Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=858https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3439 Running away isn’t an option (or if it is, I didn’t find it), which I suppose is true to the situation. It’s unlikely that either of these boys would run away from anything at this point. They were on a mission to kill people and no one was going to stop them. They had this obsession with hatred and ending the lives of as many people as possible with the fervency of religion. What they did was moral to them and they obviously felt they had to do it. They mention at one point something about changing the gun laws. Almost like a dare to the government to try and change the laws or…I wasn’t exactly sure what they meant but I think that if gun laws were tighter, they still would have gotten their hands on weapons and they still would have shot up the school. The collectable items were more symbolic than anything. The CD, the book, and the game all point to media as a possible influence. If someone were to immerse themselves completely in that lifestyle of death and killing I imagine it would take a toll on your mind eventually. I wondered during the shooting if they had taken any sort of drugs beforehand, just to dull themselves to what they were about to do. I found myself trying to avoid people in the halls so that I wouldn’t have to kill them. I just wanted the experience to end as fast as possible. Ultimately I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone and I wouldn’t ever play it again. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:01:10.)Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:00:50 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3439&iddiary=6434https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3439When I sat down to play a second time and actually got into the school, I was surprised to see that the fighting style is turn-based. This seemed to really make the game feel like a game. At that point I shifted into my gamer mode and it became me shooting pixel people. I lost a lot of the earlier sense and bad feelings that I was out to kill students and it became business as usual—shoot the enemies….though the ‘enemies’ in this case weren’t attacking me. The Frankenstein scene seemed out of place, but I don’t know much about the facts concerning these two troubled students. I’m assuming they had some sort of project involving Frankenstein at some point. There was a part where you can enter a bathroom and it appears that someone is getting beaten up by a group of students. The creator’s choice to add this seemed strange. My first thought was to fight the jocks beating up the student, but then I wondered what the point would be. I would only succeed in suffering some damage (that I could heal easily) and ‘rescuing’ the bully victim. This made no sense because I was already going around shooting at random and killing people; the sudden option for redemption, however slight, made me wonder what sort of message that creator was trying to send. Was s/he trying to glorify or denounce the Columbine shootings? The montage of pictures at the end made me think this was a tribute to the shooters, though I’m not sure if it was meant as positive or negative. Obviously some thought went into this game, I just don’t know if it should have. I don’t understand why this exists.Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:48:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3439&iddiary=6433https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3439 As soon as I heard about the new gamelog and that we had to play a game that detailed the events that took place at Columbine High School in 1999, I was prepared to be disturbed. I assumed prior to playing that this would be your standard shoot ‘em up, how-much-blood-and-gore-can-we-show style game skinned with students and a high school. The fact that the game actually shows backstory, ie-Dylan and Eric planning their attack and discussing it, made the whole experience more poignant and surreal. Players are forced to see that these teenagers were ‘real’ people and not just pixilated tools created to wield a weapon. The game makes this event less of a news story puts it in more human terms. In terms of ethical decisions, I think any sane person would agree that what Dylan and Eric did was, to put it bluntly, unethical and wrong. Shooting up a school can’t be deemed right by any theory we’ve talked about. Utilitarianism doesn’t work because far far more people were made unhappy by the outcome. Kantianism can’t justify what they did—shooting people at random is not a universal law. Social contract theory that basically says if it’s moral for me to act one way, then it’s alright for everyone else to do so also—definitely not alright in this case. An incident of this magnitude that affected so many people’s lives and continues to affect people’s lives can’t be explained in one theory. I think just as humans at our core we know some things are wrong and bad and that’s enough of a reason to justify doing or not doing an action. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:41:44.)Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:40:53 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3439&iddiary=6429https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3368Despite my rant on gameplay in the last entry, I’m only one person and the majority of the gaming world obviously doesn’t feel the way I do on the less than great gameplay layout. Taking a look at the ethical choices one has to make: should I or should I not steal this car?, If I kill this person, I’ll get respect points but I’ll also run the risk of getting killed by his gang—what to do? The list goes on. The game leaves no other option for you that is plausible besides violence. I mean, sure I could walk to my next mission and burn out all my stamina, but why do that when there’s plenty of hijackable cars being driven down the road? I could outrun the police and hide until they leave me alone, but then what would be the use of this pistol I’m carrying? GTA forces the player into a mindset to cater to our inner criminal mafia personality. Within ten minutes of gameplay I found myself absorbed in the story and having to think like a criminal to get what I wanted. In the real world I’d never hijack a car, and when I sat down to play the game it didn’t occur to me at first to do so. I was given a mission and a map and that was all. I half-expected to be given another bike and as I/Carl started walking I noticed all the cars flying past me. “Hey, this is GTA, what am I walking for?” I thought. I stood next to the nearest driver door, engaged in a brief bout of button mashing and I was soon the new owner of a