Who's against Grand Theft Auto?

[PeteJohnson]

Sociologists say video games destroy the minds of the players and one game they sighted is Grand Theft Auto. They say it teaches violence. Just wondering, if this were true then I must be very violent as I grew up watching violent cartoons like GI Joe and the Three Stooges. But ironically, I'm happily married and I have decent children who, by the way, I don't restrict to wholesome video games.

[Bosda Di'Chi]

I'm against it!!

I'm also against spinach, people who say "youse", and the color mauve.

YOU! YOU KIDS! GET OFFA MY LAAAAWWWNNNN!

[Catzpjs]

The OP has been edited to remove a SPAM-type sig. I will be keeping an eye on this poster to see if he continues to post SPAM.

[Surgoshan]

I think the games are okay; San Andreas made the sand box a bit too big, and GTA IV was a touch too ambitious, I think.

[Ursa Major]

I'm against GTA, but only because I've never been able to catch that bastard Darden after the fight in the playground.

[Penquin47]

I am. From what I've heard, GTA is a big offender of the DIAS fallacy of game design.

DIAS: "Do It Again, Stupid". You fail a mission, you have to try again. The only way to figure out the mission: luck or doing it four million times. There's no real strategy planning, common sense, or even reflex/twitch gaming to be done.

[MrKnowItAll]

Heh. Violent video games have almost become our generation's version of Seduction of the Innocent and As Nasty as They Wanna Be.

Personally, my problem isn't with GTA, it's with parents who don't set appropriate boundaries. Kids mature at different rates, and some have different psychological tendencies than others. This really should be handled on a case-by-case basis, not a blanket villification. I spent a huge chunk of my childhood watching the 3 Stooges and Warner Bros cartoons. I possessed cap guns, which I shot my brothers and friends with on many a summer afternoon, both shiny Western hero types and snub nose revolver types. (And in those days, they actually tried to make cap guns look like real guns.)

I doubt GTA makes kids any more violent than other types of play does. Perhaps the only real difference is that the kids are put in a position of playing criminals, and awarded for doing so successfully. I actually do have a bit of a problem with that aspect, the same way that I didn't play D&D with people who wanted to play evil aligned characters.

[RichPella]

Japanese TV is significantly more violent than American TV, yet their society is significantly less violent. Part of the answer is that Japanese families watch TV together, and then talk about it. The majority of modern American families use the TV and video games as babysitters.

The bottom line: It's not the games, it's the parents, as MrKnowItAll said.