How Can Grand Theft Auto Transition from Base Entertainment to Art?
May 2008 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Crafts Revisited
- Gaming in the Media: How Can Grand Theft Auto Transition from Base Entertainment to Art?
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Into Monster Camp
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP organization.
In an IRIS retrospective, Olivia recaps some of the more memorable milestones of the past year.
Robyn shares her thoughts on a recent preview of D&D 4th Edition, held by Wizards of the Coast in Los Angeles, California.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
- Ikariam
- Retro Review: Final Fantasy VI
Odds 'n Ends
In Australia, a game called The Coolest Kid in School is being billed as “Grand Theft Auto for Girls.” The gameplay revolves around risky teen girl behavior, prompting your in-game doppleganger to take drugs, practice cutting, play around with sex, and “lie, bitch, flirt your way to the top.” After checking out some of the game play, I can definitely say this is nothing like Grand Theft Auto.
It’s more like Miss Bimbo for the emo set.
These differences were underscored when the real Grand Theft Auto dropped its latest installment in stores last week. MTV’s multiplayer blog dedicated an entire week to covering Liberty City. It has been widely hailed as “art” as opposed to a game, and much has been made of the story of Niko.
However, things aren’t all sunshine in GTA world. After the game debuted - and IGN put up a few selections from the gameplay, including an offensive video (now pulled from the site) titled “The Girls of Liberty City” - Grand Theft Auto once again found itself under the lens of feminist and social scrutiny. The game has been criticized for both violent and sexual content. On Feministing, Samhita blasts the game for for condoning sexual violence against women:
If you get through the trailer you will notice that not only are the sex scenes very real looking, most of the women are killed shortly after forcibly performing sex acts. So, many young men are going to have their first (or already have, as this is not new content for GTA) sexual experiences via GTA and then they are going to kill the women they are sleeping with. The implications of that are mind-blowing. It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular? How is that acceptable?
[...]
The second implication is where does this put young women gamers? How do they feel when playing video games with such violent representations of women?
I can tell you that watching that video was humiliating and I don’t play video games, so I never have to see it again if I don’t want to.
Tracey John, writing for the MTV Multiplayer blog defends the game, saying:
Out of morbid curiosity (a force that drives many of my inexplicable actions in open world games), I procured the services of a prostitute. After driving around for quite a while, I finally spotted a scantily-clad woman on a dark street corner. I stopped and honked the horn, and she entered the vehicle. Once in a secluded area, I chose the $50 package (versus the $20 or the $70), where she vigorously fellated me Niko. While she clearly had her head in his lap, I couldn’t see much more than that. I still found this moment to be a bit icky and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t as lengthy or as sensual as, say, the sex scene in The Matrix: Reloaded.
Then I did the deed that got people downright angry: following our intimate encounter I ran her over with my car to see what would happen. She screamed and then lay flat on the ground as I pulled away. I stopped briefly to contemplate what I had just done, but apparently I didn’t hit the gas hard enough because she came after me and tried to kill me. I sped off. I learned there are consequences for killing (and attempting to kill) sex workers.
Should prostitutes exist in the game? I’m not particularly enamored with that feature of “GTA,” but I don’t have to use and kill hookers to succeed or progress. I don’t have to use their services for health (a burger will do) or kill them for their money (the game gives me plenty of cash for car thefts, deliveries and assassinations). I also don’t have to run over 50 people, including women, to get to where I’m going, though I often do because I have a bad habit of driving on sidewalks.
Addressing what this game means for women, I don’t think the option to kill prostitutes gives young men the idea to use females as sex objects and then kill them. Perhaps something is wrong with someone who repeatedly does this in the game for sheer amusement but I’d like to give gamers more credit than that. Playing “The Sims,” I’ve done some things that could be equivalent to gratuitously murdering people in “GTA” (am I the only person to have created four solid walls around their Sim to see what happens?). “GTA” is a game of choice — albeit from a strictly male perspective — in a fantasy world of crime, giving players the option to do things that they wouldn’t do in real life like illicit sex and indiscriminate killing.
All in all, as a woman, a gamer and a feminist, I’m not offended by the game.
And where do I fall in all this?
As a fan of the GTA series, crappy graphics and all, I have to say I lean more toward Tracey John’s position than Samhita’s. At this point, prostitutes are part of the whole, seedy game play landscape. And to be quite frank, prostitutes were never a big part of my game play. Why? Because having sex with a prostitute or going to a strip club with my character means that I have to sit still for a few minutes to watch badly rendered digital forms try to simulate real life. Maybe I would have been more titillated if Square Enix was designing the characters. As the graphics are today, they just look like strange little blocks trying to do a sex dance.
What I would rather focus on is improving the GTA gaming environment for women who actually play the games. Women are becoming a sizable number of consistent players in spite of our lack of representation, and there are enhancements that could be made to improve the gaming experience while staying true to the core ideas and setting of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. My main issue with GTA4 is that there are no women in any position of power in the gameplay. We are available for sex. And we may be accessories to a crime or perhaps even a long term girlfriend. But an actual personality? Apparently not.
I personally don’t have too many problems with the nature of the game. After all, I’m playing a villain, so I expect to do villain-style activities like shooting people in the face, taking drugs, and stealing cars. And it’s a fun twist on the normal hero story in video games. (I would also like to see more designers think about flipping their games around to the dark side - how cool would it be to play Sephiroth’s story?)
This villain-style gameplay would not be diminished by adding more women to the mix. In fact the female perspective would actually make the game more challenging and provide more nuance and depth to character interactions. Take into consideration the following GTA-compatible scenarios:
1. The addition of an all-girl gang as a competing force in Liberty City. They operate on the fringes, making their presence known occasionally throughout the game. You can team up with them on some missions and compete with them on others. You could even switch between players as both Niko and a female gang member. A strong female gang presence could also act as a check for gamers more violent tendencies - if a player chooses to continually kill prostitutes, the female gang could come in an attack the player at randomly set intervals.
2. Have a female leader of a gang with both male and female members. You could flesh this character out a couple of different ways - make her a fierce, like Pam Grier in Coffy, cleaning up the city but still presiding over the drug trade. Or you could make her a straight up nemesis, a Cleopatra Jones-style infiltrator who is secretly working for the FBI or DEA.
3. GTA could also focus its razor-sharp commentary on the absurdity of society on the ridiculousness of ingrained gender roles by adding an extremely capable female foil to a male protagonist. Though she could be incarnated as a girlfriend, I would prefer for her to be a sister or a friend who happens to be smart, quick, and brutal. Have her outperform the male protagonist on various missions. Have driving-in-the-car conversations about feminism, the economy, and various social issues.
If Rockstar Games isn’t afraid to push the envelope, let’s take it further than just violence. Instead of taking a page from Scarface, try taking a page from It Happened One Night - a story revolving around the adversarial wit between male and female characters that are intellectual equals. If Rockstar is trying to transcend gaming as entertainment and usher in the idea that games can be art on par with film and novels, then they should make the focus of GTA 5 character development.
And, strangely enough, if Rockstar does manage to create multifaceted and complex female characters for Grand Theft Auto 5, then it would put them in a position where a gaming company has created a more compelling female narrative in a thirty hour video game than Hollywood has been able to do in the last decade of professional film making.
Now that would be innovation in gaming.
