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[punch999]

There has been a lot of controversy on violent games recently mostly caused by the game Grand Theft Auto. Is a series of games which you get to play the life of a gangster and have to work your way up the ranks. The games are violent and gory and involve killing random people for money. You are able to shoot peoples heads off, cut people up with chainsaws and attack people with baseball bats. This game is so violent that grand theft auto 3 is censored in Australia and alot of people actually believe this should be taken off the market. In my opinion this is stupid and is against free speech. No matter how violent a video game is the creators still need to be allowed to do it.


Recently a kid in the USA was supposedly addicted to Grand Theft Auto 4 vice city was brought in under suspicion that he stole a car. Once he was in the police head quarters he jumped the police officer and grabbed his gun and shot him several times killing the officer. Next he walked down the hallway and shot again several times another officer killing him and then continued to kill a 911 dispatcher. After they finally restrained the kid he was heard said “ Life is like a video game everybody has to die sometime.” This is stupid plain stupid it is extremely sad that some people just cant understand the difference between video games and real life. But what’s even more sad is they are suing Walmart for selling him grand theft auto 3 , Gamestop for selling him Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Rockstar for creating the games and Sony for making the system that Grand Theft Auto is played on. WHAT DOES SONY MAKING THE SYSTEM FOR THE GAME HAVE TO DO WITH THIS!!!


Another one is two boys who played one of the grand theft autos were caught with 22 caliber rifles shooting passing cars. After they were caught they told the police Grand Theft Auto made them do it. This is just stupid and I can’t understand what was going thru their mind when they did this. And why do kids who are just that stupid have guns I mean come on. And after such a stupid excuse that was pretty much only an attempt at trying to blame it on someone but themselves.

Games are meant to be played for fun and seriously these people obviously can’t handle them. But what makes it even worse is all these people who buy this game and do all this stupid people try to ruin it for us all by attempting to shut them down. It almost seems like with the 2 boys shooting cars and immediately accuse seems more like a excuse to get money to me then anything. These people who try to stop these games are trying to ruin our rights. Stopping these games are completely against free speech and should not be allowed at all costs.

So share your oppinions on this and the huge contreversy concerning all of this.

[DeathDude]

Yes it is a problem when you hear these cases and they do bring down a bad rap on the game, but at the same time why are retailers selling GTA to minors in the first place, that's the main issue that needs to get resolved the game is rated M for mature so only for 17 and up, honestly it's a game made for adults not made for kids.

Main thing is that the retailers should really enforce not selling games to kids like this. As for the whole suing thing, that really is stupid to hear but I'm not surprised it's happening, hopefully it gets thrown out of court.

[punch999]

But sadly there are more of these cases and not all of them involve kids. one involves a gang who actually practicced what they were going to do at day with grand theft auto 3 and executing those plans at night.

[DeathDude]

Yeah that's true it's not just limited to kids but it sometimes crosses over to adults who honestly get too hooked into the game, and as a result stuff like that happens.

[punch999]

Its not nessicarrily getting to hooked on them its more taking the game to seriously.

[Stroggy]

I never really agreed with the politicians that claim games like GTA are bad, but I do draw the line at games like "25 to life" in which the player can apparently also take drugs in order to enhance certain factors. Now you know that I'm not the person to censor things, but this is going a bit too far.
I'm not sure where this opposition comes from. I think a person won't easily murder others because of a videogame, but with drugs becoming more and more popular and available, promoting the use of it in videogames would just encourage people to use it even more (even if they do just stick to so-called 'soft'-drugs)

As for GTA, I don't mind games like that, in fact I've played every GTA game. I concider it as your basic shoot-em-up dressed in a slightly more realistic storyline.
Mafia, for example, never drew any criticism... while it was actually just GTA set in the 1920's-30's. The game was equaly violent and controversial (robbing banks, forcing people to pay their protection money)

[Playbahnosh]

@Stroggy

Actually this drugs part is not entirely true. Take GTA San Andreas. CJ(the main character) NEVER takes drugs in the game. The others around him do drugs often and the game just presents what negative effects the drugs have. There is a beautiful(well, as much a game girl can be) girl in the game, who is a cool and pretty girl until she starts to take drugs. After a while she becomes a very skinny and stupid addict who cries for her dose. I don't think this is PROMOTING drugs, rather twart the kids from ever toughing drugs if they see what that can do to a man. YOu can find all kinds of drugs in a game with all their clearly seeable side effects, presented very negatively. CJ never takes any drugs even if he forced to. I think this is a tribut to DEA

[moogle]

Hes not talkin bout GTA.

[Stroggy]

I wasn't talking about GTA, but about the game '25 to life'.
I've been playing GTA:San Andreas for about a week now and I agree with what you said, the protagonist doesn't take drugs and the game does show that using drugs can wreck someone. San Andreas handles a flimsy good/evil balance at the beginning with your gang being mainly against using drugs while the rival gang is dealing in hard drugs.

Now I'm not sure if everything I've heard about '25 to Life' is correct since I got most of my information from previews on TV-shows and from gaming-magazines.

[Sebatianos]

My opinion is simple (and we talked about something similar when I already expressed it):

There are violent impulses in every person. Doing bad and being evil is not people learn how to do - it's something that lies within every person.
Many institutions will try to look away from that and would just blame the influence of: low class literature, comic books, inapropriate songs, movies, agressive sports, TV series, news programes, animal programes showing predators in action, video games,...

Basically in the last 200 or so years everything that was aiming for realism was considered a bad influence (because certain people wanted to look the other way pretending this is not happening in their neighbourhood).

Video games are just the next target.

Nobody forces people to watch certain things, to play certain games, to listen to certain music...
People do that, because they like it. Now a regular normal person like Stroggy (no offence, but you said you played all GTA games), will play a game (even if it's really violent). He may like it or dislike it, but I guess he liked it, because he obviously plays the game a lot. But Stroggy also does other things. He is not addicted to the game.
Now the kid Punch was telling us about was addicted to GTA. And if you are on the level to get adicted (no matter to what) then you are going to loose it anyway (you probably have, that's why you got addicted in the first place). For that kid it would just be something. Were it not for GTA there would be some other thing that would get him addicted and do what he has done (maybe a Beach Boy's song about driving around with cars - and he'd do the same thing... well they'd say that in the 60s probably).