Warren Spector critizes Rockstar with GTA Series

[mckmas8808]

Grand Theft Auto revolutionized gaming by creating a world where gamers can roam and explore at will - a breakthrough in interactivity in the industry. GTA's brand of urban violence has spawned a legion of imitators, as well as sharp criticism from groups ranging from politicians to parents.

"I'm really angry at the Rockstar guys," Spector said in an interview Wednesday at the Montreal International Game Summit. "Not like I'm going to go beat them up and yell at them, but they frustrate me because Grand Theft Auto III, in particular, was an amazing advance in game design. It was a stunning accomplishment as a game design. And it was wrapped in a context that completely for me undid all the good they did on the design side.

"It's like I want to tell my mother 'This is what games can be.' But I can't because they don't get past the beating people up with a baseball bat, stealing cars and crashing them, and the foul language and stuff.

"And I don't think it is necessary. At this point, GTA is the ultimate urban thuggery simulation, and you can't take a step back from that. But I sure wish they would apply the same level of design genius to something we really could show enriches the culture instead of debases it."


The Grand Theft Auto franchise is just one of several titles that has come under fire.

"We are dead square in the cultural crosshairs right now," Spector said. "The kids, the teens, the 20-somethings, they love us. And what that means is the parents and politicians don't."

Part of that scrutiny has comes from the very success of the video game industry, Spector argues. Gaming has become part of the mainstream.

"The more kids and young adults start turning to games to pass the time, to educate themselves and entertain themselves, the more the parents and the cultural gatekeepers will pay attention. And as we're seeing, they're feeling threatened. And that's not something I think we can afford to ignore.

"There's a whole generation of folks out there who do not get games. They grew up without computers. They grew up bugging their parents not by playing Doom but by wearing their hair long and playing rock 'n' roll loud. They don't understand why their son is barricading himself in his room killing demons all day. And they don't understand why their daughter, instead of playing with Barbies which is something they understand, is instead raising families of little virtual electronic people.

"They don't get it. And people blame and fear what they don't understand."

Plus advances in technology have made the gaming experience more real.

"Escaping from a 16-colour virtual world populated by stick figures is one thing. Killing a cop who looks like a cop . . . or being a virtual boxer and watching the blood fly in slow motion. Is it any wonder non-gaming adults in positions of power fear us and our influence?"

"This is not just something we can say 'Ah well, screw them. They're all going to die some day,' " he added to laughter.

But Spector said the matter may take care of itself in due time.

"The problem is there is a really fine line between waiting for a problem to go away, because you know it inevitably will, and just sticking your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist.

To that end, Spector says the industry has to create more content besides "mindless pathetic killfests."

"I do think that a lot of the games we make lead to a coarsening of our culture. And I think that inevitably leads to government and judicial intervention. And that means eventual cultural irrelevance."

He argues for more diverse gaming challenges, showing players the consequences of their action and helping them explore a broader range of emotions.

"Because right now pretty much all we offer is a cheap adrenalin rush."

Great, great article. I love his game design, but also think that his look on the industry is quite weird. I thought one of the biggest games of the summer was Nintendogs? That didn't have blood, guns, and curse words in it.

Discuss

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[Jabjabs]

Personally I would prefer the world of GTA over System shock and Dues Ex. They may be flights of fancy but not all games have to be fantastical. It's just his prefrence though as he is more in touch with the classical/retro side of gaming.

 

[Hardknock]

I agree with everything he said.

 

[Bobbler]

While he has solid points, I think if GTA was in any other form or non existant at all it would be a rather large loss. GTA3 was quite an entertaining game for what it was -- not every game has to be for all ages. Additionally, what stops another company from employing similar game design without resorting to the violence -- what stops Warren himself from doing it?

