grand theft auto: digital city
learning concepts of digital humanities while running from the
cops and shooting pedestrians
Warm welcome
My love for this violent, complex game started in 2002, when I bought my
first Playstation 2. In my childhood, I had my share of experience with video
games; Pokemon on my Nintendo Game Boy; NBA 2K on my Sega
Dreamcast; even old PC puzzle games like Myst, The Incredible Toon
Machine and Redneck Rampage.
Visually, I grew up privileged with the opportunity to play these games.
Experiencing the visual stimulation of flying a spaceship or exploring foreign
lands made me embrace the visual elements on the screen as I played
these games.
Back then, I had no concept of how designers put the levels together. I
simply played the game. Aside from the fascination with the visual
representation, what was equally stimulating for me was the constant
interactivity with the game. I wasn’t just looking at the inside of a lost, ancient
world; I was walking around IN that world. I was there. I was experiencing
the game from both a visual and tactical perspective, and it fascinated the
shit out of me.
grand theft auto III
Before I united with the Grand Theft Auto series, I had
never truly experienced a freedom-based video
game, also known in the gaming world as a
“Sandbox” game. Most of the games I played were
very linear and forced you to follow a storyline. Instead
of exploring these digital worlds under my own free
will, I had to follow the path that the level designers
intended to completely absorb the game play.
Then, I met Grand Theft Auto III. There were no
distinct boundaries; I could choose whether to follow
the storyline (and the linearity associated with it) or explore their tasteful
depiction of New York City, called Liberty City. The 3-Dimensional design of
the city, from skyscrapers to traffic to trees and pedestrians, made the city
feel alive. This was a huge breakthrough
for the gaming world.
This new found freedom to explore a large,
digital city was, of course, coupled with the
thematic violence found in the game. Sure,
it was fun to steal cars, run from the cops
and blow up pedestrians, but it wasn’t the
violence that sparked my interest the most.
It was how I was controlling my character
every step of the way. I wasn’t blowing up
innocent pixilated individuals, my character was; I was simply controlling his
actions. I could get away with digital murder.
Telling a story
Aside from the freedom to wreak havoc in Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto III
also utilized a key literary element to drive the full experience of playing the
game: storytelling. Once you got tired of committing random acts of
violence, you would travel to a distinct location to trigger “missions,” which
would require you to commit violence in a controlled, meaningful way. This
would progress the story, and offer meaning to the game.
What made this style of gaming refreshing for me, though, was that it let me
choose when I wanted to progress through the story and when I wanted to
dick around in the city.
The story was imbedded in completing the missions; as I played them, I
wasn’t just being told a story, I was living the story. The events of the
storyline were based on my successful completion of these tasks, and when
I finally completed the final mission, the experience was complete. Sure,
there were several animated cut-scenes that kept me connected to the
storyline, but it was as if I was acting in a movie, and playing the main
protagonist.
It was a very unique experience for me, and even inspired me to pursue
some acting in high school. I really enjoyed the feeling of being someone
else, especially when I could actively live through the story. Many games
before had that same feeling of interactivity, but never this immersive.
grand theft auto: vice city
That same year, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released. Like GTAIII, Vice
City offered the player an open-world, an engaging storyline and plenty of
vehicles to steal, but this new game added some significant elements to my
fascination of these digital worlds.
Vice City introduced a true main character to replace
the no-name mute you controlled through GTAIII. His
name was Tommy Vercetti, and he was a foulmouthed psychopath who was voiced by Ray Liotta
and rocked a teal Hawaiian shirt and 80’s Adidas. For
me, Tommy added to my already thorough
absorption in the story. Having a distinct main
character completed the story, and allowed me to
completely mask myself while committing horrific
acts of violence and cruelty to my digital enemies.
Though Tommy fit the role as the game’s main
protagonist, possibly the main character in the game
(and, arguably, in all GTA games) was the city. Vice
City, a Miami replica set in the far-off year of 1986, exposed me to a world I
could only dream of seeing first-hand. The story was set two years before I
was born, but I felt a momentous rush when I first experienced the neon
lights, palm trees, glistening water and vast beaches. That change in setting,
both in time and place, made this game a new experience for me after
spending so much time in the world of GTAIII.
As I grew out of adolescence and into the teenage world, I began to further
embrace this outlet of digital phenomena I experienced in Grand Theft Auto
III and Vice City. I started to play other sandbox games, in different worlds,
with different stories and different characters. Immersing myself in these
digital worlds made me want to delve deeper and deeper into their
existence.
Who made them? How were they created? What was the process? My
curiosity fueled my research, and I began to learn about the world of digital
writing and visual design. I like to think that had a lot to do with me
becoming a Professional Writer.
grand theft auto: san andreas
When GTA: San Andreas came out, I experienced two more unique addons to my GTA arsenal. The first of which was a significantly larger map. San
Andreas was a fictional state region that included digital geographical
depictions of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, northern California
and the desert. This offered many more areas to explore, and many more
storylines to follow. It truly satisfied my taste for more digital world to explore.
It’s been five years since the games release, and I still haven’t explored the
whole map.
The other unique experience for me in this new episode of GTA was the
differences I experienced with the main protagonist, Carl Johnson. CJ, as he
is called in the game, is an African-American gangster from the streets of
Los Santos (Los Angeles), who is thrust back into the culture surrounding the
hood and his “homies.”
At first, I was a little skeptical about playing as CJ, since I had no real
connection with the initial character of CJ himself; but I realized that his race
or background didn’t matter at all. As with the previous two games, I simply
played the game. I could customize CJ in many ways (hair, tattoos, clothes,
cars, etc.), and when I played the game, I felt an interesting sense of identity,
even though I was playing through the game as CJ.
