GTA IV discussion… over there
Feministing has a discussion about GTA:IV.
A couple of things: The offensive ads were taken down because two weeks ago the level of gun violence in Chicago was off the charts, not because it was offensive to women.
Two (I’ve pointed this out in comments already), according to the review, the internet cafe where you look for dates is called the “Twat.” Just a little something to keep in mind when the game’s defenders talk about how it isn’t anti-women.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Mighty Ponygirl - your comments were awesome. thanks.
And can I add that they have the same effect on me as Ragnell’s and Kalinara’s posts did when I first started getting into comics? Every time I start t question if getting into this new hobby is worth it (games consoles? not cheap), you all are there letting me know that I’m not crazy for finding stuff like this disturbing and that there’s gotta be stuff out there that is worth it if you all are making those arguments and are still really into games/comics.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Heh, thanks.
I admit I lost my patience at one point.
I really don’t have patience with the people who float the “it’s art!” excuse like that will somehow magically make a game above criticism.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I can’t access the article, but can you develop your comment re: the Tw@ further? By the way, it’s called the Tw@, but pronounced ‘twat” so I will give you the benefit of that portion of the doubt.
But is use of that word anti-woman? What if it was called a name for male genitals. Would that be anti-man?
Would like to hear more.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:38 am
May I posit that the games are not so much anti-women as anti-maturity?
April 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
…and anti-woman.
April 29th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Eudaimo: Yes. It is.
And it’s pointless to ask “what if the place were named ‘The Cock.’ Because it isn’t, and they never are. And since this game operates on a level where women are shown as disposable fuck-toys, why don’t you tell me if calling the “dating center” a derogatory term for a woman’s genitalia is anti-woman. Furthermore, while calling somone a Cock or a Prick is generally not a nice thing to say about someone, it has more to do with the fact that they are a jerk, and not anything to do with their inherent worthlessness, like the epithets “twat,” “cunt,” and “pussy” are.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I’m in despair! The gaming industry has left me in despair!
Sorry, I’ve been watching fansubs of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and the catch phrase is rubbing off on me…
April 29th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
OK, lemme play devil’s advocate here. I played all the way through San Andreas three times. I have not seen the marketing for GTA IV and can’t speak for what its features may or may not be. All I’m going to say is based on my experience of playing San Andreas.
1) At no time playing the game did I feel that women were being singled out as targets of violence. The fact is that the game is anti-humanity. No person, gender, race or ethnic group gets displayed in a positive light. None. The “sexy” women are all sluts, yes. The men are all vapid, or stoners. The old people are rude. The police are racist and corrupt. The rednecks are inbred and into bestiality. The gang members are stupid. The universe of the game displays the entire human race as idiotic, corrupt and irredeemable. Most of the inhabitants of the game are either sociopaths or borderline sociopaths. Those NPCs who are not enemies are generally buffoons. (Sometimes both). I don’t think this is a coincidence. The game’s world is constructed as a dystopia that no on can take seriously to make it clear that violence taking place can’t be applied to the real world since no characters in the game bear any resemblance to human beings. The tone is non-stop SATIRE.
2) There is remarkably little violence against women. You CAN engage in activities with prostitutes and subsequently kill them, but the game does not encourage you to do so and there is no particular reward. There is actually very little point in dealing with the prostitutes at all. Most of the missions target men and only men. I can only think of three occasions when a player is likely to kill a female NPC in the course of mission, and only one where it is required:
a) Towards the beginning of the game, one is required to enter a crackhouse and beat some dealers to death. There are crack whores in the house, but they are not mission targets and you get nothing from killing them.
b) During a bank robbery, one covers a security guard and some female employees with a shotgun to ensure they do not sound an alarm. It is impossible to stop them. One CAN shoot the NPCs afterwards, but again there is no reason to do so.
c) Female character models will show up as random criminals during the Vigilante mission.
d) You lock a Rap Artist’s Manager in his limo with his girlfriend and drive it into the ocean. The girlfriend is technically “Collateral Damage”.
That’s it. You are penalized for trying to hurt your “girlfriends”. If you kill one, you lose the benefits of having her. (And this is a serious loss in two cases.) There is only one occasion when you must kill an elderly person, and they are attacking you with a sword. There are absolutely no children anywhere in the visible universe of the game. (Although there are some in commercials, and it is implied that in one case they suffer horrible sexual abuse as a result of the idiocy of their parents.)
3) The “girlfriends” mini-game encourages you to be “nice” to them. (But not taking the unprecedented step of entering a monogomous relationship.) They are ridiculous caricatures of women, but no moreso then any of the other characters of the game. The object of the infamous Hot Coffee mini-game was to bring them to orgasm. (It was implemented terribly.) There are no explicit sex scenes in the released version of the game. The prostitute mechanic forces you to be in a vehicle with a woman to have sex. It only rocks the vehicle. Panning around to see in the windshield shows the two NPCs are just sitting there. The “Sex” in Hot Coffee contained no more nudity than one saw in the “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” trailer (Non-red band).
4) There are a lot of filthy place names in GTA: SA, and while female references have a majority, there are some derogatory references to the male anatomy. A strip club has the word cock in it. A restaurant and a casino are called the “Brown Starfish”. (This is, strictly speaking, gender neutral.)
5) Such major female characters as there are NOT weak willed playthings. Catalina is completely psychotic and misandronistic, but I pity the fool who would try to abuse her. She threatens to cut the main characters nuts off on numerous occasions and forces him into being the masochist in an S&M session. The main character’s sister Kendall is actually the only NPC in the game who is a rough approximation of a normal person. It repeatedly emphasized that she is the only member of the player’s peer group who is capable of running a successful business on her own account. She has no problem talking back to her brothers or her boyfriend. She is the only person, anywhere in the game, who voices genuine moral concern about the main character’s criminal activities. She has the only normal monogomous relationship in the game with the only genuinely likeable male NPC. They are going to be married at the games end.
6) There are two standout references to violence against women in the game, and they are not what you would expect. They are in a commercial that plays on the ingame Radio, I quote the scripts in their entirety:
Commercial 1:
–Crimson Executive Spouse Indemnity Services–
(wedding music plays)
Man (in flashback): Until death do us part…
Man: Gosh, I remember that day like it was yesterday. Jennifer looked so
beautiful… I knew I’d love her forever. And then… she was driving along a
canyon, and her brakes went out.
(sound of skidding and crashing)
Man: I’m moving on now, and I’ve re-married someone half my age. God, I love
banging her!
(peppy music plays)
Man: I started my life over with Crimson Executive Spouse Indemnity Services.
Life can be uncertain, and you never know when your wife will be tragically
taken away. Crimson set me up with a huge life insurance policy on my wife.
I can’t have her back, but now I have a second home.
Man 2: I was devastated when I found out my wife was cheating on me. And even
more so when she fell underneath the train! I was nowhere near at the time and
my phone records proved that. My life changed forever.
(in a halting, rehearsed voice) I was a real mess for hours.
(back to normal) Thankfully, the week before I’d met with Crimson. Thanks to
Crimson, I’ve had a penile augmentation and am much more confident with women.
Thank you, Crimson!
To have a Crimson Planning for the Future Kit faxed to you, just dial
1-866-505-CRIM.
Commercial 2:
–Commemorative Miniatures–
Man: Today, we marched on from Fort Strutter after sunrise to a Creek village
where our troops fought the savages, and shot them like dogs.
Woman: Honey! It’s time for bed!
Man: Hang on a second! I’m killing a squaw!
Man (in soldier voice): Take that, you pagan bitch!
Man (in squaw voice): No, no! (makes gunshot sound)
Woman: Him and his commemorative miniatures. My husband was getting so bored
working, and he didn’t have an interest to spend money on. But he’s always
loved history. Then I heard about grown men who like to play with toy
soldiers!
Man: War is so interesting! With commemorative miniatures I began by
faithfully rebuilding the Charge of the Light Brigade, and after that, the
Trail of Tears! I’ve built accurate recreations of fifteen significant
battles, as well as training camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and forced-labor
death camps! Now I spend all my time painting toy soldiers and attending
conventions! (makes gunshot sound)
Man 2: Commemorative miniatures. They’re instantly collectible, and a great
value. For just 37 monthly payments of $19.99, you get a starter pack allowing
you to recreate the battle of your choice. Show your inability to deal with
present day problems by recreating scenes of mass slaughter from the past!
Woman: Reenacting battles is great for your marriage, too! One night, my
husband is General Custer. The next, Napoleon. On Saturdays, (in fake Asian
voice) I’m a Cambodian villager, and he’s a GI (normal voice) that has his way
with me.
Man: (chuckles) And then I kill her!
Man 2: Commemorative miniatures. They’re not toys- they’ve very valuable,
collectible, two-inch pewter model armies! This is a hobby you can’t afford to
miss out on!
– End
Just to be clear, the voice acting ingame makes it clear these men are scumbags, and, in the case of the miniatures guy, a pathetic loser.
The Point:
I found no orchestrated campaign of demeaning women in particular more than some other games in the same genre. There was actually one positive female role model. (By comparison to the lunacy in the game.) I think it is less socially harmful than, for example, God of War, since makes no pretense of taking itself seriously. It was a mixed message, surely, but there was a lot that made it clear that a majority of the devlopers felt no animus towards the female gender, and some actually want to take the dumb male down a notch.
NOW, I have not seen the videos for GTA IV that are under discussion, but I am willing to give the folks the benefit of the doubt that they did not set out to make a game that makes women out to be sex objects, and that they primarily intended a game that shows all people as garbage. It would not surpise me if the videos were entirely the work of a few marketing execs getting non-game footage using the rendering engine.
So I would say wait and see on the thing. I really don’t think that the immature enfant terribles at Rockstar North MEANT to be taken as serious artists or cultural influences.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
You do get benefits for killing the prostitute.
1) she “heals” you by fucking you
2) you get your money back when she drops money when you kill her.
Just because everyone is portrayed negatively in a game does not mean that it makes it ok to create extremely negative sexually objectifying scripts based on gender. To show all of the men as losers or stoners does not put their entire worth based on what is between their legs, unlike women.
How very generous of you.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
“And it’s pointless to ask “what if the place were named ‘The Cock.’ Because it isn’t, and they never are.”
“And since this game operates on a level where women are shown as disposable fuck-toys, why don’t you tell me if calling the “dating center” a derogatory term for a woman’s genitalia is anti-woman.”
That implies that there are hosts of places named after female genitalia in games (or otherwise). Do you have other examples?
“Eudaimo: Yes. It is.”
Hmm. I really am trying to understand that assertion, actually. It seems to me that almost all slang terms relating to the genitals are used as insults amongst the immature. If you’ll excuse the language, in school, I knew kids who would routinely call each other “scrote,” “pubey,” “cock” and “dick.” I even knew a kid nicknamed “Smegma.” “Twat” wasn’t used all that frequently where I grew up, but I know a few people from the other side of the country who used it more frequently. We generally understood that “cunt” was a “really bad word,” but were generally ok with the word “pussy.”
