On a different note - Morality and Video games

[orichalcum]

The New York Times just gave an incredibly favorable review to the new Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City (aka NYC) game. It praises the game's graphics, its sandbox design, its music, its variability, etc...

Nowhere in the review does the reviewer (Seth Schiesel) comment on the relative morality of the game or what age group it might be suitable for.

Keep in mind that, aside from the robbery, assault, carjacking, etc.. plots....this is a game in which you (_can_ - Edited for accuracy, thanks redhound) hire prostitutes, have sex with them, and _then kill them._ That's what women are for in the game context. Not one of the numerous characters mentioned in the review is female. In the preview, female strippers at a strip club talk about how stripping arouses them. The online dating club is called "The Twat."

So...my question is - should reviews in this case query the moral and age-appropriate content of a game? Admittedly, I don't necessarily expect reviews of, say, Sex and the City to condemn it for questionable relationships, or Deadwood to be slammed because of all the obscenity. But I'd kinda like to know about it in both cases.

GTA crosses the line for me where I wish, I really wish, that someone was devoting all that effort to making a game with content that I'd feel comfortable playing. But while it may have great gameplay, the thought of selling it to 10-year-olds upsets me.

Am I overreacting? Should this game just be evaluated on the basis of whether it's fun to play?

Comments

[lisa-bee.livejournal.com]

For me, there are two different aspects of GTA that make me never want to play it -- the violence, and the pervasive misogyny.

I don't have much of a problem with GTA's violence going unmentioned in a review, because it is rated, and because it's so well known at this point that very few people would be surprised to see its violence. (And in theory you can't buy it unless you're over 17 years old.)

But the fact that there was no reference whatsoever to the fact that women are objects -- objects designed to pander to stereotypical male desires? I think that deserves mention. This may be partially because I think misogyny is more insidious than violence: it is less visible and more likely to go uncommented on.

And now that I think about it, it's not the violence of GTA that makes me not play it: it's the fact that women are so completely non-people in GTA that bothers me so much. And GTA isn't alone: there are so incredibly few video games in which women are actually treated like people rather than sex objects that might potentially be playable characters or eye candy.