Grand Theft Auto video game

Found an interesting article about the Grand Theft Auto video game. This game sounds really violent and troublesome. I thought Manhunt 2 sounded bad, but this one sounds equally disturbing.

http://www.cbsn...tes/main678261.shtml

It is just hard to imagine that anyone would enjoy playing these violent games.

I stopped taking the article seriously after they brought up Jack Thompson. He's like the people that used to call Rock and Roll the devil's music and had fits when Elvis first performed. If Thompson had his way, video games as a whole would be outlawed.

I feel for the people that lost their loved ones to this killer, but putting all the blame on the game is not the solution. Someone who goes out and shoots people like that has some serious mental problems, video game or no. It said he bought the games as a minor - he shouldn't have been allowed to have them if the ratings were too high as I'm sure they were on these.

Ugh...no offense, but I didn't even finish the article before deciding to respond to this. It's rather biased, not to mention inflated by the Media. (2005 was a popular year for gaming. Or was it 2006? Darn...can't remember when that 'Hot Coffee' Scandal broke out.) And I'll agree with Thoul: Jack Thompson is comparable to an annoying rash that won't go away.
(It has been stated that, around Feburary if I remember correctly, that Thompson will be reviewed after claims had been made that his overall behavior in the courtroom has been...innapropriate, for lack of better terms. If he's found guilty, they'll revoke his liscence. Good news for us Gamers...)

To claim that Grand Theft Auto as a whole is a main source of violent influence is inaccurate. These people who do said activities are/were mentally unstable in some fashion to begin with, wether it being previous violent acts, mental instatability, or something of the sort. I, for one, blame the Media for overhyping the problems, failing to shed light on more plausible causes, and never once providing real evidence to prove these claims!

...There. I feel a lot better now. Sorry if I sounded kind of rude.

I never expected to become a fan of the GTA games. I was in an EBGames store and saw Vice City in the used bin for $6.99. I never played any of the other GTA games. I bought it figuring it was worth $6.99 to drive around in 80s cars listening to 80s music (all I knew was that is was set in the 80s and had a ton of songs).

It didn't take long for it to become one of my favorite games. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the violence. I'd be perfectly happy if the game was exactly the same but you were selling Girl Scout cookies instead of establishing a crime empire. I got totally hooked on the open environment of the game. It's the first game I played where you can spend hours doing whatever you feel like without advancing the plot one bit. It's hard to describe just how much there is to do in the game but go check out one of the "100% completion" FAQs to get an idea. I've since picked-up some of the other games in the series, they're great games despite the theme. Although I can completely understand, and respect, those that would never play them because of the violence.

Anyway, if there was no GTA they'd just blame something else. Doom was blamed for the Columbine massacre. Counter-Strike was blamed for the Virginia Tech shooting despite a complete lack of evidence that the shooter ever played it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18220228/. It's just a scapegoat for a sleazy lawyer either a) trying to get their client off or b) trying to get rich by suing a highly profitable game company.

I really can't say much that hasn't already been said, so I won't, as I agree with pretty much everything Thoul, hugues, and DrkTr14ce said. I managed to read the most of the article before stopping in disgust, and I'm thankful that towards the end, it presents both sides of the issue and points out that many people play GTA and are perfectly law-abiding citizens, and they bring up comparisons to comic books in the 50s being blamed for crimes. But still... I actually wrote a paper about this sort of thing for one of my freshman classes, where video games get blamed for teenage crime and everyone's trying to sue the game makers even though for every million people playing GTA, you might have 1 or 2 that go out and do something stupid. It really does seem like the generational gap, where people who were kids before video games fear them and decide to blame them for their own kids doing stupid stuff. But to those people, I pose a suggestion...if you oppose video games, do your parenting job yourself and don't let own kid play them rather than suing the companies, marketers, console makers and dealers and trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives!

That last sentence felt good.

^ You guys speak nothing but wisdom. It's stupid to think that a violent video game can turn a peaceful, calm person into a blood sucking monster.

It's sad to see parents buy M rated games for their four year olds. I have a little sister who is about seven years old, and her friend, who is about her age, plays Grand Theft Auto: Vice Cite on the PSP. His parents bought him that game. Now, he's not a violent kid or anything, but it's that kind of parenting that angers me.

Lemina wrote:

^ You guys speak nothing but wisdom. It's stupid to think that a violent video game can turn a peaceful, calm person into a blood sucking monster.

Caged Wolf wrote:

But to those people, I pose a suggestion...if you oppose video games, do your parenting job yourself and don't let own kid play them rather than suing the companies, marketers, console makers and dealers and trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives!

It's sad to see parents buy M rated games for their four year olds. I have a little sister who is about seven years old, and her friend, who is about her age, plays Grand Theft Auto: Vice Cite on the PSP. His parents bought him that game. Now, he's not a violent kid or anything, but it's that kind of parenting that angers me.

I think a LOT of problems can probably be traced back to bad parenting, I really do, and this is one of them.

Of course. Parenting is the main source, and the parents of these children are just looking for outlets to blame it all upon.

And to show sort of extent of that, I remember when I was younger, and I was the only kid on my block who hadn't played Mortal Kombat or has seen a PG-13 movie. >.>

I'm not a big fan of the GTA franchise.