So, with that in mind, I really am trying to understand why one class of words “scrote, pubey, dick and cock” are simply immature insults. But the other class “twat, cunt and pussy” reveal an anti-female bias?
I have not played the game, but believe you are mistaken about what tw@ is. My understanding is that it is an internet cafe. At the internet cafe, there are (again, I have been informed) hundreds of websites including a dating center. I do not believe you can suggest that it is called tw@ because the terminals can access online dating sites.
“Furthermore, while calling someone a Cock or a Prick is generally not a nice thing to say about someone, it has more to do with the fact that they are a jerk, and not anything to do with their inherent worthlessness, like the epithets “twat,” “cunt,” and “pussy” are.”
I’ve heard this argument before, and remain undecided. Calling someone a cock or a dick suggests that they are inconsiderate, rude jerks, which are stereotypes of men. I don’t see how it is somehow more “inherent” than calling someone a twat.
But really, the above is a bit removed from this situation because no one has been called a twat here. The word has been used to refer to a place. I think you’d have a stronger argument if this were a strip club (or anywhere that primarily employed women). Do we have enough context to apply motive besides a childish need to pun off of slang?
April 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Distinction without a difference, but there are much less time consuming ways to acquire health and money in game than using the gals, that was what I was getting at. There is an incentive, but it’s a weak incentive.
OK, I see what you mean there. The prostitutes are not a necessary game element and could easily have been left out without impacting the gameplay. They have no purpose in “life” beyond their sexuality. Except ambience.
Here’s a very weak counter argument:
The game simulates the life of a degenerate criminal. To get an accurate simulation of it, one would want to include all elements of the criminal life. I think the feature got shoved in for “completeness”. Like it or not, the sex trade is very much a part of the underworld. And in real life they have no social function outside their services, unfortunatly. If one left it out of a game about gangsters, one could be accused of papering over a part of the lifestyle, never mind that most would be hoods see pimping as the ultimate job.
Take as a counter-example Panzer General, which contains no Schwastikas, references to Hitler by name, or mention of the Holocaust. One can happily pretend to gloriously roll over Europe and the US as Guderian or Rommel without any idea that the Nazis are perpatrating the most horrifying atrocities imaginable.
Or if you want to think of an example of ignoring the implied consequences of your ingame actions that’s painfully close to home… What do you thin happens on the ground when you capture a city in Civ IV and the population goes down a point? The CivSoldiers in your Legion unit will NOT be settling down peacefully for tea and discussions of of the finer points of Aristotle with the women of the fallen city if they’re at all like their historical human counterparts…
I really shouldn’t have dragged myself into this, because at the most basic level you are right, it sucks that the hooker feature was ever included. But even still I enjoyed the game on its own merits and did not get the impression of any particular sexist malice. That doesn’t excuse the the implicit sexist insensitivity, but I think it clarifies that the folks involved weren’t consciously out to secure the patriarchal social system, and would not necessarily ignore a rational argument to correct that oversight.
But as we all know, I think too much and am too inclined to forgive others in light of my own massive failings. I’m a malicious bastard that way.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
It is an internet cafe where you “look for dates.”
That is the purpose in the site, according to the review.
If you’re honestly trying to understand how words like “twat” and “cunt” are worst than “prick” or “cock” then you need only look at the implied semiotics of the words. When you’re a kid, you may assign names like “scrote” and “smegma” to others because you’re trying out all the dirty words. These names simply do not have the staying power that denigrating words for women do … nor are they considered as insulting. If you call a man a cock or a prick, you’re saying that they are a jerk. When you call him a twat or a cunt, you’re calling him worthless. A jerk may be unpleasant, but jerks are not worthless, like female parts are. I am not going to explain this any further because this is basic feminism.
Also, why is it so important for you to take a concrete example of how a game celebrates in sexual objectification of women and try to make it all about the poor, poor men?
OK, you’ve made me do this. Let’s say the place was “n_ggers.” And the game had nothing but extremely offensive depictions of black people in it. Let’s go so far as to say that whipping black people gave you back your health.
YOU TELL ME IF THAT’S ENOUGH TO GO ON FOR THE NAME OF THE PLACE TO BE OFFENSIVE.
Oh, but I bet you’re European and there’s no such thing as racism over there.
The word “Twat” is an offensive, derogatory term for women. You can wish it otherwise as much as you like, but it will not make it so.
And Duke Leto: I understand that you were apologizing there, but no expansion that I have seen to Civ has a city raiding cutscene showing graphic rape and killing of the citizens as a reward for successful capture. You get some screams, that’s about it.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
In fairness, I think Eudaimo’s point was that it was just possible they managed to come up with the name “tw@” without considering the twat connection. It seems ludicrously unlikely that they’d miss something like that but it’s not totally implausible. “Twat” isn’t really common coin in the US, it’s more of UK swear word. I don’t think I’d heard of it until college. I managed to do something like that once at the office. A former employee had left an Access autodeployment script called AUTOFe. I adapted it to another client whose usual abbreviation is “Mil”. So for the Mil implementation I stuck it in a portmonteau directory: Mil + Fe. “MILFe”. The gaff went unnoticed until we deployed and Marc pointed it out to my chagrin. It’s still there though.
Regarding the Civ simile, my point was that the LACK of a graphic rape and pillage scene could be considered a flaw, because it implies to the player that military conquest was clean and tidy, something you could go out and do in real life with no worries. A little too cute, I admit.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I stopped posting comments at feministing yonks back, because I got slaughtered and called an MRA because I had a different opinion than others, so while I read some of it, I decided not to comment. The past few days I have been pissed off too easily and for very little reason though, and would otherwise be having enough of other peoples problems and complaints about what offends them, and how everything for me is hunky dory to not lose it. Perfect timing that I decided to start playing xbox live again not long ago too, that must really be helping. Not. And it was just recently my birthday as well, so I hardly have much reason to complain, yet I am.
Sorry, this was also meant to be a kind of apology too, but Im ranting instead. Ill just go and try burn off this anger with some heavy metal before I go to bed. I hope everyone else has had much more pleasant and stable moods lately.
Damn GTA IV for making me whinge, its not even worth the effort.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
This is Rockstar we’re talking about, not a fifth grader. They knew exactly what they were doing. Don’t make excuses for them.
Honestly, today I was thinking about this and the direction Soul Calibur is going in, and it made me so angry all of a sudden that I almost wanted to stop playing video games altogether and give up on my dream of being a game developer. Luckily now I’m back to an angry simmer and I’m about to go play some Majora’s Mask =/
April 29th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
And it’s pointless to ask “what if the place were named ‘The Cock.’ Because it isn’t, and they never are.
This comment made me think about the studio called GameCock. To me, naming your game company “GameCock” sends a very threatening, macho message. It’s like saying “Lookkit me! I has penis, hear me roar!” It’s like a glorification of misogynistic gaming culture in which the male always takes precedence, IMO.
So even if there was a cafe called “The Cock,” I don’t think it would be anti-male in the same way that “The Twat” is anti-female. I think it would be yet another sexually aggressive example of the almighty phallus taking the stage and asserting dominance over everything else around it.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
@Mighty Ponygirl: I’m interested in how you feel about what is acceptable in terms of content that reflects misogyny in a satirical work. An effective satire of misogynist modern society is almost certainly going to include elements that are themselves misogynist as part of revealing the inherent bankruptcy and wrongness of those ideas.
Unfortunately, GTA and the rest of R*’s oeuvre, like a lot of broadly-targeted satire (South Park is another example that comes to mind), swings between wildly misogynist and hilariously progressive, just out of the desire to offend everyone. The prostitute mechanic is extremely horrid (and not contextualized well enough to pass off as effective satire) but then those radio commercials quoted above, or the mechanic in Bully where the main character can romance and kiss an equal number of boys and girls, are pretty fantastic.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
“So, with that in mind, I really am trying to understand why one class of words “scrote, pubey, dick and cock” are simply immature insults. But the other class “twat, cunt and pussy” reveal an anti-female bias?”
Because one does not call a woman a scrote, pubey, or cock and only once in a blue moon does even a very “bitchy” woman get called a prick or even a dick. But pussy, twat, sissy, ho, bitch, etc. are used on men quite often. Why, it’s almost as if one might be complimenting a woman by suggesting she deserves to be called a cock.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Duke Leto, this displays a double standard on the part of the game developers. Being a “slut” isn’t really on the same level as being stupid, or obnoxious, or corrupt. The latter traits are universally bad, but promiscuity is generally only negative in a sexist context, and it’s only negative in GTA if women are the ones being “slutty”. Male characters in GTA are always praised by the game when they get laid (i.e. it’s your reward if you do well in the dating minigame in San Andreas).
A large part of GTA’s humor is making fun of tropes and bigotry, but it doesn’t seem like it’s doing a very good job on that particular topic. Instead, it just buys into it wholesale.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Hi. I’ve lurked here a few times and it’s fun to read this site.
But I just can’t keep quiet about this part; ”
Oh, but I bet you’re European and there’s no such thing as racism over there.”
I’m sorry, but, what? As if all people of the different countries in Europe denies racism? I dunno what you meant by using that, but it pisses me off a bit. Do I *have* to use the “Europe isn’t one country”, or what? I’m sorry if this comes off a bit… I dunno, but, most of us are aware of racism here in “Europe” too.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:37 am
Let the record indicate that I have now gone and seen the GTA IV advertising under discussion and I freely admit my disgust at it. I apologize for having defended it. It is actually palpably worse than San Andreas.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Violet Lotus: I apologize… I’ve gotten into these discussions of sexism v. racism with fanboys before, and they’ve tended to beg off that Europe doesn’t have sexism or racism like the United States does, which is (as you agree) bullshit. It’s not that all the Europeans on the blog deny the existence of racism in Europe, it’s that a certain type of fanboy likes to dismiss discussing racism in games because the game was developed in a magical place that doesn’t have racism, like Europe or Japan. I could see this particular commenter heading in that direction and wanted to nip him in the bud.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Ah, I see. ^^ I can also understand the problematic of idiots crying that “Europe doesn’t have racism” would easily lend itself to statements such as that above to head such arguments off. It’s just so hard to suss out if the argument was seriously meant as a “Europe is one country and you’re all the same!” or if it was just an unfortunate generalization that gets used for quickness’ sake…
Since I’ve seen comments that build on the “Europe = one country” sort of apparent sentiment, and it’s… made me a bit prickly. ^^;
April 30th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Rest assured, when I tell people where we honeymooned, I say “France” and not “Europe.”
April 30th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Wait… you can romance an even number of male and female students in Bully? Where? When? I played through it, and it was my understanding that the only male you can romance, you can only do so *after* you’ve beat the game, and then, there’s still only one. You can woo three or four girls, though. I mean, I’m not knocking that it’s in there- I think that’s great, but I didn’t think that there were that many choices.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Yeah, I’d heard that the “boy-on-boy kissing” thing with Bully was a sort of easter egg that the user had to really work to unlock. If I’m wrong, that’s fine.
