off” the distancing mechanism?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but it seems to me that gamers should at least worry about them.
Once the harm is done, after all, one is not going to get another soul.
Finally, I worry that games like Grand Theft Auto encourage false beliefs about society . . . particularly about urban society. My fear is that these ideas are likely to encourage racism, ethnocentrism, and stereotypes of urban people already too prominent in our culture. Of course, one need not be a gamer to have those attitudes. Many older people have them without ever being exposed to games.
That doesn’t mean I rejoice that there is a new way to get them.
Games promote a different kind of false stereotyping. It is no better to “admire” the imagined behavior of “the other” (which is not real) than to fear it.
Many gamers weirdly “enjoy” the negative stereotypes of urban culture. They emulate what they believe is “real.” This reality is cynical, crude, and violent. I fear that this very “admiration” may harm poor persons by encouraging behavior that traps them in poverty. By this I do not mean, violence (I will assume games do nothing to encourage this), but anti-intellectualism, crudity, and attire that, as Dr. Bill Cosby has been pointing out, put a person at risk of missing the benefits of American culture.
Nor is it good that Eastern Europeans and Slavs are stereotyped in this manner. As Arabs and Italians can tell you, it is not good to be on receiving end of constant media stereotypes. Of course, persons of color have received this stereotyping for centuries in the United States, but spreading the bigotry is a funny sort of improvement.
(”Now that we can stereotype everyone, nobody is harmed by it!”)
Isn’t it possible that for every person who gets rich exploiting these stereotypes, there are thousands who are trapped by them?
Grand Theft Auto teaches players what “reality” is like without being real. Don’t believe me? Go read the comments on Amazon from gamers. People praise the games realism . . . and they don’t just mean the graphics.
However, the game is not realistic both in terms of portrayal of life in the inner city and in terms of the “wages of sin.” Since the “hero” has no soul, he does not experience the degradation of the life he leads. He does not (so far as I know) experience the mental contraction and physical decay that his behavior would bring to a normal person.
Treating people as “means to an end” and not as ends” is not good, but rewards are based on the bad behavior and not the good.
There is one common complaint about such worries as those I have expressed.
Isn’t my concern like the terror raised about the old role playing games of my generation, such as Dungeons and Dragons?
Of course, asking questions or working out moral concerns will always look similar.
The fact that some people over react to everything is no reason not to think about our choices.
(”Somebody thinks everything is bad, so I will never think about whether anything is bad.” This would not be a good attitude to adopt.)
The flexibility of the old role playing games (dice and paper) allowed one to enjoy their complexity and community without being forced to participate in anything one thought objectionable in the rules.
The game were easily modifiable. Computers games are much less so. There is no way to “get saved” and open a street mission in Grand Theft Auto. Can you get married and reform and still have fun?
You could modify a game of D&D to fit any moral vision. That is not true of computer games (at least yet). They are far less flexible.
People were right to worry about some ways of playing games. I doubt that they were helpful to the players . . . but one was not forced as a player to behave in certain ways. One had more moral choices.
Finally, there are more important problems in culture (surely) than this game. Too much should not be made of it, but still it seems like a potential bad that is ignored because “it is just a game.”
Nearly anything is justifiable in American culture by the claim that it is “just for fun.”
If you worry about it, especially if you are over forty, then your concerns are dismissed thoughtlessly by the claim that “you just don’t get it.”
I think these attitudes are mistaken and that thinking about everything (including my own dispositions and attitudes toward entertainment) is always good.
As far as I can see, Grand Theft Auto would be bad for me and not something I would welcome in my house. That does not mean I am sure it is bad for everyone in all cases, but does worry me for my friends. My goal is to encourage other people to think about their entertainment choices with me.
*(Not all unhelpful mental dispositions are or should be illegal so law is a bad way to judge whether a thing is good for me. Not all unhelpful mental dispositions are even “sinful” in and of themselves. What might provoke righteous indignation in one person might provoke snobbery or self-righteousness in me. It is of course easy to kid oneself.)
**(Important Disclaimer I: My thoughts are based on reviews of the game. I have not played it. That limits my ability to comment on the game and opens up the real possibility I am missing something “good” about it. Since however reviews of the games seem to agree on the content relevant to this review, I feel justified in writing it. I am open to emails that suggest I should reconsider this decision.
***(I am not in favor of censorship. People should have the ability to make the game, but should also consider whether they should. I have the right to worry about the impact of playing on self and on my culture. I don’t favor banning the game or access to the game for adults.
I do think adults should be able to discuss whether playing a game is good for them without screams of outrage. Most gamer magazines never seriously engage these questions.)