Warren Spector slams GTA Comments by Ellie Gibson

LOL @ Atheist

My take on this:

Spector is merely saying what we all think - that Rockstar have gone too far. As someone touched on, he's not delivering a meticulously arranged argument that will stand up to 2 days' debate on an internet forum. Do that, and you can pick any monologue apart for whatever means you want, thanks to the beauty that is semantics.

Instead, he's just chosen to say what he thinks, in a more or less spontaneous manner. It doesn't matter if you think he's being a hypocrite, because you're one of at the most only half of everyone total who disagrees with him. The other half agree. And seeing as our opinions on what he said aren't in any way relevant, it doesn't matter either way!

I can't speak for Thief, but GTA vs DX is an unfair comparison. Take a step back and look at the subject matter first - in GTA, you play a criminal underling rising to the top of a less-than-intricate mafia death-web, whose only motive is to pull women, get money, and kill.

In Deus Ex, you play a troubled, biologically enhanced Government agent, tasked with dissecting the lies from the truth about your origin and politics in general, in a continually evolving story where allies become enemies become allies again.

In which game is death more justifiable? Don't kid yourselves and try and argue that.

"...whose only motive..."

...and that, kids, is how we spell 'spin'.

fireclown said:

"Cartoon violence and endlessly glorified, gleeful thuggery are 'part of the human condition', but they're an ugly, unsophisticated part that doesn't benefit much from close examination. They're fun in the way that wanking is fun."

Says you :) I appreciate that I have both you and Warren Spector looking out for us as moral arbiters of what is "culturally valuable" but I don't subscribe to the idea that violent roleplay / fantasy / representation needs to be sophisticated in order to be valuable. In fact, the point of violence is that it IS unsophisticated. That doesn't preclude the potential for treating a violent act with some maturity and intelligence for a change, but there's room for the puerile too. After all, gaming is pretty much exclusively a puerile and childish pursuit, being all about simplistic and cathartic acts of play. It's dumb, but enjoyable and valuable all the same.

I'd welcome a smarter take on games, but I certainly wouldn't suggest that these dumb games aren't culturally valuable. I'm not going to get into the tedious argument about videogames as art, but I can think of some fantastic movies that would be considered "puerile" but are nonetheless volubly important to both cineastes and casual punters alike.

"Violent entertainment can be intelligent and interesting. But it doesn't have to be. In fact it's usually not. "

Half true. Games are rarely intelligent, but frequently interesting. Is there anyone posting on EG that thinks games are not of interest? If so, why bother?

"There *are* no games of anything like the prominence of GTA with the intelligence of an (early) Allen film, which is your problem right there... "

That isn't really my problem. I don't expect the same kind of intellectual stimulation from videogames that I get from books or (some) movies. I would welcome smarter games, and if Warren Spector thinks he can do something to help push things along I'll support it. However, his point that the violent content of games like GTA "debases the culture" is pure moralistic snobbery, and one could apply the same subjective arguments to a many wonderful movies and books with violent content.

fireclown said:

"alternatively try replacing the word 'violence' with the word 'defecation':

'Why is the representation of defecation in videogames "debasement of culture" necessarily? Defecation is a part of the human condition, a part of all our lives, and rubbing shit into cartoon NPCs' hair can be both entertaining and culturally valuable...' "

I'm not sure I'd agree that rubbing shit into cartoon NPCs hair would be entertaining or culturally valuable, but I'll keep an open mind on the subject. The first game to tackle scat fetishes in an interesting manner gets my 30 quid!

lol @ MrAtheist

These are the answers we need!

Dr_Actually said:

"Bollocks"

Why is that, exactly?

You illustrate my point with beautiful irony, Sko. My phraseology has nothing to do with the point I was actually making.

I don't see why you guys are trying to pin DX2 on Spector.. I mean, he was just a producer on that, and spoke publicly after the game was done, about some disagreements he had with how it turned out (ammo system, for one..) --

I agree that every game since GTA3 has just been a style/content-update, mostly, but I don't pin them for that. I mean, the way there hasn't been a GTA4 yet seems to imply what Rockstar thinks about the matter..

And you can't really hit down on the violence part.. It's just something we all have in us, like it or not. Subconciously, that's a part of why the GTA's are so fun.. Plus the fact that it's all inside a funny satire caricature world, of course.. I don't feel bad for beating up cartoon thugs..

But still, there are flaws all over the games.. Flaws that can piss you off, and flaws that will make you all "why the f*** am i playing this, really..".. (I seem to remember thinking that whilst exploring the vast, mostly empty expanses of SA). But after getting over all that, with the first playthrough complete, and the game area explored and known, the final evaluation is -- these games are really fun overall, and there's nothing quite like them.. Which is why they survive..

