I hit a link directing me to a new GTAV gameplay trailer earlier tonight and ended up on this imgur thread. Read the first few items on it.
This is why Jack Thompsons and the like exist. When you see those kinds of comments — which are not infrequent in the gaming community, and anyone who says otherwise is either willfully ignorant or just happily so — it’s easy to understand why America would be so eager to tramp all over the First Amendment to restrict access to these kinds of games.
Here’s the thing about GTA. At no point in Grand Theft Auto are you required to solicit a prostitute. Neither are you told that it’s a bad thing to do. It’s simply an option. Similarly, killing her (and they’re all female-bodied) is an option, as is killing any NPC, but it’s not requisite. Nor is it rewarded more than or in a unique way to killing anyone else
Games are not actually the problem.
The problem here is that we’re bringing our social consciousness to these games and exercising our will within them. In the case of Grand Theft Auto, we’re taking prejudice against sex workers into an environment in which the consequences for exercising that prejudice are nil. And then we get folks like GloryHoleLegend (a class act, to be sure) gleefully targeting them for acts of violence.
This is one of the reasons I don’t look forward to or play GTA games anymore. I can’t do so without becoming immediately associated with these kinds of behavior.
Come on, folks. Let’s do better. And if your friends are like these kids, then give ’em a good shake and remind them that they sound like assholes.
