Iwonder: What would happen if I did this? That question is the driving force behind many video games, including the new Mature-rated Grand Theft Auto IV for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360: You can experiment and push physical, ethical, legal and moral boundaries within the relatively safe confines of a virtual play space.
This week, I also wondered what would happen if I read a new book, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games, and then spent a few days kicking the tires of the new version of the game that inspired its title. It worked out pretty well because both works have a lot in common: They are political, often angrily so, and they are brilliantly put together.
That's a lot of grand theft for one week. One evening, I wandered into another room to give myself (and the whirring Xbox) a break, just in time to see on TV a character in the 1990 series Twin Peaks burst into a police station and yell, "Grand theft auto! The Log Lady stole my truck!" I thought that was a cue to get back to work.
A lot of people who don't usually talk games had Grand Theft Auto on their minds this week, and that is a good thing for the most part. The authors of Grand Theft Childhood, Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner, point out that many players, especially teens and kids, use video games to "build and strengthen social relationships with peers." Games provide plenty of talking points.
The trick is getting everyone talking together, and Olson and Kutner may be able to help with that. They are on the psychiatry faculty at Harvard Medical School and run the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Inspired by their son, who at the age of 6 petitioned his principal to get games put on the kindergarten curriculum, they conducted a large study into the effects of violent games on 12-to-14-year-olds. They interviewed and surveyed 1,254 middle-school students in the United States and then talked to many of their parents as well.
The results may shock some people: Among the boys studied, 44 per cent listed Grand Theft Auto, which is rated for players aged 17 and over, among their regularly played games; it was the most popular choice by some distance. It was the second-most-popular game among girls, just behind The Sims.
What attracts the kids? For that, back to Grand Theft Auto IV. Say what you will about its developers at Rockstar Games, who delight in creating and then feeding on controversy, the new game proves yet again that they are extraordinary coders.
The design elements that make up the game's setting, Liberty City, have been exhaustively detailed this week in reviews. I have one anecdote to add to that mix.
A lot of people focus on the graphics in the game the faces can be easily confused with TV car shows on the Speed channel, or perhaps with the characters in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (if you are playing one of the more violent story missions). But underneath those pretty visuals are codes - sets of rules, really - that dictate what you can do in the game.
Often these rules are applied by virtual police officers, which makes sense, and they stepped in during an altercation I had with a disgruntled passenger in a cab I had stolen. (It happens.) The two police officers didn't see me steal the cab, but they did see the passenger throw the first punch. I wasn't in the mood for a fight and moved back. The officers arrested the man, put him in the back of their car and drove away.
As hockey players know, referees always catch the retaliation, but that is some incredible artificial intelligence on display: Who's in the wrong is a hard question to answer, let alone program into a game.
And distinguishing right from wrong is really the driving force behind the GTA experience. The game's primary writers, Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries, have strong opinions on the matter, and in the story and the many satirical pokes at news outlets, the Internet, advertising and politicians of all stripes, the game makes it clear that its authors think everyone in the media is wrong most of the time, except maybe them.
Other people will play and read this instalment of GTA differently, but for me the central theme - whether in the story of Niko Bellic, the game's central character and a former combatant in the Bosnian war, or a random stand-up comedy routine by a digitized Ricky Gervais - is the widespread effect of war. State-sponsored violence takes a beating in Grand Theft Auto IV.
The scattershot political commentary in this game is aimed at a lot of targets, often broadly, but enough of it sticks to recognizable authorities that it isn't too far-fetched to wonder if a GTA-inspired surge at U.S. polling stations might play a role in the presidential election come November.
And that anger, directed at the ways in which modern media and political leaders can get distracted from the issues that matter, is echoed by Olson and Kutner. After completing their study and researching childhood development, they summed up much of their findings in what I think is the strongest paragraph in the book: "More important, focusing on such easy but minor targets as violent video games causes parents, social activists and public-policy makers to ignore the much more powerful and significant causes of youth violence that have already been well established, including a range of social, behavioural, economic, biological and mental-health factors."
Their advice to parents is to relax, identify the true markers that indicate if their children have problems, and then take a more active role in their kids' use of video games. The chapter "Practical Advice for Parents" could help with that, and I think video-game players of all ages can do their part as well.
All week, people who don't play video games have been exposed to a high dose of hype, and a lot of them are probably curious. If they bother to look for themselves, they will find that, whether the game is Grand Theft Auto or Mario Kart, the player takes the rules provided by the game makers and then dictates what happens. When I play Grand Theft Auto, for example, I don't intentionally injure those police officers. (I may steal their car, but I'm sneaky about it.)
When you show a new viewer a game, discuss your rules or your family's rules, and then show them something that fits their interests. There is a lot more focus in this episode of GTA on casual games - bowling, eight-ball pool, darts - and many of the satiric jabs at modern culture can be enjoyed by a wide range of people, providing they have the maturity to understand them.
Right now, I'm planning a trip through Liberty City with my parents. I'm thinking of finding an ice-cream truck that plays Flight of the Bumblebee, speeding up the tempo as we drive faster, and then heading over to the pool hall.
That and flipping through some pages from Grand Theft Childhood should make for a good little Saturday.