I am not sure I understand why he hates GTA so much -- there isn't anything patently wrong with games like GTA IF there is also a suitable number of games that show the other end of the spectrum of gaming (non violent -- be it a sims type game or a love story). The problem I have with the way he talks there is it seems like he doesn't think GTA3 should have been like it was at all, instead of thinking there should have been a GTA3 and then another game to counteract it (grand world, interactive, etc, but non violent or whatever). I can't agree with him if he wants to limit the genres and stories in any sort of way -- I will agree with him if all he wants is more games that we could show our parents that doesn't come at the expense of games like GTA3.

Sorry if that was a bit hard to read, I am having trouble putting it into words.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I really dont agree with him. GTA has allways been a huge killfest and he expects it to change as soon as it went 3d? He should create his own engine and apply his own ideas to what thinkks should be set, but he tried that already no?

 

[Blade]

I don't think he's necessarily bothered by GTA3 as much as he is Rockstar for putting pretty much all of their modern games in a violent context.

Or should I say, ultra-violent.

Spector himself has traditionally crafted adult games, but nothing quite on the scale of GTA.

I think it's true, honestly. I mean, I like GTA1 through SA as much as anybody, but let's move on. Make a real departure before creating another GTA sequel. Manhunt and The Warriors and State of Emergency and all of your other gory, violent crap doesn't count.

 

[Hardknock]

I really dont agree with him. GTA has allways been a huge killfest and he expects it to change as soon as it went 3d? He should create his own engine and apply his own ideas to what thinkks should be set, but he tried that already no?

I don't think he necessarily wants to change GTA. He just wants Rockstar to apply the same open-ended gameplay concepts to a game with a more family-safe theme.

 

[PARANOiA]

I agree with everything he said.

I agree with everything Hardknock said.

 

[mckmas8808]

I will agree with him if all he wants is more games that we could show our parents that doesn't come at the expense of games like GTA3.

For the record I agree with most of the stuff that he said. But Bobbler I can't even agree with him with what you said in your quote. You know why? Because we already have many many games that kids can show their parents that doesn't come at the expense of GTA3. First of all I have to say is Nintendo. If I had a 8 year old kid and I didn't want him or her to play games like GTA3, then I would buy them a Nintendo Gamecube or DS. Both of those sysems can keep you entertained for hundreds of hours without playing "M" rated games.

 

[mckmas8808]

I don't think he's necessarily bothered by GTA3 as much as he is Rockstar for putting pretty much all of their modern games in a violent context.

Or should I say, ultra-violent.

Spector himself has traditionally crafted adult games, but nothing quite on the scale of GTA.

I think it's true, honestly. I mean, I like GTA1 through SA as much as anybody, but let's move on. Make a real departure before creating another GTA sequel. Manhunt and The Warriors and State of Emergency and all of your other gory, violent crap doesn't count.

So movie companies like lets say LGF need to stop making movies like Saw II? They like the hard dead on super gory violent movies, just like R* loves to make their games.

 

[Inane_Dork]

I agree with a lot of Spector's points. Gamers on forums like to thumb their e-noses at lots of things, but that only serves to antagonize and perpetuate errant stereotypes. If parents are a little scared about how much time kids spend playing video games, then it's in our best interest to educate them. Sure, it's not our responsibility, but welcome to Earth. That's how it is here.

And I completely sympathize with his comment about GTA3 in specific. I would love to own the game and show it off as what games can do nowadays. But I can't because the veneer is WAY too offensive and eye catching to most people. I'm not saying we should not have GTA3. Rather, I'm asking where is the GTA3 aimed at a people group other than 14 year old boys.

 

[Hardknock]

You guys are missing the point, our industry is becoming really one-sided. If your game isn't overly violent then you don't get approved with a huge budget for the game, which cuts the quality and cuts on the exposure(advertising).

Kameo(one of the very few big-budget family adventure games that we've seen recently is an exception), which makes me appreciate it even more. Could you imagine the type of game Rockstar could make if they were to put the same effort and money into a non overtly violent game as they do with GTA?

In today's world if you don't like violent games you are really getting the short end of the stick because not as much effort(as a whole) goes into these games anymore. Which is a stark contrast to the 16bit and 32bit days. Although Nintendo is still holding it down, why can't other companies branch out and put in the same amount of time and money that they put into their violent games?