I admit I’m curious about Bully and wouldn’t mind giving it a spin.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I actually enjoyed Bully. It’s certainly not without problems, but I felt like it worked much better as a satire of school life than any of the GTA games do as satires of… what? Urban life? As someone who was bullied a lot when I was a child, it was kind of satisfying to play a character who can protect other kids from bullying and sort of deconstruct the clique system that seems to dominate most schools. I should replay it and review it, I suppose. I definitely remember there being parts I was annoyed by, but I can’t remember what they were, now.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Actually, there are places and things that are named for male genitalia that are often equally gross. It’s beside the point, however. You’re not wrong, but you’re also only half right. I’m not going to play “Devil’s Advocate” because I don’t think you’re a moron who needs to be educated about the game or feminism. It’s not a feminist game; it is, in fact, very hostile to women.
However, as a feminist and a gamer, I feel there’s more to it. I manage to get a lot out of the game and I feel there’s more to say about it.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
GTA’s misogyny makes me uncomfortable. The video that Feministing linked to actively revolts me. At least Rockstar have the possible defence of misguided satiric intent. IGN decided to post a gameplay video of killing prostitutes for… what earthly possible reason?
April 30th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Holy crap, I should do the dishes more often. I was just thinking about this and it dawned on me (God, I feel stupid) that you think Tw@ is directly related to the fact that you can use the computer to find dates. The dating site is called Lovemeet.com, which is of course a reference to penis (meet=meat).
However, the internet cafe is called Tw@ because there were internet cafes in GTAIII by the same name. You could go in, but you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t use the computers. The reason these cafes weren’t in VC and SA is that the former took place in the ’80s and the latter in the early ’90s, whereas GTAIII is somewhere between ‘95 and 2000. In addition, GTAIII and IV also take place in the same city (more or less). I honestly think they chose Tw@ because it conveniently ends in “at” and because it sounds like “twit” only more vulgar, as per their sensibilities.
I’m not justifying their choice, but explaining it. It isn’t called that because you meet women on the computers inside, but because they’re creating a universe full of specific in-jokes. I’m sure they thought it was clever once they realised the connection, too, because they’re not stupid. That they ran with it is a mark against them.
I just feel really stupid for not realising that before. I only saw it as a reference to the cafes you could enter in GTAIII and nothing more.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
There are six kissable boys in Bully — one for each of the cliques. It’s more difficult to kiss the boys (you need to be respected by their clique in order to get with them) but it’s not desperately obscure. And it (as, I imagine, was intended) got tons and tons of media play when the game was released, so anyone who might be interested in it would probably know to look up how to do it, at least.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
So, the fact that they use a derogatory and offensive term for female genitalia in the previous GTAs makes it ok to continue using that term in the current GTA?
May 1st, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“So, the fact that they use a derogatory and offensive term for female genitalia in the previous GTAs makes it ok to continue using that term in the current GTA?”
Not necessarily, but it certainly refutes your misinformed argument that cafe is called Tw@ because it is a “dating center,” as opposed as an attempt to be vulgar, per se.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Uh, no it doesn’t.
It’s a dating center, and it’s vulgar.
So, yeah.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“It’s a dating center, and it’s vulgar.”
I’m not sure why you insist that it’s a “dating center,” particularly when you have never played the game.
From Wired: “But what blew me away was the in-game internet. You can access the web on your laptop or at a chain of internet cafes (Called TW@, har de har … the gags are as cheesy as ever). You can sort through e-mail, getting mission updates and coordinating with friends and girlfriends. You’ll also have to delete spam … lots of it. That’s carrying realism too far!
Clicking through the internet leads you to sharp parodies of news sites. There’s an in-game equivalent of Fox News called Weazel News (right).” (Source: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/watching-tv-and.html)
You made an argument dependent on Tw@ being so-called because it’s a dating center. That argument is based on a false premise. 1) it’s not a “dating center, and 2) it was called tw@ for a decade before any dating game elements were even included.
I’m sorry you were misinformed by something you read in a single review, but that doesn’t make your premise true.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
You are so heartbreakingly wrong and off-base, but I’d expect nothing better from a troll.
Splitting hairs does not make you right.
THE TERM TWAT IS NEVER ACCEPTABLE.
The fact that you “look for dates” at a place that just “happens” to be named TWAT is unacceptable, no matter if you can also delete spam there, or the fact that it’s been named TWAT for ten years.
You don’t get to grandfather an obnoxious, offensive term.
You fail. In an epic way.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I’m sorry that it upsets you as much as it does, but I believe your response is a bit confused.
You previously suggested that the word twat is inherently sexist. We discussed that a bit, but I have largely left that argument alone.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I’m sorry that it upsets you as much as it does, but I believe your response is a bit confused.
You previously suggested that the word twat is inherently sexist. We discussed that a bit, but I have largely left that argument alone.
You also said “why don’t you tell me if calling the “dating center” a derogatory term for a woman’s genitalia is anti-woman.”
I corrected you on the point that it is a dating center. That is not an assertion that GTA is “not sexist” (I don’t believe you will find that I’ve ever made that assertion, actually). It’s not an assertion that the word tw@ is ok or even ok in this context.
I corrected a part of your argument that was incorrect. If you abandon it, your argument is more robust. I would ask you not to take that personally.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
What upsets me is all of these people, especially so-called-feminists, falling all over themselves to excuse a game that has inexcusable content. I expect the GTA Fanboy Defense Force to come concern-trolling, and talking about how “sorry” they are that I’ve let a game upset me so much, and try to play gotcha and tell me how I could “better argue my case” against people who think I’m just an over-reacting bitch and will never actually reflect on the game’s implicit and explicit messages on what women are “good for,” and who wink and nudge and come up with all sorts of lame rationalities for use of an extremely offensive term in a game.
Don’t tell me what I can and cannot take personally. The term Twat is an offensive slur against woman and I am RIGHTLY outraged by it. I am RIGHTLY outraged by the portrayal of women in the game as nothing but hookers and strippers and holes for the protagonist to score in. Every day I see reports of women being beaten, and raped. I read news articles about sex workers being raped and the judge dismissing the charge because they were just “theft of services.” This game does not exist in a vaccuum. The way that women are treated in this world of ours is shameful and the game seeks to make a joke about that. As a woman, I choose not to find that joke funny. And you’re damn right it’s personal.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I am all to ready to agree that this game makes light of a shameful thing that happens to women. However, like sex workers are treated badly, people in general are also treated badly. How many casual real life murders does GTA reflect just as much as it does reflect the treatment of sex workers? Im not going to scream about GTA IVs clear hatred of women because of this one specific thing. The reason is because I think, to use something I remember from the feministing shtick, murdering a prostitute is just as morally objectionable as murdering anyone else if you ask me. That of course means that murdering anyone else is just as morally objectionable as murdering a prostitute. Outside of completely agreeing that the inclusion of prostitutes is a degrading, unnecessary addition that only adds to this games massive amounts sickness, Im not going to admit that the “woman killing” in this game is awful. Only the “people killing”. Prostitute, businessman, mime, shopper, its all just as sick to me when you can kill them.
As for the varying degrees of severity between calling someone a word for male genitalia and female genitalia, it doesnt even enter my mind when I use them. If I call someone a cock, or a cunt, Im using it for exactly the same reason, and I dont use them for a specific gender either. I apologise if that still offends people, but I have had this discussion before, being told the word “cunt” is off limits. Its not for me, because to have cock be “ok” because it is apparently less severe pisses me off. I use the words interchangeably to express my anger or hatred of someone. Not to suggest they are even more awful if I use “twat” or “cunt”.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
GTA is being debated to death everywhere, and I see the same arguments over and over. What disturbs me the most is the people who deny that there is any issue with this game at all. To that I say it doesn’t matter if the game is well made, or fun, or satire (or not) — there are ethical issues, and if we (by “we” I mean everyone, everywhere) don’t call them out consistently as such, they will be taken for granted. The game is edgy, and it should stay that way. It IS an adult game, after all. I don’t want to see games like this normalized, but I also don’t want to see them banned entirely. I don’t believe in censorship as much as I believe in teaching morals.
Many players of the game say they understand that it’s not acceptable to behave this way in real life. For the most part, it’s probably true. However, I also read a lot of “well I can’t do this in the real world, so I like this game” — my answer to that is why the hell would you want to do these things in the real world? You’re role playing a criminal! If we were talking about a game where you had super powers, or were fighting to save the world, that would make more sense. Makes me wonder how these people would act if we lived in anarchy.
So yes, we have to continuously remind people so fervently that it is unacceptable to beat up a hooker, because it can, will, and has happened. Violent crimes, dangerous driving, and abusive relationships (to name only a few issues) are happening in the real world. Video games do NOT cause these things (one of the reasons I don’t think it should be banned outright), but portraying them as “fun” and “sexy” while dismissing the reality of it does nothing to help. Young players could be influenced, but they should not be playing the game, period, so I don’t even factor them in — it’s usually adults doing those things anyway.
When people are mature enough to fully understand the issues at play, and approach the game more as a sobering look at how the scum of society operates, rather than “oooh yeah! you popped a cap in that ho’s ass!” I don’t have as much of a problem with it. It’s all about the attitude. I don’t know many people who are that mature who would want to play GTA though. Most of the people I’ve watched play GTA were in the latter camp.
My bottom line is, I don’t think the game should be banned, but it should be called out on all accounts of its immorality and recognized as unacceptable human behavior, just like any other ethically suspect game. That said, I don’t play GTA because it offers me nothing.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
It’s not JUST the killing. No one’s offended by being able to run over female and male pedestrians alike. It’s the killing plus the prostitution plus the fact that there are no major female characters plus the use of “twat” and other things of that nature. Any one of those things alone is awful; this game has all of them. This game SCREAMS to women, “THIS IS NOT FOR YOU, YOU ARE NOTHING IN THIS WORLD BUT SOMETHING TO BE FUCKED AND DISCARDED.” AND IT EXPECTS THIS TO BE FUNNY.
Also, just because you personally use a certain word a certain way doesn’t eliminate the baggage associated with that word.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I really like how you put this. That is probably what what it really comes down to here: aspects of the game are unacceptably destructive regardless of the intent behind them.
I tend to agree on this (and I’m generally pretty against the trend in a lot of Western-developed games towards lionizing total sociopaths and ludicrously evil behavior), but I’ve gotta say that I don’t really think it’s a big deal for a game to make dangerous driving fun.
Some friends and I were discussing the other day the possibilities inherent in a GTA-type game that didn’t force you into a life of crime. While it could be open to its own problems, we were imagining a game where you play as a police officer — not a usual videogame “loose cannon” cop, but one who either has to follow regulations and upstanding behavior, or explicitly become corrupt (and be confronted directly with the consequences thereof). I’d love to see someone (even R*, who are exceptionally skilled developers) take a crack at something like this, or another potential scenario that doesn’t inherently include unquestioned misogyny in places.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Ladies and gentleman, girls and boys come and see the man Pummel the Defunct Equine!
