Andrew Kantor's Place: GTA, OMG!

GTA, OMG!

Published 7/16/05

Let me get this straight. No one says much of anything about any of the versions of the Grand Theft Auto games when they’re played without modification.

You can, for example, my friend Eric tells me, hire a prostitute, pay her, then kill her and take her money.

Not a peep.

Nor is there uproar about the other violence in the game — killing cops, bystanders, etc. No problem.

But the moment someone cracks the game and there’s nudity involved — yikes! Call out the legislators! Alert the media! We can’t let that stand!

Sheesh. Talk about misplaced priorities.

No, I don’t think the game — or any material — should be banned. I love ratings systems, because they let people make informed decisions. My point is how hypocritical people get.

The show “24,” for example. Even Dave Barry makes fun of it because the way characters solve most of their problems is by killing people. Or torturing them. That’s fine. But Janet Jackson bares a nipple at a distance for a fraction of a second and all hell breaks loose.

In-fricking-credible.

The Fray

4 responses (add yours)

Eric Berlin says:

Just a couple of tweaks: As I understand it, the newly revealed scenes do not simply contain nudity but are supposedly downright pornographic. (I haven’t seen them so I don’t know for sure, but that’s what I’ve read.) And I would say there has been quite a bit of outcry over the game in its original state, including several people who were appalled specifically by the kill-the-prostitute-after-you’ve-hired-her trick. (How do you think *I* found out about it?)

July 16th, 2005 at 9:05 PM

Jason Lockhart says:

Andrew,

Have you not watched the South Park movie (Bigger, Longer, and Uncut)? It’s about this very type of hysteria. “Horrible, deplorable violence is ok as long as there’s no naughty language!”; or in this case, nudity. It’s utterly ridiculous what the American public will do. They elected ‘W’ for Christ’s sake…TWICE! IDIOTS!

- Jason

July 16th, 2005 at 9:53 PM

Andrew says:

Eric: You’re right that the GTA games got heat when they came out. But the degree of difference is startling. And the new scenes are “pornographic” in that there’s sex. Yep.

But my original point holds: Piles of graphic violence (against civilians, no less — not just other soldiers or something) don’t get nearly the outrage that sex does.

I wonder if the fact that the sex scenes involve black men and white women have anything to do with it. But that’s a whole other discussion.

And yes, Jason, I sure did see South Park. Several times. :) Yeah, you can never really underestimate people, can you….

July 17th, 2005 at 9:14 PM

Vince says:

I don’t get why they are pulling all the copies of the game off the shelves. The “mod” can only be applied to the PC version of the game, therefore, the PS2, XBox, whatever version cannot be “hacked”.

And what’s the big deal if the scenes were in the game, but then were hidden so users didn’t see it? That meets the rating by removing it. The rating doesn’t say you have to remove it from the code, just that the user can’t see it. If they can’t see it without hacking it, what’s the problem? I think this boils down more to parents need to watch what their kids are playing. If your kid is under 17, they shouldn’t be playing this game anyway. Even if they do play it, how many of those kids haven’t seen a porno?

July 21st, 2005 at 12:19 PM