Speaking as someone who is a huge gamer and feminist both, I have a hard time getting riled up at the Grand Theft Auto games for a few reasons.

First of all, it's a game of 'choice'. It is never a story goal to kill hookers, and playing through Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas I had no idea how to even do the action. The entire game focuses around "Ok, you're in a corrupt city working your way to the top of the criminal world, and every action you take has ramnifications (stars that alert the police to you with increasing intensity). If you want money for a piece, then you'll need to do missions or find it in a less savory fashion if you're stuck", etc etc

So right from the beginning, its not a very savory world and it tends to be over the top in its depictions of violence, sexuality, and crime. Its the video game equivilant of the 'Hollywood' effect.

However, Rockstar knows exactly what they're doing with these ads. Samhita, seeing how you've never played a GTA game before I'd guess you're unfamiliar with Rockstar and controversy. Rockstar's main property is the GTA games, and so they know exactly how to milk them.

Grand Theft Auto 4, as a result, is so highly anticipated that Hollywood is taking care to schedule movies around it as they are pretty sure it will eclipse any releases on that date.

Rockstar knows exactly what they're doing and they are fine tuning it to the right amount of controversy. As an effect, they're taking the ever popular "You can kill hookers in this game!" controversy and blowing it up huge when in reality, its just a totally optional and obscure part of the game that is a pain in the ass.

I don't know, I'm partly defending Rockstar because the Grand Theft Auto games are really well done, are written with a pretty good sense of humour, and they're just fantastic games. However, I don't like the tact they're taking of promoting the "Hey, you can murder a hooker!" aspect of the game instead of the expanded Liberty City, storyline, new combat, new main character, etc.

Samhita, is it the fact that you murder sex-workers that bothers you? The fact that the game depicts graphic sex scenes? The fact that they are promoting the above as a kickin' game feature?

Ok, so killing hookers is an "optional an obscure" part of GTA4... Anyone know how female characters factor into the game besides the way they are depicted in the linked video? I have not played this game or its predecessors, so I'd be curious to hear from someone who has.

For me it isn't that the game depicts graphic sex, it's that sex is uniformly depicted as something that men pay women for with absolutely no variation. From that commercial (I'm not a gamer and have never played the game) all women are prostitutes. Is there an option for me to play a character working her way up to the top of the criminal underground? Is there an option for the central character to be a female?

@halfawake In GTA: San Andreas the cast was pretty uniformly male. However, there was the protaganist's sister who was instrumental in forming an alliance between gangs in the city and a few other minor female characters. San Andreas had a pretty small cast, though. You can also have a girlfriend in the game who can hold her own in drive-by shootings or gang wards by being your driver or the shooter in the back.

@sgzax: You can have 'girlfriends'in the game and you can only preposition certain women for sex. The main character has always been a guy, though - always of different origin, but there has not been a female protganist of GTA4 though.

The fact that it's an option in the game however "obscure" it may be is enough for me. If even one of the scenes depicted in that trailer were possible, it's misogynistic. I fail to see how it could be otherwise.

And those options might not be appealing to you, Arbuthnot but are adult women really the target audience here?

I'm not saying this game should be censored or anymore regulated than it is, on principle. But it's fucked up. And I wouldn't support it.

Video games, as an industry, are going through 'growing pains' like this. And I think it's a sign that women are, in a way, being shut out of this new industry. But this specific trailer isn't really getting me too angry because I expect Rockstar to put these parts of the game in the public eye because Rockstar knows their image and how to manipulate it quite successfully. When I play the actual game, then Ill have a better idea of whether this is actually a sexist game or if weve made some progress.

Given that killing prostitutes is not a goal in the game, and that the in-game consequences are only negative, I'd submit that the fact that the game allows you to kill them actually does more for the player's ethical development than a game that doesn't allow you to do it. The choice NOT to kill a prostitute doesn't really have any meaning unless you have the option to choose otherwise. For more on this, see "A Clockwork Orange".

First of all, I'm pretty sure the ratings system on video games is an elaborate joke, right?

Second, the article you linked to on the pulling of ads states "Advertisements for Rockstar North's upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360) will be pulled from city buses despite no explicit or otherwise inappropriate material in the ads." Instead, the ads seemed to be pulled in Chicago in response to recent shootings (?), which makes as much sense as banning Nike Air Jordans or 2 Live Crew in the late 80s.

Finally, video games are becoming more cinematic, but it's the interactivity which is probably bothering people (after all, underage sex workers are abused and killed in Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, but it was intended to stimulate thought and empathy, not complicity).

Finally, I'd recommend adding this blog to your blogroll or your reading list to keep up with such developments so that they aren't a surprise (I've been randomly assaulting computer characters in GTA games since the late 90s).

If they can't even bring themselves to imagine a world in which a woman is the central character of their game, then I won't feel bad about never buying anything they produce. Not that they care about my money or opinion anyway.

About the prostitution and subsequent killing... horrifying message being sent on how you can treat your sex partners.

Do sex worker advocacy groups ever speak out against these depictions?

I am a gamer. I've grown up playing video games. I've never had a problem playing games where I blow someone away, or slit their throats, or bash their heads in. The same applies to the violence towards women in these games. I've played previous versions of GTA, and I've done the hooker option, killing her afterwards. I don't have a problem with this either, and I never understood why this country is more squeamish about sex than about murder. Violence against women is a horrid thing, as is brutally murdering someone, and I certainly don't advocate either. But they come as two sides of the same coin. GTA exposes people to instances where it's ok to abuse women just as it introduces the concept that killing for money or fun is acceptable. If you want to get rid of one in video games, I'd think you'd also have to get rid of the other, and then move on to violence in movies and books.

There are more concrete steps that can be taken towards stopping violence through community support and strong parenting rather than treading on the toes of the First Amendment.

Noriz - in America and Canada, the ratings board play random 15 minute increments of the game and watch a couple of cutscenes and talk to the devs - so its quite easy to miss parts of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if Rockstar was leaning on them to keep the rating a bit low either.

And if we're in a world where lots of sex is on offer, why isn't it an option to proposition men for sex?

Well Grand Theft Auto is simply a game based around violence and crime.

Violence, sex, and more violence.

Anyone can be killed at any time - so would the game be ok if women were removed completely from the game?

Or maybe if women couldnt be killed in the game?

But then the rife hypocrisy here at feministing rears its ugly head as usual - since the violence is about 99% towards males, wouldnt that reek of misandry?

Kind of funny, you know, this bullshit post coming from samhita when she constantly talks about racism against black males who tried to kill someone by kicking in their heads with steel toed boots, but then shooting people in a video game is suddenly misogynistic?

So real world violence is ok, but a game that has nothing to do with killing females is suddenly misogynistic?

Logic must have the day off today.

As another female gamer and feminist, I want to disagree with the people who are defending GTA. In my experience, I have watched my guy friends spend hours playing the GTA games, just chasing down and beating prostitutes to death with a golf club. And please, the "ethical lesson" is not one I think Rockstar intended, at all. Very few people think about the games they are playing and the moral implications--rather, it's the imagery that is effective in planting more seeds of sexism and violence in young impressionable minds. Now, I am not one to press censorship, but I really think more people, especially female gamers, should be speaking out against this game. We can go play Super Smash Brothers: Brawl or Zelda: Twilight Princess instead. :)

halfawake: "Anyone know how female characters factor into the game besides the way they are depicted in the linked video? I have not played this game or its predecessors, so I'd be curious to hear from someone who has."

The game is usually set in poor urban areas, so you have bystanders walking along, some of which are women. You can have a girlfriend, and you can proposition prostitutes. I seem to recall in San Andreas playing as a female character later in the game, or at least having her as your partner for a while, and I can say clearly that she was pretty badass.

sgzax: "Is there an option for me to play a character working her way up to the top of the criminal underground? Is there an option for the central character to be a female?"

Not from the beginning (yet), but I do remember having a female gangster partner at one point in an earlier GTA game, and maybe even taking her role on temporarily at some point (it's been years since I played that).

norbizness: "First of all, I'm pretty sure the ratings system on video games is an elaborate joke, right?"

What are you referring to? Jack Thompson wouldn't approve, heh.

Kacie, while I'm really glad to hear that you're voting with your dollar and I think that the Wii is a great feminist system I have to kind of disagree that because your boyfriend killed eighty hookers with a gold club that that makes GTA4 the ultimate in sex-worker murder simulator games, and that the game has no redeeming values.

The game embodies violence - if anything its a great deal of misanthropy.

So, any games featuring a female character that can hurt a male character is suddenly misandry as well? How come no call to arms about this earlier?

I have also played the GTA games, and it is true, actual women are sorely lacking from the game. GTA IV may differ, but I doubt it. They say in this game you can meet up with women via online personals and have psuedo relationships. (Which I'm sure will result in some incredibly misogynistic treatment from the main character.)

I did see a preview video that included some shots of what I think was a strip club, where the dancer said something like "this makes me so hot" and I literally laughed out loud. So really, this game exsists entirely in the realm of male fantasy where every woman wants you and there are no strings attached. That's pretty much the whole point of the game as far as I can tell. Do indulge in the fantasy life of an angry and oversexed 17 year old boy.

Though it leaves me frustrated that I can't enjoy playing a fun game without simultaneously having to see my entire gender reduced to walking orifices.

Kacie,

I wasn't trying to make ant points one way or another about what Rockstar intended; I'm just theorizing about the implications of the players' choices, and how a game which allows for prostitute killing poses more choices to the player than one which does not.

Ditto to the people above who pointed out that, given the fact that violence is EVERYWHERE else in the game, it would be a bit odd to exclude women from it. I also agree with the people who point out that the lack of a female protagonist makes the games unbalanced.

Ironically, even though I enjoy discussing & debating GTA, I've never owned and probably never will own any of the games in the series. Twilight Princess & Brawl, on the other hand, are two of my favorites. Wanna trade Brawl friend codes?

Given that killing prostitutes is not a goal in the game, and that the in-game consequences are only negative...

(I don't play this game, but I've heard about it.) I thought the reason gamers had the option of buying the services of prostitutes was to increase "happiness" or one of the power bars. Then, the option of killing the prostitutes in order to recover the money you just spent. Those aren't really negatives.

“strong parenting rather than treading on the toes of the First Amendment.�
Destra, can you please tell us if anyone here advocated the game to be banned or censored in anyway? Because if they did that would be “treading on the toes of the First Amendment�. Criticizing, complaining, bemoaning, critique, do not violate anyone’s first amendment. It just gets really tiring, having to explain this on every other tread.

“and I never understood why this country is more squeamish about sex than about murder.� What is your point? People here are very obviously not talking about sex but rather about the normalization of sexualized violence.

Listening to the reviews talk about how important the GTA series is, and what a break Niko is from the other protagonists because he's sympathetic made me physically ill--like I actually thought I was going to throw up. My blog is for feminist gamers. I can forgive a lot in a game, but GTA is so categorically anti-woman I see no need for self-proclaimed feminists to heap more praise on it when there are so many games out there more worth your time and effort. There are plenty of misogynist dicks out there proclaiming what a great game GTA is -- it's not like the game is hurting.

Ellestar, the only 'bar' that killing prostitutes filled up for you were the 'star' bar. Carl (protganist) had a bunch of physical bars such as 'fat', 'muscle', 'sex appeal', 'reputation' but I don't recall a happiness bar and if there was one hookers didn't fill it for you. The 'star' bar was police attention and if it filled up that was actually quite negative as cops would be coming for you.

And Shinobi, I've always found that the GTA games (see: San Andreas) tend to subvert 'fantasy' life tropes. For instance in SA, drugs have ravaged your gang, your allies are on probation, people are working in fast food places after getting out of jail for getting caught selling drugs...

Kacie-
I agree with you about 6000%. The whole point of this controversy is not whether video games are more unfair to women (that's another debate, I have serious issues with Tomb Raider as well...) or how major/minor the "beating up women" feature is in this game, it's about GTA unabashedly glorifying violence as a way to have fun on a rainy afternoon. Whether this violence is misandrist (sp?) or misogynist is irrelevant; Samhita focused on the misogyny because 1. it is much more obvious (women: when you're done with them, just toss them in the morgue!) and 2. this is a feminist blog.

Arbuthnot- I agree that GTA does have an effective marketing strategy, extolling the fun of raping and killing women. That this is effective is what scares the shit out of me.

Ellestar, I think that's how it was in GTA III, not sure how much it's changed since then. I was basing the "only negative" on what other people had said, but you may very well be right.

There is still the negative consequence of the fact that killing anyone raises your "wanted" level. It's a risk to be taken, and just like in real life it's up to you to decide how you want to way the ethical implications along with the practical ones.

Arbuthnot, your argument about the game being a "sex-worker murder simulator" and thus having no redeeming value doesn't hold water. The game is whatever you choose for it to be; it's a "sandbox" game. It is true that "sex-worker murder simulator" is a choice you can make for how you want to act, but it's one of hundreds of choices. You could just as easily choose to be a perfect gentleman throughout the whole game. Implicit in your argument is the assertion that the game is ONLY a murder simulator, which is simply not true.

Arbuthnot: It's funny how much care and attention to narrative detail the writers at Rockstar gave to all of the men in the series: Making sure that the war on drugs and the actual human impact of this failed policy is painted in more detail than just "Say no." Too bad they couldn't spare a little of that sympathy and empathy for the women in the game. Nothing about the circumstances that led a woman to being a street prostitute--just fuck 'er and kill 'er so you can get your money back. They must have broken their arms patting themselves on the back for being so culturally aware after writing the stuff about the fast food workers that they couldn't write anything more about the plight of women. That must be it.

Mighty Ponygirl, I've read your blog and I respect your work, but I also disagree with you that GTA is an anti-woman series in such a degree that enjoying the gameplay and parts of the storyline actually revokes your feminism card. The game has flaws. The game is heteronormative. The game has an option for you to kill sex workers. I don't think this makes it a game that deserves such a big place in the hall of shame. I don't think I'll buy 4, since I don't own a PS3 or a 360, but the entire industry is in need of an overhaul and if you restrict yourself to playing games with no sexism then you're going to miss out on some games that subvert some sexist tropes, some games with great gameplay, and some games that do deserve to be missed out on.

