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Sep 22nd, 2010 at 11:39:09 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) |
I played San Andreas for a third and final time and I wanted to see how the game is able to speak to a specific demographic and how the game really offers nothing to the female audience.
As I mentioned before in my first log, this game offers absolutely nothing to the female demographic. Within the first 45 minutes of the game, not a single female character can be seen (unless you count the NPC’s walking the street and those are few and far between) and there is literally nothing to hook the female audience into playing this game. To be fair, I love war games, I love games when you can go around shooting your opponent and teaming up and having fun and I thoroughly enjoy first person shooters. I tried giving this game that same chance and I seriously couldn’t find anything fun about this game. It was just a boring game to me. There was nothing in the opening of the game that would pull a female toward this game. Other FPS’s at least have some sort of allure or pull even though it might be centered around a male character it still has a pull and this game has none. It only speaks to the male demographic.
Because this game speaks to the male demographic, obviously it will have more male oriented things. The idea of playing as gangster CJ, that draws men into the target audience. The opening story of playing as a gang member fighting against a rival gang is not something strong enough to hook a female. The story is uninteresting and far too centered around appealing to the male players. Now, to be fair, games like TeamFortress2 , which is solely based and killing your opponents, has no story, no female characters, but at least if a female wants to play the game, they can relate to one of the nine different classes of characters and the allure of playing with/against your friends is fun. In GTA: San Andreas, there is really nothing about CJ that a female playing the game can relate to. Which is something the is a general thing. If a game character cannot relate to the audience, then the story will be boring and uninteresting which is what I feel is my case. Running around playing as a gangster that has had a fellow gang member murdered and having to go after and kill rival gang members is not run. Attacking a police officer is totally NOT okay in my book, even if it is in a game. I come from a family of police officers and even virtual violence against the police force isn’t cool.
Maybe it is because I have higher standards when it comes to games and playing them. Maybe its because I was taught strong morals and ethical codes while growing up. I don’t know. But San Andreas offered nothing in the way of pulling in a female demographic and to a degree, that’s okay. Not every single game on the market will have a pull for the females out there. TeamFortress2 for example has no female characters, but its just a fun game that can be played with friends which is why it is so popular among female gamers.
So I ranted in my first post about how bad this game is. It’s not a terrible game, there are in fact worse games out there. I think it was my initial distaste with the game that fed through the first log and I simply got over it and started analyzing the game more.
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Sep 21st, 2010 at 23:37:25 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) |
So for the second time of playing San Andreas, I decided to basically play the same first 45 minutes of the game and view how it portrays the gang violence between the two rival gangs.
So you start out as CJ, a black male in about his 20’s. As you begin to move around, then you begin to notice how poor looking the neighborhood is. Graffiti on the walls of homes, broken down houses, etc. So you move CJ and make him get on a bicycle as you ride to head to his home. There he is attacked by a friend who thinks he is someone else. The scene uses some very strong language, as do the rest of the scenes following. So you take CJ and his friends to a cemetery and there they are attacked by a rival gang that is shooting at them. You hop on your bikes and make a mad dash threw the city to avoid them. Soon after, you and Ryder go to a pizza place and attempt to rob it but are chased away. Following that the next morning, you go into your rival gang’s territory and start spraying over their tags with your own, even running into two gang members and a police officer, both cases in which you sprayed the gang members and the cop and it drops them. Running around for a few more minutes and getting a few more tags was when I ended the game play.
Now, I am not from a poorer neighborhood so I don’t know if I can be the best judge of how things are, but you can tell that from looking around, just the overall feel of the game screams poorer conditions thus it can lead to gang violence, which to some extent is true. The game shows that these areas are populated by what can appear (making the assumption) lower income black families and generally, in poorer areas, crime is higher and gangs seem to thrive more. This much of the game is correct. Yet the game itself is still inaccurate. The game itself just seems to glorify gang violence and it makes it seem as if it is fun to go after other gang members. In the scene with the drive by, no one in the game was hurt, however in real life, someone would/could have been hit with one of those bullets and might possibly have been killed. Especially as you raced through the city to get away from the other gang and bullets were still flying. You could hear a few screams from people on the street but no one was killed. How wrong that is? It makes light of such a serious situation. Including the scene in which you spray the spray paint in your rivals and the police officers face, effectively dropping them and what can be assumed either dead or severely poisoned. Another part of the whole gang thing is not only innocent bystanders are getting hurt, but the other gang members and the police that are sworn to protect take a hit. This game makes light of the issue that human life is not sacred and that it is okay to run around with a gun shooting someone. Nothing about this game teaches a good value but it can place the idea of glorified gang violence is okay. By this game’s standards, it’s okay to kill a police officer, it’s okay to rob stores, it’s okay to fire wildly at another gang member, thus killing them, when in reality, all of these things are wrong and are looked down upon in this society. So for the second time playing this game, I was not amused nor did I enjoy playing it. Maybe my sense of human life and morals are too strong, but I just found this game distasteful to a very strong level.
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