I’ve actually put in some thought about this because, as I said, I enjoyed San Andreas and I’m now agonizing over the fact that that makes me a worse person. So lemme shotgun off some semi-related points:
1) MP, I think Cola’s point was not that “using twat in previous GTAs makes it ok to continue using it”, I think it was “it started as a one-off joke for the “Grand Opening” of an in-game internet cafe, not as a vagina-porium”. She also emphasized that they should be faulted for keeping it for “consistency”. (I’m attributing “she” to Cola here.) It’s like making the distinction between third and first-degree murder, the net effect to outside society is the same but the guilt is a bit less.
2) I’m kinda caught off guard that there’s the animus against “cunt” and “twat” as words in themselves, from my perspective “pussy” as an insult to a male is the most offensive of the three because it makes the simile that the effiminate male is worthless by being womanlike. I think this is because “cunt” and especially “twat” don’t exist in my vocabulary as personal pejoratives, just as descriptors of the gentialia. I didn’t hear either of them used all that much growing up as an insult to women, possibly because my family was an Absolute Matriarchy of a queen, four totally subservient males, and one literally emasculated cat; and high school was an all-male affair. So perhaps unfamiliarity bred lack of contempt on my part. At the same time, I can see MP’s visceral rejection of them. In a trivial comparison, I hate the word “essential” and all of its derivatives. (Whenever someone talks about an essence, they assign a real, universal meaning to something. Nominalism, which I invoke below, says there are no universal meaning or underlying universal “essences”, or “forms”, or “ideas”.) But I have to look at it philosophically, There was once a time when these words were not insulting, if only because nobody knew what they meant, and a time must come again when they will have ceased to offend anyone, if only because the last English speaking human must someday die.
This may just be Philosophical Nominalism and a profound anti-Post-Modern bias talking, but I think that words have to be evaluated first on the meaning intended by the speaker, not on that perceived by the listener. Obviously this can’t be objectively gauged by the listener. I don’t mean that we should allow any nasty hate speech to go by, just that we should hate the hater and leave the poor word alone. There’s a practical point here too. I agree that the language should be rendered gender neutral, but there’s practical ad absurdum one hits pretty fast. Do we need a new name for the hysterectomy because it’s cognative with “female hysterics”? (Don’t laugh, poor “niggardly” takes a beating although its a good 800 years older than the n-word and hasn’t a thing to do with it etymologically.)
To make this academic point still MORE academic, I’m going to argue that “cunt” actually SHOULD be the prefered word on pure philology and “vagina” is unacceptable as a transparently sexist artificial coinage. Cunt is OLD, much older than English. It was around at least as far back as 1230, but almost certainly as old as 1066, since it exists in Old Norse and William the Conqueror conspicuously chose to use the Norse “Jarl/Earl” in preference to the French/Latin “Comte/Count” for his mid-tier vassals. Chaucer spelled it as “quaint”, and might actually have meant it with affection. The Norse “kunte” is all but certainly cognate with the Latin “cunnus”, and it may go all the way back to Old Indo-Europe, being further cognate with the Proto-Greek word that evolved into “Gyne”. It became impolite by Chaucer’s day, but the Church was dim on speaking of the subject at all. Back when “Coney” was still used for rabbit, (about the same time Frodo and Gollum lived), the preferred animal familiar for the pudenda was soemtimes the rabbit and not the kitten. In other words, it was there first and it wasn’t always bad. Nobody’s ever called Cunnilingus or Gynocology sexist.
You’d think “vagina” would come from old Latin, but it doesn’t. It was invented in a medical text by a male doctor in 1682. Looking for a good and appropriate euphemism, he grabbed the old Latin word for “scabbard” or “sheath”. He made it from the font of life into the thing you stick your sword into. When you aren’t your using sword for more important things. On the other hand, you could have done a lot worse than that. Birds, Reptiles and Amphibians that use the same tract for all outbound freight don’t get to have a vagina, they have a cloaca, a “sewer”. Liberated women of the world unite! Grab hold of your cunts! You have nothing but your significant others’ sheathness to lose, you have your pride to Gyne! (OK, that was a bit much…
)
Note that the above isn’t really a logical argument so much as one of aesthetic symbolism, but there are practical points too. During the Civil War, Fredrick Douglass implored young Black men to take up arms for the Union with the maxim “If they ask you, “Will a slave fight?”, you say, “No.” If they ask you, “Will a NEGRO fight?”, you say “Yes!”" That probably would not go over well today, Negro being to closely related to the n-word. The “United Negro College Fund” would probably have another name if it were founded today and the “NAACP” is also something of a linguistic antique. But back in Douglass’s the n-word was not the ultimate insult to an African-American, Slave was far worse. The social severity of words ebbs and flows through time. Fag has gone down a bit in unspeakableness in the last decade or so, for example.
Look at Douglass’s quote another way. The proper response to being called an n-word or a cunt or a twat or a fag, or a preposterous blabbering bag of pretentious hot air, is not to get angry. It is DEFINITELY NOT proper to feel devalued. Both of those responses are what the insulter WANTS. Turning the other cheek is the only proper option. That’s how you deprive your attacker of the ability to let his words harm you. You take away his meaning from him by refusing to listen, and you make him ridiculous.
3) DSimon, I think it’s pretty clear what the Satirical targets have been. Each of the last three games has been primarily taking aim at a genre of crime movies. It isn’t a coincidence that The Godfather, Scarface, and Menace II Society are always on the shelves of every Gangsta rapper you see on MTV cribs. (I admit to hovering on the channel for as much as 2 minutes during the program before moving on. It’s like watching a train wreck.) I remember hearing the creator of Boondocks on Tavist Smiley talking about how young black kids would see the Godfather and Scarface and be attracted to lifestyles of the characters in these movies and seeking to emulate them without realizing that they are fantasies. So I suppose in principle, making versions that are fantastic beyond absurd could be a good thing, if one could count on the target audience to pick up on the over the top lunacy when it failed to register the rather overt moral tragedy in the originals. (One should not make the mistake of reading that last sentence as racist instead of educatist.)
4) I’m at least somewhat relieved to see that the movie I was so horrified by did not come out of Rockstar itself, but was produced by IGN and screencaptured together. They had to make an effort to put together that montage. It would be disingenuous in the extreme to call it a perversion of the spirit of the game (Like posing Alyx and G-man in suggestive ways with Garry’s Mod), given that it is a well known feature of the previous games.
5) In the interest of balance, let me talk about Hitman, which I also enjoyed. Mostly because it was oriented towards stealth and precision in the extreme, killing ONLY the target without bullets, rather than just shooting everything in sight. That said, the last two iterations have stepped in a direction I’m not all that comfortable with. The first game had exactly 3 female characters in the game environment: a Chinese Sex Slave you are expected to rescue, her madam, and a Dutch Hooker you pay to distract a gang member so you can plant a tracking device on his car and find a nuclear bomb. Not exactly feminism central, but while you can kill them, you are in every case explicitly penalized for doing so. Basically the same deal with Hitman 2. There was one female contract, but she was an organ harvester and a nuclear weapons dealer… and German… so she was obviously evil. Apart from the Dutch girl, they were not sexualized. This changed with the 3rd game which got much darker. 47 was tasked with recovering the graphically mutilated body of a young woman from an abbotoir, while killing the owner at the BDSM-Orgy party celebrating his aquittal of her murder for lack of evidence. (vis-a-vis aforementioned body.) Women were now plentiful, but they were clad in leather and thongs. The fourth game upped the amorality and the graphic violence another notch. You are now free to kill anyone as long as it can be made to “look like an accident”. This was most graphically displayed when a mobster’s wife could be relieved of an important piece of microfilm by setting her g-string clad body on fire in a propane grill explosion. There was one new attack that was also gender indiscriminate and deeply disturbing. You can take a standard carpenter’s hammer and plunge it into the back of the skull of the victim and dig the ball around in the brain, causing blood to spray out and producing some rather sick sounds.
Point is it used to be impossible to hurt women in most Hitman levels because there were none. Now there are lots of women, often highly and questionably sexualized, who are all killable in gruesome and graphic ways. Which is worse? No violence against women in a woman free universe or violence left and right against women? (Not counting the gratuitous skin.) I have to lean towards the latter being worse. But one wonders. Do we want a world of video games with no violence? I’m not 100% sold on the “no graphic representation” rule, because I think unromanticized grit is a deterrant to violence. I don’t know that there are easy answers on this one.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
First of all… awesome blog! I’m so glad I found it.
So this whole Tw@t thing is rather interesting because, given it’s use of @ symbol, it’s pronunciation should be like “toe-at” (British pronunciation) rather than “tuh-wott” (American). It’s my understanding that the British meaning of the word is still a reference to the female genitals, but it’s more commonly used to describe someone stupid.
According to peevish.co.uk, the definition is:
TWAT
Noun. 1. The female genitals. [1600s]
2. A contemptible person, an idiot.
Verb. To hit, to thump. E.g.”I twatted him before he had chance to twat me.”
So… do they mean it in British English or American English? Regardless, it’s a sexist term that refers negatively and specifically to the female anatomy. Still, perhaps if they mean it in the British sense, couldn’t Tw@t refer to the overall idiocy of society that GTA seems intent on spoofing?
Just something I’m throwing out there. I’m definitely not trying to make any excuses for the many other effed up elements of GTA, but this could be another angle to look at this.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Im not going to talk about the lack of major female characters in GTA IV, because I wont defend a game I hate. Rockstar have no excuses for it, since other games prove that regurlarly. I just will not talk about woman hating due to killing women in a game that lets you butcher anyone you want. Women hating in including prostitution for sick kicks? Sure.
If you take away the prostitution, what are you left with? No different than anyone else being killed. Using a prostitute and killing her in GTA IV are two separate acts. Both despicable I admit, but Im not going to scream about it because I dont feel any worse seeing a prostitute being killed just after sex than I do seeing Mr.Nobody getting the shit shot out of him for no reason. Im sure thats going to piss you off, but I dont think the fact that she just engaged in sex for money before being killed somehow makes it just unbearable. I can see the point of the “used and discarded”, but if using a prostitute for sex and killing her afterwards in the game is a fucking travesty, what is the Mr.Nobody civilian situation? I would actually like to know how it differs? For me its simple, killing is killing, its awful. Including prostitutes in the game for no other reason than to make light of something some women are forced to endure is awful too. I don’t doubt sex workers have been used and killed many, many times, and it’s despicable that it continues today. But Im just not convinced that is somehow worse than someone who was beaten to death with a baseball bat in real life, or shot and killed in real life.
And just because baggage is associated with a certain word doesnt mean I shouldnt be allowed to use that word when I have no intention of including the “baggage”. If my true intentions behind the use of said words isnt enough for you, then Im sorry but its tough. Im not going to have “cunt” be a no go word, but cock be “okay”. Ill just use both for the same thing. “Bollocks”, a word for testicles, is commonly used here for all manner of “negative” things. I likewise have no trouble using that, because of WHY I use it. Not because I think negative things about my testicles, or any other mans.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
O_o That’s a long post.
