More Pew Pew, Less Q_Q

Yep

^^^ Q_Q ^^^

This post will be about 75% my opinion supported with 25% facts.  Beware, I have my own twisted values.

Let's just get this out of the way now; I love video games.  I especially enjoy a realistically made violent one like the (in)famous Grand Theft Auto series.  Before explaining today's issue, I think a visit on the past would help to better understand what everyone's worried about today because, as they say, history repeats itself.

If you don't feel like reading, you could watch the very in depth video on the history of GTA below.  If you feel like it, read away below the video.

Grand Theft Auto hasn't always been the 3D looking EarthPorn that we see it as today.  Hell, it started more like a 2D over-the-top game.  It's birth name was Race'n'Chase until the creators, Dan and Sam Houser of DMA Design, renamed it to something "better sounding".  Upon initial release, the game had already racked up condemning from several world powers: Britain, Germany, France, and Brazil (source).  It was viewed as a violence training program and parents feared that it'd bring about death on the streets as we know it!...Yep.  As we can see below, it looks more like a clever drawing than a real moving world.  Compared to today, it really was that.

The original mass murder training program

But oh the places GTA was destined to go.  After two games of "eh, it's just the same video game", DMA Design released Grand Theft Auto III.  Set in the fictional New York City, called Liberty City, the graphics and storytelling showed how the city was very much the most important character in the game.  It literally revolutionized video games.  It was one of the early games that had 3D graphics, complete with more realistic violence and the handy service of prostitutes for those late gamer nights.  After paying for their services, you could kill them and get all your money back.  Critics also focused on illegal activities being portrayed in the game as a "main plot point".  The main character, who goes by the name of Claude and is silent the entire game, commits a crime a minute, including the slaughtering of policemen, infantry, gangbangers and the mafioso. 

That guy should have used his head before messing with the silent killer Claude

Things aren't looking up for the GTA-parents relation as the next hit game comes out. Grand Theft Auto Vice City, which is a spoof of Miami, Florida, had one mission where you must start a gang war between Haitian and Cuban gangs. It was chosen as the media's next target and was assaulted by both Haitian and Cuban anti-defamation groups (source).  The Haitian group went as far as sued the developers for a certain line said by a character named "Diez" in the main story.  I wouldn't expect anything less from the refined character shown below.  In the end, after changing their company name to what it is now, "Rockstar" had to remove the term, "Haitian dickheads", and change it to the much less demeaning line "dickheads".

Ahh...classic GTA dry humor

Next on the media chopping block is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  Initially criticised due to its "gangster" elements such as drugs, hookers, murder and unreleased sex mini-game....wait what?  In the game code, modders have been able to find a minigame dubbed "Hot Coffee", where the main protagonist, CJ (Carl Johnson), has sex with their in-game girlfriends and record sextapes.  Although unreleased and had nothing to do with the developer, Take-Two, they were sued because of the unreleased code *gasp*.

God damn it CJ.

Grand Theft Auto IV was a visually orgasmic overhaul of the game and along with that, the realistic violence.  But the violence isn't what they whined about this time, it was the drunk driving!  Niko Bellic is an ex-navy foreigner who just wants a peaceful, quiet life in Liberty City with his cousin Roman.  He wants to have a few close friends, live safely, avoid the past, and find a special someone...so he can rip their lungs out while asking about why they killed his whole village and sold them to slaughter.  That was the plan, but things never go exactly as planned.  In the game, you can call up a friend to go out drinking to build connections and open up services if they're happy enough with you.  After a shot or six of Jägermeister, Niko walk around disorderly and you can barely control him.  It gets worse getting into a car because you get two wanted stars and the cops start chasing you.  Did I forget to mention you drive like an excited 4 year old?

Here, we see Roman (left) and Niko (center) in their natural habitat.  From the words of Niko himself, "GOD BLESS THIS CITY!"

We'll stop the history lesson just because we should probably get to the main point.  Disclaimer alert; all my opinion, you're entitled to your own. I believe that people have the right to their own opinion, but a taboo is forcing it upon others.  You think God is the almighty?  Buddha? Allah? Michael Jordan? Whatever, you get the point.  It's fine to have an opinion on things and speak about it, but when you sue a company for something completely optional and controllable to you, then we have a problem.  

First of all, no one told you to play this game and learn from it's wise teachings of drugs, violence, and hookers.  If you can't control your kid from playing these games, well then that's your problem and you should probably step up on the whole "being a parent" thing.  If you're okay with it, then it's your responsibility, as a parent, to teach your kid that it's a game and that the game is portraying how horrible this stuff is in real life.  Hell, I'll raise my kid like that if we still have video games as we know them.  It's a lesson in how the world really is.  Not the "safe drive to work and safe job" dream that people have.  My father used to hang around in Southern Las Angelas and he let me play these games.  Why? Because it teaches us about life.  The game did an excellent job in jokingly portraying spoof cities and the quarks that comes with them.

Secondly, don't force your damn teachings/beliefs on other people when they don't care or don't want it.  I'm going to be honest; I didn't really mind that the sex mini-game was in San Andreas (which, by the way, was a pretty accurate spoof of Southern California, where I'm from).  If the game were released today, then we probably wouldn't give a hat if a sex mini-game were in the game.  I do not think anyone has the right to change the developer's original game just because the media is afraid of a tit or two.  

In conclusion, I hope and pray that the media doesn't make a mountain out of a molehill with Grand Theft Auto V...which comes out on September 17th, 2013.  I know that I'll be super hyped and not sleep for the 3-5 days following it's release.  And I hope that if you enjoy the game as much as I do, that you don't let the media spook you from enjoying this incoming, amazing experience.  Now enjoy the hype train folks.

HYPE ART

HYPE IN GAME CARS AND ENVIRONMENT

HYPE CITY

Now your turn to talk.  What do you personally think about video game's correlation to violence?  I don't want to know or care what the mass media thinks about this topic.  I want to learn about you!  You can also include relatives opinions or your social groups opinion compared to your own..  However you want to present yourself is up to you.

Thanks for reading my rant and I hope to chat with you all in the replies.