So I just deleted my savegames for GTA4. Or, rater, snarled in hate at realizing it has no delete function, and that the closest thing to that would be to start the damn game and drive the convoluted path it insists you take to the first save point, then save a freshly-started game over my saves.
Why? Well, I spent most of the time I was at home this weekend playing the fucking thing. Even though I didn't want to, even though I have art that I want to get done.
I bought GTA2 for the Dreamcast, back when. It was fun, it was hyperviolent in a cheerfully silly way. But I didn't buy GTA3. It came into my life when I found it, and a pile of other obviously-stolen games, under a bush. It hooked into my obsessive side. I had to make myself stop playing it; ultimately it got dumped on the used game store. When GTA3:Vice City came out, I knew better than to buy it - but my room-mate wanted it, and it wound up devouring several weeks of my free time against my conscious choice. When GTA3:San Andreas came out, I had nobody in my life interested in buying it... but later on Rik installed it on his Windows box, and once again, I couldn't resist; I ended up playing the fucking thing. If not for Alicia loaning us her 360 and GTAIV, I would have never gotten the thing. I've never wanted the 3D versions of this series, but put them in my life and I can't, somehow, not play them.
I did not actually enjoy the body of the time I've spent on this series. Oh, there are moments: completing a mission in a delightfully sideways way, causing chaos and fleeing it - or even being run to ground by the cops after a half-hour merry chase across the whole game map. But the actual content? Frustration and snarling, for the most part. Moreso than usual in this latest one, as every single mission is given to you by a complete asshole who it would be a pleasure to kill.
There's this one character in GTA4. This guy named Brucie, this creepy steroid junkie with too much money. He creeps me out in the same ways that guy I did the parking piece for early this year. Like everyone who gives you missions, his dialogue is written to establish him as pretty much a scumbag you want to hurt. You're given no opportunity to do this, until one mission where you have to drive him across the city, then take part in a street race for him while he hollers testosterone-fueled imprecations at you. The instant this mission started and I realized he was a game object, I pulled a shotgun out and let him have it, point-blank. It took three shots before he went down. I then restarted the mission and wandered off to a lonely, desolate beach with him in tow, and shot him again. And restarted again, looking for another interesting way to kill him. Several times. Finally I actually bothered to take him to the car he wanted me to get, to be told about the race. Failed the first time. Killed him again. Tried shooting out the bot racer's tires before the race, got told that wasn't allowed. Killed him some more. Parked a van in front of half of the cars and finally did it.
I did this instead of working on the 9 of Pentacles, which is slowly shaping up to be yet another pretty and evocative image.
Really, this is why I object to the continued existence of GTA. It's this wonderful, deep, inviting game; a wonderful sandbox to play in - coupled tightly to a narrative built exclusively out of the dark side of humanity. GTA3 and GTA3VC sort of walked on the side of parody, but the cartoonish dark humor filtered out and it's just incredibly depressing, yet incredibly addictive. At least for the way my brain is wired.
It's not terrible because "oh no you can get your health back from a hooker and then run over her to get the money back". That's almost a kind of defense against the game's worldmessage: after a while, you stop seeing these bits of code as (symbols of) people, and just see them as game objects; it's the only way to really cope with how much nasty virtual shit your new addiction has you do. It's terrible because it's a little sham reality made to program you to be an asshole. And it's got these addictive hooks all over it to draw you in.
And this is what big-budget video games "for adults" keep turning into. Addiction engines with a "grim, gritty" payload. I think everyone reading this either knows someone who's fallen head-first into WoW, or some other MMORPG, or has done it themselves. I feel like there's a code of ethics that should be in place here, really. There's moral weight in creating a game that you know damn well offers just the right balance of repetition and reward to trigger addiction. Is it ethical to create something like this? Sure, it's profitable, especially if you do it as a pay-to-play thing. But is creating video crack with no clear stopping point what we want from this new medium? As a society, as artists who work in the medium of 'game'?
