Grand Theft Auto Drugs Mini-Game Maxi-Pictures
Plus: what does The Sun have to say?
The first pic of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars' insidious, child-corrupting drug-dealing mini-game has wormed its way onto the Internet via T3. You can see it right here. Acid would appear to be the drug of choice for this particular client. SPOnG wouldn't know anything about that L.D.S.* stuff.
The mini-game has already started to make ripples in the mainstream media. The Sun has now run the inevitable 'FURY OVER DRUG DEAL VID GAME' headline. The paper quotes Darren Gold, 'Outreach Team Leader' at Drugsline (a charity that helps those struggling with addiction), as saying, “Anything using drug-dealing as entertainment is sending out the wrong message. Glamorisation doesn’t help our work trying to educate kids of the dangers of substance misuse.”
One Sun reader, Tommy29, opined in the comments section, "(Ancient British TV presenter) Timmy Mallet made his name by whacking kids over the head with a Mallet, therefore accountable for a whole number of horrific murders! Ban him instead!" SPOnG feels that Tommy29 should, in fact, be editing the paper.
The paper also reports, "Experts predict the final edition is unlikely to feature explicit criminality." SPOnG would have to question what stealing cars and mowing down pedestrians in all the other GTA games counts as, if not "explicit criminality". If explicit criminality won't feature in the published game, it will be a pretty shallow experience. Needless to say, the 'experts' in question weren't named.
Rockstar has no intention of pulling its punches, however. According to Rockstar VP Dan Houser, "No one disagreed with [Rockstar president and Dan's brother] Sam [Houser]'s very clear edict that GTA has to be an M rating. It can't be softened to make it family-friendly--that's not the game we're making...[Nintendo] didn't want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren't interested in making a game we wouldn't normally make."
The mini-game will enable players to peddle in heroine, cocaine, weed, ecstasy, acid and downers. You can see SPOnG's original coverage here.
Drug-dealing, eh? Genius boundary-pushing, we say. But we are coked-up to the eyeballs all day, every day. Maaaan.
Sources: T3
The Sun
Edge via Gamespot
* Sic
The mini-game has already started to make ripples in the mainstream media. The Sun has now run the inevitable 'FURY OVER DRUG DEAL VID GAME' headline. The paper quotes Darren Gold, 'Outreach Team Leader' at Drugsline (a charity that helps those struggling with addiction), as saying, “Anything using drug-dealing as entertainment is sending out the wrong message. Glamorisation doesn’t help our work trying to educate kids of the dangers of substance misuse.”
One Sun reader, Tommy29, opined in the comments section, "(Ancient British TV presenter) Timmy Mallet made his name by whacking kids over the head with a Mallet, therefore accountable for a whole number of horrific murders! Ban him instead!" SPOnG feels that Tommy29 should, in fact, be editing the paper.
The paper also reports, "Experts predict the final edition is unlikely to feature explicit criminality." SPOnG would have to question what stealing cars and mowing down pedestrians in all the other GTA games counts as, if not "explicit criminality". If explicit criminality won't feature in the published game, it will be a pretty shallow experience. Needless to say, the 'experts' in question weren't named.
Rockstar has no intention of pulling its punches, however. According to Rockstar VP Dan Houser, "No one disagreed with [Rockstar president and Dan's brother] Sam [Houser]'s very clear edict that GTA has to be an M rating. It can't be softened to make it family-friendly--that's not the game we're making...[Nintendo] didn't want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren't interested in making a game we wouldn't normally make."
The mini-game will enable players to peddle in heroine, cocaine, weed, ecstasy, acid and downers. You can see SPOnG's original coverage here.
Drug-dealing, eh? Genius boundary-pushing, we say. But we are coked-up to the eyeballs all day, every day. Maaaan.
Sources: T3
The Sun
Edge via Gamespot
* Sic
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Comments
schnide 25 Sep 2008 09:54
1/5
Once again, I think this is too far and doesn't do anyone any favours.
Am I alone in that?
Am I alone in that?
SiPie 25 Sep 2008 10:17
2/5
I think it's everyone going crazy again. Rappers talk about drug dealing all the time and they've actually done it. A game talks about a fantasy situation in which drugs are dealt and it's blown out of proportion. Games are just a scapegoat for society's ills in the media mind. Parents and game buyers, however, happily seem to be taking no notice. Parents will still buy the game to keep their little brats quiet and then complain later when they hear expletives coming out of the TV saying "I think this game is inappropriate for my 9 year old girl. It's disgusting". Yes. And it also says EIGHTEEN on the front, eejit.
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TimSpong 25 Sep 2008 10:29
3/5
schnide wrote:
Once again, I think this is too far and doesn't do anyone any favours.
Nah, my only real issue with it is that it's a tired, tedious, predictable slice of schlock. It's sad that Rockstar - with all the creative talent it's got - can't come up with something more imaginative.
That said, of course, it might be the most original take on drug dealing since Hunter S Thompson or Grange Hill or Seth in the OC etc etc etc... and Zzzzz.
schnide 25 Sep 2008 12:16
4/5
Hello everyone, it's me again. Presumably this game is going to also show you the downside of what it is you're dealing? At least when you drive over a prostitute you can see the dead body rather than just profit from it financially as this will appear to do.
Is Chinatown Wars going to show you the vegetative teenage minds who've smoked too much skunk even though it's become socially acceptable now? Or the twenty-somethings who are in debt but still spend £60 a week on a gram of coke just as a little pick-me-up? Maybe you don't know people like that, but I do, and object to anything that makes doing such things more acceptable.
I'm going to keep saying this until someone listens - the games industry needs to be more responsible than this, and does no-one any favours.
Is Chinatown Wars going to show you the vegetative teenage minds who've smoked too much skunk even though it's become socially acceptable now? Or the twenty-somethings who are in debt but still spend £60 a week on a gram of coke just as a little pick-me-up? Maybe you don't know people like that, but I do, and object to anything that makes doing such things more acceptable.
I'm going to keep saying this until someone listens - the games industry needs to be more responsible than this, and does no-one any favours.
oliver 11 Mar 2009 19:03
5/5
hello