Really? As with almost all slurs, it would be inaccurate to say there was a consensus on the matter, but the idea that the word is inherently unacceptable is pretty widespread. I think it’s generally safe to assume that any word which has served as a gender, ethnicity, or other identity slur isn’t generally acceptable to use in a context where you’re broadcasting to an indeterminate audience.
(And in this particular case, “cunt” almost unquestionably has much more traction than “twat” as a potential target for reclamation, due to its presence in places like Inga Muscio’s book title.)
May 1st, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Hmmm… I don’t know if the quotey thing will work, but here goes…
“And just because baggage is associated with a certain word doesnt mean I shouldnt be allowed to use that word when I have no intention of including the “baggage”. If my true intentions behind the use of said words isnt enough for you, then Im sorry but its tough.”
I see what you’re saying here. And, to an extent, I agree. I used to be one of those people who always found herself saying, “No, seriously, though, I didn’t really MEAN it like THAT.” And you know what? I really, really didn’t.
Like when I called a very ambitious friend of mine a “ball-busting bitch.” It was meant as kind of a compliment, actually, and (of course) I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. My use of the words “bitch” and “ball-buster” in this case was supposed to impart that she was awesomely assertive and a really cool woman.
However, did she take it like that? No, no, no. Turns out she had always been saddled with those labels (Type-A over-achiever that she is) and had a lot of strong, negative associations with it from her past. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I think that a lot of women have comparable strong, negative associations to the words “twat” and “cunt.” I can call another woman a “twat” in jest with only humorous intentions, but that doesn’t change how someone might be affected by the term.
BTW, I also think that “cock” is sexist and don’t use it. I prefer gender neutral terms.
I just think that telling someone that their personal reaction to a derogatory term is irrelevant and “just tough” for them is hardly the way to continue a dialog, which (I think) blogging is all about.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Agreed 1000%. You said it so much better than I ever could. Much of the problem with this game is not in the actual subject matter as in how the subject matter is treated. For example, I don’t think an actually mature game (as opposed to a mature-rated game) that addresses violence against prostitutes would be inherently objectionable.
It shouldn’t be an either-or (and why are you not counting the “gratuitous skin”? It’s an important part of the issue). Female characters need to have as much weight and consideration as male characters. A world without women is just as unrealistic as a world where women exist only as eye candy or as sex objects. I don’t think anyone has a problem with a game where women and men can be gunned down equally. No one is saying female characters should be magically immune to violence. Part of the problem is that it’s not equal: women are singled out for *sexualized* violence, especially in GTA.
I would totally play a GTA game with a female protagonist that was just as deep as Niko apparently is.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Charlequin: I used to play a lot of racing games when I was younger (had a wheel and pedal at my computer and everything), and dangerous driving IS fun in games (and while go-karting =P).
I should have been more clear in what I was referring to: In GTA you can drive drunk. Inebriated driving is just not funny.
Of course, you can also mow down pedestrians in GTA, but it’s been done before (Carmageddon). I think that part is less controversial for what Eleniel above me here said: it’s not sexualized or singling out a section of human beings to kill. Sexual violence is a bad combo.
Speaking of which…
Probably one of the worst games I’ve ever seen for misogynistic, sexual violence would be the Duke Nukem series (which I have played in full). I searched for posts on it here but was surprised there were none.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Duke Nukem would be too easy? ^^;
May 1st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
FelizaNavidad: I understand what you are saying, and I want to make it clear that I do know there are limits. However, I think its sometimes just as insulting to try and stop people from expressing themselves how they wish because someone else finds it offensive (when it wasnt intended to offend them). Like I said, I know there are limits, but I think they work both ways, and there are limits to what you can do to a person simply because they expressed themselves in a way you dont agree with.
And the “just tough” part may have been somewhat harsher than I intended. Basically, what I mean by “just tough” is what is said is said, and there is no removing that. Not “just tough” as in “shut up and accept it”. I would apologise if someone were offended of course, but you cant erase what you have already said, and I believe sometimes you shouldnt feel the need to, despite how others feel.
But I have moved away from the GTA IV point, so Ill leave it at that.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:04 pm
My mind was clearly flagging by the end of that monster, the point had gotten away from me. Sex has no meaning in 47’s personal world. The only time the player appears to be offered the chance for sex in Blood Money is when a scantily clad female assassin trys to seduce and kill him by luring him into a an office and he has to strangle her while her back is turned or die instantly. The alternate path to flambeeing the gangster’s wife is to dress as the cabana boy and let her take you upstairs… at which point she gets bored and falls asleep. Women aren’t sporting thongs on all levels, and they are only everywhere when it is supposed to display the unutterable depravity of the level’s inhabitants. I can’t escape the inference that it was just there to titillate and detracted from the overall experience for me, although I don’t see how one is supposed to have a mission in what is clearly supposed to be the Playboy mansion without it. (Target: Hefner/Flynt + a thinly disguised William Kennedy Smith, so I suppose that could be considered a positive.)
So the violence perpetrated in Hitman by the PC is never sexualized, although you are allowed to be rather haphazard with innocent lives as long as it “looks like an accident”. (And really, how many chandeliers and conveniently placed cliffs can baddies be expected to hang out near.)
Lemme say this about all that when it comes to GTA:SA and GTA IV. When people say Niko is the most likable of the GTA Protaganists, that could be called damning with faint praise. CJ is a sociopathic thug, pure and simple. I would imagine the same for the Scarface protaganist. Niko could seem a saint by comparison by having the slightest moral compass.
Now that said, the kill hookers for own money exploit just doesn’t happen much in SA unless the player seeks it out for the express purpose of doing so. The ingame instructions tell you about the girls exactly once. It does not suggest killing them after sex in game. One is shortly thereafter directed to get life points via food which is more cost effective by far. One has to be in a car for sex so it is always more time effective to haul over to the nearest fast food place or save point as well. If I protest too much, it’s because I never once in the course of playing the damn thing used violence to get sex and it just isn’t a major factor.
Let me reiterate again that it has no reason to be there. And is a dumb feature/easter egg. I might be defensible if the following rules were uniform throughout the game:
1) All persons who one may transact business retain the funds they have acquired from you.
2) All NPCs may be killed.
3) All killed NPCs holding funds previously transacted drop these funds on death.
It appears to only apply to the prostitutes, if indeed it is the case at all. The purchase money involved is so low that it might be less than the average walking around money of the NPC. If you want to shoot random pedestrians for their money, the crack dealers are a much better target. I did not bother with the experiment on Hot Dog vendors or Fast Food workers, but I assuredly did do so with the Gun Merchants after purchasing several thousand worth of ammunition from them. I did not get any cash into the bargain. (From a genre standpoint this would be a much better addition, since the gun seller held up with his own merchandise is in the Cagney Scarface and the Good the Bad and the Ugly, but it would cause game balance issues. (Less so if you had the classic Darwin Award case where there is store full of armed patrons.))
The “Pimping sub-mission” is the only other incentive to interact with the callgirls, in this one must transport the girls and protect them from violent Johns. Any violence against the women terminates the mission immediately, which can be a pain since the girls tend to get between you and the Johns while defending themselves. The reward for the mission is that the girls now pay you for sex, but there is no real reason to pursue this since it takes more time then it’s worth.
As to the dating model, sex isn’t so much a reward, it’s part of the mechanic of dating. The actual rewards are access to unique vehicles and weapons, unique clothing, and most important of all from the gameplay standpoint with the two most important girls, immunity from the negative effects of dying and arrest. It’s pretty clearly represented as a means to an end in game, I actually found it more tedious then anything else, especially when Hot Coffee was included, since the mechanic for pleasuring the girls was difficult and the cost of failure was high. Relationship abuse is taken VERY seriously, taking a major bite out of progress towards those in game goals mentioned above. Lastly killing one of those girls is about the only way to permanently hamstring yourself ingame, since once they’re dead they stay dead and you can’t ever get the benefits of dating them again, and as stated, the two big ones are the most important perks you can get.
Rape qua rape, not the ex-post de facto rape murder of consensual sex trade followed by murder is absolutely impossible in the game.
I say all this as a confessional. I didn’t go into the game seeking the prurient elements. I actually bought a copy and installed Hot Coffee as a political statement censuring Hillary for wasting the public time decrying when there’s a goddamned war to stop and an economic/environmental catastrophe to avert. I was impressed by it as it now seems to me that Rockstar is the Leni Reifenstahl or Wagner of gaming. It’s faults are damning but the technical virtuosity and craftsmanship was awe inspiring. I could not pass it up and felt obliged to see and do everything. (Within reason.)
So that’s my apologia, more for myself and my own self respect than for Rockstar’s defense. I think I’ve at least shown that the instances of sexual violence outside the boor street girls is slightly exaggerated, but I wouldn’t say it was wholesome either.
I hope that’s my last word on this.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
TheBends: You bring up a really good point. I see what you’re saying about the inherent difficulty of reconciling one’s own statements (which may or may not intend to offend) with the feelings of others (which, for the most part, are out of our control.)
In the situation with my friend, I chose to place her feelings above my inclination to use certain off-color terms. That’s the choice I made. But things aren’t always that easy or simple.
In other words, it’s something that I struggle with often. In a larger context, I’m all for free speech, but there are certain things that offend me deeply and that I see as detrimental to society. And so, the tug-of-war begins! To bring my rant back to GTA, couple that confusion with the fact that I just plain love playing video games and you’ve got one mixed-up feminist. I personally find most of the themes in all the GTAs to be pretty misogynistic, and yet I still found myself rushing to buy GTA IV. Go figure.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:10 am
Thank you for speaking up, Mighty Ponygirl. Thank you thank you thank you.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:53 am
To add to the growing list of awesome totally non-anti-woman things in this game, apparently* when you go to a burger place the woman at the counter asks if you want a burger and a handjob! Hahahahaha!!!! Oh man, that is the height of satire!!!! If only real life were like that, amirite??! That’s totally hilarious, mature, and clever, and not at all further emphasis that women are good for nothing but sex!!!!!!
*According to someone I’ve been talking to who’s playing the game, so no, I’m not making this up.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
@FelizaNavidad
Personally, I think giving some consideration to how the person you’re conversing with is going to take a certain word or phrase is part of polite conversation, and that you chose the non-selfish thing to do.
Totally agreed on the tug-of-war… ugh. It’s like, “I definitely don’t want it banned, but it’s still awful, so what do we do about it?” And the only thing I could come up with was just to discuss it and make it known that this sort of thing is immature and unacceptable. I keep hearing how deep the story is or whatever and I kind of want to play it, but the fact that the game was made with such a misogynistic mindset outweighs any fun I might get out of it. This is beyond where I draw the line. Of course, if the game were my favorite genre (and I actually had the right system to play it on) I might have a harder time making the decision, and might even decide that I could overlook that stuff to play it.
One of the things I keep hearing is that the game “pushes the boundaries of what video games can do” with regard to creating virtual worlds and storytelling. And it makes me wonder when we’ll heap praise on a game not just for how it is saying something but what the game actually says?
