PWNED
WITH ART
CRIME IN VIDEO GAMES: PART ONE Being a villain in video games is getting easier and easier. Since Custer’s Revenge (where you play, in a way, a rapist) video games have been a battle ground in the war against censorship. To what degree are the video games we play causing us to live our lives differently? Have you ever actually seen a car, pulled out the driver and sped off into the sunset? Hopefully not. In this part of ‘Crime in Video Games’, I want to give you an idea of the range of games which place you as a criminal. I’ve spoken about being a terrorist before, but this is very, very different. You see, terrorism is ambiguous. One man’s terrorist, as the old and over-used saying goes, is another man’s freedom fighter. Crime is always crime however. Perhaps the most famous game in the criminal category is Grand Theft Auto. Any serious gamer will have played at least one, if not all, of the often criticised game. When teenagers go and murder each other, politicians and Christians (yes, Christians - I’m not anti-Christian. Just stating a fact here) start banging the war drums and blaming violent video games. Grand Theft Auto is at the top of their target list as well. Australia regularly gets bullshit, edited versions of the games we get. With GTA IV, sex scenes were replaced with crappy camera-
locks and even crappier animations of a car bouncing up and down. Blood and gunshot wounds also disappeared, to be replaced with slightly discoloured sections of clothes. WEAK SAUCE! But perhaps it is good that we edit some graphic violence out of these games. They are R18, after all. To rent one for a child (yes, even your own child) is as illegal as renting a porno for someone under 18, or buying booze or cigarettes for people under 18. I’m also a firm believer in leaving things to the imagination. Not for any puritanical reasons, but because I believe that no studio in the world has the budget to beat my imaginations special effects budget. Perhaps the most disturbing crime game I have ever come across was one called Postal. Widely banned on release, Postal 2 (an FPS remake of an older isometric view game) had your character going about his day to day tasks. Along the way, you get the option to kill, piss on or beat anyone and anything. Needless to say, Postal 2 did not need to be made. Next week I’ll look at being a cop in video games!
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