As I watch my nine-year-old nephew kick a pensioner to death in Grand Theft Auto’s Vice City for what must be the third time this evening, some interesting thoughts begin to run through my mind. I chuckle as I wonder what the National Institute on Media and the Family would have to say on witnessing this particular scene. Oh, it’s just a bit of harmless fun, I try to reassure myself but as I watch this pensioner-bashing begin for a fourth, and subsequently fifth, sixth and seventh time, I start to feel a little concerned.
“Don’t you ever engage in any of the missions?” I enquire.
“No, missions are for suckers,” he says. “I gotta kill these people or else they kill me.”
“Oh, I see. You seem to be targeting old people quite a bit.”
“They go down easy,” he informs me.
“Sure, sure.” I can’t fault the boy’s reasoning. “Um, what are you doing now?”
I watch as my nephew flees his latest crime scene and find myself praying that he’s not scouting for any more senior citizens – heaven forbid there’s a Derby and Joan Club close by. He pinpoints an occupied car, ejects its driver, makes a pitiful attempt at manoeuvring the vehicle and drives straight off a bridge. This instantly kills his player character and also my hopes of watching any endurable gameplay that night.
Being overwhelmed by cops became a common occurrence throughout the evening
Now, I know that some will be shocked because I watched this boy play an 18-rated game. This is a reaction I can completely understand; after all the game is inappropriate for his age, it’s just that I’m a little naughty like that. But my point is that, fortunately, my nephew is a soft-natured lad and I don’t believe that videogame violence is capable of changing this, despite my occasional shock at his diehard commitment to it. Truth be known, the way games allow us to embody various cultural models intrigues me greatly, intrigue that’s piqued by my nephew being an incredibly sweet boy who possesses such videogame bloodlust.
I’ve always found it interesting that, in the Grand Theft Auto series, the actions necessary for in-game progression are entirely appropriate within the criminal culture your player character personifies. This allows an exploration of the acceptable codes of conduct from a cultural frame that challenges one’s own, which brings to mind a cultural consciousness.
I’ve noticed that this approach has been exploited in many of my favourite films, too. Take Gus Van Sant’s lauded movie Elephant, for example, motivated by the Columbine High School massacre. Elephant boasts huge balls, balls big enough to explore the impetus behind such a massacre from the perspectives of the killers involved. Whilst effectively portraying the oft made-over ugliness of murder, Elephant carries with it a huge level of sophistication, a cleverness that allows it to portray the convoluted nature of these massacres in an open-ended manner. If that doesn’t do it for you, well, it’s got that Alex Frost bloke in it, and he’s well fit.
But what happens when a videogame attempts the same achievement? The mostly negative reactions surrounding Danny Ledonne’s game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! tell us that the mainstream is not quite ready for videogames to embrace such forthright exploration of these tragic incidents. But, perhaps, if we were to somehow include Alex Frost in there…
I’ve started to feel, along with many others, that games offer healthy players the tools to safely explore emotive issues. So while my nephew (quite literally) kicks ass in Grand Theft Auto, I can see him organising his understanding of “right” and “wrong”. I’m not advocating that parents allow their children to play violent games. Rather, what I’ve observed makes me think that it’s only through consistently tackling such controversial themes that games can artistically progress. If this doesn’t happen sometime soon, the videogame industry might just have to take a leaf out of Grand Theft Auto’s book and coerce the mainstream into praising it. (I kid.)
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