Edmy Vega

21 March 2017

Where it all Began

In 1998, Sam Houser and his old school friend Terry Donovan moved to New York City from England in hopes of setting up their own game company. Their idea sprouted from a Scottish man’s game design that allowed players to highjack cars. Grand Theft Auto was born in England and upon its release became a game that people loved to hate. Many newspapers and media outlets condemned it for its violence and explicit content; however, the pair decided they would continue with this idea. In terms of preparing the market for their game in the states they paired up with Take Two Interactive a publishing and marketing company. That was not the only exclusive deal they signed. Playstation became the designated console for their game. In the end Grand Theft Auto had an executive team consisting of Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King, and Gary Foreman. (Brennan)

 

Grand Theft Auto’s Reign

The Grand Theft Auto games are games where a player is set in a hyperreal environment (DeVane, Squire pg 3-4). So far there these games have been release: Grand Theft Auto to Grand Theft Auto: London `1969, GTA II, GTA III, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas, GTA Advance, GTA: Liberty City Stories, GTA IV, GTA: The Lost and Damned, GTA: Chinatown Wars, GTA The Ballad of Gay Tony, and GTA V.

These games are based in real life cities, which gives the game a sense of familiarity. This game allows players to roam the cities as they please. They have the ability to buy apartment homes, cars, and clothing of their choice. They are also allowed to steal cars off the street, rob public businesses, and kill whomever they please.

This game also allows the players to have sex with hookers in exchange for money. It is beneficial for a player to have sex with a hooker because their health is restored. Players may also kill the hooker after having sex with her and get their money back. This exchange happens in the back of a car so the player does not actually view his character having sex; however, the game has the capacity to show this happening and hackers figured out a way to see it. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas coined the term ‘Hot Coffee’. Hackers exposed how the character Carl “CJ” Johnson could have sex with his girlfriend after completing token relationship requirements. It was named ‘Hot Coffee’ because the girlfriend invites CJ in for coffee which in hence means sex. This very explicit content got the producers in hot water and Grand Theft Auto became and Adults Only game.

Link to Hot Coffee scene: EXPLICIT content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBeoWBXmgw8

The story lines to all the games differ although their locations may not. For example, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and Grand Theft V all have vastly different characters and storylines but can coexist in the same space. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is composed of three smaller cities: Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas, to which players can migrate. These cities are modeled after real life places. Los Santos is modeled after Los Angeles, San Fierro after San Francisco, and Las Venturas after Las Vegas. Grand Theft Auto V takes place in the fictional city of Los Santos. The restriction being a player cannot migrate anywhere else unlike in San Andreas.

San Andreas and Los Santos

The Grand Theft Auto producers pride themselves in carefully thinking through their characters storylines and implementing them in cities or situation where they will not seem out of place. When you visit any Grand Theft Auto website you have the option to read the game storyline and view the characters. San Andreas has an all black cast, our protagonist being Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson. The website describes his story as,

“Five years ago Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas… a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs and corruption. Where filmstars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gangbangers.

Now, it’s the early 90s. Carl’s got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster.

On his return to the neighborhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets.” (Rockstar Games)

CJ is being portrayed as an anti-hero. This man who society views as criminal is in fact that but his intentions in the end are for the good of his family. The problem with making CJ and the rest of San Andreas cast black is this real world societal belief that black people are thugs, drug lords, and criminals. Even though San Andreas tries to humanize ‘CJ’ by giving him a sad story an uneducated public will view ‘CJ’’s life as a result of his culture. If he and the rest of the community he’s involved in were straight good citizens then he would have been able to live a long and happy life outside of San Andreas.

This video game allows you to self identify as a black man ruling the streets of San Andreas. You can completely remove yourself from any fault because it is not you rather his black character who in real life is inherently drove to do these things anyways. Video games allow us to submerse ourselves in make believe worlds where the actual rules of society do not apply. However, when a video game has real world implication in its storyboard the line becomes harder to draw. One instead associates it’s actions with whom the character is modeled after.

Grand Theft Auto V is the most recent release and his included various modifications to the game since San Andreas. The game’s description reads,

“Amidst the turmoil, three very different criminals plot their own chances of survival and success: Franklin, a street hustler looking for real opportunities and serious money; Michael, a professional ex-con whose retirement is a lot less rosy than he hoped it would be; and Trevor, a violent maniac driven by the chance of a cheap high and the next big score. Running out of options, the crew risks everything in a series of daring and dangerous heists that could set them up for life.” (Rockstar Games)

There is less of an implication on race in Grand Theft Auto V but there is a socio-economic trope that holds this storyline together. Poor people are criminals. Criminals will do anything to secure their futures even if that means taking advantage of good non-criminals. There is also this untouched problematic portrayal of women in Grand Theft Auto V. Nearly twenty years after it was first released and the Grand Theft Auto games still paint women as hookers, unfaithful or gold-digging wives, and objects for sex.

These games perpetuate stereotypes and demoralize certain communities.

Stop Attacking our Baby

Grand Theft Auto is notorious for bad reviews, criticism, and lawsuits. Yet the creators of the game defend it as if the game is not really the problem. In an interview with Dan Houser he says, “We wanted to make games that were like the films that we like watching. We saw games as a very powerful medium that could do lots of interesting things, but the content needed to feel like it was part of someone’s overall entertainment content that they consume on TV or in a books or in movies.” (Gaudiosi). When juxtaposing a violent movie to this violent game it is easier to admit that Grand Theft Auto is nothing new. It is after all entertainment and not to be taken too seriously. Entertainment has never had a great impact on society or has it?