… How did I miss your post earlier this morning? >.>; /oops
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 am
Duke Leto has summarised my attitude to and opinion of the GTA series perfectly, and far more eloquantly than I could have. A lot of the elements in the games make me very uncomfortable, and I’m honestly not looking to give Rockstar a pass for how the series portrays women, or for the uncomfortable straddling of the line between satiric exaggeration of gangsta culture and racist portrayal of stereotypes in GTA: San Andreas.
That said - if you’re using the game to go pick up a prostitute and then kill her, that genuinely says more about you than it does about the game. As Duke Leto noted you’re really not given any incentive to do so, and it would appear that in GTA IV even the insignificant gain of recovering the money you paid to them has gone, since pedestrians no longer drop money when killed.
Again, this isn’t meant to defend Rockstar - even with this taken aside the GTA games treat women very badly, and the inclusion of “usable” prostitutes is the worst kind of gratuitious hubba-hubba pandering to the lowest common denominator.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:41 am
Hey Cola: I just wanted to respond to your Post over at blogspot since I couldn’t post over there.
You’re right, I admit that I am “shutting down discussion” of the game… there is so much praise being heaped on the game all over the web (Gamespot gave it a 9.5 and then took that review down so they could give it a perfect 10), and no one is discussing the role of women in the game, it really bothers me. The way that reviewers wink and nod at the treatment of women in the game, or attempting to describe the sexualization and sexualized violence against women in the game as “just the same as” the anonymous violence against pedestrians in the game really bothers me, particularly from self-proclaimed feminists.
Really, the title seems like it’s sacrosanct and nothing bad can be said about it. Even though reviews point out that the missions are repetitive, there appears to be less attention to detail (like the ability to gain and lose weight through diet and exercise choices, and fewer weapons) in this GTA than in previous installments, the game has been getting perfect scores and everyone is clamoring to proclaim it is the best game EVAR. Because having horrible misogyny in your game should never impact a game’s score.
Basically, what happened here (and what was happening over at feministing) was an attempt to point to the extreme misogyny in the game and say not cool, and not continue to heap praise on a game that has extremely troubling portrayals of women.
Whether or not to play the game is a personal choice — I just wanted to give voice to people who feel very trampled in these online discussions about GTA.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
OK, I’m going to try this again, my comment yesterday got eaten.
See this? This, this is the attitude/argument that’s driving me fucking crazy.
The implication of this statement is that by saying they are two separate acts, you are saying they are completely unconnected, which is just such complete bullshit I don’t even know where to begin.
They are most certainly connected acts. Murder. Driving dangerously. Theft. Picking up prostitutes for sex. These are all actions connected by the narrative and themes of the game. One may have to make the decision to press the buttons to do each of these things on a case by case basis, but that doesn’t make them separate or disconnected.
And I’m getting really fed up with people arguing that critics are blasting the game without really knowing it, and then turning around and saying that we are giving the game too much credit and making all sorts of other arguments that fail to treat GTA - the game that they supposedly admire and know so well - as an art form - and all that comes with that: plot, theme, narrative, character development.
And this?
Not true. Neither are the claims that sexual assault is absent from the game. In the fan trailer made by IGN, the character being played makes the comment: “I’m a hired killer and I pay for sex. My mother would be ashamed.” Who would seriously argue that statement wasn’t referring to rape/murder ? - of women in particular? Just because it’s not explicitly shown does not mean that it isn’t implied or suggested.
More importantly, the absence of male prostitutes and the inability to play as a woman* work together to mark women as the other. A sexualized other. So, no, killing prostitutes is not the same as killing any other random person in the game. Any other person in the game could conceivably be you. (Aside from enemies - who all have guns.) You walk down the street. You deal drugs. Etc. But you never get paid for sex. You never walk around in skimpy outfits. The game doesn’t encourage empathy towards anyone, but prostitutes are on a special level all their own when it comes to the lack of empathy that the game design encourages.
This is hardly new or unique. But it’s hardly edgy or morally neutral, either.
Also? this is freakin’ feminism 101 people. It’s not that hard.
* apparently you can play as a woman on the online game. But since that feature isn’t extended to all versions of the game, and the main supporting characters are male, that’s not much of an improvement.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Ack! I forgot to unblockquote.
MP, is there anyway you can fix that for me? thanks.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Fixed!
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Heya Mickle:
Just so we’re clear, the quote you picked out from me is referring to a completely different game in a completely different franchise. So uhhh… ok.
FWIW though, the prostitutes in San Andreas were also pretty generally carrying either a knife or a gun, which was not true of the non-Gang Member NPCs. (I found this out via “friendy/neutral fire”.)
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Wait, where do you get rape/murder out of that?
a) “I am a criminal and a ‘bad boy’ who’s proud of it” (intended “cool” reading by the developers)
b) “I am a misogynist asshole who makes cracks about sleeping with prostitutes using my ill-gotten money from murdering people” (subtext)
It’s a misogynist statement because of the attitude it reflects of prostitutes as inhuman objects that exist only for the character’s gratification, but I don’t see how it implies anything about rape/murder.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Hey Mickle, I really dont give a fuck if you think its bullshit. Im not going to scream misogyny about a game that lets you murder anyone you please. Killing a prostitute after having sex, killing a pedestrian after he scratched his nose, I dont give a shit, killing is killing. Sometimes I just cant speak out against what happens to women, when not much different is happening to men.
Is including prostitutes in the game a sick and misogynistic thing? Yeah Ill agree on that.
Is GTA’s constant use of a male protagonist unfair? Sure Ill agree with that too. But when it comes to killing on GTA, I just think its indiscriminate, and I wont talk about woman hating through killing women when god knows how many “men” get killed in GTA.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I’m not quite going to argue against that directly, but if you jack that line of reasoning up from the microcosm of the game to the macrocosm of human life, it is possible to prove that either
a) God is evil and twisted. (By designing his “game” to allow “Evil Acts”) and
b) By not killing themselves as soon as they understand the world (ie. stopping playing), every person is a willing murderer, reckless driver, thief, sexual predator and rapist.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Help a brother out with them quote tags, MP?
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:10 am
These 4 recently posted articles relate to morality within games (some tangentially/some directly). There are no easy answers to be found there, but I think it adds to what has been a very focused and interesting discussion.
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3167625
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am
MP, it’s not that the title is sacrosanct. It’s that the reviewers are the same kind of wank-off fanboi jerks who can’t understand why “fuck a woman, kill her and take her money” could possibly be offensive.
When there’s a GTA game that lets you hire male prostitutes I’ll believe the apologists.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Mythago, I’m curious as to why you feel that the “the reviewers are the same kind of wank-off fanboi jerks who can’t understand why ‘fuck a woman, kill her and take her money’ could possibly be offensive.”
Besides being extraordinarily well-received, GTA4 is also extraordinarily *widely reviewed.* Sure, it’s been praised by the enthusiast press like IGN and Gamespot, but it’s also attained substantial praise in the mainstream press, including NYT, Variety, and by a host of female critics, many of whom are only loosely involved in game-culture (check out Heather Chaplin’s NPR piece on the game).
That seems to undercut your broad brush assertion about anyone who praises the game.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I think this series has become a rallying point for the ‘video games are evil’ people who want the whole industry burned at the stake, so the fanboys lump anyone calling the game on its negative attitudes towards anyone who isn’t a white male into that camp. As for cutting edge design and story telling, aside from the open sandbox idea, there are none. You can get better music on Rock Band, Guitar Hero (hell, Twisted Metal 3 had better music), better cars in Grand Turismo, better violence from any survival horror/action adventure/combat title, better graphics from just about anyone and as for story telling; what story telling? Beyond Good and Evil and Eternal Darkness are had groundbreaking story telling. Legacy of Kain studied the Gnostic gospels for their story line. Assassin’s Creed is the equivalent of a 3 credit university history course. Bioshock is an essay on why Atlas Shrugged is best used for garden compost. If anyone ever wants to know why we never get fresh, inventive new ideas in games, its because people keep buying GTA and its clones and ignoring titles that have some actual thought behind them.
May 4th, 2008 at 3:36 am
GTA tries to be sexist, racist, classist, elitist, and every other -ist around. It tries to be as un-politically correct and offensive as possible . It is satire of the worse of the worst of our society. People call each other the meanest things they can. That is the GTA world. Cynical. Terrible.
Looking at the game world you can say it is indeed sexist. But within the world it is different. Because this is the world they live in.
As for some things that are brought up that are sexist:
1) Killing the hookers. You can kill the hookers because they are people objects. In GTA all citizens (including the cops, etc) are killable. They added on a special routine for the prostitutes that allows them to give sex. My guess is they thought “hey, what shit goes on in this fucked up world? Killing. Prostitution. Drug dealing. Corrupt cops.” And then went about getting them into the game. The fact the two intersect is a player made one.
2) Tw@. Seems to be a play on words. Crude humor is what makes GTA GTA. Just listen to the radio and TV. It is part of the world and wouldn’t feel the same without those types of things.
3) No female main character. Doubt it will ever happen. Just doesn’t fit into the world they created. And not really what their base wants. And how many girl gangs/mafia outfits are there? Any? What stereotype will they play with?
@Dungeon_Keeper
“You can get better music on Rock”
Yes, but where can you get all of this in one place? Instead of buying all those games all I need is one and I pretty much have them. That is the draw. You can do so much in such a huge city.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Yes, GTA is intended to be a satire of stereotypes.
However it seems pretty obvious that, at least when it comes to sexism, satire is for the most part just being used as a cover. GTA doesn’t really refute or make fun of sexist stereotypes. Instead, it revels in it.
It’s normal for the main character to only care about women (outside their immediate family) as objects to leer at or have sex with. But it would be extremely unusual for the main character in a GTA game to be, say, anti-Semitic. The developers correctly reason that that would get in the way of the player’s sympathy for the character.
They do not apply that same reasoning to sexism.
In San Andreas, if a character uses racist insults against CJ or his friends, that’s almost always the game saying to the player “This character is evil. You’re going to get to shoot them and/or make them explode later.” But, characters who use sexist insults against women are, at worst, neutral in the game’s moral spectrum for it.
Yeah, the whole series is about criminal depravity, but it still has “good guys” and “bad guys”. Most kinds of really obvious bigotry are indicators to put characters in the “bad guys” category. Sexism is not, because it’s normal and encouraged for the good guys in GTA games to be sexist.
The series has had violent criminal women as secondary characters in nearly all its games. Plus, the multiplayer mode in San Andreas cast the second player as a woman. And, you can play as a woman in GTA4’s multiplayer mode.
If all of those things made sense, then why doesn’t a woman as a main character make sense?
I’m part of their “base” (men in their 20s) and I’d like to see a woman main character in GTA. And of all my friends who are also in this same “base”, I can’t imagine any of them actually having a problem with a female main character.
Where are these gamers who’d say “Well, here’s a brand new game in the critically-acclaimed Grand Theft Auto series, but… OMG, cooties! I’m gonna invest my $60 in the stock market instead.”
Also: Why would a female main character need to be part of an all-woman gang?
May 5th, 2008 at 2:31 am
God, suggesting people would invest in the market, now?
