Its hero is a violent criminal who wanders a virtual city, stealing cars and killing bystanders, but GTA IV's defenders say it is a beautiful creation, rendered in increasingly realistic graphics. Is the computer game a cultural disease or an art form?
YOU CRUISE through the streets. Down alleyways. In and out of doorways. Refusing to let anyone get in the way of your straightforward, vital but seemingly impossible mission: to buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) IV.
If you tried that this week, you'll know it was as tough as completing the game itself. Shop after shop tantalised customers by putting it on display, but unless you had pre-ordered the game you could forget about getting your hands on a copy until yesterday at least. By which time an American guy called Jimbo had already set a world record by playing the game for 28 hours straight. By the 23rd hour, he had killed 10 people with his bare hands, started 32 fires, been fatally shot 31 times, and slept with one prostitute. And he had become one of the many people who are expected to make GTA IV the biggest-selling game of all-time, notching up $400 million in sales in its first week alone.
One man who has not played it is Florida lawyer Jack Thompson. And he doesn't want anyone else to play it either. "Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio. We now have vaccines for that virus . . . The 'vaccine' that must be administered by the United States government to deal with this virtual virus of violence and sexual depravity is criminal prosecutions of those who have conspired to do this." With an 18s rating in Ireland, it is meant to be an assault only on the senses of the demographic who now comprise the average gamer - men aged between 25 and 30. But this is a series which has been accompanied by notoriety for some years now, to the point where its creators - Rockstar - bring their own recorder to interviews with journalists. They do so because they have learned lessons about how some of the media approaches a game which has featured a criminal as its hero, wandering a virtual city of prostitutes, stealing cars, killing bystanders, and with excessive violence and sex bringing rewards.
For many players, to focus on all that is to ignore the true beauty of the game, which lies in how it has created a virtual city of unprecedented detail, rendered in increasingly realistic graphics, with an innovative crossover between the web, music, comedy, television and advertising, allowing the player an immersive experience that is revolutionising not only the computer game market but the entertainment industry itself. This is not a cultural disease, they insist, but a work of art.
GRAND THEFT AUTO began life in 1997 as a 2D world in which Playstation players had the freedom to progress through the game by methods that included selling stolen cars or just causing as much destruction as possible. Two million copies were sold. GTA II, which followed in 1998, sold a similar amount.
With the third instalment the action became a little more realistic, moving into a 3D world and attracting attention for both its themes and its increasing realism. But it was the arrival of an offshoot, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in 2004 that firmly established the game's credentials as a trigger of moral panic.
Much of this was exacerbated by an in-game sex scene which was hidden, but could be hacked into by players with the know-how. It was ludicrous, pixelated smut. But it caused uproar, albeit chiefly among those who enjoy a good uproar. The game was effectively banned in Australia, because of the sex scenes, not the violence, although that was primarily because the ratings system didn't have an adult rating for computer games. In the US, the rating was upgraded from "mature" to "adults-only". And the franchise was accused of playing a part in at least two murders. Jack Thompson filed a lawsuit against its makers, claiming that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City had acted as a weapons-training tool for one 15-year-old killer.
Grand Theft Auto IV, then, was always likely to attract attention. The London Times, for instance, this week ran a story on how the respected neuroscientist Susan Greenfield warned that "children who spend hours playing computer games risked doing so much damage to their brains that they could lose their personalities".
Another neuroscientist (with the splendidly heroic name of Stafford Lightman) disagreed, claiming there is no evidence to support such fears. And it does seem a little obvious to point out that the globe is not overrun by personality-less teens. Much as their parents might wish it were so.
In the US, a Fox News item included one contributor's complaint that Grand Theft Auto wasn't like old-style games such as Street Fighter. This was picked up by a games journalist as an example of how muddled the criticism can be. "Did he say Street Fighter? Really? A game that - unlike Grand Theft Auto IV, where much of the violence is in fact optional and play-style determinative - requires gamers to beat the living stuff out of each other?"