I don't know, I don't have any bile for GTA because I can note the sexism and move on from there and ignore it. I don't think its influencing a generation of misogynists - I mean, you could say that the Zelda series has Zelda perpetually getting kidnapped by Ganon and it shows the patriarchal system by having a male protaganist save her from a male antagonist, or you could say that the Birdo character is an insult to transsexual people.

I don't know, I think its a fledgling industry and feminists need to make their voices heard and vote with their dollar, but I also think Rockstar thrives and is a master of controlling this sort of controversy and I find it easier to forgive that than a game like Soul Calibur which I find more odious by many degrees.

I'm yet another gamer and feminist.

I know for a fact that there are hordes of (male) gamers that want to go out and get this game because it has so much violence and sex. I've seen 10 year olds play GTA games and heard these same kids say that Nintendo is a p***y company because of all their kiddy games.

So yeah, you have all of these kids wanting to be all grown up, you have all of these hypersexed teenagers (who also want to feel like grownups) and you have these 'adults' who play their dream fantasy. They eat this stuff like candy and so that's what the companies give them.

What's my point? Ummm...not quite sure. I just have a hard time supporting games that promote violence and sex for the sake of violence and sex.

Oh, and I guess the dating club in GTA IV is called the "Twat."

Nice.

Ellestar, the only 'bar' that killing prostitutes filled up for you were the 'star' bar.

After a little research, I remembered it was the "health" bar that was (ironically) raised when using the hookers' services. It may not be the case in later versions of the game, but the original reason for the prostitutes was a positive for the player. Then, the murder was another positive (recovering the money just paid).

Ponygirl, I think there are a lack of women in game writing overall that that leads to unbalanced narratives like the one in the GTA series.

I was responding to your first comment in the thread previously, it seems to be taking a long time for the comments to post for me. D:

I don't believe videogames can encourage violent behavior, but I do see this as reinforcing the notion of sex workers as being less than human which, in turn, encourages harm to them by way of a legal system that never endeavors to help them in any way shape or form.

Games like GTA along with films and television are the only exposure most people have to prostitution, and so I believe popular entertainment can actually shape attitudes in this area simply by being the only source of info available.

Why is it that any other misogynist type of product will incite our reactions against it, but as soon as the product becomes a video game, the critical functions of many of the people here fly out the window? Why are video games so sacrosanct?!

The Guardian brought this issue up then did NOTHING with it. Just blathered on about the rendering.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/29/games

I don't care if there's no "benefit" to killing the sex workers. Why is it even an option? I know you can kill all kinds of people in that game by running them over or shooting them, but are the prostitutes being singled out for special treatment?

I don't know, I don't have any bile for GTA because I can note the sexism and move on from there and ignore it. I don't think its influencing a generation of misogynists - I mean, you could say that the Zelda series has Zelda perpetually getting kidnapped by Ganon and it shows the patriarchal system by having a male protaganist save her from a male antagonist, or you could say that the Birdo character is an insult to transsexual people.

Except that those games are fantasy games whereas GTA prides itself on its realism. And yes, I have gone after Sexism in Zelda: That was one of my first major fanboy trollings on my site, TYVM.

I am in 100% agreement with VGC's and Robos A Go Go ... it's not like kids are going to play GTA and go out and kill a cop, it's that the game is going to feed into a perception of women and especially prostitutes as disposable non-humans.

...and I've done the hooker option, killing her afterwards.

Uh ... why? Just 'cause? It's not an essential part of the game.

In fact, you can pretty much get through the entire game and be a 'gent' about everything the player is required to do.

Overall, I like the GTA series (lots to do in lots of different ways), but the way Rockstar is promoting it needs a serious rethink.

Bowleserised,

Singling out prostitutes for "special treatment" would be if you were NOT able to kill them.

Your question "why is it even an option" has already been answered further up. While I don't necessarily defend the whole game, I do think that the best way to balance it out would be to include MORE choices, rather than sanitization.

But it is one of the trailers to the new Grand Theft Auto coming out today, and it is reprehensible.

I agree this is reprehensible, but in the interest of honesty, this is not a trailer. It's a video compilation put together by IGN, a review site. It was not made by Rockstar, the company behind GTA.
The actual trailers are (a) significantly shorter, 30 seconds to a minute to fit into television commercial breaks, and (b) focus on either the actual gameplay or the visuals.

I know you can kill all kinds of people in that game by running them over or shooting them, but are the prostitutes being singled out for special treatment?

Not unless this GTA is significantly and radically different from all the others, and we'd have heard about it by now. You can kill anyone in the game by running over them or shooting them, and there's no difference between them as far as rewards (random amounts of money being dropped) or penalties (wanted level increasing, cops coming to arrest you).

What strikes me about many of the comments in defense of Grand Theft Auto 4 is how condesending they are toward those of us who are questioning the message of GTA 4. For example, Kacie's guy friends beat the hooker with the golf club, not her boyfriend. And I'm not going to apologize for critisizing a game that I haven't played because I don't think I need to experience the misogyny to know that it is something that offends me. While violence is rampant in the GTA series, using sex as a form of violence is reprehensible. And the fact that this has been going on since the 90's and that all of the reviews ignore this aspect only highlights the need for criticism such as Samhita's.

Maybe I'm misreading some of these comments but I think this discussion is important. I think gaming in general is a place where women's issues and opinions are rarely considered. We may all choose to vote with our dollars but Rockstar isn't going to give a damn.

Whoops, thanksd for pointing that out Sarah. I'm at home with a stomach virus and I'm in bed snivelling and vomiting so my reading comprehension may not be up to par. I was not condescending towards any poster and despite my mistake I was not insulting anyone but just discussing my opinions.

I'm going to admit, I have the seeds of doubt as it were planted in my head now the more I think about it. I've posted about gaming on my blog - about Valve's games, in particular, and there's definately very vivid differences between a game like Half-Life 2 and a game like Grand Theft Auto.

I think the option to kill sex workers is something that is a bit of a 'running joke' in a way - Rockstar knows how much controversy it causes and therefore plays it up in their marketing. Like I've said before, Rockstar has absolutely no qualms about collecting money for things that people get upset about in their games.

Which, I guess, makes me less upset than I should be because I kind of view it as being done with a winking eye and a nudge in the ribs. Does that make it right? Well, no, but I can see it being an in-joke of sorts, a riff on the series history, a sort of "Yeah, we're Rockstar, and you love it", which for some reason bothers me less. Hm. I need to ponder this more.

What strikes me about many of the comments in defense of Grand Theft Auto 4 is how condesending they are toward those of us who are questioning the message of GTA 4.

I agree that the discussion is important, and I think the lack of major female characters, and especially playable ones, is a severe flaw in the game.
However, many of the people criticizing the game have either never played it or studied it, leading to them making conclusions based off of incorrect premises - such as "prostitutes being singled out for special treatment" or that they're even a significant part of the game. I realize the videos such as the one at IGN certainly give that impression, and the endless discussion in the media about it certainly doesn't help, but in terms of relative importance to the game play, it's as if you formed all your impressions about Super Mario Brothers by seeing video clips of jumping on the flag pole at the end of the level, or formed all your impressions of The Sims by seeing people wetting themselves with no bathroom available. Yes, these happen, but to presume the entire game is based off them and then criticize it is leaping to an unrealistic conclusion.

Oh for god's sake! This game is clearly disgusting, women-hating and sexist. CLEARLY. If you can't see that, then you are incredibly sexist. That's the bottom line. Killing women for fun (whether they are prostitutes or not) is NOT acceptable! What is so difficult about that to understand?

I'm horrified that people like Arbuthnot are defending this crap. Oh, it's optional, like that changes anything! It's still brutalizing women, and that's all I care about.

In this creepy little fantasy world that Arbuthnot seems to like so much, men are in charge, and men get to kill women. Why would any non-sexist man want to play a game like that? Why would anyone pay money to buy a game that was clearly created by a bunch of sexist men.

And all these silly whiners talking about how feministing has all this violence against men and it's glorified- um, where? Point me to it. This thread seems like a lot of privileged little clueless boys, trying to defend themselves. Why are you here boys? You are clearly not feminists?

All these justifications for killing women is just sickening.

I'm sure that all the teenagers who brag to their friends about how they killed the hooker are enjoying it on the purely ironic level.

I must admit that I love the GTA series. I've played them since I was about 13 or 14 years old, and I have never thought that the things I did in that game would at all OK in real life.

The part with the prostitution doesn't get me too riled up. They could get rid of it and I wouldn't shed a tear, the effort it takes isn't even worth the benefit, because first you have to find a nice car, steal it, find a prostitute, follow her around honking at her, and then maybe she'll get in your car. The fact that you can kill her afterwards and get your money back, well, you can kill anyone on the street and get their money. Including elderly people. The only people who are safe are kids; you will find no children on the streets.

You do a lot of reprehensible things in this game. You get extra points for head shots, you steal people's cars and run over them if they chase you, or you can just grab a flamethrower and torch everyone on the street. I don't think you can even do a good deed if you wanted to.

I had the option of killing prostitutes and I never chose to. Just because I did it a couple of times, doesn't mean I started to think that its OK. If someone thinks that it IS ok, there was probably something wrong with the person to begin with.

However, I think kids should NEVER play this game. Even my playing at 13 or 14 was pushing it.

Unicron_The_Vagina

I think maybe what's really needed here is a study of how real people "play" the game and what they choose to do. The Guardian's gamer likes wandering round the city admiring the sunsets. Kacie's (I think it was, forgive if I'm wrong) male friends have fun clubbing prostitutes to death.
The fact that the "trailer" Samhita found comes from a review site is pretty revealing.

That would answer a lot of the questions being brought up here.

I think you can note and disagree with the sexism in something but still appreciate other well done aspects. Surely you've read a great piece of literature for English class and thought "Wow, the sexism in this is pretty abhorrent but the guy really knows his sentence structure."

And I'm not a man, but I doubt that'll make any difference in your opinions.

I think you can note and disagree with the sexism in something but still appreciate other well done aspects. Surely you've read a great piece of literature for English class and thought "Wow, the sexism in this is pretty abhorrent but the guy really knows his sentence structure."

And I'm not a man, but I doubt that'll make any difference in your opinions.

Bowl, when playing San Andreas I liked to take Carl to the gym, to bike around the city, and to do the missions and see the story begin to unfold. I didn't kill hookers or innocents, as it were. The game has a lot of options. My older brother bought it for me because he enjoyed using it as a driving simulator.

I think the real question here is can you still bludgeon people to death with dildos?

So, any games featuring a female character that can hurt a male character is suddenly misandry as well? How come no call to arms about this earlier?

When you show me a game that lets me porposition male prostitutes, visit male strip clubs, and lets you regain health by having sex with a man before you kill him, then you'll have a somewhat valid point.

Until then, you're talking out of your ass.

Arbuthnot – well, good for you. But what about everyone else who's playing it? That's my point.

Arbutnot: You're using the classic shellgame false-dichotomy.

Nothing is above criticism. Be it Chaucer or the works of Uwe Boll or GTA. This posting happens to be about GTA, so we're criticising it, rightly, for its portrayals of women. Pointing to other cultural artifacts and proclaiming "But, but, but... those treat women badly too" is disingenuous. We're not talking about classic literature, here. We're talking about Grand Theft Auto.

In fact, if a game has a pretense toward calling itself "art" (as so many of the apologists for GTA are intent upon), then that game becomes more open to criticism. Have you ever actually talked to an artist? Artists put their work out there so that every symbolic and semiotic aspect of the work can be picked apart by critics. It's not about hanging in a museum and making people feel smartened for looking at it, it's about getting a reaction from people. And if the reaction isn't going the way you want, if there's outrage and recriminations, you have to accept that as the price for putting your "art" out there.

Frankly, I view GTA in the same way I view Lolita. It may be the most brilliant piece of work of its generation, but if 99.9% of the people who view it miss the point so spectacularly that they actually believe the inverse, then it's failed art.

Between porn and games like this, our young boys are getting a really sick and twisted introduction to sexuality.
They're not getting sex ed in school; they're getting it from misogynist media.
The message is that women exist as sexual objects and that's about it.
In GTA they're either prostitutes or props in the background.
And of course it echoes our society's insistance that prostitutes are expendable sub-humans.

I think I'm starting to fully understand the points being put forward here, but I'm still not sure what course of action would be best. Boycott? Letters? Protest?

Hm.

It's hard to ponder right now, since my head is all stuffed with wool, but I don't know. I see a lot of 'teen boys teen boys teen boys' in comments, but I wonder how old Rockstar's 'core audience' is, since they began releasing their games in the early 90s.

I don't know, I think its a fledgling industry and feminists need to make their voices heard and vote with their dollar, but I also think Rockstar thrives and is a master of controlling this sort of controversy and I find it easier to forgive that than a game like Soul Calibur which I find more odious by many degrees.

I'd like to hear you expand on this a bit, actually. In what ways do you find Soul Calibur more odious by many degrees?

That "Rockstar thrives and is a master of controlling this sort of controversy" actually makes it harder for me to forgive or overlook. At least Soul Calibur, despite having some really ridiculous and offensive costume choices for the female characters, gave me the option to create fighters from scratch, giving them appropriate armor, and allowing me to make them whatever ethnicity I wanted. Further, the fact that Rockstar are intentionally racist and sexist and exploit that in their advertising to get notoriety makes them a lot less forgivable in my book.

It's not as though that aspect of the game is there to NOT be utilized. It's true that a great many players will ignore that facet of the gameplay, but that hardly negates the existence of it altogether.

That said, the responsible thing for Rockstar to do would be to acknowledge the basic humanity of prostitutes by, you know, making them a well-developed part of the story rather than relegating them to the role of gritty window-dressing for their somewhat juvenile depiction of lower-class urban life. If they could just establish that attacking a sex worker is no more morally permissible than attacking anyone else, even though both acts are available (and thereby encouraged, at least if you think games are meant to be explored fully), it'd go a long way towards redeeming the company in my eyes.

The Soul Calibur series is really erasing all of my good will built up by II by streamlining all of the women characters to look exactly the same except for hair/eye color and showing them off the fanbase hungry for approval and a thumbs up.