None of us chauvinists with the slightest fiduciary sense are making investments in anything other canned goods, grain and weapons right now.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Dem, I’d rather hear the same song on repeat in Twisted Metal 3 levels than endure GTA’s giant middle finger raised at anyone, to blatantly steal and paraphrase Yahtzee’s brilliant snarks, who didn’t have the good sense to be born white and male. That and I get to play as Rob Zombie. That gets anything GTA has to offer hands down. See above for Grand Turismo while I rev up my Dragula and get black top rollin’.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I would like to note that the mechanic of killing prostitutes isn’t as essential to the gameplay as it sometimes gets made out to be. Its an option, absolutely, but its really not something everyone who plays a GTA game does. I’m pretty sure it would even be termed an “easter egg” in that I don’t think any game has advertised that function to the player. You either figure it out accidentally or read about it online. But I haven’t played through GTAIV enough to know if that’s still the case. As someone who has played earlier games, it isn’t something I did. Because it did make me feel uncomfortable as a player, but I did feel that was my response to the free-choice the games gave me. I was free to be uncomfortable doing that.
That said, it does discourage me that Rockstar is still playing around with the juvinielle BS in GTAIV. The games are well written, and often the mysogony is far more tempered than other forms of pop culture. But the wild amount of snickering going on with the sex puns never felt right to me and I thought their more realistic game would distance itself from that nonsense and stick with the more apt social commentary satire stuff that they frankly do well. But I guess the frat-boyism still reigns. The boys will be boys defense doesn’t cut it. Crude puns isn’t what makes GTA, GTA. Frankly, it just cheapens things to constantly encounter locales that all have “Get it? hehe” appended to their names. The game could be better than this, and its frustrating that fall back on this base nonsense repeatedly.
Ultimately, I think the flaws of the GTA game are flaws that could be said of a lot of pop culture. The violence and its treatment of women are nothing unusual. This becomes an issue when GTA is singled out for special blame for content that’s very common in our culture. It doesn’t mean that GTA should be immune from commentary. This website is about video games, after all. So discussing GTA is extremely appropriate and is an excellent forum to explore the ways it serves a misogonistic culture. Its not about singling it out. This IS the place to discuss this, and the fan boys need to get that. I get some specific defenses of the game (obviously, since I just made one), but the “nothing to see here” attitude is just silly. GTA is more like other aspects of pop culture than it isn’t, absolutely. But last I checked, there is plenty of pop culture criticism that serves a meaningful purpose. This discussion is part of that. The GTA narratives do have issues that should be raised and explored. I like the games and I agree that it catches a lot of flack that is unjustified, but I can still recognize that there is flack enough for it to catch.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I point everyone to This comment by Cola over at Feministing.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
My BF is curently playing it, because it was said to be so great gameplaywise, and also, we just wanted to see for ourselves. He’s not that far yet, but we’ve noticed a few things:
As far as I’ve seen it, prostitutes and normal pedestrians are not treated equally. You can kill them both but you can only interact with the former. If there was no difference you should either be able to talk to/do stuff with both of them or none.
Another thing that caught my eye: You can date this “normal” woman, Michelle. When you run into her during a date, she apologizes to you, even if you made her fall and she has to crawl on the ground for a few seconds before being able to get up again.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I didn’t mean “run into her” but “jostle her”. Sorry English is not my first language.
May 5th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Yeah, you see now thats crossing the line for me. Im pretty sure I heard somebody mention a mission like that on GTA IV while playing COD4 on live today (maybe it was one of those very ones I think, since all I can remember is mentioning kidnapping a woman). But its getting to one of the reasons why I dont like GTA as an entire series. From Cola’s description, there isnt anything there that really inspires me to do those sort of missions. I havent liked any GTA protagonist that has any character since the silent zero personality one (and liked is the wrong word, indifferent is the right one), and from what I have seen of this Niko dick, its still going strong. So I have a total dick for a protagonist, doing missions like that? Im sorry, I guess Im just missing0 the motivation behind it.
Maybe Im a hypocrite, since if Im feeling in a more misanthropic mood, I would happily wipe out the human race in a videogame with enough motivation. However, those scenarios Cola mentioned just dont sit well with me. For all those who talk about GTA’s cultural satire, I would generally like to know where the satire is in a mission like that? Sounds more like emulation to me.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
So Steffi … did I miss the part where random pedestrians will give you pole dances, or perform quasi-lesbian lap dances? Sexualized violence is NOT on the same level as random stranger violence.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Very true, and why accusations of sexism against GTA are more accurate and more worthy of attention than, say, accusations of racism.
Well… that’s a little like saying the same thing about “except for the totally revolutionary take on the gangster story, the Godfather had….” The sort of sandbox gameplay created in GTA3 is a huge deal for games, and it shouldn’t be downplayed — because, if nothing else, there is no reason games that aren’t misogynist shouldn’t be created that nonetheless owe a great deal to the ideas that GTA invented.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
That’s not what I meant to imply, though I totally see how my other post came across that way.
There are lots of examples in GTA games of racial stereotypes as well, which also try to fake social conciousness by hiding under cover of satire. This isn’t always the case with racist portrayals of characters in GTA; sometimes they do manage to pull of the Boondocks effect (like, IMO,
May 5th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Crap, I accidentally hit the post button early. Here’s the end:
(like, IMO, some parts of San Andreas). But, other parts completely fail to be anything but obnoxious bigotry. For example, the characterization of the Haitian “voodoo queen” character in Vice City still pisses me off, and I haven’t played that game in years.
Straddling that line between satiric commentary on vs. propogation of racist memes is tough for developers to do. But, that certainly doesn’t excuse them from due criticism.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:40 am
[blockquote]It’s normal for the main character to only care about women (outside their immediate family) as objects to leer at or have sex with. But it would be extremely unusual for the main character in a GTA game to be, say, anti-Semitic. The developers correctly reason that that would get in the way of the player’s sympathy for the character.
They do not apply that same reasoning to sexism.[/blockquote]
30 hours into GTA4 I can honestly say that every openly sexist secondary character I’ve encountered is being portrayed as an obvious idiot (eg, Roman) or a generally contemptible asshole (eg, Brucie).
As I said previously, even accepting their generally nihilisitic pose and their desire to satirise everyone and everything (even those who “had the good sense to be born male and white”, for what little it’s worth) there are still a ton of problems with how Rockstar portray women and minorities, but in this small area they at least look to have made a step forward from previous games, damning with massively faint praise though that is.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:11 am
I totally agree with you, I see now, that my statement came out horribly wrong.
I was thinking about how some people argue, that the game doesn’t encourage you to interact with the prostitutes and how they are just there for the realism. My point was that when it does not make sense to try and talk or whatever with other pedestrians else because they simply wont react (they act pretty much like the pedestrians in Jet Set radio Future) you are very well encouraged to go to the prostitutes because they are the only ones who do. There are more options of interaction in many rpg games.
But then again, my argument is rather pointless compared to the fact that you regain health by taking their services and get your money back by killing them afterwards, which of course totally encourages the player to do just this.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:44 am
GTA needs to read some real satire if they want to claim to be satirical. Swift, Wilde or Saki might help them get a grasp on the difference between a scathingly unflattering portray on society or a Modest and revolting Proposal for improving it and toilet humor. Hell, maybe watching The Daily Show and Corbert Report would be easier because I highly doubt anyone at Rock Star can read. And they’re Canadian so they should have damn well watched enough Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes to know! Marge Delahanti as Marge, Princess Warrior, mock interviewing public figures is satire. Raping and killing prostitutes for is not. You’d think the Rorbert Pickman trial going on in their backyard might have given them some clue that such behavior is not funny.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Rodafowa: I think that there is a point to “they’re assholes and idiots,” but when you look at the sort of stuff that’s being written on most gaming forums, and it’s a safe bet most of these people play GTA IV, are they assholes and idiots in a way that makes being an asshole or an idiot unattractive? If you’ve got a bunch of fifteen-year-old cobags acting like hooting dickholes* and they play GTA, they not only “don’t get” the satire but seem to actually want to emulate the assholes and idiots in the game, then there’s something wrong there in how the game presents it. As popular as The Simpsons are, everyone knows that Homer’s an idiot and not to be modelled after, because it’s good satire. Basically, everything I’d say after that has been said by DK.
* all hail yahtzee!
May 6th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Aaargh. Just lost a comment. Let me try that again.
I genuinely don’t feel that the characters I referred to in my previous comment could be taken as admirable by even the hootingest of dickholes, which was what separated them from similar assholes in the previous GTA games. If there really are a significant percentage of people out there who want to emulate say, Brucie, then I despair for the human race.
That being said, literally half an hour after posting that every misogynist I’d encountered in GTAIV was an obvious figure of ridicule, I ran into manly man’s man Patrick. Who you’re plainly meant to think is OK. Sigh. Forget I said anything, then.
I respectfully disagree that the GTA games aren’t “real” satire. I can’t imagine how anyone could play any of the 3D iterations for any length of time and come up with the conclusion that all there is to the writing is “toilet humour”. No, it’s not A Modest Proposal or The Day Today but then very little is.
To echo a point made by DSimon and in the excellent post you linked to on Feministing - neither the fact that the writing is generally excellent nor the writers’ intent are in any way a get-out-of-jail free card that exempts the games from criticism. Just the opposite. It’s the very fact that most of the writing is so sharp and intelligent and funny that makes things like the series’ uncomfortable flirting with racism and its hubba-hubba attitude to most of its female NPCs all the more bloody infuriating - its designers are obviously good enough not to have to dive for pandering, lowest common denominator bullshit like that.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Satire should make you think, “That is just wrong,” in a humorous way. GTA doesn’t do that. Its like a kid yelling obscenities and acting tough when the big kids are around, mistaking vulgarity for maturity.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:43 am
I disagree. Since GTA does make me think “that is just wrong” in a humorous way.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I’ve never had that impression. Its too poorly constructed and juvenile to get any humor besides Steve-O’s Jack-assry for me. I’ll stick to listening to Sweet Tooth describe how unfair it is to be locked up before he’d finished his killing spree in Twisted Metal Black.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:56 am
“By not killing themselves as soon as they understand the world (ie. stopping playing), every person is a willing murderer, reckless driver, thief, sexual predator and rapist.”
Huh?
A) Is there a way to play the game without doing at least one thing that’s illegal?
B) Is there anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock that start out playing GTA thinking that they won’t be doing illegal things in the game?
No then, yes:
“By not…stopping playing…every person is a willing [virtual] murderer, reckless driver, thief, sexual predator and rapist.”
Your point?
I’m a willing Heartless killer when I play Kingdom Hearts. I’m also pretty cool with running off all the Disney Villains. I don’t particularly care how much honey Pooh gets to eat, however. The difference is, I don’t go around pretending that rescuing dalmatian puppies or activating trinity spots are somehow disconnected from the overall themes of the game. Regardless of whether or not I choose to go for the special ending.
You can certainly say that Kingdom Hearts itself is a bit more hypocritical in the sense that you are “killing” the heartless, even though you are supposed to be a hero, while in GTA you are just playing a pretty awful person. I just think it’s more than a bit stupid to go around pretending that GTA makes no connection between sex and violence.