Its supporters argue that the game is actually a clever cultural satire and, besides, computer games - like cartoons - have from the early days been based on violence, killing (or, at least, not being killed). But there are also complaints that the game's misogynistic tone, in which women are to be wooed or paid for sex, mirrors the flawed perspective of the players as a whole. A montage of the "Ladies of Liberty City" (the name of the game's fictional setting) was circulated online, and included lap dances, hooker shootings and the like, drawing popular website Feministing.com to comment that: "It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is, why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular?"
"We're not sitting there trying to provoke people," Rockstar's creative vice president, Dan Houser, recently told the Daily Telegraph. "It boils down to the following thing that I believe is true, and if I'm being naive please correct me. If we were making a movie or a TV show about the same themes and the same world . . . if it was good we would win Oscars and Emmys and Baftas and we would certainly never be criticised.
"[The idea] that you're participating in different ways is strange. I just don't think it holds water. Particularly when you're talking about the difference between video-game graphics and a photorealistic movie. Most of it's just Ludditism and people having a fear of things they don't understand. And education: you wouldn't buy your kid that movie, so why would you buy them that video game? We are staunch supporters of the rating system and always have been."
Computer games, Houser insists, are an "emergent art form". And many previous emergent forms - jazz, rock and roll, comic books, film - have been subject to moral outrage before becoming part of the cultural establishment. There is the sense, in coverage on this side of the Atlantic at least, that Grand Theft Auto has already become an accepted icon of modern culture. This may be partly to do with the fact that the game, while influential, is no longer representative of the industry as a whole.
Nintendo has been marketing Wii as a family console. The Brain Training games have made inroads into a surprising market - middle-aged women. The games market is expanding well beyond the teenaged boys who became its unwarranted stereotype a long time ago.
Part of the industry's difficulty remains in how, unlike movies or music, gaming is not something into which people accidentally wander. It is not as culturally pervasive, as easily absorbed by the general public. To play a game, you have to sit at a console, pick up a control and engage with it. Which means that it remains a niche of sorts. It just happens to be the most monstrous and profitable niche out there.
So those who stand outside it find it difficult to appreciate the increasing variety of titles, or the subtlety within headline-grabbing games. And, in the case of Grand Theft Auto IV, they miss out on the genuine art of a game that should not have to rely on explosions and violence to gain attention.
For instance, when designing the New York-inspired Liberty City, architects were involved in the art team. About a quarter of a million photos of New York were taken, plus a "silly amount" of video footage, according to Rockstar North's art director, Aaron Garbut. They looked at traffic flows from different times of the day, the changes in light through the day, the ethnic mix of various neighbourhoods, the electrical, sewerage, and drainage plans. They created brands for billboards, fake websites that can be surfed through digitised web cafes, a full comedy act with Ricky Gervais.
"I keep seeing game worlds of a sprawling futuristic metropolis or whatever and the first thing that occurs to me is, where the hell do people buy milk, where do they get a cup of coffee?" Garbut has said. "It's too easy to get lost in the aesthetics of something and forget to think in those terms. How does it work? How do these people live their lives? Where do they eat? Where do they work? How do they get home? Where do they park their cars?"
It's by entering that kind of detail that the game has risen above its seemingly brutish themes. And when the bullets stop flying, that may yet be what it will be remembered for.
CV GRAND THEFT AUTO IV
What is it?One of the biggest-selling computer game
titles of all time. And menace to your children's morals, according
to some.
Why is it in the news?Grand Theft Auto IV was
released this week for PlayStation and XBox. Costing about $100
million to produce, it is expected to make far more than that in
the first week alone.
Most appealing characteristic:It is beautifully
made, incredibly detailed and an example of what can be great about
modern computer games.
Least appealing characteristic:That players can be
rewarded for killing cops, stealing cars, beating up bystanders and
generally causing mayhem. Its portrayal of women has also come in
for criticism, and it has had to be modified for sale in Australia
and New Zealand.
What the gamers say:"I now know how film critics
felt after screening The Godfather." (Andrew Reiner, Game Informer)
What its critics say:"What Grand Theft Auto IV
affirms is the pleasure of eschewing decency for obnoxious
violence." (Tim Rutten, LA Times)