Honestly, the whole area of GTA revolves around controversy, why are the feministing staff (who must know this, unless you live under a rock) further inflating sales of the game by giving it attention of your website?

The game is just that, A-GAME. How many people do you know that play GTA, then say, "Hey lets go and kill us a few police!"? None I'd wager.

It's fantasy, not reality, theres a difference, gamers (including myself) know what it is.

Besides that, in this game you have the option to:Kill cops, grandmas, grandpas, little kids, skaters, army officials, politicians, common criminals, mothers, fathers, basically everyone. Theres the possibility of going on a mass killing spree, taking thousands out, and your upset about the "violence against women" standpoint? How insignificant can you get?

Bowleserised,

I very much appreciate where you're coming from, but I feel that if we're discussing the inherent nature and quality of the game (which seems mostly to be the case), then statistics about how many people are doing what with it would be irrelevant to that discussion. Hypothetically, if 99% of people use it as a sex-worker killing simulator, I still don't think that proves anything about the inherent nature of the game. Correlation != causation. On the other hand, discussion about whether the design of the game is intended to specifically encourage these killings or DIScourage the player from abstaining from said killings, I think is more revealing. My take, personally, is that the fact that the killings are allowed is pretty neutral in its gender treatment, whereas the lack of depth for female characters is probably a more valid feminist gripe.

buggle, you're not really participating constructively in the discussion here. You can yell all you like about "this game is AWFUL AWFUL and so is anyone who thinks otherwise", and I could yell the exact opposite just as loudly, and we'd accomplish nothing. People here are delving into WHY people have problems with the game, or find certain aspects of the game defensible.

Teen boys are talked about because your teenage years are formative in sexuality. I've not a lot of adult assholes who happened to like the game to, but I saw that more as they enjoyed the game because it reinforced what was there, not because it instructed them to view women as simply objects for sexual gratification who should be disposed of afterwards because their services are monetarily useless and you have every right to keep your money after you've cum, no matter what the bitch says.

Really, the first step in all of this is for gamers to be vocal and say "Portraying women like disposable sex objects is unacceptable."

Don't buy the game.

Don't give the game a critical free ride.

Hold reviewers accountable when they gloss over the treatment of women in the game.

Yep, it's sexist -- any "game" where prostitutes are killed for sport is sexist, and worse than that. For this and a thousand games like it, the gender lens isn't the most prominent. The question is senseless violence. Yeah, the women are treated shitty, and teen guys are primarily blowing up images of men in these games. The fact that there's so much other violence in these kinds of games hides the sexism. But I don't want my kid exposed to either the sexism or the violence.

Ah, and just like clockwork, the second someone calls out that art is not magically exempted from criticism, the "It's just a game" retort comes out.

You can't have it both ways.

Oh, and It's not just a game.

“Frankly, I view GTA in the same way I view Lolita. It may be the most brilliant piece of work of its generation, but if 99.9% of the people who view it miss the point�
Hey hey leave Lolita out of this! I know this is off topic, but I doubt a lot of people who have actually read Lolita would miss the point.

um, no... if majority of people who read it didn't miss the point, the term "Lolita" would not be defined as "A seductive adolescent girl."

Oh for god's sake! This game is clearly disgusting, women-hating and sexist. CLEARLY. If you can't see that, then you are incredibly sexist. That's the bottom line. Killing women for fun (whether they are prostitutes or not) is NOT acceptable! What is so difficult about that to understand?

Um, what? I am sexist for playing GTA? How about fighting games like Mortal Kombat or Tekken? I have, through the magic of video games, ripped women's arms and heads off. How about GoldenEye and Bond games where you're shooting female spies?

Buggle, your analysis is way off. I'm not comfortable with prostitutes in these games, but it's really a minor quibble when you consider you can go through this game and kill millions upon millions of people.

It's perfectly reasonable to have a problem with that. Boycott GTA with your wallet. But calling me sexist for playing an amazing game where you have the option to kill women is ridiculous. Instead of this being about the game, you made it personal. I don't appreciate it.

Besides that, in this game you have the option to:Kill cops, grandmas, grandpas, little kids, skaters, army officials, politicians, common criminals, mothers, fathers, basically everyone.

That's simply untrue. You do not, in any of the GTA3 games, have the ability to murder children.

The creators made a choice- they wouldn't let you murder children. They also made a choice: To include the ability to regain health by soliciting a prostitute. Further, they included the ability to kill the women that you've paid in order to regain your money. Oh, and to include the ability to go to strip clubs.

Those were choices they made with regards to the game, and they are not immune to criticism for those choices.

Another female gamer here!

The majority of my games are moderately violent to mega-violent; the only PG games I have are Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and that's just two out of about 25. Many of the games that I have contain some misogynistic tones, or completely lack playable female characters.

However, I could never get into this series, much to the dismay of my friends. It's not only because of the prostitution issue, but also of its racist tones, particularly in Vice City game, where it has Haitian and Cuban gangs. Particular characters would say things like "kill all the Haitians" (or said, because I think that the newer edition removed these references after much protest and threat of legal action). Apparently, it doesn't differ much in the other games. However, which is not surprising at all, many gamers defended the racist statements, referring to it as just entertainment, as just a game. To which I call bullshit. Game developers know exactly what they are doing.

Really I had a very long paragraph typed out about just why this is an incredibly inane topic to bother with, but I'll sum it up quickly.

Focusing on the hooker killing raises controversy, which raises talk about the game, which equals more sales. Good job feministing, you helped Rockstar.

On the actual killing of hookers-You can kill anyone, from babies, to mothers, to daughters, to fathers, to sons, to grandmas, to grandpas, to politicians, to anyone. Singling out one type of character in a game simply shows how narrow minded this is.

The difference is that female spies and martial artists aren't, in real life, the subjects of real physical and institutionalized abuse by johns and the justice system alike. They aren't seen as jokes or animals, and their plight isn't ignored or seen as deserved by mainstream America.

As such, a game that allows you to hurt a female spy or fighter isn't feeding several harmful stereotypes, whereas a game that lets you do the same to sex workers is, even if the latter occurs in the context of a greater wave of violence.

That's the difference.

The only reason murdering children is probably not allowed is because it is an automatic AO if you can kill a kid in any form and it is flat out illegal overseas to depict the murder of children in games, which will destroy a games sales. Itd be interesting to see what happened if this restriction was lifted.

@RoymaxIII, I always considered the skaters in GTA Vice City to be anywhere from 11-16 in age. I never bothered to look closely, but thats what I meant about kids.

You could be right and they may be over 18, in which case I admit defeat, but even so, look at the rest of the list. My point is still valid.

I also don't see how mentioning GTA in the context of claiming that it is sexist raises sales. At best you can say that it doesn't discourage sales because, surprisingly enough, most of the people here weren't going to buy the game anyway.

And that's fine, because nobody's trying to argue for a boycott. We're only having a discussion about a pop culture phenomena which, last I checked, was perfectly valid.

JohnDoes: You must loose IQ every time you take a dump.

I seriously doubt any people at Feministing are going to rush out and buy the game to see what all the brouhaha is about. I seriously doubt that us talking about how fucked up this game is will positively impact the sales of the game when every gaming site on earth is falling over itself to praise the game. Get a fucking clue.

Jack Thompson has learned how to possess people? *runs in terror*

On the other hand, it's good to see that the world hasn't changed dramatically since 2005, when the "Hot Coffee" mod was used to try and claim that GTA:SA was just a sex simulator.

I do have a question for the people who find this so concerning: why should we be troubled by players who choose, given the option, to kill prostitutes in the game (to the extent that some posters have advocated removing that element)? The harm can't be to the prostitutes that are killed, since they're not real; it has to be some sort of expressive harm to real people. If killing prostitutes is an expressive harm in the game, is running down pedestrians? Shooting at police? Carjacking? Are we channelling MacKinnon along with Thompson, to view the subordination of women as more primary than senseless violence in general?

If your argument is that GTA doesn't establish good role models, you're absolutely correct: at *best* you're playing a morally ambiguous criminal in a corrupt and morally damaged world, and at worst you're playing an inhuman monster. On the other hand, you can "check out" of the game's story entirely, and just go explore the city. It's up to the player and how they want to play the game. The few times I played it, I mainly ran over pedestrians to get police attention, because attempting crazy getaways ("This time, I'll ride my bike up on top of the building and jump from rooftop to rooftop like the Tick!") was more entertaining than the missions.

At any rate, GTA is wildly inferior to Mario Kart Wii.

Depends on the rest of the content, doesn't it? You could murder children in Fallout 2, although, unlike GTA, doing so actually carried negative consequences, in that other characters would refuse to talk to, or even attack you on sight after having done so, and you carried the reputation of "child killer" with you for the rest of the game, and it was rated M for Mature.

But, as others have pointed out, there's context. I understand that there are plenty of people who object to violence in video games at all, but I'm not one of those people. My particular concern is with the gendered violence, the sexism, and the racism upon which the GTA franchise has specifically been built.

Shooting at police, stealing cars, and running down pedestrians are widely discouraged in other areas of life. Sexism and violence against prostitutes is not. In fact, many people feel that prostitutes invite violence upon themselves by virtue of the "choice" they make, or at the very least accept abuse of sex workers as a matter of course rather than a problem that should be as much of a concern as random assaults of pedestrians and law enforcement officers.

Again, prostitutes are treated as less than human by society at large, and this game goes out of its way to feed this notion simply to generate sales of a product that was going to make millions anyway.

Roy, I think the addition of the automatic AO came well after Fallout 2. Newer and European editions of the game have been bugged because children have been removed from the game - but they are just invisible, still pickpocketing you, and making the game unplayable at parts.

I don't even know where to start. I'm a gamer as well, and have encountered my fair share of violence in PC gamers. Both my husband and I have deplored the lack of strong, non-sexualized female characters in video games. I can count on one hand the number of first-person shooters that include a female character, and have fingers left over. Far Cry features a strong female lead, and in the new Tom Clancy's Vegas 2 you can actually choose to be a female, with the same set-up and gear as the men characters. So we are making some strides, though not nearly as many or as fast as I would like.

That said, I have to agree with other posters that I don't see how anyone can defend this game. I have read all the other comments and have tried to keep an open mind and not just be reactionary, but I truly have not seen one comment defending the game that makes sense to me. They all seem to be categorized along the lines of 1. Rockstar plays this up to create controversy and sell their game 2. It's only an option. Well, if this is how Rockstar chooses to advertise their wares, I'm certainly not going to spend my hard earned dollars supporting them. Not only is that NOT an excuse in my book, it is an outright reason to not buy ANY of their products. What if this type of advertising was used to sell other products? Isn't that (one of) the reasons we visit this site? To learn who in the advertising world is helping us or hurting us, and make better spending choices?

As for number 2. Echoing other commenters, I don't care if is JUST an option. The fact that it is an option is enough for me.

I was looking at a parental review site for video games the other day, and they had a list of all the AO (adult only) video games. Most were soft porn where you control the female characters, but the site pointed out that these games are extremely hard to get a hold of, most have to be ordered from overseas on the internet, so it is easy to track by checking your credit card statement. Not so the case with GTA. If this were just some obscure game that Samhita had posted about, I would read it, shake my head, and go, "Wow, that is bad" then dismiss it and move on. But this has been the number one selling game for the past several years. This game is actively condoned in our culture, and glorified. And the MAIN reason for it lies with the sex and violence. Not JUST the violence, because there are plenty of other violent games out there that don't get this kind of reaction, but the combination of the sex and violence.

I don't believe in censorship either, but at the same time I do believe that we have the right to stand up to these game-makers and say, "Hey, this isn't ok." I work in community mental health field with children, and I guarantee you my male clients as young as ten are salivating, just waiting to play this game. And ratings be-d*mned, you know they are going to get their hands on it. Yes, the parents should be more involved. And if I can get them to put down the meth pipe for ten minutes to do so, then maybe they will be. And yes, these kids do have bigger problems then what they see in GTA. But it all ties in together, and while I'm working with the parents to help them get their act together and start parenting, I'm also going to hold companies like this responsible for contributing to the misogynistic and glorification of sex/violence in our culture. I can do both.

Robos: If they could just establish that attacking a sex worker is no more morally permissible than attacking anyone else, even though both acts are available (and thereby encouraged, at least if you think games are meant to be explored fully), it'd go a long way towards redeeming the company in my eyes.

If you play the game, you'll find that it is no morally permissible than anything else. The penalties for killing a sex worker are exactly the same as the penalties for killing any other avatar in the game, male, female, cop, firefighter, EMT, etc.

The game is just that, A-GAME. How many people do you know that play GTA, then say, "Hey lets go and kill us a few police!"? None I'd wager.

This is my favourite defense of violent, misogynistic games: that nobody actually dies as a result of participating in them. When your claim to something not being sexist is that IT DOESN'T FORCE PEOPLE TO KILL REAL PROSTITUTES, that is setting a hilariously low bar. Fifties indoctrination pamphlets telling women to stay in the home? Hey, nobody died, right? Therefore not sexist! Misogynistic jokes?Come on, it's not like someone was REALLY raped!

I agree a thousand times over with Mighty_Ponytail, RoyMacIII and others.

Sorry for any double-posting.

The game is just that, A-GAME. How many people do you know that play GTA, then say, "Hey lets go and kill us a few police!"? None I'd wager.

This is my favourite defense of violent, misogynistic games: that nobody actually dies as a result of participating in them. When your claim to something not being sexist is that IT DOESN'T FORCE PEOPLE TO KILL REAL PROSTITUTES, that is setting a hilariously low bar. Fifties indoctrination pamphlets telling women to stay in the home? Hey, nobody died, right? Therefore not sexist! Misogynistic jokes?Come on, it's not like someone was REALLY raped!

I agree a thousand times over with Mighty_Ponytail, RoyMacIII and others.

"If you play the game, you'll find that it is no morally permissible than anything else. The penalties for killing a sex worker are exactly the same as the penalties for killing any other avatar in the game, male, female, cop, firefighter, EMT, etc."

What I thought was implied (and later went on to explicitly state) is that the morals that tell us harming those other avatars have already been put into place through years of education.

