There’s been a lot of buzz lately over Rockstar Games’ new game, the latest installment of the massively popular “Grand Theft Auto” series that is known for its open world game play and freedom of choice.
But with the release of the game’s new trailers this week, the same questions we’ve heard over the years are raised again over the appropriateness of players’ actions in-game. And since “GTA” is a choice-based game, in which you can decide what you’d like to do at any given time, players can spend their days doing anything from running ambulance missions to mugging prostitutes.
It’s understandable that this kind of control makes some people nervous. This type of game allows for a freedom that might take a decidedly dark turn, and no parent wants to think their kid enjoys violence.
But let’s face it, everyone’s got guilty pleasures.
Don’t tell anyone, but one of mine is creating ridiculously unsafe roller coasters in Hasbro Interactive’s “RollerCoaster Tycoon” and watching in grim satisfaction as cartloads of passengers go careening off the tracks.
I didn’t get very good customer satisfaction at my theme park, but who cares? I was drunk on power.
Some games allow moral-free, godlike control, such as “RollerCoaster Tycoon” and Electronic Arts’ “The Sims,” while other games, mostly of the single player, role-playing type, have been integrating subtle choices that change game play in their story lines, to varying degrees of success.
This model allows players to become the controller of the story line. In “GTA” there are set missions to accomplish, but what people do outside those missions depends entirely on the player. In a sense, the player is writing his own story.
Humans are inherently pretty creative, so it’s no surprise that open-world, choice-based games are generally more popular than linear narratives, which might also include choice, but to a lesser degree. The replay value, if nothing else, makes open-world games a good choice.
It’s easy to think of linear-style games as a book already written, waiting to be read, while open-world and free-choice games offer a book with empty pages waiting to be filled.
If we accept this, then the player cannot be judged for his in-game actions any more than a writer can be judged for the characters of his novels.
And you know what? Sometimes it’s fun to be bad. On Halloween, I didn’t dress up as Alex from “A Clockwork Orange” because I have secret designs of going on violent killing sprees. It’s just fun to be something you’re not sometimes.
Open-world video games often give players this option. I reject the idea that violent video games create violent people. I reject the assertion that a video game can’t be art and therefore is not worthy of the same high consideration. I reject that the idea that how you play an open-world video game tells you anything deep and insightful about the mind of the player.
People like to pretend, and people are pretty imaginative. It’s why humans write books, paint art, make films and do any number of other creative things. To conveniently forget this understanding of human nature because it involves a video game with pixelated characters is absurd.
Choice inevitably makes some people uncomfortable. They’re afraid others won’t make the right choice. It makes people nervous to think that a game offers chances to beat up random people and then get rewarded, but these people need to remember that a player’s in-game actions are not necessarily indicative of his personality.
There’s also a myriad of other choices. That’s the point. Open-world games allow you to be anyone you want, whenever you want.
So who do you want to be today?
How do you play choice-based games? Email agilvezan@media.ucla.edu with your gaming style.