 

[fearsomepirate]

Well I think his point that there's a preponderance of overly violent games, and that most innovation is geared toward killing people better, is well made. I also don't think games have to be either absurdly violent or "family-friendly." Your game can be "family-friendly" and still not be culturally enriching. How many games make any kind of contribution beyond raw entertainment? I think a good example of a game that could be considered "culturally enriching" is Shadow of the Colossus, not Nintendogs or Tetris. The game could have been just about killing a bunch of giant beasts and nothing more, but they managed to put this whole dimension in it that makes you think about your actions in a moral context. Not many games manage to make the player thing "now why am I killing this thing?" or even feel regret at sending a mass of polygons and pixels crashing to the ground. I think that games largely tell stories through violence just due to the concept of a game as something you "win," meaning there's something you have to "defeat." Whenever the concept of a game becomes concrete enough (as opposed to abstract puzzle games and board games) to have a realized story, it's almost always a violent game of some sort (only exceptions I can think of offhand are sims). I think you have to take that as a given unless you're really going to break the concept of "game." The question then becomes one of what you're going to do with the medium. What kind of feelings do you want to evoke? What do you want to make people think about as they go about their tasks in the game? What story are you going to tell through those actions, and what's going to be the point?

Maybe it's a losing game. I think it's probably a lot harder to do that with a video game than you'd think. It's way to easy to devolve into mowing down waves of identical baddies.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I don't think he necessarily wants to change GTA. He just wants Rockstar to apply the same open-ended gameplay concepts to a game with a more family-safe theme.

so like a gigantic 'the sims' game? ill pass.
if gta wasnt a violent game, what would he like you to do? i think he should of been a bit more specific what kind of concepts he would of changed..

but i do think other companies are going the way of huge open ended cities withouth much loading thats very "explorable" americas wasteland for example which is a different genre from gta. and i do beleive unreal engine 3 can create some pretty large open areas, but im not sure about as far as the extent to san andreas's size.

So movie companies like lets say LGF need to stop making movies like Saw II? They like the hard dead on super gory violent movies, just like R* loves to make their games.

agreed. its like someone not liking mario because its too kiddy and thinks it should be turned into a violent fighting game. rockstar is rockstar. let them create the games they create, its been going right for them so far, i enjoy their games a lot; no matter how mature/violent some think they are.

 

[PARANOiA]

so like a gigantic 'the sims' game? ill pass.
if gta wasnt a violent game, what would he like you to do? i think he should of been a bit more specific what kind of concepts he would of changed...

It's that kind of attitude that stifles innovation in this industry.

 

[Platon]

I really don't agree with him on the point of GTAIII bringing in this open ended 3D world that you could explore at will for the first time, I mean didn't elder scrolls come well before that? And I am sure there are other games before that. Wasn't the new thing in GTAIII all about being the bad, ultra-violent guy?

And yes most of the games now a days are violent, but most video games have been violent, even mario is about "killing" stuff, but now that the graphics have advanced so much the violence has become more believable, and also since we have relistic graphics developers are like "look how cool our gore looks in the game". But there might come a change when gamers will want something more with their gameing rather than just killing better...

 

[mckmas8808]

It's that kind of attitude that stifles innovation in this industry.

Actually it isn't. I just you didn't know that the biggest game of the summer was Nintendogs. I know any kid can show that to momma. And tell me that this game didn't get a lot of exposure and hype.

 

[wazoo]

I agree with him.

I've never bought (I tried the game anyway) GTA because the setup was too offensive for me. I know I miss a great gameplay experience, but I do not want to play at the expense of doing things I would refuse to do from a moral point of view.

I have no problems with violents games usually because you are the good guy.

 

[one]

Change the title 'Grand Theft Auto' into another, then it won't sell.

 

[Gubbi]

Another point that is normally missed by the thought police: You don't have to beat up every single pedestrian in the game with a baseball bat, in fact, it's kind of counter-productive.

Cheers
Gubbi