Thoughtful discussions on GTA IV and "just a game"

A couple of interesting links for those who like really thoughtful discussions of games:

-The final installment of N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo's "vs. mode" discussion about "GTA IV" got really interesting as they addressed some good reader questions and comments. I was particularly intrigued by this one, which is a much more extreme version of the same thing I said last month:

I also found the story to be a fraudulent bill of goods, between the laughable artifice in some of the NPCs (Michelle after 10 seconds in the car: "I'd really like to get to know you better, Niko...") and every time the writers build up a little good will in terms of your emotional investment in Niko they squander it on something completely out of character in the name of a violent filler mission.

Another commenter calls that problem the "'uncanny valley' in terms of gameplay," which is a pretty apt description of it, I'd say. N'Gai responds that maybe we're putting too much faith in Niko Bellic as a person, but I think Stephen's more right when he wrote "The game left me no choice but to think of Niko as scum. I think the game designers wanted me to feel some sympathy for him. No way." That's how I felt and it's how I feel even more as I keep on playing. And it's a comment I've heard from more and more people.

I feel like with every major videogame (and many movies and books, for that matter), that's a general consensus about a problem the game has that wasn't too apparent at first that develops over time. In the case of "GTA IV," my perception is that the huge conflict between the person the game's writing tells us Niko is and the person we have to make him be in the gameplay is it.

-Regular Variety critic Leigh Alexander has a good piece on Kotaku about fans need to stop responding to critical debates by saying "it's just a game." As she writes:

“It’s only a game” is a phrase that agrees with all of those who ever looked down their noses at the medium, who want to nutshell it as a child’s plaything, who want to promote the kind of prejudice that will keep games from ever achieving widespread respect for everything they are.

When gamers ask whether the imagery of a white man shooting through a vacant-eyed sea of African villagers feels all right to them, we do ourselves a massive disservice when we simply dismiss questions like that, when we attack each other.

Whether or not you like murdering whores in GTA IV, we do ourselves a massive disservice when we fail to use that as a springboard to consider our own, and our community’s attitude toward women.

So it may be our responsibility to defend games, to explain them when they’re misjudged, to support our right to the full spectrum of emotion and experience they offer, both delightful and disturbing.

But questions like MTV Multiplayer's Steven Totilo's (our kind guest editor this week), asking, "Are Games Our Fantasies?" ought not to be brushed under the rug.

She's dead on, and that leads extremely well into a post I'm working on right now (going up shortly) about a new game that I find really morally disturbing. Look for it very soon.