With prostitutes, though, nobody ever really tells you that they're as deserving of compassion and fair treatment as any other segment of society. So, it's not really surprising when they aren't granted compassion and fair treatment? Furthermore, so long as media continues to portray this group without that disclaimer, they'll continue to be so denied.

roymac: They also made a choice: To include the ability to regain health by soliciting a prostitute. Further, they included the ability to kill the women that you've paid in order to regain your money.

Technically, this is not true... When you kill any character, there's a random amount of money that drops off of them. So, it's not "regaining your money" per se, though certainly that impression is there.

Oh, and to include the ability to go to strip clubs.

And this I think is a horrible waste for the game. Games are supposed to be interactive, and you have the option of watching a five minute cut scene? Bleh.

What I thought was implied (and later went on to explicitly state) is that the morals that tell us harming those other avatars have already been put into place through years of education.

With prostitutes, though, nobody ever really tells you that they're as deserving of compassion and fair treatment as any other segment of society. So, it's not really surprising when they aren't granted compassion and fair treatment? Furthermore, so long as media continues to portray this group without that disclaimer, they'll continue to be so denied.

You're right, and I agree completely. I just wanted to point out that among the legitimate criticisms of the game are some incorrect ones that distract from the conversation we should be having.

i played GTA3 quite a few times, enough to get to the ending. the most fun i had was to get on a rooftop and kill as many people as possible, to get the police copters after me, and then to run away, or to steal taxis & crash cars (boy did my driving suck!).

is the option of killing prostitutes wrong? of course. but so is everything else in this game: drug trafficking, killing members of opposing street gangs, stealing cars, etc. killing prostitutes only becomes the main goal if the player decides to make it so.

my take on this: it's a game. i'd never steal a car or kill someone, or deal drugs, in real life. if you want to oppose this game, oppose the whole lack of immorality it contains, not just one aspect of it (killing prostitutes).

Technically, this is not true... When you kill any character, there's a random amount of money that drops off of them. So, it's not "regaining your money" per se, though certainly that impression is there.

I don't believe that's accurate- the money isn't completely random, and certain types of characters don't drop money at all- police, for example. The general concensus seems to be that killing prostitutes gets you *at least* as much as you gave them back, and Rockstar certainly hasn't done anything to discourage that impression.

The criticisms of GTA from non-videogame playing populace are inevitably short sighted.

All the game does is provide a relatively consequence free environment, the evil that ensues in the MINORITY of game-playing experiences that have stereotyped GTA is the result of human nature in a mysogynist nation. (as an aside, I think the current era of Feminism has been habitually fixated on symptoms over causes, of which this is an instance)

Violence against women is an option because the game has both women and guns in it. It is not central to gameplay. Reckless driving and gangland violence are central to gameplay, but in a hypermasculine culture those are considered just good wholesome fun.

The game ALLOWS for violence against women because of it's open nature, it does not INCENTIVISE it. This is a distinction unique to interactive entertainment that's crucial to understanding a game's influence. Anytime hardcore feminists share the opinion of senators from the religious right, there has got to be horrendous mistake.

"I did see a preview video that included some shots of what I think was a strip club, where the dancer said something like "this makes me so hot" and I literally laughed out loud. So really, this game exsists entirely in the realm of male fantasy where every woman wants you and there are no strings attached."

Well I've never been to a strip club, but I'm pretty sure strippers all say shit like that. False enthusiasm is part of their job description.

And as far as GTA goes, if you have any problems with violence or misanthropy you shouldn't play the games.

Neither should 13 year old boys, really, but I doubt that GTA is going to inspire anyone to behave that way in real life if they weren't already sociopaths to begin with.

The GTA games are incredibly solid and well made video games. They wouldn't be so popular if they weren't, regardless of whether you could have sex with prostitutes in them or not.

In a world where unspeakable violence is widespread, why the fuck are people so desensitized as to allow a game like this to exist?! Why does anyone want to make or play a game like this? I really don't get it. Watching clips of the game make me effing sick.

I'm referring to the violence in general, including the prostitute-killing - can someone explain to me how it is possible to actually enjoy a game where you graphically murder people? How detached from reality do you have to be not to be disturbed by it? I hate the "prostitutes are expendable pieces of meat" vibe too.. makes me sad that my little brother plays this.

Okay, firstly...

That video is utterly reprehensible. The focus being entirely on "let's fuck then kill lots of women, wheee!" is an awful, awful message to send.

However, I would point out that all the points being raised above about children playing the game are not really useful. Games are rated like magazines and movies are for a reason; the fact that so many parents choose to ignore the ratings because "it's just a game" is a big issue, but the problem there is with a lack of education about the importance of the ratings. To raise th "what about the children" message really derails from the issue, and just plays into the hands of people who do advocate censorship.

That being said, I've never liked the GTA games. It is perfectly possible to get through the game without killing ANY general, public non-gang people, except in specified missions, and this includes the women in-game. The game developers definitely hype up the sex and violence aspects of the game, but to be honest if they didn't there wouldn't be much else to hype up. The graphics are rubbish, the humour puerile and the gameplay buggy as hell.

That's not to say I don't agree that the treatment of women in the game is problematic; even the strong women characters that actually play a part in the plot are required to be sexy, they are vastly in the minority and the majority of other women in-game are hideous caricatures.

Then again, personally I'm just chuffed to see some women of size in this one, for a change.

I wouldn't call myself a gamer, but I have been a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series since it's been on PlayStation I, when the graphics were sucky and you saw everything in bird's-eye view.

However, I hate that you can kill prostitutes in this game, and if memory serves, I don't think they fight back like some of the other passersby in the game. I don't think you should be able to pay a prostitute and then have the option of murdering her to get your money back. That's just gross, and the prostitutes usually have more money on them than anyone else. And the fact that the character's health increases after having sex with a prostitute is highly misleading, but I wouldn't call it anti-feminist.

Like others have said, the way you associate with prostitutes in this game is a choice, as is your purpose behind stealing cabs, buses, and ambulances. You can kill a prostitute to steal her money, or you can pay her to increase your health. You can steal an ambulance to take people to the hospital and get money, or you can steal one just to be a dick. I think the choices a player makes are reflective of their personality that was intact before they played the game.

Obviously, kids shouldn't play this game. The "M" for Mature rating is not simply a suggestion, and I think sales associates at video game stores should strictly enforce that rating and not sell the game to anyone under 18.

It's frustrating, because studies have shown that most adults actually know about the ESRB ratings system, but also that most kids play M-rated games anyway. I think a lot of parents are just negligent: They don't care, or they assign more maturity to their kid than the kid actually possesses, or they buy the game for themselves and don't make a point of keeping it out of their kid's hands. At any rate, they're probably not having conversations about the culture of violence and hatred against women.

Wow, that's amazing considering the hot coffee debacle. I can't believe that they made the sex scenes more graphic than they used to be. Furthermore, I don't really get why they put this in a video for ign--I mean they usually just claim that it's a hidden feature but they kind of show you exactly how to do it and what sorts of "rewards" you get in this video.

Mass, public entertainment has always been about sex and violence: Gladiators v. Gladiators, Lions v. Christians, witches in the stocks, mass public hangings. Sure, 'unspeakable violence is widespread', but to an outside observer at least today we relegate the sex and violence into a pixelated landscape.

I'm a male gamer. It's kind of amused me that media criticism with a feminist framework has placed such emphasis on dying media forms -- print magazine, newspapers, broadcast TV, movies -- when the real action has been in computer games.

I'm curious to see what others reaction is to a game like World of Warcraft with its hyper-sexualized female body forms and plate armor that looks like a thong and a bustier, yet powerful female game characters (several racial bosses) and no limits on the classes and roles female toons can play.

My raiding guild -- for example -- has a "gurl gamer" playing a female troll who's our whip smart, take no crap, "tank", and another (the leader) who plays a more "den mother" role but leads us into battle with inspirational shouts like "Do it! For the epic bewbs!"

I am not a gamer whatsoever, so perhaps I can't truly understand the lure of any game. But seriously? That video was repulsive. It is beyond me how we have become so desensitized as to call this acceptable...

FeministMe: Because it makes people feel edgy and cool to be able to play a game that notorious.

“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.� – Samhita

Where in that video (which is not an official trailer, BTW) did you see forcibly performed sex acts?

Everybody should read this book. It should help people better understand why this whole video game violence thing is overblown, IMHO...

http://www.grandtheftchildhood.com/GTC/Home.html

emmag: I'm referring to the violence in general, including the prostitute-killing - can someone explain to me how it is possible to actually enjoy a game where you graphically murder people? How detached from reality do you have to be not to be disturbed by it?

This is an interesting question, and I'm not sure what the answer is. As Paul points out, historically, entertainment has frequently involved violence, but that doesn't explain why.
Your reaction is certainly a reasonable one, and I would say that the opposite reaction - enjoying the games - is also a reasonable one, in that people have very different reactions to all sorts of events. Some people crack jokes at funerals, not because they're heartless or insensitive, but because that's how they deal with tragedy. Likewise, some people cry at weddings, because that's how they deal with great joy. Everyone's different.

I will say this, though - the violence in many games, including GTA, is highly stylized and cartoonish, not as graphic as you'd assume. Compare this to the game Manhunt, which was incredibly graphic, and which made a lot of people reconsider their own feelings about violence in games. It's the same sort of thing as the Uncanny Valley phenomenon in graphic rendering of faces - at a certain point, it becomes too real and uncomfortable. Maybe that's the answer to your second question - it's not the person that's detached from reality, but the game.

Finally, I'd ask if you play or have played any games with "violence" - this would include Donkey Kong, PacMan, Q-Bert, Super Mario Brothers, etc.
We normally think of these games, with killing of enemies by jumping on them or hitting them with a hammer or eating them, as non-violent and kid-appropriate. Like Manhunt, the difference doesn't seem to be in the violence themselves, but in the level of detail and realism.

outcrazyophelia: Furthermore, I don't really get why they put this in a video for ign--I mean they usually just claim that it's a hidden feature but they kind of show you exactly how to do it and what sorts of "rewards" you get in this video.

Again, this video was made by IGN, not by the creators of the game. And yes, the video is reprehensible and misleading about the game.

The criticisms of GTA from non-videogame playing populace are inevitably short sighted.

Because any criticisms of the game must necessarily be from non-gamers, right?

I think I fall very comfortably into the game-playing category, thanks.

the evil that ensues in the MINORITY of game-playing experiences that have stereotyped GTA is the result of human nature in a mysogynist nation.

And you know that it's the MINORITY of game playing experiences... how? You did a poll? A study? Because I'd be very interested to know the results. It's been my experience that most people who play GTA do, at some point, murder the prostitutes and steal back the money, just as most people who play the game end up, at some point, intentionally causing as much mayham as possible to get the police chasing them. But I'd love to be proven wrong on that count.

It wouldn't do a lot to counter the claim that the game has a thick and disgusting layer of sexism and racism surrounding the core game-play, but it'd be interesting all the same.

(as an aside, I think the current era of Feminism has been habitually fixated on symptoms over causes, of which this is an instance)

It's my opinion that many feminists are concerned with both with the symptoms of sexism, and the causes. It's entirely possible to write a short post about one of the symptoms, and still care about and be working on the root causes.

Violence against women is an option because the game has both women and guns in it.

No. Violence against women is an option because the makers of the game decided to include it. The ability to murder female characters comes from allowing the player to murder anyone. That's not my criticsm, although it may be others. My criticisms, and the main criticism I saw raised above, was in the way that women are hypersexualized, and the ways that the ability to pay a prostitute and then murder her to get the money back are glorified. Nowhere in the game can one pay a man for sex or go to a male strip club.

Anytime hardcore feminists share the opinion of senators from the religious right, there has got to be horrendous mistake.

And when Samhita or whomever decides to advocate banning the game, I'll agree. But, engaging in critical analysis? I'm quite comfortable with that.

And as far as GTA goes, if you have any problems with violence or misanthropy you shouldn't play the games.

Thanks. I won't be.
If you have any problems with feminist analysis of video games sexism or racism you shouldn't read their sites.

Not working for you?

I doubt that GTA is going to inspire anyone to behave that way in real life if they weren't already sociopaths to begin with.

You don't have to believe that the games are going to inspire people to engage in mass murder to think that they're still saturated with racism and sexism, and that the sexism and racism just go to reinforcing the rampant sexism and racism that exists within the gaming community.

The GTA games are incredibly solid and well made video games. They wouldn't be so popular if they weren't, regardless of whether you could have sex with prostitutes in them or not.

Popularity is a poor indication of quality. Twinkies continue to be a popular snack item, and by most counts, McDonalds is one of the most popular restaurants in the world. I wouldn't look to either of them for quality food, though.

Overall I have to agree with Samhita. I did purchase the game, though.
I think there's a positive aspect to the sandbox adventure, even if that adventure places you in the role of a violent criminal and gives you the option of killing and victimizing. Casting off socialized behavior and living out Bonnie and Clyde fantasies can be fun.
The problem is there's no Bonnie. The game and the marketing are privilege-blind to the fact that violence against women already IS a socialized behavior, and they've done nothing to allow players to cast THAT off.
I enjoy the freedom of this game, but I wish I had the freedom to play it as a woman and wage violent guerilla war on the patriarchy: blowing up fashion mag HQs and enforcing vigilante justice on rophynol rapists in night clubs. That option doesn't exist. Murdering prostitutes does, and they've rendered it "fun" and inconsequential (the whole "wanted level" deterrent doesn't deter anybody, and it only applies if the cops SEE you). I personally don't take this option, but knowing it exists and that there's no anti-male equivalent makes a pretty bleak statement that women aren't important.

�I'm referring to the violence in general, including the prostitute-killing - can someone explain to me how it is possible to actually enjoy a game where you graphically murder people? How detached from reality do you have to be not to be disturbed by it?� – emmag

You don’t have to be at all detached from reality. You have to be detached from avatars in a made up world.

"That option doesn't exist. Murdering prostitutes does…� – just_pat
“knowing it exists and that there's no anti-male equivalent makes a pretty bleak statement that women aren't important." - just_pat

There is an anti-male equivalent to killing prostitutes. Killing men.