'I appreciate that I have both you and Warren Spector looking out for us as moral arbiters of what is "culturally valuable"'

My pleasure. You obviously need some guidance :)

Spector isn't slamming 'violence' per se. He's slamming the very particular mix of unpleasant thuggishness, misogyny and gangster escapism that GTA keeps giving us. And he calls GTA a 'stunning accomplishment' in terms of game design. He's pointing out that there's something ugly about the way Rockstar put real brilliance and tremendous resources into a huge toybox that primarily rewards one particular kind of play: behaving like a violent, attention-deficient teenager, running over prostitutes and giggling.

His mother, who you think is irrelevant. Imagine that you wanted to talk about films to someone who'd never seen one...and Kill Bill and Sin City were the cream of *all* film, not just of violent films. Or books, and American Psycho or Venus in Furs were the best and best-known out there.

'I don't expect the same kind of intellectual stimulation from videogames that I get from books or (some) movies.'

Then you probably don't want to use Leone and Allen as examples of how variety in films is analogous to variety in games.

'his point that the violent content of games like GTA "debases the culture" is pure moralistic snobbery, '

if he was making a point about violent content, maybe it would be snobbery, but it's a point about GTA's particular poisonously nasty, cynically controversial flavour.

wrt 'debasing the culture': look at it this way. It's GTA's freeform gameplay and the immense resources (big maps, A-list voice talent, hours of radio, variety) that made it a winner. But they chose to wrap it up in this stupid yo-homie I'm-so-hard gangsta bullshit. As a result we're showered with pimp-your-ride imitations all similarly wrapped up in yo-homie I'm-so-hard gangsta bullshit. Way to go, guys.

btw I think Spector's comment about 'debasing the culture' is a bit of a red herring: he doesn't mean (imo) culture in the fuzzy sense of valuable stuff that gets piped into people through books and museums and TV, he specifically means gaming culture.

" You illustrate my point with beautiful irony, Sko. My phraseology has nothing to do with the point I was actually making."

Phew, musta missed your point. It was...?

"As a result we're showered with pimp-your-ride imitations all similarly wrapped up in yo-homie I'm-so-hard gangsta bullshit. Way to go, guys."

If that was true shouldn't we be being showered with mobster imitations wrapped up in hey-capo I'm-so-hard gangster bullshit? Or are you trying to 'blame the bling' on a game that came out after the proliferation of that culture into mainstream gaming?

Sure, GTA hitched up to that particular bandwagon but that was never going to be a huge leap. Still, if you're simply going to consider any kind of inclusion of that type of content beneath you then it really does all just come down to snobbery.

That instantaneous mode of speach has nothing to do with the message being conveyed.

If he wanted to, he could've sat down and meticulously arranged a throughly underwhelming statement that would've expressed, dully, the core of his opinion, but which would ultimately me uncontestable.

But that's not how normal human beings talk. My point is that anything, said by anyone, can be picked apart through semantics in order to wield an argument with someone on an internet forum, as has been done here by people dodging the really very obvious issue: that GTA is repetitive, uninspiring, rinse/repeat mass-market chart-fodder. It may also be very good, but the increasing apathy with which Rockstar seem to be approaching this franchise is surely evident to all?

Nobody likes anyone or thing willing to rest on its laurels.

Warren shut up

I won't take issue that GTA has made a very large impact on the gaming market - my issue is that it's the kind of game which is going no-where at 300km/h. There is so bloody little that can be done without detracting from it being "GTA" and without (a) going obscenely over-the-top or (b) looking like they're dumbing down. I liked the original GTA (top-down one thanks) but only because at the time I was at school and I knew I wasn't really supposed to be playing it.

Videogames do involve violence - whether that be bopping things on the head with your body weight, or creating a hundred new ventilation shafts with a customised SMG. It's an inherent part - not just of videogames, but cartoons and entertainment in general today. So violence itself isn't the issue - that can be done both tastefully, and crudely.

The message I got from this was "Same old same old" - which, IMO, is a valid point (though I do think he should have kept his mouth shut). Next GTA game - what will change exactly? And what of the next? GTA is a game really stuck in a rut of it's own making - as a game it was originally really well designed, but Rockstar have dug their own hole. There is little they can do to change the formula now... and given time, it will eventually disappear I feel.

