GTA game series: facing and shaping reality

By Ausama Anwar:

I remember reading Don Quixote and the clash between reality and imagination within it. There was only imagination that could face reality, creating a free world for humans, finding that which they couldn’t find in reality, and merging their imagination with it. Then, when I read about dreams, I thought they could be also something that can interest those who find their life uncomfortable in reality. Although the science of dreams isn’t as developed as movies make out, lucid dreams are things that are open to interpretation. The movie ‘Inception’ shows us something about the future of dream science; maybe someday reality’s number one enemy will become dreams, or Technological Dreams anyway.

In the modern day, the world of the Internet is worth studying in this regard. Isn’t also the Internet confronting reality – and especially social networks? Don’t we all find some people who own two different personalities (on social networks and in reality)? This topic reminds me of a statement by a girl In a Japanese anime film called ‘Paprika’ (a movie about the science of dreams). “I love the internet, it’s like dreams, people can do what they can’t in reality” says the girl to a man.

I believe that, nowadays, video games can affect reality as much as dreams and imaginations do. Teenagers now tend to be more imaginative than before; they spend more time playing than doing other stuff, and that’s what shapes their personalities and their attitudes. This is ok, but the question is: what kind of games?

GTA (Grand Theft Auto) is one of the best-selling video games nowadays; it gets played more than other games. Its violent, sexual, blood-soaked nature is not hidden and builds its influence, which makes it for over 18s only. But do only adults play it? Of course not, you can’t take it away from those teenagers and even kids who adore it, you can’t control the sellers, and you can’t censor it when it’s being downloaded from pirate websites, even though most players are under the age of 15. GTA is one of the most realistic games, compared to reality, with a flavor of violence. Some consider it as a kind of purge of the self, in which people can empty the badness and lust from their unconscious minds into the game. But what about the danger of those kids who learn badness and take lust from it?

Just a month ago, the British “Daily Mail’ (1) carried the headline: Boy, 8, shoots 87-year-old grandmother dead ‘after playing Grand Theft Auto and tries to claim it was an accident’.

Well, this is one obvious proof of the danger, and how many other hidden examples could we find?

A few weeks ago, to be honest, I was one of those who were excited to play the newest edition of the game: GTA V. Its graphics are really incredible and it has an awesome background story grounded in real-life places, like los Santos, Vinewood and San Andreas. You are armed, you rob banks, you kill easily and take down the police: what else can be more violent than this? On just the first day of its release, millions of copies were sold. I ask how many of those poor kids got it.

There’s always a way for everything. We can’t stop kids and teenagers from loving their game consoles but we can try other approaches. In my latest book written in Kurdish (‘Hidden Ideas’), I wrote about the influence of video games over people, and a way to make this positive. Earlier, I asked a question: what kind of video games? If GTA really turned out to be most negative game available now for under 18s, at least we can make something similar but with benefits. The topic in the book was under the title: “A Step for Merging Philosophy, Science, and Wisdom with Video Games: ‘Bioshock: Infinite’ for example”. I consider ‘Bioshock’ to be a positive video game, despite its violence. The game also makes some serious points which can take the players’ minds to question whatever is going on in the game: quantum mechanics, some political ideologies, philosophy theories, and all kinds of stuff, combined with a thriller story following a science fiction background.

I know it’s not the kind of game that teenagers currently go for, but it’s something different and I see it as a positive step, which can keep players in an imaginary world and keep the violence far from reality, and teach them some lessons in science and philosophy.

(1) Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2401297/Eight-year-old-shoots-caregiver-87-playing-Grand-Theft-Auto-says-accident.html

Ausama Anwar was born in 1994, in the capital of the Kurdistan region, Hawler. He is a writer and author of two books published in Kurdish. ‘A Gate to the Intellectual’ is dedicated to youth generally with an intellectual background. ‘Hidden Idea: Some Samples from Movies’ is a work of creative movie analysis. Ausama is also a journalist at ‘Yakgrtw’ newspaper, and leader of a society youth group called ‘Zamwa’.