Overall I have to agree with Samhita. I did purchase the game, though.
I think there's a positive aspect to the sandbox adventure, even if that adventure places you in the role of a violent criminal and gives you the option of killing and victimizing others. Casting off socialized behavior and living out Bonnie and Clyde fantasies can be fun.
The problem is there's no Bonnie. The game, its marketing, and the majority of its fanbase are privilege-blind to the fact that violence against women already IS a socialized behavior, and they've done nothing to allow players to cast THAT off.
I enjoy the freedom of this game, but I wish I had the freedom to play it as a woman and wage violent guerilla war on the patriarchy: blowing up fashion mag HQs, enforcing vigilante justice on rophynol rapists in night clubs, etc. That option doesn't exist. Murdering prostitutes does, and they've rendered it "fun" and inconsequential (the whole "wanted level" deterrent doesn't deter anybody, and it only applies if the cops SEE you). I personally don't take this option, but knowing it exists and that there's no anti-male equivalent makes a pretty bleak statement that women aren't important.

"
When you show me a game that lets me porposition male prostitutes, visit male strip clubs, and lets you regain health by having sex with a man before you kill him, then you'll have a somewhat valid point.

Until then, you're talking out of your ass."

One of my favorite games made by Rockstar was the game Bully. As it was about high school you couldn't actually kill anyone, and you got bonus health by kissing as opposed to having sex.

One of the most controversial parts about Bully was that your male protagonist could kiss males as well as females. If you really wanted to you could stuff them into a locker afterwards just like any other character.

I'm not sure whether they will be including male prostitutes in the new GTA game coming out.

"Again, this video was made by IGN, not by the creators of the game."
But doesn't IGN have their permission to reproduce portions of the game that other sites don't? I hadn't realized IGN made the video itself, but they did have permission to do it, so TakeTwo isn't really concerned about the nature of the sex in the game getting out. At least, that's what I'm stuck on. It used to be the car would rock but now the windows are clear so you can see movement pretty clearly and I just don't get what they hope to accomplish with it. I guess its edgier now and maybe it'll sell better since it's even more adult than before.

I grew up playing games like this, and seeing the increasing sexual exploitation of the few female characters in the game makes me feel even more left out. Somehow, women are an imaginary demographic for game companies. It's bunk. Maybe I would like to be able to play a female character, or at least choose the sexuality of the male character I'm saddled with.

Of course GTA shouldn't be above criticism because it's art. But let's critisize it like we do with similar art. Look at Sopranos, Taxi Driver or the Godfather. All contain misogyny and violence. However, there is a big difference between depicting a world with misogyny and making misogynistic depictions of something that isn't inherently misogynistic.

Mostly, GTA4 falls into the first category. A story in the seedy, macho world of crime with a positive, non-sexist view of women wouldn't be realistic. It would be a completely different story and setting. It's like a crime drama without swearing. I'm not pointing out Sopranos to divert attention, but to remind people of how it works with other forms of art. If we want gamers to listen to our arguments, treating games with double standards isn't a good start.

As for specific details in the game, yes, Twat is a stupid name for an internet cafe, even if it's meant to be a non-PC pun. And yes, there are strippers in strip clubs. While you can certainly question why they're featured so prominently, they exist because GTA4 is inspired by a part of reality where there's plenty of strippers and prostitutes. Sopranos is very similar, but it's AFAIK not a celebration of misogyny. Tony Soprano is a sexist macho psychopath because you expect such people in the mafia. GTA4 is the same and it doesn't paint a pretty picture of it at all. In fact, the whole GTA world is corrupt and dirty.

Besides that, you can go on very regular dates that have the potential of leading up to off-screen sex. I haven't seen anything obviously sexist about that so far. Female characters are so far secondary and the misogyny they face is whatever treatment they get from other characters. I did pick up some sarcaistic commercial and talk radio comments about gender roles on the in-game radio stations. I don't know what to make of all that, but it might be worth knowing for non-gamers.

Finally, the dynamic world simulation of GTA4 is basically a sandbox where you express yourself. With little or no repercussions for your actions, you're of course free to try to do backflips with city buses or run hookers over. While the setting itself can certainly be called sexist to some extent, the player actions are expressions of whatever the they bring into the game. Misogyny in, misogyny out. Running over hookers is in the game because everyone can be run over, which in turn is there because it's a big sandbox of people and cars and streets, all interacting. If you want to criticize gamers, that's relevant, but for the game itself, these possibilities don't strike me as relevant compared to the sexism in the setting that you can't affect as a player.

There is an anti-male equivalent to killing prostitutes. Killing men. - noname

That's not equivalent at all. I can't kill men:
a) As a member of the opposite gender.
b) As someone who is paying them for sex.
c) As someone being paid BY them for sex.

I also can't go to a club and wait for asshole guys to try to pick me up and/or drug me, only to pull out a weapon and exact vengeance upon them.

There's no equivalent.

If they could just establish that attacking a sex worker is no more morally permissible than attacking anyone else

In the (yes, warped) morality of the GTA universe, randomly killing anyone-- women, men, old people, rollerbladers, hippies, gangsters, and yes, prostitutes-- will get the exact same attention from the cops, if you're caught. At in that respect, it's equal-opportunity nihilism.

As a lot of people have pointed out, unless something has radically changed in this incarnation, going on a sex-worker killing spree has never been part of the storyline.

I'm a woman, and I gotta say, I love the GTA games. Yes, they're sexist and rude and violent, but they're also incredibly fun. The "sandbox" environment allows for a lot of variation in gameplay, it's an engaging storyline, and a solid, well-made game.

The option is there to depart from the story and kill prostitutes (and everyone else), but you also have the option to depart from the story and drive a tour bus at high speed through a crowded shopping mall to see if you can flip it over before you crash. And yet.. AAA isn't freaking out that teenagers will learn reckless driving skills, because it's a game. You'd have to be one hell of a sociopath to think that anything in the GTA universe applies in the real world.

female gamer here- and I'm not a fan of GTA because of the obvious reasons stated...but also because its just a crappy game!! The missions are tedious, the characters are boring, and sitting around shooting things gets old very fast. I just don't understand the appeal of the game...I was bored after five minutes and then traded it in (san andreas, I wouldn't bother with the new one). I think what bothers me most is the absolute LACK OF POWER any of the females have in these games. They are submissive and complicit and easily killed.

just_pat - So it's not the killing that bothers you, it's the paying for sex?

I basically have the same viewpoint as Ms. Kar3n, but for me, the nihilism isn't "equal opportunity" enough to blunt, let alone negate, Samhita's point, which is that this game is worthy of severe criticism from a feminist perspective. And even if the design team went back to the drawing board and addressed MY issues, the gaming media (who created that trailer) would still be glorifying the game's capacity for misogyny. There's a problem here.
I think there's a great, fun, nihilistic romp at the core of this game and that's probably what really drives the sales. The misogyny, though, is hugely prominent and it should be called out and condemned so that it can be repaired.

-jro- I'm in the same boat. I don't find the missions all that interesting, and its only so interesting to see how long you can go around causing mayhem before you get caught for so long. I liked the Godfather game, though it suffers from similar gameplay. The missions were a bit more interesting, and not all of the women were completely helpless (although a many were--but that's par for the course in the gaming industry).

outcrazyophelia: But doesn't IGN have their permission to reproduce portions of the game that other sites don't? I hadn't realized IGN made the video itself, but they did have permission to do it, so TakeTwo isn't really concerned about the nature of the sex in the game getting out. At least, that's what I'm stuck on. It used to be the car would rock but now the windows are clear so you can see movement pretty clearly and I just don't get what they hope to accomplish with it. I guess its edgier now and maybe it'll sell better since it's even more adult than before.

Agreed. I still think the particular blame here is a bit misplaced, in that IGN had license to publish videos as a reviewer, but I seriously doubt those videos were individually reviewed by Take Two.
That said, yes, the sex is definitely more graphic than in prior versions where you merely saw the car rocking.

I grew up playing games like this, and seeing the increasing sexual exploitation of the few female characters in the game makes me feel even more left out. Somehow, women are an imaginary demographic for game companies. It's bunk. Maybe I would like to be able to play a female character, or at least choose the sexuality of the male character I'm saddled with.

I think this is the big failing of the game, and I think it's a failing of imagination by the creators. I don't have an issue with the violence or sex that's in the game, but rather the sex that's not in the game, female protagonists, male strippers/prostitutes, etc. as just_pat pointed out.

It certainly seems like something near half the demographic is needlessly spurned. Something near half, because some women will have no problem with playing a male; and needlessly because, as we've seen in World of Warcraft, a large portion of men have no problem playing a female avatar. Something like half of the female characters on Warcraft are played by men.

As an aside, there's a new competitor to World of Warcraft coming out, Warhammer Online, that limits the classes that male and female players can be. This makes absolutely no sense, and is one of the reasons I won't be buying it.

There is an anti-male equivalent to killing prostitutes. Killing men.

Yes, because there are two sexes: male and prostitute. Exactly. Thank you noname for playing all your cards at once like that.

noname - you need to enhance your reading comprehension, but I'll feed the troll one last time:
No, the paying for sex does not bother me. The lack of an equivalent female perspective as an alternative to the options available to the male protagonist is what bothers me. There's no female main character and there's no option to do something equivalent to killing a prostitute that's on the opposite end of the gender spectrum. The power dynamic between the main character and prostitutes is completely different from the one between him and any male character in the game. I should have the option to place males in the same dynamic (like some kind of straight male prostitute), or to reverse the dynamic on them (have the prostitute kill the john).
I'm a fan of the game, I'm just looking for an attempt at equivalence along gender lines.

Theaetetus,
That stinks about Warhammer. I don't know why they can't try to make things at least a bit more neutral. I mean if I can't be a female character, at least try not to have all the female characters in the game be damsels in distress or prostitutes with no names.
Baldur's Gate let you choose whichever gender you wanted--and it didn't affect your choices or your class at all (that is until the second game where female characters only got one romance whereas male characters got around four--bit I let it slide).

just_pat: GTA does merit some criticism from a feminist standpoint. I'd prefer to sit on top of a building and pick off cops while playing as a female character. The strip clubs are demeaning (and boring and kind of pointless, unless you like pixelated soft-core porn).

But a lot of games could use a feminist overhaul, as well as a lot of movies, and TV shows, fashion shows, politics...

It seems a bit short-sighted to single out GTA as public enemy #1 when it's a symptom of a much more pervasive problem.

And I agree with Theaetetus and the others, though I forgot to mention it explicitly, that there should be options for the main character's sexuality. Freedom and choice are supposed to be big selling points for this game. I want more!

It seems a bit short-sighted to single out GTA as public enemy #1 when it's a symptom of a much more pervasive problem.

Ms. Kar3n,
It all comes up for discussion eventually and it is all being addressed, one bit at a time. Right now the subject is GTA. Just because we're talking about GTA doesn't mean we think it's the root problem plaguing all of society. It's a symptom and it is worthy of discussion. Really.

That stinks about Warhammer. I don't know why they can't try to make things at least a bit more neutral. I mean if I can't be a female character, at least try not to have all the female characters in the game be damsels in distress or prostitutes with no names

Just a correction... you can play female characters in Warhammer, but you can't play every class (and likewise, there are classes limited to female characters, such as the [eye roll] witch).

Hold the phone, Thaetetus. I want to play a maibd.

The question isn't so much whether a toon's gender confines you to certain classes. The question -- it seems to me -- is whether the gender constrains the role in a manner that's coherent, or whether the thing is well thought out.

I find the lore that underpins the Brides of Khaine is really compelling. I mean - who wouldn't want to play a race of warrior / priestesses who bathe in the blood of their fallen foes. Better that than playing one of those slacker Slaanesh worshiping frauds, that's for sure.

Roymac, I disagree with your rebuttal of Marcus' initial statement. He said nothing to imply that non-gamers were the only source of criticism, or that the dialogue here was dominated by non-gamers. He just said that criticism from non-gamers irritated him.

While I don't think one necessarily has to be a gamer per se in order to possess the understanding necessary for a valid critique, one should at least know enough so that their comments don't immediately expose them as being almost totally ignorant of the subject matter.

To all the commenters here who cannot see anything wrong in killing prostitutes on a videogame, I ask you:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING READING A FEMINIST BLOG???

For a laid back, "everything is cool" attitude you have THE REST OF THE GODDAMN WEB.

We, feminist, CARE about THESE THINGS because it's always WOMEN who have to put up with MALE VIOLENCE.

I insist, if you think that "it's all cool" then you are not grasping the most basic of feminist ideas. LEAVE US ALONE! The whole WEB and THE WORLD agree with you.

Thanks.

Alot of good points in this thread. I'm going to bullet my post since a lot of different issues are getting jumbled.

-The GTA series has many sexist features (androcentric, women are sex objects) that are common to the majority of games (probably). Its amplified by GTA's higher realism, its appeal to chauvinistic humor, and greater prominence of sex than most games. Women are similarly portrayed in lots of mafia- related media.

-The issue of killing prostitutes is not so clear cut. You have freedom to kill everybody, there is an underworld motif, and the ability to kill prostitutes is a somewhat logical outcome.

-Maybe they should acknowledge the special circumstances (the routine violence against sex workers and women) and exempt women from this. A good point, but some people think Rockstar is singling women out with this feature.

-Prostitutes ARE one of the few types of NPCs with special functionality (At least in GTA3 and VC which is all I've played). Did Rockstar choose this because prostitution is itself taboo in America, or because men would have fun killing prostitutes? Who knows? This is why politics shouldn't focus too much on the ideological realm.

In GTA3 use of prostitutes was incentivized in the game. Using prostitutes gave you health; which could be easily gained in other ways, but only using prostitutes let you get over 100 health points (to 125). A prostitute you used was guaranteed to drop (a large amount of) money where only a minority of other bystanders would. Also they are brought into a secluded area and you are less likely to get police attention.

Of course these are logical outcomes of the structure of the game--and reality-- and give *some* of the story of why prostitutes are so often victimized. It ignores social attitudes towards sex workers, but it implies the sort of conditions women would have to be in to work in such a structurally dangerous field.

-Back in high school when GTA3 came out my friends did talk and laugh about killing prostitutes. If it is popular for people to choose to do this in a game which gives a constrained freedom of choice; is more responsibility on the designers or the latent desires of the male populace?

