Gaming Controversies in Grand Theft Auto

In preparation for my review of the Grand Theft Auto games (out later this month and will be mostly footage reviews), I thought to take a look at how this series managed to become so controversial causing all sorts of things to happen, so with that said, let's start from the beginning of this controversy:

The message of "Don't Try This At Home" not being made clear

A lot of crimes were made when the series first came about where a number of people got inspired by the game to become criminals. Its no surprise to many of us that this keeps happening even to this day. Some people may say that games are bad for you and in some respects, they have a point. Video games can hurt your eyes, make you lazy and even inspire you to do things that the game shows you. As much as I can think about gaming being bad, its not all bad. A lot of games these days, tend to help you learn from the stuff that happens in them like in the Mass Effect games where even the smallest of decisions can have very severe consequences and especially the Assassin's Creed games where as Ubisoft describe it "History is your playground". In GTA, the thing you learn (or should learn) from it is that being a criminal is bad. Being a drug dealer is bad. Even holding a gun, driving at full speed and cheating on your girlfriend or wife is bad. That's what these games are. They don't tell you to do the stuff in the game, they tell you to not do that and they show you why. Its clear that a number of gamers have no common sense, but come on. Do you honestly think that doing the things in the game, will get you anywhere? I don't think so. This alone has made GTA, the most controversial game series to have ever come about, and the controversy doesn't end there.

The first GTA's condemning and banning

So ever since the first game came out, the GTA series has been controversial from the start. Its been condemned in countries like the UK, Germany and France due to the extreme violence in the game and its even been banned in countries like Brazil. This proved to be a problem for DMA Design (the makers of the game, now known as Rockstar North), but fortunately British publicist Max Clifford attempted to sell the game by talking about it in various news articles, and well it became a bestseller in the UK so I guess Max did a good job of selling it. But there's plenty more to go.

The third GTA with its general violence and crime

To this day, the third game is the most controversial of the series and that is thanks to its idea of having you carjack a car, pick up a prostitute, have sex with her and then kill her and steal her money, as well as killing random people as well. Because of this, some of the retailers decided to have a system in place where anybody who looks below the age range of the game's age rating, will be asked for ID and this turned out to work quite well. Additionally because of Rockstar not submitting the game to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (who are the people that rate video games in Australia), the game was banned in Australia. Despite all that, the game did inspire some people to kill other people, but nevertheless, proved to be a success, both critically and commercially, but that still didn't stop the controversy.

Vice City causing problems with Ethnic Groups

In the sixth game in the series (which I believe, serves as a spin-off to the main series), the was some controversy around a particular mission in the game which involves 2 ethnic groups being part of a mission that involves the player killing them. This made those Ethnic groups accuse the game of doing such a thing and Rockstar as a result, decided that for any future releases of this game, it would change the dialogue and when it was re-released in 2004, Rockstar kept their word and the dialogue was changed which satisfied both ethnic groups as a result. But of course, this was another game that caused a few people to shot other people, which were all dealt with. Despite all that, it has considered to be one of the best games ever made and was both commercially and critically successful, but the controversy continued.

San Adreas's Hot Coffee Mod

So this mod called Hot Coffee was found in this game and was used as a way to play an inaccessible minigame where the protagonist (or the guy that the player controls in other words) and his girlfriend can be seen having fully clothed sex. The name itself, comes from the offer of the girlfriend asking the player to come in for a coffee, hinting that she wants to have sex with the character. As such, this was made for the PC version, although players of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox Original found traces of it and used various video game hacking tools to gain access to it. This drew a lot of controversy that when Rockstar released updated versions of the game, the minigame was completely removed and in its place was a patch so that if anybody decided to try and access it, the game would crash. However as of now, a more complex way of accessing it has been done. But there is still plenty of controversy to go yet.

GTA 4 - The most controversial of the lot

When GTA 4 came out, it became the most controversial of the games so far with a guy called Jack Thompson (an activist and barred attorney) having argument after argument with Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive (another publisher of the GTA series), even going as far as trying to prevent the game from being sold and even sending threatening letters to the creators which as a result, has had him banned from making any contact with both Take-Two and Rockstar and as a sort of parody and insult, the game has a mission where you shoot down a lawyer and there are some similarities to that lawyer and Thompson which has further angered him. Additionally, a TV presenter and radio host called Glenn Black used GTA4 as an example of comparing video games with the US military, going as far as bringing on board, Thompson to discuss the matter which ended with him just going crazy. Due to the controversy that the games have caused in Australia and New Zealand, the game was edited so that it could fit in with the age rating system there with removing some sexual content and blood pools (they also released an uncut version as well). An organization for mothers with alcoholic issues in the car, criticized the game for allowing the player to drive a car while the player's character is drunk, but this was short lived as Rockstar stated that the game does persuade the player to get a taxi and the character does say he should get a cab so in a way, they are telling the player that doing such a thing, is a bad idea. And there are plenty of others as well in this game which has made it very controversial. But like with its predecessors, it still managed to be critically and commercially successful.

So on the whole, despite the controversies, lawsuits and people doing things that they shouldn't, its still to this day, one of the greatest gaming franchises ever made and prepare yourselves for possibly my biggest video game series review to date. See you then.