I was pointed in the direction of GamePolitics.com this morning, they had a piece about a blogger who has noticed quite a bit of racism in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. The writer, a schoolteacher in a New York City, seems only to be half clued in on the topic about which he writes.
To begin with he calls Grand Theft Auto "the only game of its type – a freeform adventure/third-person shooter/racing game set in a huge ‘living’ environment." He must not be aware of the word sandbox – as it is a term we have that designates more than one game.
He goes on to say that the main audience is "clearly suburban white males." Clearly? With the two of the recent GTA games (Vice City Stories and San Andreas) having black protagonists I don’t really see it.
"I can not remember a single positive image for Blacks, Mexicans, Cubans, Jamaicans, Colombians, Haitians, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, one Jewish lawyer (!) and soon in the upcoming game, Russians and Serbians; not to mention the constant lampooning of liberals and homosexuals."
And we have reached my favorite part of his post. The game is called Grand Theft Auto. Say that with me. Grand. Theft. Auto. It’s a crime game. What kind of images did you think you were going to stumble upon playing a crime game? Criminals generally aren’t a good representation of any people. And while I am all for videogames taking social responsibility for themselves, when a game calls itself "Big Old Crime" you can’t expect much.
Listing all the different nationalities that GTA shows as being criminals, this writer just proved that Rockstar is the opposite of racist. They seem not to pigeonhole a certain type of people as criminal but instead spread it around saying ‘anyone can be a bad guy.’ The very nature of diversifying the criminal element is the opposite of racist. If anything, it’s progressive.