-Video games have been proven to cause real world violence and aggression.

http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html

-"With prostitutes, though, nobody ever really tells you that they're as deserving of compassion and fair treatment as any other segment of society"

I don't think society's message about prostitutes is much different from that towards the male non-white gang members (forced into that position by economic exploitation) which are killed very often in GTA.

Moral messages in society are contradictory and semi-coherent, as they are in the game. I bet some people feel that killing prostitutes is in some ways an especially transgressive act because they are a victimized group. On the other hand, the game makes prostitutes just as deserving of moral consideration in the game because the game forces you to be absolutely amoral.

Should read: On the other hand, the game makes prostitutes just as deserving of moral consideration as anyone else in the game because the game forces you to be absolutely amoral.

“Yes, because there are two sexes: male and prostitute. Exactly. Thank you noname for playing all your cards at once like that.� – sgzax

She pointed out one group (prostitutes) being murdered and said there was no anti-male equivalent. Gee, what group would I have to murder to make those murders anti-male? Men, perhaps?

What were you trying to insinuate, anyway? Do you think I don’t know the difference between sex and occupations?

MaryTracy,

See my earlier posts about shouting. Also, see my earlier posts about how giving the player the ability to kill prostitutes gives more weight to the act of choosing NOT to. Those demonstrate how it is possible to defend this feature of the game from a position other than "WHEEEE!!! KILLING WOMEN GIVES ME SUCH A HARD-ON!!!"

Think about what would be accomplished where they to remove only that specific mechanic from GTA4. You could run around and kill everyone EXCEPT prostitutes. You could fire your gun at them, but to no effect. It would be confusing, and inconsistent with the rest of the game. If the women of GTA aren't fair game for violence just like everyone else, I think an argument could be made that it would reinforce the (erroneous) perception of inherent female weakness and helplessness.

I think it's arrogant for you to declare that anyone who disagrees with you on this point is automatically anti-feminist and not welcome here.

"To all the commenters here who cannot see anything wrong in killing prostitutes on a videogame, I ask you:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING READING A FEMINIST BLOG???

For a laid back, "everything is cool" attitude you have THE REST OF THE GODDAMN WEB."

I thought the point of allowing comments on a blog was to incite discussion, which there wouldn't be much of if everyone had the same viewpoint.

Believe it or not, there are are some people who call themselves feminists and can still play this game, myself included. As for being "detached from reality", I resent that. I'm down-to-earth enough to realize that cartoon violence shouldn't escalate into real violence. Let's focus on people, not pixels.

just_pat – Ah. So it is a female perspective you are looking for. OK. Please don’t insult my reading comprehension, though, because that is not what said in the statements I was responding too. It should be noted as well, that in the game (at least in GTA III) prostitutes can kill you.

Ha. This is some funny sh*t.

People just won't admit that killing feels good. But killing a ho feels even better.

As the apologists mentioned this is FANTASY. That means that the creators could have made the game any way they wanted it.

Yes, if they could get away with it they'd have Klansmen characters running around too. My bad, if there actually are. I don't play.

What gets me is that nobody wants to address why it's even necessary to include gendered violence in a video game? What is it appealing to? Obviously it adds something to the game otherwise it wouldn't be there.

I doubt it's for authenticity. I mean then why stop there? Hell, why don't they throw in some incest and abortion into the game while they are at it. Again, my bad if that sh*t is already in GTA.

I imagine that this genre is indeed marketed with the male gamer as the primary audience. Nice to know what some boys like.

And it's interesting that so many females are so accepting of the level of in-your-face f*ck you that embodies these games.

Play on players, play on.

I think the thing is that if you object to this one thing in GTA, then you have to object to the whole thing. Killing prostitutes doesn't stand out as a horrible thing that you do in GTA. You do a ton of horrible things, there are no illusions that the main character is a good guy. If you kill a prostitute, the game doesn't pat you on the back and say, "What a wonderful thing you just did!" and then you go on to help elderly women across the street.

So, I guess the reason I'm not all riled up about it is because the whole game is based on being a criminal. You do illegal things.

People do have a point about there being no male prostitutes, though. Personally, I think they should just do away with the prostitution altogether.

Ugh, I just remembered something that some people do... You have to follow the prostitutes in your car while honking at them to actually have sex with them. Sometimes they just ignore you, which will cause some players to get out and kill them. Bleh.

"So, I guess the reason I'm not all riled up about it is because the whole game is based on being a criminal. You do illegal things."

Getting off on killing prostitutes is not excusable and entertaining. Pretending that it's the same thing as getting off on stealing cars is either a put on or suggests a profound detachment from reality.

I'm actually more than a little confused that so many folks are trying to justify this.

I love feministing.com and read it every day. I have never posted a comment but this one deserves it. My thought is this: if the game depicted guys having sex with and then killing only African-Americans, wouldn't people be outraged? I mean, why is it more acceptable to do that to women? It's not.

I'm not sure anyone is reading this far, but I want to explain a little bit that I think people are missing.

Computer games in general, these days, work by setting up systems of "rules of physics" of how different objects interact in the world. Then the developers place objects in the world (like you, other characters, trees, cars, guns, whatever) and give them various properties, and then start it up and it runs according to those rules.

The point being, when you see a character in a video game, usually it's not because they've been painstakingly programmed in over many days - their behaviour is mostly or entirely based on those rules of how everything acts. The major effort behind adding a new character in there is generally the art.

I just wanted to explain that because a lot of people here seem to be confused and thinking things like, "well why did they program it in at all??" Almost all the behaviour is just governed by rules programmed into the game. It was already there. The additional work would be programming exceptions to those rules, not adding new things that conform to them.

This isn't meant to excuse the game for anything it's accused of or whatever, but to hopefully provide an insight for some people into the development of it.

My thought is this: if the game depicted guys having sex with and then killing only African-Americans, wouldn't people be outraged? I mean, why is it more acceptable to do that to women? It's not.

Well, if this it's rampant racism, class-ism, sexism and specie-ism you're looking for, might I suggest the fine publications in the Redneck Rampage! line of games?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck_Rampage

The point is that computer games, like much media, are more or less a stew made out of the rotting roadkill carcasses that litter the the 'social attitudes' on-ramp to the information super highway.

Without defending the substance of Rockstar's GTA for a second, these games are successful because they offend. The teenage boy in me wants to go out and buy the thing not because I think shotgunning people is a good idea, but because so many people seem to think playing the game is a punk-ass, rebellious thing to do.

BTW: Redneck Rampage! is inspired. Nowhere else do you get to hold off the state police by feeding your flatulent pig and endless supply of chicken guts while (Oh the joy!) shooting it out with a quartet of tie-died hippies who've barricaded themselves in the barber shop and are threatening to rub out the "short back and sides terrorist, man!"

I'm a bit late here, but I want to point something out: this is NOT a trailer for the game. At least it is not a trailer created by Rockstar or Take Two for advertisement reasons. It's just recorded gameplay footage from IGN for review purposes.

That said, I find the video completely reprehensible. The game, however, I don't find that awful. In fact, if I hadn't had class so late today I'd have gone downtown to pick up a copy. Killing prostitutes and women is not something the game forces anyone to do, it's just something you CAN do in the freeform world the game provides. No one talks about how you can indiscriminately kill business men, black drug dealers, white drug dealers, people who limp, grandmas, grandpas, sensibly dressed women, etc.

And no, prostitutes and strippers are not the only women in the GTA games. Women are objectified to some extent, but I can't remember any of the games condoning violence against any woman on the basis of her womanhood.

Yes Krw,

People have missed the boat on this one. I'm tired of the excuse that if it happens in real life, it's fodder for entertainment purposes.

And let's be real. It's not like this game has any structured plot with a complex resolution like a book or a movie. So let's cut the crap.

So again. I ask. What is the appeal of sport killing (man-man, man-woman or whatever) and specifically when sex and violence are involved.

I just want an honest answer. Obviously it's appealing; but instead of people taking a deep breath and looking inward, they just tiptoe around talking about the architecture of the game, blah blah blah.

I think that a lot of you are jumping to the defense of GTA because a lot of you like to play them. Remember when this very same site had a series on anti-feminist guilty pleasures? Now, don't get me wrong. None of us are perfect and none of us shun every bit of sexist media out there. BUT-- I think it is worth noting as feminists we have to be willing to criticize even the media we love. The problem is that I am hearing a lot of you fans of the game trying to defend GTA as not being sexist and/or a problem. Now, I love America's Next Top Model. But I would never try to say it doesn't have racist and sexist tendencies. In fact, I might be the first to point out those aspects of the show.

I think as those who are going to be critical of all other issues with sexism and racism, we should admit when we like something. But, that does not mean you should try to say it is not a sexist or problematic piece of work. Yes, GTA may be fun and a well done video game. But it is still riddled with sexism and violence and racism that is, at best, distrubing.

And let's be real. It's not like this game has any structured plot with a complex resolution like a book or a movie. So let's cut the crap.

Actually, yes it does. According to IGN, in fact, it has one of the most well-executed and deep plots of any video game, much less the GTA series itself, which has always had an extensive plot element.

**I think this has two consequences in the land of no child left behind where standardized educational systems have led to a cutback in the teaching of metacognition in elementary schools.**

In other words, kids have a hard time telling reality from fantasy and right from wrong. I'm a substitute teacher and I have to agree with this totally and emphatically. I had an 8th grader - mid teens - just yesterday, state proudly he was a homophobe and if any guy ever came on to him, he would shoot him in the head 'like that kid did on the news'.

Consequences? What consequences? I'm not saying movies and video games and television are totally and solely responsible for crime or bad behavior, but I AM saying that tv, movies, music, video games do teach a skewed world view of no consequences and lack of personal responsibility. When that is combined with the current system of 'teaching the test', where the only information taught is what will get passing grades on that damn test, yeah, we have a serious problem, folks.

"Actually, yes it does. According to IGN, in fact, it has one of the most well-executed and deep plots of any video game, much less the GTA series itself, which has always had an extensive plot element."

I find this dubious, in what ways is this game functionally different from the prior incarnations? Are there suddenly deeper backgrounds to the characters? Is the main character no longer one dimensional? Is the goal no longer to make it through the obstacles of gang/mob warfare to get to the top?

They're honestly saying that this is one of the deepest games ever? Additionally, isn't that incredibly subjective? I've heard people say the same thing about Kingdom Hearts, but you know, opinions and all that.

There have been so many bullshit statements and outright lies in this thread on behalf of the critics that it's astounding, but I thought I'd reply to this one as a "Quick Hit" cause I have to get going:

"And let's be real. It's not like this game has any structured plot with a complex resolution like a book or a movie. So let's cut the crap."

Spike, every single review for this game has marveled over how amazing and involving the storyline is. If you're going to criticize something, at least have a vague idea of what you're talking about.

"Getting off on killing prostitutes is not excusable and entertaining. Pretending that it's the same thing as getting off on stealing cars is either a put on or suggests a profound detachment from reality."

Stealing a car is not comparable to stealing a car, no. But is it comparable to stealing a car and then running over the victim, and whoever else gets in the way as you try to escape? I'd have to say yes. Brutally beating an elderly person to death? Yes.

I'm not saying there's no grounds to object to the series, I'm just saying that the violence against women isn't special, there's violence against EVERYONE. I'm just not understanding why people are particularly offended by the killing of prostitutes, and not the killing of everyone else.

That was really revolting.

Two things I'd like to add to the discussion:

1)I saw this article at BBC today. I wonder if games like this would fall under the extreme pornography ruling.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7364475.stm

2) My friend Katherine Buckley has been involved with research about video games and aggression. While people may say, "I know it is just a video game...I would never do this in real life" she and two Iowa State colleagues have found that there is a link in aggression for children. Here's a link with a good summary of her study:

http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2005-2009/07agb.pdf

I'm just not understanding why people are particularly offended by the killing of prostitutes, and not the killing of everyone else.

Violence is meted out to everyone, but sexualized violence is reserved for women. Do you see how that is a problem?

Also, there is no male equivalent to the female sex-workers in the game.

There is no female equivalent to the protagonist.

The female is never the protagonist.

For the most part the females are bystanders or prostitutes.

These are all problems.

"Spike, every single review for this game has marveled over how amazing and involving the storyline is. If you're going to criticize something, at least have a vague idea of what you're talking about."

Hey. I wasn't the original person to compare the game to the violence of film and literature. I mean hell, millions of people think Harry Potter is a marvelous, amazing and that it has an involved storyline...but um' it's still Harry Potter.

I am talking about themes that are more nuanced and deep. Sometimes if violence is in a certain context for example you can learn something about the story. That's the kind of complex plot I'm talking about.

I'm listening, though.

Wildberry,

Killing of anyone is offensive. What I find distasteful is the fact that in other contexts people would be up in arms about the scenario depicted in the game, yet somehow here it's harmless fantasy.

Is this the type of complex story line to which folks are referring? My ex used to play, but hell if I know.

from wiki:
"In later titles, notably those released after Grand Theft Auto 2, the player is given a more in depth storyline, in which they are forced to overcome an event where they are either stabbed in the back and left to die by someone they know, or experienced an unfortunate event. This served as a motivation for the character to advance in the criminal ladder, and eventually leads to the triumph of the character by the end of the storyline."

Wow. Yes, this is deep.

"The series has courted a great deal of controversy since the release of Grand Theft Auto III. This criticism stems from the focus on illegal activities, in comparison with "hero" roles that most other games offer. The main character can commit a wide variety of crimes and violent acts while dealing with only temporary consequences, including the killing of policemen and military personnel."

You're right, CoasttoCoast and Alice. Yes. This game does indeed have complex, nuanced story lines. I don't have a fucking clue. This game should not be criticized in any way shape or form.

I'm done here.

Well, I guess the thread has thoroughly derailed. I was hoping to get into a real discussion between the group that sees the problems but likes the game, and the group that doesn't think these depictions of violence are justified at all. I don't think the people trying to argue away the problematic nature of the violence in this game should have really been in this discussion unless they had first been to this discussion

"I find this dubious, in what ways is this game functionally different from the prior incarnations? Are there suddenly deeper backgrounds to the characters? Is the main character no longer one dimensional? Is the goal no longer to make it through the obstacles of gang/mob warfare to get to the top?

