{"id":42,"date":"2008-05-23T12:11:06","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T17:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/05\/23\/gta4-values-at-play\/"},"modified":"2013-09-26T14:40:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T19:40:52","slug":"gta4-values-at-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/05\/23\/gta4-values-at-play\/","title":{"rendered":"GTA4: values at play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/files\/2008\/05\/gta4-mikhail.jpg\"><img src='http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/files\/2008\/05\/gta4-mikhail.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Mikhail Faustin' align='right' \/><\/a>GTA4, viewed strictly from a narrative, \u201cplayable movie\u201d perspective, does offer a coherent moral worldview, one in which the bonds of kinship trumps other personal commitments. It\u2019s not a universalist worldview but rather one tied strictly to, as Helen Haste emphasized, the conventions of a known and well-understood genre. Condemning any of the GTA games for \u201cteaching\u201d evil behavior would only make sense if players were unable to recognize genre play \u2013 a danger that some research suggests is both overrated but, perhaps, most possible for people who sit far outside the portrayed culture. As Helen pointed out, stories such as Hansel and Gretel convey their moral messages not because the audience confuses fantasy with reality, but they construct a system encompassing both worlds. (\u201cThe moral of the story\u201d is abstracted from the specifics of the narrative: Hansel and Gretel doesn\u2019t, I imagine, teach children about pushing old women into ovens!).<\/p>\n<p>If GTA4\u2019s characters take seriously their strong, maybe even stereotyped code of honor, there\u2019s also a clash with the game\u2019s sandbox recreation of New York City. Once the brutal edge of the Euphoria Engine wears off, Sam observed, the open-ended aspects of the game take on a cartoonish feel (Matt specifically cites <em>South Park<\/em>): running over pedestrians goes from sickening to interesting to flat-out convenient (given that the game\u2019s physics make driving safely almost impossible). It\u2019s another example of the game\u2019s schizophrenia: what it tries to say departs from what you do.<\/p>\n<p>(gk)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GTA4, viewed strictly from a narrative, \u201cplayable movie\u201d perspective, does offer a coherent moral worldview, one in which the bonds of kinship trumps other personal commitments. It\u2019s not a universalist worldview but rather one tied strictly to, as Helen Haste &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/05\/23\/gta4-values-at-play\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1658,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113393],"tags":[13248],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archival","tag-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}