GTA: San Andreas helped me realize that I could create an identity in the
digital and online world. When I stole a car I liked, I would take it to a
garage, paint it a specific shade of blue (which in my mind, represented my
own personal symbolism in the game) and customize it to my liking. It was
as if I was living in the world of San Andreas, even though I was sitting in my
room with a PS2 controller in my hand.
grand theft auto Iv
After a four year wait, Grand Theft Auto was back on the Xbox 360, which I
specifically bought for its release. The 360 offered a more detailed visual
representation of a re-designed Liberty City, which made everything seem
even more realistic, especially with my High-Definition Samsung TV. When
GTAIV finally came around, I locked myself in my room and devoted my life
to the game.
What really set GTAIV apart from the previous stories, apart from creating
another definitive world separate from the others, was the complexity of the
storyline. The story centered on Balkan immigrant Niko Bellic, and
showcased his struggle in Liberty City,
which now included specific parodies of
New York landmarks like the Statue of
Happiness and the GetaLife Building.
Liberty City had a different vibe to it; like
it was the real New York City. It added to
the sense of realism I felt every time I
played the game.
A few months later, Rockstar released an additional episode to the story of
GTAIV called “The Lost and The Damned,” which focused on biker Johnny
Klebitz, a recurring character in GTAIV’s story, and his biker gang “The
Lost.”. The episode was available as “Downloadable Content,” and could be
purchased while using Xbox Live. This was one major focus for the world of
gaming, especially with the release of next-gen consoles like the Xbox 360
and the Playstation 3. There was a huge market for allowing gamers access
to each other nation-wide and world-wide, and GTA was involved. Though
I’ve never had Xbox Live myself, as it requires a high-speed connection, I’ve
played on the network plenty of times with friends. The idea that I could be
stealing cars in
the same digital
environment as a
gamer in Russia
truly fascinated
me.
What also
fascinated me,
with the release
of TLAD, was
how the story was
told from a
different
perspective. Sure, the story had a completely different focal point in this new
episode, but you clearly see how the different stories of happenings in
Liberty City intertwined to create a distinguished theme, something that ios
often overlooked with violent games like GTA. I could see through the
pixilated violence and mayhem, into the raw, emotional tale of a city
strikingly similar to New York City.
hyping it up
Because of the digital brilliance these
games brought upon me, I couldn’t
wait to see what the next episode in
the GTA line would bring. To make my
poor, teenage mind even more
anxious for the game’s release,
advertising and hype was everywhere
in the months leading up to the next
GTA.
Commercials filled the airwaves with
carefully-constructed game trailers,
hinting at the new features included in
the game. These digital trailers would
serve the same purpose for the game
as Hollywood movie trailers would for a
movie: get people to buy the game.
On magazine covers, billboards and
web pages, millions of dollars are spent promoting the game, which helps
make Grand Theft Auto one of the most successful game franchises in the
world. However, Rockstar Games, developer of the GTA series, utilizes the
internet for the bulk of their promotional needs. By using their own web
space to host content about the game, they not only feed the public’s
curiosity surrounding the game itself, but also gain a significant audience to
fill visit their sites. This whole process fascinated me, and really helped me
realize how the online world can be so vast and mainstream.
This large, cult-like following spends a good
amount of time on message boards like
www.gtaforums.com and
www.gtagaming.com. Here, people who
share my passion for Grand Theft Auto can
discuss essentially every aspect of the culture.
The extent to which these users communicate
about missions, secrets, vehicles, characters
and upcoming games is thoroughly endless.
It’s as if they have more interest in the digital
worlds of Grand Theft Auto than in the actual
real world; the weird thing is: I completely
understand.
Listen while you steal
While you’re driving around in the worlds of GTA, odds are you’ll be listening
to one of the many songs playing on one of the
many radio stations playing in one of the many
stolen vehicles. Rockstar helps drill these (mostly)
quality songs into our minds as we play the game,
which help nullify the sometimes long trips around
the city.
Each radio station has a distinctive musical
theme, such as pop, hip-hop or rock. The game
developers pay to use the songs in the game, and the player gets to listen to
them as they nonchalantly run over pedestrians in a stolen Hummer (or
Patriot, as they call it in the games). For Vice City and San Andreas, all the
music comes from that particular time period, to continually add to the
atmosphere.
The use of music in GTA introduced me to new
artists and styles of music that I may not have
heard without the game. Over the years, I credit
Grand Theft Auto with giving me that unique
access to new genres of music, and fueling my
desire to build my musical library with mp3’s from
the game’s soundtrack.
virtual reality
As far as understanding the digital humanities, I would think that an entire
world creating using concepts of visual design, artificial intelligence and
interactive environments in order to create the illusion of a digital world
would be a great place to learn. Sure, the gratuitous violence and highspeed chases are adrenaline-filled and satisfying, but the real stimulation,
for me, comes from the world itself. In each of these games, the world was
created using computers and digital design.
In establishing a digital identity, I think my earliest experience came with
acting as a character in the world of Grand Theft Auto. It was not I who was
beating hookers and blowing up helicopters, it was the character in the
game’s story. Perhaps I was not creating an identity in the literal sense of the
word, but I was establishing myself in an environment that was completely
digitized, in the story and in free roam.
Either that or I’m simply trying to justify the many, many hours I’ve spent
racing around in a blue and white Ruiner with a three-star wanted level and
LCPD cruisers hot on my tail. Well, at least I was doing it digitally.