VIDEO GAME New 'Grand Theft Auto' generates controversy

Despite rave reviews, critics feel the series crosses the line.
LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY
Get some earplugs: "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" hit stores Tuesday, and the sound from cash registers ringing up copies of the video game may be deafening. Then again, so could the noise from the game's critics.
After all, that's been the story of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, which has sold 32 million copies worldwide since its 1998 debut and has generated its fair share of controversy. Expect the same from "GTA: San Andreas," which some analysts predict could eventually sell as many as 15 million copies now that it's been released for the Sony PlayStation 2. Such sales would generate the kind of revenue for its publisher, Manhattan-based Take-Two Interactive Software, achieved by the highest of Hollywood box-office grossers.
Numbers like those could make San Andreas the best-selling noncomputer game ever, but if that happens, it won't be without notice. Although, like its predecessors, the game will carry a "mature" rating -- meaning it's not recommended for anyone under 17 -- critics complain that the rating does little to deter kids from playing it and being exposed to its violent content.
Rest of series
It's an understatement to say the games have lived up to that rating. In "Grand Theft Auto III," released in 2001, and "GTA: Vice City (2002)," players control a main character who must survive by performing missions for various gangs and crime bosses around the city, usually having to injure, maim or kill others in the process.
While both received rave reviews for giving players the ability to freely roam in huge virtual environments, critics said that allowing players to carjack civilian vehicles or kill cops was over the line. "GTA: San Andreas," the fifth game in the series, allows players to navigate an entire state, including three fictional cities.
Where Vice City patterned itself on the 1980s TV show "Miami Vice" and the movie "Scarface," "GTA: San Andreas" takes place in the early '90s and focuses on the character Carl Johnson, who returns to his Los Angeles-like home city after his mother's murder but ends up fleeing when he's framed for killing someone.
In one respect, the series is comparable to "The Sopranos," in that "Grand Theft Auto" has proven mature-rated games can be successful while also spawning inferior imitators trying to capitalize on that success, said Greg Kasavin, executive editor of Gamespot.com, a San Francisco-based online magazine covering video games.
"It's often lost on people who only pay a passing glance at GTA games that the worlds of these games are loaded with style -- they're filled with clever, ironic humor, excellent music, memorable characters and all the sorts of things that make for a great entertainment experience for adult audiences," Kasavin said in an e-mail interview.
Games to avoid?
The two most recent games in the series, "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," both landed at or near the top of the "games to avoid" list warning parents of their violent content, according to the annual "Video Game Report Card" put out by the independent, nonpartisan National Institute on Media and the Family. But of the 345,000 users who have "wish lists" on the popular video game site IGN.com, "GTA: San Andreas" is the top game on those lists for each age group up to 35 and older, including those ages 13-17, according to the Web site's tracking data.
That's where the problem lies, says Liz Perle, editor in chief of the Web site of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that seeks to educate parents on entertainment media for kids.
Although the group doesn't advocate censorship and has no problem with the video game ratings system, it does object to companies buying ads for such games as "Grand Theft Auto" in magazines and other media in which the audience is primarily adolescent boys.
Violence
Celia Pearce, an instructor at the University of California, Irvine, who has researched video games, believes games in general have gotten a bad rap as being too violent.
"Movies, it's OK to be R-rated and be big hits, but for games, it's somehow wrong," said Pearce, associate director of the Game Culture and Technology Lab at UCI's California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology.
"I don't really get the double standard, and, to me, that's a real problem with how these things are approached."