I never want to have another installment of this fucking game series in my life again. I have too much real stuff to do to let me get tied up in incrementing counters in a save file for a solid month.
Why? Well, I spent most of the time I was at home this weekend playing the fucking thing. Even though I didn't want to, even though I have art that I want to get done.
I bought GTA2 for the Dreamcast, back when. It was fun, it was hyperviolent in a cheerfully silly way. But I didn't buy GTA3. It came into my life when I found it, and a pile of other obviously-stolen games, under a bush. It hooked into my obsessive side. I had to make myself stop playing it; ultimately it got dumped on the used game store. When GTA3:Vice City came out, I knew better than to buy it - but my room-mate wanted it, and it wound up devouring several weeks of my free time against my conscious choice. When GTA3:San Andreas came out, I had nobody in my life interested in buying it... but later on Rik installed it on his Windows box, and once again, I couldn't resist; I ended up playing the fucking thing. If not for Alicia loaning us her 360 and GTAIV, I would have never gotten the thing. I've never wanted the 3D versions of this series, but put them in my life and I can't, somehow, not play them.
I did not actually enjoy the body of the time I've spent on this series. Oh, there are moments: completing a mission in a delightfully sideways way, causing chaos and fleeing it - or even being run to ground by the cops after a half-hour merry chase across the whole game map. But the actual content? Frustration and snarling, for the most part. Moreso than usual in this latest one, as every single mission is given to you by a complete asshole who it would be a pleasure to kill.
There's this one character in GTA4. This guy named Brucie, this creepy steroid junkie with too much money. He creeps me out in the same ways that guy I did the parking piece for early this year. Like everyone who gives you missions, his dialogue is written to establish him as pretty much a scumbag you want to hurt. You're given no opportunity to do this, until one mission where you have to drive him across the city, then take part in a street race for him while he hollers testosterone-fueled imprecations at you. The instant this mission started and I realized he was a game object, I pulled a shotgun out and let him have it, point-blank. It took three shots before he went down. I then restarted the mission and wandered off to a lonely, desolate beach with him in tow, and shot him again. And restarted again, looking for another interesting way to kill him. Several times. Finally I actually bothered to take him to the car he wanted me to get, to be told about the race. Failed the first time. Killed him again. Tried shooting out the bot racer's tires before the race, got told that wasn't allowed. Killed him some more. Parked a van in front of half of the cars and finally did it.
I did this instead of working on the 9 of Pentacles, which is slowly shaping up to be yet another pretty and evocative image.
Really, this is why I object to the continued existence of GTA. It's this wonderful, deep, inviting game; a wonderful sandbox to play in - coupled tightly to a narrative built exclusively out of the dark side of humanity. GTA3 and GTA3VC sort of walked on the side of parody, but the cartoonish dark humor filtered out and it's just incredibly depressing, yet incredibly addictive. At least for the way my brain is wired.
It's not terrible because "oh no you can get your health back from a hooker and then run over her to get the money back". That's almost a kind of defense against the game's worldmessage: after a while, you stop seeing these bits of code as (symbols of) people, and just see them as game objects; it's the only way to really cope with how much nasty virtual shit your new addiction has you do. It's terrible because it's a little sham reality made to program you to be an asshole. And it's got these addictive hooks all over it to draw you in.
And this is what big-budget video games "for adults" keep turning into. Addiction engines with a "grim, gritty" payload. I think everyone reading this either knows someone who's fallen head-first into WoW, or some other MMORPG, or has done it themselves. I feel like there's a code of ethics that should be in place here, really. There's moral weight in creating a game that you know damn well offers just the right balance of repetition and reward to trigger addiction. Is it ethical to create something like this? Sure, it's profitable, especially if you do it as a pay-to-play thing. But is creating video crack with no clear stopping point what we want from this new medium? As a society, as artists who work in the medium of 'game'?
I never want to have another installment of this fucking game series in my life again. I have too much real stuff to do to let me get tied up in incrementing counters in a save file for a solid month.