History Repeats Itself

Redskins. The Stoic Warrior. The Savage. John Wayne the American Hero. White Savior. Westerns. The crowd favorite genre, Westerns, portrayed Native folks as bloodthirsty savages, who posed a threat to civilization. These movies showed how white men like John Wayne countless times murdered, ransacked, and dominated Native people and called them success stories. Dan Houser in an interview was quoted saying, “We love them (Westerns), and we loved working on that game (Red Dead Redemption). It was a great experience, and we always have, and always will love watching good Westerns. I hope people keep making them.” (Gaudiosi).

It is not a new concept that society has benefited from exploiting minorities. During the 19th century the United States instituted laws banning products like marijuana (originally known as cannabis) and opium. Mexican and Chinese labor workers used these products after a long day in the fields. Newspapers and other forms of mainstream media were quick to twist stories about Marijuana and Opium to help accomplish a racist agenda. Marijuana was deemed to be a highly dangerous drug after the media reported Mexicans smoking it were turning into bloodthirsty madmen. Opium was also demonized when Chinese men who used opium in religious practices were accused of using it to lure white women into their ‘opium dens’ and raping them. (Block). Racist stereotypes flourished from drug use or low socioeconomic status of the racial minorities. The oppressive nature of society made life difficult for racial minorities. Educational systems programmed against them made it difficult for these minorities to better their futures. It became a vicious cycle where the economic wealth gap grew alongside racist stereotypes. Minorities were being thrust into blue-collar work while white folks reaped the benefits. (MacDonald).

Since then there has been progress in terms of racial equality. There are no longer explicit segregation laws. Educational systems are not supposed to favor anybody but there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in order to achieve equality. It is important to broadcast the inequalities of society at large scales and educate people on how to be culturally appropriate. The media and news outlets reaching millions of viewers have done little to fix stereotypical or harmful portrayals of minorities. Minorities are not telling their own stories. There is less than 1% of Latinos involved in news and media work because the system has not enabled them to reach these platforms from the get go. (Negron-Muntaner et. all) To think that a video game like Grand Theft Auto does not help erase these misconceptions but rather benefits off of them is disturbing. This video game is extremely popular. It is especially obvious that producers like Dan Houser and his team do not care about cultural appropriation. After all their website motto reads, “Fighting Justice Everywhere.” (Rockstar Games)

It’s Just a Game.

There is a certain privilege in being able to say certain things like ‘its just (blank) get over it’. Some families and people live the repercussion of media portrayals everyday. The United States Electoral College recently instated a man into the presidential office that demonized certain groups of people. The little progress that had been made in reparations came crashing down. White supremacists, religious institutions, and single issue voters felt comfortable enough again expressing oppressive thoughts and behaviors. In a society where equality and human rights are frail, unsecured concepts we cannot promote games like Grand Theft Auto. The violence and rule breaking is not the problem. The real problem is the societal damage whether conscious or subconscious that the game is prolonging. Games like Grand Theft Auto are directly profiting off cultural exploitation of stereotypes.

Historically colored minorities have not starred as heroes in movies, media, or news outlets. They have been left out of history books as well. Colored children grow up thinking white people founded the United States morally. We call a man who murdered, enslaved, and took advantage of indigenous people a pioneer and even have a holiday for him. The children know nothing of this and associate Columbus discovery as a peaceful Thanksgiving. People have been pushing for more diversity in video games and movies; they want to see themselves on screens. However, this is not a simple task in order to accurate depict your culture you have to tell the story. We see what happens when British people create a game thinking they can use whichever defining characteristics they please.

King one of the producers admits he and the rest of the producers traveled down to Los Angeles to accurate model Los Santos in the 90s. He said they arrived and were shocked at how different they had imagined it. (DeVane et. al) This should have been their indication to stop what they were going to do with certain communities. If the only representations of colored bodies in video games are anti-heroes and not regular heroes it is best to keep excluding colored bodies from video games. This concept is the same for any other community because they must live with the repercussions even after the game console is shut off.

 

Works Cited

Block, Judge Frederic. “Racism’s Hidden History in the War on Drugs.” The Huffington Post, 5          Mar. 2013. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

Brennan, Carol. “Sam Houser Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, Advameg Inc. .             Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

DeVane, Ben, and Kurt D. Squire. “The Meaning of Race and Representation in Grand Theft                 Auto:San Andreas.” , University of Wisconsin, July 2008. Accessed 20 Mar. 2017.

Gaudiosi, John. “Grand Theft Auto and the Power of Games.” , CNN, 25 Oct. 2011. Accessed 20           Mar. 2017.

MacDonald, Victoria-Maria. “Demanding their Rights: Latino Struggle for Educational Access            And Equity.” American Latino Theme Study, National Park Service. Accessed 18 Feb.                  2017.

Morris, Chris. “Grand Theft Auto: The controversy, the money, and the impact.” Gaming,                    CNBC, 13 Sept. 2013. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

Negron-Muntaner, Frances, Chelsea Abbas, Luis Figueroa, and Samuel Robson. “Latino Media          Gap Report.” , NALIP, 17 July 2014. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., 2017. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.