stolen vehicle. I’ve heard the occasional news story of someone killing another in real life claiming the crime was inspired by GTA, and I don’t doubt it. This is the kind of game that gives video games a bad name. Parents and politicians are in arms over games like this, where the main reason to play is to kill and commit crime and do drugs, etc. I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t want my ten or fourteen year old playing this. I felt more annoyed and violent only after playing for an hour. Even if I didn’t notice the effects of the violence immediately, I think those images and feelings would stay with me whether I realized it or not and possibly manifest themselves in other ways. I don’t think that these types of GTA/M-rated games should be made illegal, but I also thing the access to the public should be really limited. By that I mean there should be tighter laws that would prevent kids from getting GTA; ‘should’ being the operative word—the chances of tougher laws realistically being put into effect are small. Ultimately I think the responsibility lies with the concerned parents to be techno-savvy and learn to monitor what their children play.Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:11:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3368&iddiary=6320https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3368In terms of moral values, there’s really nothing in GTA that promotes any sort of value in a positive light. There’s no compassion, as you as the player must shoot and kill those who are shooting at you. Loyalty as a virtue is presented, though to stay loyal to your family and your gang, you sometimes must kill and hijack cars to protect your ‘turf.’ Even then, the value isn’t presented as something you’d want to do, but as something you ought to do; and this follows the theory of virtue ethics. The player/Carl may not want to kill and steal for loyalty. Though at that point, it’s your option to choose a different game. Looking at another value, justice, it’s easy to say that justice is certainly a theme in GTA. Police officers try to bring you to justice after you’ve shot people (though not for driving erratically). Your missions consist of using graffiti to block marks tagged by other gangs, and in some cases killing the rival members count as justice in San Andreas. Justice is presented in two different lights, though both can easily be described as ‘justice.’ One is the justice of the law that the police officers try and uphold. The other is the player’s/Carl’s own cultural justice which consists mostly of revenge. You could almost argue that Carl’s version of justice would just a misunderstanding of cultures, which would lead to cultural relativism. Though since that’s not a working theory, plus there’s the fact that it butts heads with Social Contract theory (which says there should be a set of rules dictating how people treat each other as long as everyone else follows said rules). Though San Andreas is fictional, I doubt the laws would say that any and all people are prime bullet targets and cars are free for the taking. The game is difficult to get into because of the gameplay layout. I’ve been a gamer my whole life, and this was one of the more irritating games I’ve played. A map of the town is provided, though very little of use is labeled. I drove around for fifteen minutes trying to find my next mission and managed to find two tattoo parlors, a fast food chicken restaurant, and some property I couldn’t afford instead. Given the lack of information presented plus the extreme violence in the game, I’m surprised it’s as popular as it is. The tidbits of realism that are in the game just aren’t enough to make me want to keep playing it.Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:26:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3368&iddiary=6291https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3368We meet the main character, an African-American man named Carl Johnson, in an airport as he’s coming back home upon hearing of his mother’s death. Several stereotypes are immediately put forth: he gets arrested on the way home from the airport—none of the officers are African-American, his home is in the poorer part of town, simply reinforcing the ‘ghetto’ stereotype. His house is run-down, he used to be in a gang, and his neighbors curse like pirates and smoke various substances. At one point, players are involved in a drive-by shooting that they must escape via bikes. As I was pedaling, I decided that this mode of transportation was getting me/Carl nowhere fast, as I had already been sent to the hospital once. So I hijacked a car instead and came to my first real ethical quandary: Do I keep pedaling to save my life, or do I steal another’s car to have a better chance to save my life? Ethically, I believe it’s better to take another person’s car if it means you’ll have a better chance of not getting shot dead. Stealing the car won’t prove that you won’t get shot, but you’ll surely have a better chance of outrunning the pursuers who are also in vehicles. It’s rather Rule Utilitarian in that the benefits outweigh the harms, making it morally acceptable. The harms include: taking the property of another, physically yanking that person out of their car and risking injury to them. You could even say it emotionally harms the pedestrians witnessing the violent hijacking. The benefits though: me/Carl having a much better chance of not getting killed, outweigh the harms. If doing this act would save one life, then it is worth taking the car. This dilemma also goes against Rule Utilitarianism in that this is an exceptional circumstance, and as me/Carl stealing the vehicle doesn’t benefit everyone, the rules shouldn’t be overthrown for this one case. I see the appeal in this game in that it feels very ‘real.’ By real I mean that it’s the player’s job to see that Carl has enough energy and stamina to do the missions. He needs to eat to maintain energy, but if he eats too much he gets fat and that’s well documented in the Stats tab on the screen, along with Respect and Sex Appeal. These are apparently going to be valuable later in GTA. There aren’t many values presented in the game just yet. One I can name would be the respect issue, where by completing missions you can gain respect among your peers and earn Stat points. This sounds fine and innocent, however these missions include being involved in drive-by shootings by rival gangs and driving around your friend who likes to rob pizza stores. Overall, I think GTA deserves the ‘M’ rating it has; for the swearing alone if for nothing else.Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:11:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3368&iddiary=6274