The Next GTA Controversy is Coming

The fawning gamer magazines somehow manage to ignore the elephant sitting squarely in the middle of the room: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is going to send the non-gaming world into a tizzy. This time, it's going to be more than the usual promotion of crime as the primary game function. This time, there are going to be some serious questions about the wisdom of portraying California gang life from the inside. Like the other GTA titles, the gameplay does not culminate in social redemption. Unlike the others, though, the latest game draws on a very real, very violent, and (it has to be said, and will) very race-specific segment of society. How many white gamers will want to suit up as a black gangbanger? More importantly, how many black citizens of Compton or other communities riven with violence on a daily basis even now will welcome gamers of any color virtually participating as one of their own in "missions" that are actually crimes that afflict them every day? Exploitation has a new interface.

A friend of mine recently observed a criminal trial in Los Angeles involving a gang killing. What he learned about the gang world is chilling to those of us who prefer to shut out reality. There are streets in LA, right now, on which you must not travel unless you are of the correct affiliation. In daylight. If you go at night . . . well, chalk up another victory to natural selection, and thank you for removing your foolish self from the gene pool.

Is it, dare I say, insensitive to create a game based upon a tragic subculture in which extreme violence and disregard for human decency is played out on a daily basis (whatever the cause might be)? Sure, drug runners ruled Miami for a while in the '80s, so Vice City was a fun little romp. But gang warfare seems to me to be far more serious. Gang life is based inherently on family or family-like relationships, which is specifically recognized and used by the new game. Unlike drug running, or perhaps even the Mafia activities that are now the standard fodder for suburban crime life voyerism, SoCal gang life is not business, it's personal. It's a part of everyday life for just about everyone who lives in those communities. In games of this sort, it is usually possible to demonize, or at least marginalize, both the protagonist as well as the "enemies." I have a hard time dismissing the crime-committing, posse-building protagonist n the new game. He represents thousands of struggling young men and women living and, unfortunately, dying, right now in South Central. The little bit of humor injected into the storyline that leavens the anti-hero nature of the other GTA titles is going to be hard to come by in the new game.

As I noted at the top, the gamer magazines have not commented on the anti-social gameplay; given the path blazed by GTA in its other guises, that is no longer newsworthy. Watch the news when the game is officially released later this month, though. Along with the usual complaints about the anti-hero motivation, I think there will also be a more serious examination of the setting of the game. It's too close in time and temperament to reality to get a free pass.

And what is most disturbing: Rockstar is too savvy at promotion to not know this.