The connection between trinity spots and teamwork isn’t spelled out in a “this is the moral of the story” tone of voice, (well, not every second of the game, anyway) but even the kids that play Kingdom Hearts get the point. Nor would any of them ever consider the dalmatian quest or search for Pooh’s Torn Pages disconnected from the overall theme of the game just because they are technically an optional quests.
So why are all the “mature” adults that play GTA so oblivious compared to a bunch of kids?
May 20th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Mickle, no one is saying playing these games urns people into rabid kill crazy monsters. The point is that the willingness to include that much racism/sexism/homophobia in games like GTA represents something very bad about our society in real life and enforces it to a certain extent. I play Twisted Metal but I’m not about to buy and ice cream truck and start running people down in the streets but I get a little more than concerned when rape and racist/homophobic violence is celebrated in the media. Any media.
Interesting you mentioned Kingdom Hearts, because one of my reasons for not playing KH is how stupidly over-simplified the good/evil concept is and how revoltingly sunny and sugary its GIANT MORAL LESSON is. I feel more sympathy for the ‘Heartless Nobodies’ in Organization 13 than Sora any day. I prefer watching a character with some humanity cope with the grey areas of morality or wrestle with the ambiguity of right or wrong. Silent Hill 4 may have had some truly obnoxious game play but Walter Sullivan’s character made it worth finishing and repeating for me. Here is a man who’s motivation for the horrible crimes he commits is simply to have a place were he feels safe and loved and if he has to slaughter 21 people to do it, he will. We also see his child self, a very sweet and lost little boy and see the man was not a monster to begin with but made one by the Order’s dogmatic abuse. You actually feel bad for this child and the man he becomes despite the horrible things Walter has done and the fact that your character is the last person on his hit list.
I also enjoy the Legacy of Kain series were we have a much more realistic portrayal of the subjective nature of right and wrong and complex characters. everyone has their own righteous reasons for doing what they are that are justified in one way but still horrific and no one is in it for ‘the greater good’ without some personal gains. Is Kain doing this to restore Nosgoth for its own sake or does he want his empire restored and to hell with anyone else? Raziel starts out on quest for vengence that becomes a journey to right the very foundation of his world. Kain even encouraged Raziel to be vengeful because its an honest emotion, ” There’s no shame in vengence Raziel. Its motivation enough… Hate me, but do it honestly.” is a nice change from the ever repeated, ‘Revenge is the bads, m’kay, but still pwn the Bad Guy hardcore for what he did to you.’ Vorador tortures humans for his entertainment but protects his fellow vampires and slaughters six members of the Circle of Nine to end the crusade against his people. Moebius is the most manipulative, twisted old bastard in video game history and he’s doing this all at the behest of his good who he trusts is good an caring. So where in all of GTA is any of that depth that justifies it as more than a personal rampage fantasy for straight white males?
May 28th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I always thought about GTA4 as a satire and reflection of our real world. And it would certainly fail at that if it would have been normative in the equality between the sexes.
Everything in the game is stereotypical and absurd because it’s trying to reveal the hypocracy in the real world.
If GTA4 would have been perfectly ok by feminist terms, it wouldn’t start any thoughts about how women are treated in real life.
Instad of trying to be perfect in all things with no minorities or groups stereotypicalised, it goes the other way to make ppl think “Wow this is crazy.. is the real world anything like this?”
If GTA4 would have perfectly even gender roles I wold have blamed it for trying to cover up the real world inequality.
English is not my first language, so please be tolerant and try to see what I mean instead of what I type if something is weird.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
GTA4 is a thoughtful piece of social commentary, meant to provoke the player into thinking about the true meaning of inequality and its existence in the real world?
Lamest justification for jubblies ever, amigo.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:23 am
No u.
Seriously is that all you can say? “It’s lame”
I suppose it’s all about american hystrical political correctness then. And GTA profits on your soo easily offended egos.
If you have played GTA4 you would know it’s not actually glorifying any violence or abuse at all. It’s pretty dark all over and when you finally finish the game story (and get vengance on a traitor from past experiences) the main character admits that it didn’t make him feel any better and his life is still a mess.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Sammiel — from everything I’ve read, the game is a very sarcastic piece of work, except when it comes time to titilate the audience with lapdances, spousal abuse and sex in the front seat with prostitutes. That to me isn’t sarcasm. That’s exploitation with a thin curtain of the rest of the game’s sarcasm to hide behind.
Trying to declare that we suffer from American Hysterical Political Correctness just shows how deeply steeped in your privilege you are; that any objection to the way that content negatively portrays a maligned group is so violently dismissed by someone who enjoys it.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:24 am
First of all my comments about “American Hysterical Political Correctness” wasn’t ment to be taken very seriously. It was more of a reaction to the weak response I got. “Lame” in itself is not a very valid argument.
Well I dunno, I’ve played the whole game and I feel it wouldn’t be true if it left out the women. GTA4 isn’t perfect, nothing is unless you’re religious I guess. Yes it contains a stripclub (two actually) with lapdances, so does the real world.
Yes, sex with prostitutes give healing (I’ve heard, I’ve never really managed to find a prostitute in the game), but so does eating a hot dog wich is more or less instant even.
The game in itself doesn’t really encourage exploiting women. You can, sure, but you can also throw handgranades at ambulances.
I don’t think games should be normative, they shouldn’t be expected to promote any values.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:38 am
The game doesn’t explicitly “encourage” anything because of the sandbox design — you can’t argue about what the game is explicitly “encouraging.” What you have to look at is what the game implicitly encourages by the tools that they give you.
Male strip clubs? No.
Male prostitutes? No.
Female protagonists who are not sexualized? No.
Female characters whose relevance to the plot is not sexual, either as hookers to be fucked, girlfriends to be fucked, women who find Niko attractive and are therefor disdained and abused, spouses who are killed? No.
Having women’s utility in the game comparable to a hot dog which is literally something to be consumed for health, in fact, to have a woman’s utility in the game to be less effective (and therefor less valuable) than friggin’ street vendor food? Yes.
And unless you’re the invisible guiding force behind the video game design industry, what you THINK video games SHOULD be doesn’t have one ounce of impact on what videogames ARE. So we’re not going to just stop the discussion because you think that things should be different so that you can continue to enjoy explotative porn without a bunch of mean ol’ feminists being a bunch of killjoys.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Male stripclubs, no that’s true. But since the game is about a guy (wich of course could be a discusion in itself) they’re not really needed.
Male prostitutes, same thing.
Female protagonists. There are few to begin with. But none of them are sexualized, unless I misunderstand you.
Are there spouses killed in the game? Also Nico never, as I recall, disdain or abuse any of his potential girlfriends. Rather it’s in a few cases the other way around. One of them turns out to be a government spy out to get evidence on him to force him to work for them (wich she succeedes in doing).
First of all, would they be more feminist if the choosed to not include prostitutes (wich exists in the real world) or could they have been accused of trying to smooth over the issue to begin with. It’s not like they’re glorifying prostitution, as I’ve seen in videos on the net (as I haven’t still managed to find a prostitute in game), they’re very cynical and clearly not enjoying what they do.
And I’m not at all trying to make you stop discusing video game at all. Everything benefits from a discusion in the end. However it’s MY OPINION that games shouldn’t be forced to fit into narrow political frames.
And seriously, the demonization you fall back onto in the last few lines makes me quite disapointed. GTA4 is pretty far from beeing explotative porn. I enjoyed GTA4 as a dark story about a man from a wartorn land going to the supposed promised land to get vengance for past slights and discovers that it’s not as easy after all.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Epic fail. You’re assuming very heterocentric, heteronormative approach. I thought that the whole point of GTA4 was that it was a sandbox? Why prohibit the exploration of homosexual themes if that’s what the player wants to do? To say it’s “not needed” is an obnoxious dismissal of the reality of homosexuality.
Sammiel — you should read Cola’s blog about GTA4 — yes, there are spouses killed in the game. She describes how one character commissions Niko to “follow his wife” and catch her in the act of cheating. Even after Niko discovers that the wife is not cheating on her husband, the man kills her and enlists Niko in disposing of the body. Then he comes back later in the game to enlist Niko’s help in following his new girlfriend/woman — and is hit by a bus. Which is a total cop-out as if I were playing the game, I would have preferred to shoot the fucker myself. There is no “sarcasm” in this. This is simple platitudes where the player as agent is removed.
You’re patently and willfully missing the point. The game’s limitation on its portrayal of women is what this feminist takes issue with — not that there are prostitutes. It is the sole relegation of women to the role of prostitute and the sole use of women’s bodies as sexual commodities. If you’re going to be this facile in your arguments, you should just go back to whatever forum sent you now. Seriously.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Well it might be a sandbox approach to it at some point, but it still has a quite linear story about a heterosexual guy out for vengence. Some facts are given and from the story point of view he’s a he and not gay.
I could agree it’s a bit of a problem that there’s no GTA with female heroes (or maybe “anti heroes” rather) but if we’re just talking about GTA4 and the content in just his single game, we have to accept the background material to understand the story.
Ah yes, that mission, that is true. That man was clearly suffering from extreme paranoia and to my understanding was more a slap against male behavior and possesion thinking. And I do agree, they should have given the player an opportunity to kill him ourselves.
However, while it sure was a quite awfull thing wich happened, and the mission could have been handled better, I fail to see how this behaviour is promoted in anyway. He was clearly a demented and alcoholic loser and the whole thing had a quite tragic feeling to. If anything you felt sympathy for his wife.
I can agree there’s a point to it, that women could have had more meaningfull roles, especially as mission givers they could have been much more frequent. And that’s sad. However there aren’t really that many other roles to fill in the game. There’s mission givers (only 1 female), there’s badguys wich basically are guys with guns, ment to be shot down at first opportunity, and then there’s innocent bystanders.
If the game would be like Mass Effect, with a totally fictional world I would agree more with you I think. But this is supposed to be a parody of NY, and with focus of it’s dark underground it almost must have some sort of elements from the real world that are disturbing.
I think what I’m trying to argue is that there’s only bad things in GTA4, they can not be said to really promote any sort of behaviour at all. And as the game developers live in the real world, they would of course to be victims to certain stereotypical ideas.
I really enjoy Robert E Howards stories about Conan, that doesn’t mean I agree to his view of women (wich is pretty distastefull).
Maybe it’s just my decadent european mind speaking, but really, there’s not that much sex at all in the game to begin with.
And I’m not “sent” by anyone. I don’t have any agenda to hunt down feminists. I do know there’s serious issues about inequalities all over the world. I study at university and in my country that means lots of gender studies. I’m here for the discusions and to try widen my view. That doesn’t mean I will eagerly accept everythin you or anyone else say but I can promise I’ll give it a serious thought. Just because I may not agree with you in all things doesn’t mean I’m a fanboy or a chauvinistic pig.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:58 pm
[...] Reading, or People Who Put it Better Than I Do “GTA discussion… over there” — Feminist Gamers (with a link to Feministing) “Some GTA IV Questions” — [...]