Video Game Violence
Vice City's violence hooks 'em
Calgary Herald
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Page: D1 / FRONT
Section: Arts & Style
Byline: NICK LEWIS
Source: Calgary Herald
Last night Jeremy Hartman scored some cocaine, enjoyed
a hooker's services in a back alley, carjacked a
Buick and bludgeoned a cop.
Hartman has spent barely a week roaming Vice City, but
he's loved every moment. He can do anything he ever
wanted in this video-game metropolis -- steal cars,
blow up a mall, hook up with biker gangs, run an adult film
studio, rob a bank or drive his car over pedestrians.
"There's nothing like it out there," the 27-year old
graphic design student says. "A lot of games don't go all the
way. This one does."
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been the most eagerly
anticipated video-game title of the year. Its predecessor,
Grand Theft Auto III, has sold 8 million copies to
date and grossed an estimated $350 million US-- more than
all but a handful of Hollywood's silver-screen
blockbusters.
Vice City is a fictional Miami in which the gamer
plays Tommy Vercetti, a gangster just released from a
maximum security prison. Vercetti, voiced by actor Ray
Liotta, is set up by his boss and forced to return to a life
of crime. He begins stealing cars and killing people,
staples of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
Other voices in the game come from Burt Reynolds, Lee
Majors, Dennis Hopper, porn star Jenna Jameson,
former NFL player Lawrence Taylor, and Miami Vice's
Philip Michael Thomas.
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. shipped 4 million
copies of Vice City for its Oct. 29 North American release.
Many fans pre-bought copies of the PlayStation 2 game
months in advance. Retailer Electronic Boutique
couldn't specify how many copies it sold on its first
day, but CEO Jeff Griffiths said it was "closer to a million
than half a million." Electronic Boutique stores in
Calgary have sold out of the product and are awaiting new
shipments.
Video game enthusiasts vote with their wallets and
Vice City -- the most violent game now available -- is
predicted by a number of independent retail analysts
to become the biggest seller ever. New York-based
Take-Two has gone from the bottom of the industry to
the No. 3 independent publisher in about a year. Its
stock price has soared, rising 55 per cent in 2002 and
outpacing industry rivals.
But it's not just violence that attracts purchasers of
the Grand Theft Auto series. Earlier titles, including the
popular Space Invaders, had a higher body count.
Hartman says the appeal is in the evocation of a violent
world that appears more true to life.
"It's cool because it presents violence in a
real-world situation as opposed to a fantasy world where you know
nothing really exists," Hartman says. "Doom or Unreal
Tournament are also ultraviolent games, but you're
killing things that don't exist. The cities in the
Grand Theft Auto game seem real, so you feel like you're able to
do what you've always wanted to in real life."
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut,
raised criticism when Grand Theft Auto III (GTA 3, as
gamers call it) was released in 2001. In a statement
about video games, he denounced the title's gratuitous
violence as an incitement to mayhem.
"Games like Grand Theft Auto are particularly
troubling because they go beyond just celebrating violence
generally, and actually reward players for engaging in
organized crime, murdering innocent people and other
forms of perverse, antisocial behaviour," he said.
Electronics Boutique says it adheres to the Electronic
Software Ratings Board when selling games to
customers. Vice City carries an M rating, which means
purchasers must to be older than 17, and Electronic
Boutique's Calgary stores say they strictly adhere to
that policy.
Mike Boyes is a child psychologist and a professor at
the University of Calgary. He says that while children are
reasonably good at recognizing that Vice City is not
real, the game introduces a number of issues, ideas and
themes that are not appropriate for younger kids.
"We need to be confident that our children are capable
of dealing with (the levels of violence in the game)," he
says. "We're dealing with a developmental question. We
want to be guarded about the inhumanity and
violence in aspects of our children's lives, how much
of that they're exposed to.
"We want them to get to a point where they can be
confident and comfortable and reasonably level-headed
before they have to deal with these complex themes.
Games like this have a tendency to introduce these
things a whole lot earlier and in a way that makes
them look far less important than they really may be."
Boyes likens the current state of video games to that
of home-video rentals in the '80s. He says there was a
period where parents suddenly realized their children
had easy access to age-inappropriate movies. Being
exposed to mature themes too early can have a negative
effect on children, he says.
"It desensitizes them to violence, it desensitizes
them to the level of drugs and sex and things like that in the
world," he says.
"Now is there a direct causal link between playing
this game and becoming a drug fiend? No, I don't think so.
"(But) look at the kind of world that these young
children are existing in when they're playing these games. . . .
Children tend to game for hours every day. It does
kind of give them a view of the world that is potentially
restricted -- not necessarily, but potentially."
Heather Keller has a 12-year-old son who often plays
Mario titles on the Nintendo GameCube. She says she
doesn't want him anywhere near Vice City.
"This is teaching them everything that parents are
teaching their kids not to do," she says. "I'd say to my son,
'You're not allowed to play this anywhere, I don't
care where you are. If you play that, you can't play video games
at all.' "
Keller says she's appalled that games like this even
exist.
"I didn't know how bad they could be," she says.
The average age of a video game player is 28, an age
that rises each year as gamers get older. Close to 70
per cent of PlayStation 2 owners are over 18. Douglas
Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software
Association, said in a prepared statement last week
that as gamers have grown up, so have games.
"Just as there are books and movies that some people
may choose not to read or watch, there are games that
contain content that some parents may not find
appropriate for their own unique children," he said.
The 27-year old Hartman agrees.
"The trouble is, the media equates video games with
kids, so when you hear a video game is violent, you think
10-year-olds are playing it," Hartman says. "Trust me,
there's no way I'd want my 10-year-old playing this."
