Let's Get Serious: Violence in Video Games: Spotlight on GTA V

I've always been relatively nonplussed  by violence in all entertainment media, games, movies, television, books, etc. I've always been able to discern between reality and fiction and find violence in any fiction to be played for effect it's oftentimes exaggerated because that's what is most entertaining. I'm also of the same mind as Quentin Tarantino who says, "If you ask me how I feel about violence in real life, well, I have a lot of feelings about it. It's one of the worst aspects of America. In movies, violence is cool. I like it." Violence in movies isn't always played for reality, like a musical, outrageous acts of violence in entertainment are typically visual cues for the intensity of the drama ratcheting up to a bloody breaking point. But I and many who enjoy the occasional piece of violent entertainment still take issue when violence is dished out maliciously, when it's mean-spirited and used as a cheap way to "thrill" the audience or just stir up controversy. 

Violence in all entertainment media is typically seen as OK as long as it is justified, not justified too some FOX News anchor or Sunday church goer, but by the legal definition of a reasonable person: a person whom is fair, rational and avoids damage through negligence. When applied to violence in entertainment that typically means the violence on display must be chalked up as a necessary creative decision. A broad stroke that typically excuse any and all violence, as an argument can be made that the violence in the Saw franchise is necessary. But be that as it may it is still a definition most scholars and aficionados agree with.

This past week I, like many video game players, obsessively played Grand Theft Auto V. I waited outside of a Best Buy at midnight just to play the game a few hours before everyone else. I hurried home and immediately started my simulated criminal career and it was a blast. Rockstar Games, developer of the series, always puts an unprecedented amount of detail and polish into every game they craft and GTA V is their latest crowning achievement. But it was around the 8 hour mark when one of the main characters, a well established psychopath, brutally tortures a character in the game and left me in utter disbelief. A segment that has players choosing which method of torture should be used, from pliers to water boarding. The games impressive graphics appropriately convey the pain and suffering the character is experiencing and that you "the player" are dishing out. It's an oddly serious moment in an otherwise exaggerated satirical game. It's a moment so cruel I dwelled on it for days hopping to comprehend some reason that it had to be in the game, other than shock value. It says nothing about anything, unlike everything else in the game which is overall a chastising critique on America culture. This scene isn't played for laughs and instead relishes in the notion that the player knows that the torture is unnecessary as the victim is more than willing to divulge all the information in question. So the violence is not only gratuitous but unwarranted. 

Later on in the story the same character brutally murders two characters for reasons I can't even fathom. Those two scenes didn't come close to ruining my experience with the game which overall was phenomenally enjoyable. But it made me wonder why the developer put them in the game, what purpose did these scenes serve. The only feeling they initiated from me was of utter disgust, forcing the player to brutally torture a human being and then brushing it off as if it's no big deal is an odd choice that doesn't sit well with me. And I'll be questioning their inclusion for the foreseeable future. It's an odd thing, critiquing a product that is inherently violent for being more violent but the scene doesn't gel with the rest of the game and feels like a harsh ice water bath as opposed to the mocking tone of the overall game. This isn't a condemnation to Rockstar Games or violence in entertainment just an expression of curiosity towards their relevance in the overall product. Why are those scenes in the game? What are they meant to say, if anything. Because apart from those scenes GTA V was an impeccably designed, wonderfully written and immensely enjoyable video game.