I guess the one thing I think is probably important is how to keep things fresh, how to keep things interesting. It's not just GTA though - Sonic, Mario, even Tomb Raider and lots of other games - they've committed this gaming crime too, recycling same old same old. The thing is, these games had good scope for reinvention. GTA is unique in the fact that even if the developers can't make any sweeping changes, then the fans won't like the changes and therefore you arrive at a creative cul-de-sac.

Warren kinda does have a good argument there. I wouldn't "Hate" GTA2, VC and SA, to be honest I think it's the kick up the arse the industry probably needed. But I don't see a long-term future there either... so let's enjoy them. One day the fun will be over, the shine will fade and we'll move onto the next game...

It's how the industry works.

While I certainly admire GTA's open-ended gameplay, I curse it at the same time for being the focal point of all the bad press that my hobby gets. I know that this is probably a delibrate tactic by Rockstar to get more sales through controversy, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. There's much more to gaming than violence, sex and drugs, but try telling that to the people who read the media stories about GTA.

Maybe I shouldn't care about what they think, but I do. I want games to get the sort of acceptance that movies got in the middle of the 20th century.

And Warren Spector's mum almost certainly chose the "God" ending of Deus Ex, reflecting the God-like powers that she has over him ala Norman Bates' mum. She's controlling him now, as we speak.

i had a lot of fun playing gta3. it was new and great open ended gameplay.
gta 4 and 5 had them but never finished them , i just didnt like them. what i dont like are those stupid fucking parents its because of them why the game sold well. we all know who raises their childern the TV, games and music and its not the parents, no dont blame them to have fucked up childern

Sorry Warren old boy but leaping over a skyscraper in a motorbike whilst firing a Uzi from the sidwindow with Guns N' Roses blaring on the radio is tremendous fun......games are meant to be fun? remember? That's all it is: fun. Society isn't being eroded here.

You can't show it to your mother? big deal.......concentrate on your own backyard, Deus Ex 2 was one of the biggest anti-climaxes ever.

The major difference between violence in film and violence in games is that a cinematic narrative often demonstrates that a life of violence often takes its toll on the wielder. Look at all the classical gangster films out there - despite their subject matter they strove to maintain a moral centre - the protagonist inevitably met his downfall and there were often messages at the beginning and the end of the film encouraging the audience to do what they can to stop crime rather than inviting them to imitate what they've seen. Even in the likes of The Godfather the long term message is that a life of crime ultimately does not pay. Similarly war films often maintain one central theme - the idea that war is bad and that death is the only true result.

The problem with violence in video games is that it's difficult to emulate the same feeling. Violence isn't shown within a context of being something to abhor or as being disgusting or anything rather its something that is seen as the raison d'etre of many games. In Grand Theft Auto the only consequences that your actions have is that people may try to kill you, and even if they succeed all you really lose is your weapons and a little money. Every single person you see exists to be a target for you to possibly eliminate, their death is ultimately inconsequencial. I remember a few years ago EA advertised Medal of Honour with the tagline "You don't play, you enlist" at the time it crossed my mind how offensive this could be to those who actually fought in WWII. In reality you absolutely are playing. The people who fought in the war did not do so because they wanted to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible or because they thought it would be fun (well some might have done so initially but I'd imagine that didn't last too long), they did so because it needed to be done in the hopes of protecting what was dear to them. The idea of a war video game is an odd one because the experience is ultimately the antithesis of real war. You aren't stuck far from home in a situation you'd rather escape forced to unspeakable things in order to survive, you're sat at home repeatedly choosing to wield violence for its own sake aware that the worst fate that might await you is that you'll have to start the level over. Even in the likes of Metal Gear Solid where the general stupidity of war has been a fairly major theme from the outset it remains ironic that as a player you repeatedly choose to enter these situations and derive fun from a situation that all the characters would rather not be in.

Ultimately I have to say that I agree with Spector's statements. Whilst I enjoy Grand Theft Auto I can see that the series does not necessarily present the freedom that it is often praised for. Why if you can do almost anything is progress only achieved through illegal acts? Even if one were to decide that they must make an honest living the game necessitates that you must, for example, steal a taxi in order to embark upon this living. Violent games will always be with us but game design as a product of our culture would be enriched by designers branching out into new directions and forming new ideas that are not centred around violent acts.

There's some nice points hidden in there, Firefly. Here's hoping more people will take the time to read them.

"I am frustrated that the games in the GTA series, some of the finest combinations of pure game design and commercial appeal, offer a fictional package that makes them difficult to hold up as examples of what our medium is capable of achieving. The fictional context of GTA all but ensures that it will be portrayed in the mainstream press (and, I guess, in the courts!) as little more than a 'murder simulator' when it clearly is so much more--if you take the time to look."
quote, Warren Spector - what he really meant..