They're honestly saying that this is one of the deepest games ever? Additionally, isn't that incredibly subjective? I've heard people say the same thing about Kingdom Hearts, but you know, opinions and all that."

The game is about a Bosnian immigrant who comes to America in search of the American Dream and revenge, only to find that the promise America holds for its immigrant population is in many ways false. His cousin (and only family member) falls into gambling debt with the mob, triggering a series of events that force Niko Bellic to revert to his past as a Bosnian soldier (albeit reluctantly).

The game incorporates in its 20+ hours of plot, including hours and hours of cutscenes, elements of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the disillusionment movement, traditional mafia films, and the experience of an immigrant, all in a living, contemporary setting based off of New York City.

But apparently there's no depth to be found if you don't want to find it.

I own GTA IV, and I enjoy playing it. Yes, parts of it are sexist, both against men and women, and parts of it are racist, again targeting many different ethnic and religious groups. That being said, it's an incredibly well executed game, the best I've ever played, because of its combination of violence, open-ended gameplay, exploration, themes and plot, and technical prowess in regards to graphics, physics, and artistic direction. The game's an achievement in satire, as well.

No, I don't hate women, or men, or people of other races or ethnicities, but I enjoy playing a great game and internalizing a great piece of art. If you require your art to conform with your view of the world you limit your appreciation of the whole. So yes, condemn GTA IV for the sexism it contains against both genders, but please, stop basing your criticism on half-truths or things you heard by-the-by on the internet.

Critical analysis of art means you have to look at it in-depth. How can people say they have an in-depth knowledge of the sexism within GTA if they've never played it? That's like saying "Scarface" is racist, even though you've never seen it.

I am male who plays a lot of video games. Many include violence in one degree or another, such as war game or a first person shooter when the enemy is trying to kill my character. (For the record I prefer strategy and historical simulations above all.)

But I will not under any circumstances play or in any way support any game that so much as has this option, no matter how difficult it maybe to enable or what parental lock features exist! The trailer alone shows these despicable acts where our youth most certainly watch them. Sorry, but making someone enter their birth date does not prevent minors from gaining access. Anyone can lie about that!

I realize that sex and violence sell especially against women it seems. I know the controversy will benefit them in many ways. I think it will also hurt them in many ways also as a number of people who would play won’t with that kind of content. I will defend the right of an adult to choose to buy and play games of this nature. As far as I am concerned an adult has every right to play such a game if they choose. Movies seem to be pretty much as bad to me. But I am not going to defend in any way the content itself. I will make it clear to the game industry that I do not approve of this in any way and that I at least will have nothing to do with it. I am sorry if this offends anyone, but I don’t think highly of people who defend the content or make excuses for said conduct.

As I said, as far as I am concerned an adult has every right to play such a game if they choose. But parents need to be aware, and certainly should be aware, of the nature of this game so they can execute parental oversight.

I noticed an option to “spotlight� this issue to the media. I think that is a wonderful idea. I hope you join me in trying to bring further attention to this issue so that parents at least will be more aware. Assuming they care, of course.

In continuation of my post above, below is what I sent to a number of media sources:

I am trying very hard not to use profanity here, something I rarely have a problem with, but this is different. I will spare you and leave the profanity up to you after you check this issue out. Feministing (at www.feministing.com) brought this to my attention, and I hope to bring it to yours. If you are not the correct person to bring this to, then please direct me or this e-mail to the correct person.

The latest Grand Theft Auto game has put out a trailer which not only includes a great deal of violence and sex, but the frequent murder of women following the sex. Whatever your personal views on sex and violence in games, the cold blooded murder of women immediately after goes beyond any rational explanation.

No matter what they might claim, a large target audience is our youth. Not that youth alone are the problem. Perpetuating the "women aren't worth a damn" meme further damages the standing of women in our society when there are already enough who believe women to be inferior. I honestly believe they thought they could sneak this past the mainstream public. Sex and violence sell to begin with. Add in the murder of women who, as prostitutes and are supposedly therefore not worthy of humanity, and you have something that words alone cannot give justice!

I am video gamer myself and many of those games involve violence to one degree or another. But this?

I ask of you, I beg of you, please bring this atrocity to light! I recognize adults have a right to this kind of material, but at the very least parents need to be made aware of the content of this game so they can make an educated decision in regards to their children.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Miles Webster


Christie Webster

Female gamer here. I played every incarnation of GTA since II. I think that it's important to point out that these games are popular first and foremost because they are good. Video games, unlike McDonald's, cost a lot of money, and if they aren't quality, no one buys them. The storylines do give a lot more complexity than the average video game out there. There is an almost infinite amount of things to do and the gameplay is thus constantly compelling. These things are all true, and trying to argue otherwise is to waste time.

That said, of course there are things you can criticize. But just as trying to criticize the above qualities are a waste of time, so too is spending time on a lot of the complaints I see here. Killing prostitutes is in NO WAY glorified in this series. You can argue all you like about whether it should be an option, but it is not a special option. Someone touched on how much of a pain in the ass it is to even have sex with a prostitute. Yes, I have done it and then killed them to get the money back, but only once or twice because, in the end, the game *doesn't* reward you for it, and your time is better spent robbing a convenience store, finishing missions, or selling stolen cars if money is your goal. Besides all the time it takes to even get a prostitute, the money you get is only a pittance more than what you gave her, if that. You'd be better served killing someone random. For that matter, what you gave her to begin with is a pittance not worth trying to get back. In a game where your budget is in the millions, it's really not worth it to chase her down for your $200, and then you have to avoid the cops. And then there's the fact that killing a hooker and having sex with a hooker are two completely different actions. You can have sex with hookers all day without killing them, and you can kill hookers all day without having sex with them. There is no sexual violence in this game. No one is ever raped or has sex unwillingly. The hookers even have to like you enough to let you pick them up. There is sex in this game (and by the looks of it, much more realistic sex than in previous incarnations of the series) and there is violence, but no sexual violence.

I would love to see you be able to pick up male hookers, but as the gaming world in general seems to have a problem even letting women have equal exposure, it's really dreaming to expect any gay content. The evolution is happening ever so slowly, however, and come to think of it, Rockstar did become one of the first mainstream companies to allow the choice to be gay with Bully... maybe next time?

My point with all of this is to blow the killing hookers thing out of proportion is to distract from the REAL criticisms you can make about this game, things that Rockstar might actually give a damn about and change if we make our voiced heard. The gaming industry is slowly realizing just how big the "gurl gamer" and the "gaymer" segments really are, and it's only a matter of time before their "18-35 year-old straight male" marketing mentality gives way to a more eclectic and inclusive focus. Let's work on bringing that about rather than falling in with the "but violence is bad!" crowd, the crowd that Rockstar expects, goads on, and then ignores.

And I do think they will eventually come around on this (if we make them). While strong and multidimensional female characters are sorely lacking, they did have a presence in GTA San Andreas (it's really been too long since I've played the others to remember), which is not to say that's nearly enough, but it does indicate to me that the creators aren't just misogynist bastards making a game about hating women. They're probably just like all the other men conditioned to live in the patriarchy and think on its terms who don't realize that throwing in one strong female supporting character just isn't enough. It's not going to make us complacent and it's not going to expand their audience. The answer, as someone said before, is MORE choices, not less.

Miles: It's a noble sentiment, but I really don't think parents are unaware of what the GTA series is all about. If they somehow missed the media hype all these years, there's a big fat Mature rating on the cover. Kids are no longer the video game industry's target anyway, for the most part. The bulk of the new games are targeted to 18-35 year old males.

It's also worth repeating that Rockstar didn't put out this "trailer". Some (obviously immature) reviewers at IGN put it together.

This "oh no, the teenage boys!" sentiment is really strange, because this game is M for Mature. You need to be 18 to buy it. If your parents buy you GTA and you're under 18 it means one of tow things: either your parents trust you a lot (possibly for good reasons), or you have negligent parents (most likely this one). But negligent parenting is going to be the big issue in that child's life, not one game among many.

Eventually I hope they tap the market and create games for girls, but gaming is still in its infancy. The primary audience is male, and no company is going to take a huge risk and run a female protagonist when millions are on the line. Still, games like Metroid Prime (with heroine Samus Aran) exist. As the medium grows, so will its appeal, and that will change its demographics.

Still, so many criticisms of this game are based on a four minute edited film. If you're going to do a deep critical analysis of GTA you're going to need more than four minutes to render any accurate or interesting ideas on the game.

When the first GTA game came out all those years ago, it was so different that it spawned a new genre - so called "sandbox" games. These games are popular because they plonk you in an open ended world for you to explore, where anything and everything goes.

The game allows you to hurt people. It allows you to steal cars, deal drugs, kill cops, and sleep with prostitutes. Any inherent misogyny comes not from what they have put into the game, but from what they have omitted.

There are no female protagonists. There are no male prostitutes. The main character can have girlfriends, but not boyfriends.

If anything rockstar should not tone down the violence and sexuality in the game, they should make it worse. They should make it more satirical than it already is.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll see any such changes yet. The game industry is still in it's infancy, and proper satire, subtlety and artistry are only creeping in at the edges.

"You're right, CoasttoCoast and Alice. Yes. This game does indeed have complex, nuanced story lines. I don't have a fucking clue. This game should not be criticized in any way shape or form. "

No reasonable person could make an argument like this and expect to be taken seriously. Are you drunk? You seem to have read a wikipedia article that recaps three video games worth of story, at least 20 hours of story each, in one paragraph, and then used that to decide that the story for all three of those games is shit, as well as the newest game, which isn't included in the article you quoted?

You actually don't have a fucking clue. Not even a little bit. It seems like you've never played one of these games, you almost certainly haven't finished one(which is the only way to put yourself in a position to critique the storyline) and even if you had, using that to condemn the story line of a game that only reviewers have played is lunacy. Add to this ridiculous situation the fact that the reviews are saying "the story in the past gta games has been uniformly lacklustre, which makes the magnificence of this story so surprising" and your original comment really becomes comical.

It's ok that you don't know anything about this. You can't know everything about everything. It's just that when I don't know anything about something, I try not to run around yelling my half baked opinions about it.

Games do NOT cause violence. The studies showing this are almost all very limited and removed from reality. Much of the reporting is Fox-style sensationalist crap, where the slightest connection, no matter how random or irrelevant, is made up to be a sign of gaming-inspired violence. There are however many more relevant studies that show no causal link at all.

A book called "Grand Theft Childhood" was recently released adressing games and violence. If you've fallen for the prejudice about games, this might be a good place to start.

For a quicker fix, consider why youth violence has dropped dramatically with every release of Grand Theft Auto.

Obviously games are a simplistic explanation and scapegoat for something more difficult.

I started writing a rebuttal here, but it got long. Instead, there's a link on my blog, if anyone's interested: http://kar3ning.livejournal.com/455976.html

Games do NOT cause violence.

That's nice. Now could you please address why only the women are prostitutes, why heterosexuality is set as a default, and why there is no option for a female protagonist? Until those flaws are fixed the game is off my list, whether it's an amazing work of art or not.

This game has been around for quite a few years and it's always been really bad. I know it's gotten worse and worse and more of the game has been focused on the realistic scenes in between playing. I had some friends that played it (who I lost respect for) and I've always thought it was one of the worst things I've ever seen to give to young people. Just look at the culture that has come out of the GTA generation. This game should have been banned like 5 years ago!

There is nothing redeeming about this game and I feel really bad for people that are so fucked up that they want to play this game and/or defend it. We as a society are seeing human beings devalued and degraded in so many ways and in particular we see women treated as less than human.

I don't understand why intelligent people can't see the connection between what children and young adults consume and how they percieve others. You need to think about psychology for just one minute and you'll see that we're systematically eroding our values as a society.

If you can't see the connection between the media that young people take in, and the actual events taking place in the real world, then you're ignorant and you're a pert of the problem. If you don't see a problem with this game then you shouldn't see a problem with the violence and hated that's committed against women. let's just go back to the days when a husband was allowed to beat his wife without consequences.

This is a sad place to be for someone who values peace and progress. I thought that's what we were working for, but I guess people are just stupid and will take anything that's given to them.

It's just sickening that this game has been successful and it makes me not want to live here anymore. Everything I'm working to instill in my children will be destroyed by this culture if I let them consume any of our media. What's the point of being a mother and teaching our children anything, if it's just gonna be beaten out of them just as they're reaching an age where they should be learning how to make our society better?

Everything I'm working to instill in my children will be destroyed by this culture if I let them consume any of our media.

You are crediting the media with way too much power. If you've raised sensitive and thoughtful people they won't be destroyed by violent or misogynistic content.

I have to say, while I find the game offensive I mostly disagree with your position. I want to encourage video game companies to question the assumptions they write into their games, to work to be more inclusive of female and non-hetero perspectives, to think of other options besides sexualized violence, and... just generally to be better.

But no, they don't have to take my advice. If they want to live without my money it's their right. And I don't believe they are corrupting good people. That's just a bit too far for me.

Miles: In continuation of my post above, below is what I sent to a number of media sources:

...The latest Grand Theft Auto game has put out a trailer which not only includes a great deal of violence and sex, but the frequent murder of women following the sex.

Miles, your message would get across much better if you don't start out with something that's completely false on its face.
It's not a trailer.
It wasn't put out by the creators of the game.

Start with the truth, and then people won't immediately dismiss the rest of what you're saying.

I would say that criticisms of GTA are an amalgam of criticisms of other cultural phenomenon, and I think some sort of taxonomy is in order. The game features rampant violence against humans of any sex, and against property. The game features women, some of whom are sex workers. The game features depictions of sex. Because GTA is a work of (interactive) fiction, these elements should be evaluated on terms similar to other works of fiction—as reflecting society, and with with at least some consideration given to context and the intent of the authors. (see, e.g., A Clockwork Orange, a critically acclaimed, though notoriously violent, work of fiction.) At a minimum, that requires actually reading/watching/playing the subject of the criticism.

Yesterday I was at a strip club in the game. As has been reported elsewhere, this is boring. But then I tried to jump up on the stage, and I was instantly chased out of the club by bouncers and pursued by the police. This also happens if you so much as display a weapon in the club. I'm not sure where this fits into the line of criticism regarding the game's alleged promotion of violence against women, but it's clearly relevant.

I could read 164 comments in which everything I want to say has probably been said, but as a gamer and a feminist, perhaps GTA is one of my big un-feminist guilty pleasures... but I don't like to think so. If you played the game... Everything is funny in that "I dare you to laugh and expose yourself for the bigot you are" kind of way.

A lot of the jokes about women are about how our culture uses them up and tosses them aside. A lot of the more subtle sexisms are brought up to the scary light of day and shoved in your face. One radio program on their version of a conservative talk radio station is like The People's Court, in which the judge sexually harasses the women in his courtroom and tells them, for a number of ridiculous reasons, why they're the inferior sex. He does this, though, not because the makers of the game think we need to know, but because I think they were painfully aware that people think these things even if they don't usually say them. He talks about the historical oppression of women, and how giving up her last name goes back to men owning women, but then goes on to accuse her of deliberately emasculating her husband by forcing him to hyphenate their last names. He's a parody of all the men like him, exposing all that hatred and hypocrisy.

I don't know if the makers of the game are growing up, but I feel like a monster every time I kill someone in GTAIV. Just two days ago I was playing the three games that precede it, and I never felt the slightest bit of sympathy for all the walking jokes that populate those satirical interpretations of New York, Miami, and Southern California. The people in GTAIV feel more like real people, now, and I can't imagine getting any pleasure out of killing them.

If anything, GTA is a mirror. You have never, in any of the games, needed to pick up sex workers or kill them. That has simply been something you /can/ do. How you play says more about you than the makers of the game.

Also, it's not for kids. Also, women play it, too. Please don't erase feminist gamers like me by talking about what the men who play this game take away from it. I get enough of that from the mainstream gaming press.

Also, I just watched the trailer, and I'm fairly certain this wasn't put together by the makers of the game. I'm also fairly certain that it was composed of experiences that were chosen for the purpose of putting this video together.

I've been playing the game for about twenty hours since I got it Monday night, and I can tell you that things he says, like, "stay down and stop crying" are things he says to anyone he shoots. It has nothing to do with who he was shooting. It's a simple "random quote triggered by discharge of players weapon" formula. That was obviously a choice on the part of the maker of the video to express their own misogynist feelings.

That said, I am pretty horrified that the sex is so obvious now. Sex workers never gyrated over you or even touched you before. I hate seeing Niko like this, too. He's a much more complex character than this video makes him out to be. This isn't how I play the game.

Ugh.

My Niko has a girlfriend, to whom he loses games of bowling and pool.

"Now could you please address why only the women are prostitutes, why heterosexuality is set as a default, and why there is no option for a female protagonist?"

I already did address that. It's largely because it's a depiction of a reality where women have these roles. Most crime stories on tv or film work this way. Maintaining a level of realism and connection to the real world is obviously important to the game. I think you can't shut your eyes to where it's coming from - a society that's in itself sexist. As a portrayal of that, the game contains sexism, but mostly depictions of it, and not sexism hat actively involves you or rewards you.

Having said that, I agree with your complaints. There are other things that wouldn't change the core concept of the game, make it less artful or immersive. For that Rockstar deserves criticism. I'm just speaking out against unjustified criticism. Also, there are some redeeming values others have brought up. One good thing I can point out is that among all the satire in the game, there is some pretty on-the-spot attacks on gender roles and patriarchal society. I don't know if the game's audience is generally open to it, but it's there.

I fully understand why the game is on your don't-play list. Even if you remove the criticism based on misunderstandings and prejudice here, GTA4 has enough left to put it on the list. But it's not so black and white that we can't have differing opinions about it whithout being bad people. I'm aware enough of sexism that I can see it for what it is in fiction. I can handle the violence in a similar way. That's why it's in my 360 now.

I can't enjoy playing a fun game without simultaneously having to see my entire gender reduced to walking orifices.

This. As for the defense that it's a completely optional and minor part of a sandbox game - well, as per the video above, the game's being sold in part on your ability to cap bitches after doing them. It's not a minor enough part for the promotion department to pass it by. I'm also wary of a title that has more sympathy for someone working in fast food as a result of socioeconomic ills than someone who got raped and murdered in the course of a job they took for the same reason.

As a female gamer, I absolutely don't buy the argument that these scenes aren't a manifestation of or affecting young male gamer attitudes toward women. Because oh, gee, no, there have been *NO* _actual_ recent controversies in gaming where *real* women were treated as walking orifices and deemed worthy of brutal treatment:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/assassin.s-creed/ubisoft-threatens-something-awful-over-jade-comic-323946.php
http://www.thaumatocracy.com/jade-raymond-comic

(For those not in the hobby: Jade Raymond is a female programmer who is a) constantly noted to be "hot" and b) loathed by the largely-male gamer community. Ostensibly, the latter is due to her "overexposure" during the promotion of a very popular title she produced. I hadn't seen her face before the comic imbroglio, so maybe "overexposed" means "bitch actually, at some point, talked to a journalist and dared to have some success in our little boys' club".)

Synonymous: the video linked above was not produced by the makers of the game.

Kristen, thanks for your comment. It was really good and I agree with most or all of it.

Those of you who're commenting who aren't gamers, please resist the temptation to, not knowing why anyone would play a game, invent some vast work of horror fiction about why people must play it. If you don't know why someone would play it, how about asking us? I've played GTA, along with GTA 3 and its two sequels. I'm a female gamer, and I've played and enjoyed those games, and it wasn't because I secretly loathe myself or because I get gift vouchers from the Patriarchy for it. It'd also help if you got an idea of how we see the game, since that's pretty important in establishing what we get out of it.

There are very legitimate criticisms of GTA and the video games industry in general, but incredible kneejerk assumptions of why people play these games don't help advance those criticisms. Please stop it.

I have always wondered how some say that people don't "learn" these things from games/TV when the whole industry of advertising is based on what we see on TV, billboards, and even games. It works for them so reliably that they are a huge industry.

I'm not a "gamer" but I do play online and nerdy games once in a while. I think women gamers have three choices, 1)not play these games, 2)play but ignore the crappy parts, 3) play and imagine that you are a male rapist murderer.

I'm pretty sure there are people who choose the last option because often women don't have a hard time identifying with a man's point of view (and especially a patriarchal point of view). So we can enjoy virtually killing hookers just like a boy would. (not me personally of course, I can hardly sit in a room watching someone else play it)

by the way, my husband played this game and felt terrible. so men and boys can be uncomfortable with the idea too, but I guess that's obvious.

Synonymous: the video linked above was not produced by the makers of the game.

IGN, the game site that made the clip, selects the material for their promotional clips based on what they know players are eager to hear and see of the game. Their size and success would indicate that their judgment and perceptions regarding their audience are reliable. One might also question how far the official company GTA hype machine and the members of the gaming press covering GTA can be separated, given the super-indulgent treatment and extensive behind-the-scenes access writers covering it have enjoyed.

So, let's see how long we can split this hair and distract us from the real issue of sexism in gaming culture.

I have always wondered how some say that people don't "learn" these things from games/TV when the whole industry of advertising is based on what we see on TV, billboards, and even games. It works for them so reliably that they are a huge industry.

I'm not a "gamer" but I do play online and nerdy games once in a while. I think women gamers have three choices, 1)not play these games, 2)play but ignore the crappy parts, 3) play and imagine that you are a male rapist murderer.

I'm pretty sure there are people who choose the last option because often women don't have a hard time identifying with a man's point of view (and especially a patriarchal point of view). So we can enjoy virtually killing hookers just like a boy would. (not me personally of course, I can hardly sit in a room watching someone else play it)

by the way, my husband played this game and felt terrible. so men and boys can be uncomfortable with the idea too, but I guess that's obvious.

Three things came to my mind after reading this:

1. Thank God for GTA IV. Now I can go back to playing my "sex romp" Mass Effect without feeling guilty. Regardless, I'm so glad that people who don't bother actually looking into the material they criticize are here to protect my fragile mind from its deleterious effects.

2. It's too bad you can't eat tenant farmer babies in the game. Because, y'know, satire should never deal with the problems facing a people at the time. It should be as rarefied as possible.

Whoops. Missed a "thing."

3. Thank God you don't kill animals in this game. PETA would have had a field day with it.

Wow, UCLAri, that was priceless. Grand Theft Auto IV as Swift-esque satire? Now THAT is satire.

Nobody gives a crap about your fragile mind. It's not about protecting you. It's about the shittiness of a game that thinks killing prostitutes is edgy and totally hXc, not to mention fun.

I think it's worth drawing the analogy to a joke or story again. It's not that people die. It's not that the archetypical pure little child will be destroyed by it. It's that the role of women, especially prostitutes, in this game is genuinely degrading and upsetting. That's not to say that nothing bad should ever happen in video games. It's just gross to perpetuate the idea of prostitutes as disposable humans - far from being satire, that is the horrifying way mainstream society DOES view them.

Wow, what a topic :)

Hi, I'm Law Fairy, and I'm a feminist gamer ("Hi Law Fairy"). I haven't played the GTA games much -- got San Andreas for my PS2 but didn't finish it for lack of time (the bit I did play, though, I found pretty fun, didn't run into any significant sexist stuff for the length of time I played it). Bought GTA4 yesterday in part because some gaming buddies were buying it so I figured, why not. Haven't actually played the game itself yet, only the online multiplayer version. For what it's worth, Xbox Live assigned me a female character (my gamer profile says I'm a woman). So online, anyway, you can have female protagonists.

I think maybe part of the hysteria that surrounds things like GTA4 (on both the pro- and anti- sides) hinges on the fact that video games are an emerging form of entertainment and art -- yes, ART (some of which will be amazing, and most of which will completely suck -- just like any form of art). Video games are still relatively new -- especially games with both graphics *and* actual narratives. When movies were new, people were pretty skeptical of them too. Part of what's going on here, I suspect, is an inherent mistrust of video games in general because they're kind of a wild card in our vast world of multimedia. The gaming community doesn't particularly help this, since for many of them the reaction to public vilification is to counter with comebacks designed to scare people even *more* -- rather than showing people why, actually, video games are not particularly threatening and, in fact, are an incredibly evolved and rich addition to society's repertoire of media culture. Some in the gaming community are trying to reach out and do this. But others just don't bother, and instead focus on their justifiable irritation at being labeled monolithic basement-dwelling socially-impaired losers. Instead of engaging in productive discourse, they defend EVERYTHING about games and assume anyone who disagrees is a stubborn, unenlightened neophyte. So what you end up with is two sides who don't understand each other, and who don't really *care* to try understanding each other. Not a great way to initiate a dialogue.

And so what happens is that, when someone like Samhita brings up some totally valid points that deserve discussion and thought (especially given that she doesn't play the game -- an admission that she's one of those "outsiders" trying to spoil everyone's fun), a lot of people in the gaming community get their hackles up because valid criticisms become indistinguishable from invalid criticisms (in fairness, the two are often themselves jumbled and mixed up), and it all sounds like one big old buzzing cauldron of anti-gaming sentiment. And so gamers -- even legitimate feminist gamers -- react at the not-necessarily-unfounded perception that the criticism is no different from something a Jack Thompson would say.

Adding fuel to this fire are incidents like a recent imbroglio involving our favorite news channel, Fox, and a popular video game called Mass Effect. Basically, Fox brought on a woman to discuss all the things that were horrible about the game, when she hadn't even played it for two seconds. The gaming columnist brought on as the counterpoint wasn't really given a chance to mount his defense of the game, and the gaming community was so infuriated at the unfair portrayal that they instituted an Amazon spamming campaign to rate her book poorly (pretty immature, although I have to admit that comments like "I haven't read her book, but I know that it's terrible" made me chuckle).

Anyway, the point of this is to say that what the non-gamers here need to understand is that there's a little bit of a war brewing behind the scenes. There's more to this story, and what's happening in the comments here, than just a single game series. When people make comments like "no one who enjoys this game could possibly call him/herself a feminist" and DOESN'T EVEN OWN A CONSOLE, it's not exactly going to resonate with the feminist gamers who actually DO want to see quality, woman-affirming games (and there are LOTS of us). By the same token, we feminist gamers need to pay enough attention and take a deep enough breath to separate out the wheat from the chaff of gaming criticisms. Samhita brought up some good points. Some gamers here have brought up some good counterpoints, and some gamers and non-gamers have brought up further good counter-counterpoints. Gaming is just another medium, like music, or movies, or television, or books. That it is explicitly interactive makes it superficially, but not actually all that different (though I would argue this feature does afford more entertainment bang for your buck). All media are interactive, even if your actions won't change what the person on the screen says -- communication is necessarily interactive. Art means nothing without an observer. Words mean nothing without a culture, a context, and, most importantly, a listener/reader. Games are just another piece of media technology that will eventually become as mundane and ordinary to us as DVDs. I think it's important to keep this in mind when we have these much-needed discussions.

For example, it may in fact be that GTA4 is a pretty great work of art (jury's still out for me, as I've barely played the thing). Or it might be a total piece of sexist crap. Or it might be something in between. This discussion is no different from a discussion about horribly violent movies (which I think most of us watch occasionally) that may or may not be brilliant, or horribly sexist rap lyrics (which has been one of my guilty pleasures in the past) that might or might not have a deeper meaning. For instance, some people thought No Country For Old Men was pure genius. I found it unimpressive. Neither of us is necessarily wrong, and neither conclusion is inherently unfeminist, and pointing out that watching the movie would be the best way to form a legitimate opinion about it (rather than simply watching the ads, which may be subject to a *separate* critique) doesn't make one a misogyny apologist.

So I guess what I'm saying is: the point isn't the choices people make in playing the game, or the fact that those choices exist. The point is, looking at this game as a whole -- just as we would look at ANY other media work as a whole -- what's problematic about it, and what's redeeming about it? The tricky thing with games is that getting a handle on the work as a whole takes a LOOOOOOT longer than it does for movies. Is it valid to criticize aspects of the game without playing the whole thing? Of course. But it's not exactly fair to then go and question the feminist credentials of those who HAVE played and have reached a different conclusion.

Okay, I think I've taken up enough of your bandwidth for one day :)