Jesus Fucking Christ.

This upsets me. Like really, this is NOT okay.

Well, since I have no desire to steal a car, kill a stripper, or punch an elderly person walking down the street, I stick with Guitar Hero III.

I played the original GTA and I still picked up and promptly killed hookers. Methinks the misogyny is not a new development, it's just gotten more elaborate to cater to the fan base. I mean really, how often is a GTA-addicted dude getting laid? Nothing gets the ladies like 'Check out the animated pussy on this one!'

Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhh enough already! I cannot take anymore, it is all too much for a Tuesday.
PS Im pretty sure whoever makes GTA is happy about all of this talk of their shitty game.

@KathrynwithaY loves Joan Collins: And seriously, this game keeps pushing the envelope with each new version. Disgusting.

Why can't we all just get along and play Wii tennis?

I just read this thread on Feministing and came back over to Jez. This is completely sick.

But it's not like I'll really go out and do this to a woman. I just like the FANTASY of doing it to a woman. That doesn't make me a bad person, right?

...right?

Unfortunately, I feel that there are probably plenty of women with hostility toward other women to comfortably sell this game.

My head is exploding with hate. Peace out.

This is why I wish I were more inclined to do work on a computer. I would design a game where women walked around, running men over with cars, sodomizing them with Wii controlers and the catrating them with a rusty fucking butter knife.

But it would just be a game so it would be okay. It's not something I dream about doing more than I dream of sex, I swear.

There are lots of video games where you have to kill people to win, however those people are usually "enemies" who are also trying to kill you. What the hell did the prostitute do to warrant being murdered?

So, what if there was a game where we could virtually kill some version of a white man, that is feminazibonerkiller babes killing white men. I don't want to offend the white men out there by getting specific but, at least how about Austrian dads who keep their daughters in the basement for 24 years?

Well, if GTA is going to keep enforcing the stereotype of what a woman is worth, why don't they invent a game in which women run around and shop, gossip, get drunk, and solicit themselves for sex at the end of the day... "Sex and the City" the videogame anyone?

I've been a GTA player for years. You've always been able to get lap dances and kill your hos.

I love GTA. I don't know why. I love having a five-star wanted level and having the cops chase me in by land, air and sea until I can get to the pay and spray.

And I don't always kill the hookers. I let them live. I have a business in San Andreas where I pick them up in my pimpmobile and drive them to their destinations. I'm a kind pimp.

And I pay the strippers well. I respect them.

Why don't you respect me?

I CANNOT WAIT TO OWN GTA 4!!!

Yes, I have the soul of a 13 year old boy.

I never could really get into GTA games. I think it's just (and pardon the pun) overkill, really.

Now I will play the hell outta some Mortal Kombat Armageddon and have no problem doing fatality moves where I pull your spine out and remove your beating heart - but that's equal opportunity. You're gettin a FATALITY whether you're Scorpion or Milena.

my BF really wants to buy this. i want nothing to do with it other than Uncle Karl being a DJ character.

Here's the crazy thing to me...young kids play this game. I just can't imagine a middle schooler playing a game where he picks up hookers and kills them? Actually, I can't imagine it being a good thing for anyone that young to pretend to do any of the things on this game.

Even better what does this mean for a generation of young men? They learn that it's ok to go to prostitutes and then kill them? You get extra points if you do!

i used to think these video games really didn't influence people much. my ex used to have GTA and play it all the time. i never played myself, but i would watch him play.

one day, walking home from work, i saw a post office truck with the keys in it. and seriously, my first thought was "damn! i should steal that shit and use it to ram into stuff!"

i clearly have a weak fragile mind.

@cinemaddict: you're right. I was having a conversation with a girl I work with the other day and she just says, "I hate women, I respect men much more!" And she was being very serious. I was dumbfounded. I should have pointed her to Jez.

@NewsBunny: And I wish the DOOM franchise would come out with a new game.

Also, I love Lara Croft! I've killed lots of people with Lara!

Games like this are gross and ick, but I tend to think they are kind of OK.

The people who wrote Freakonomics recently did a study on violent movies like "Saw" and "Hostel" looking for a violence/crime link and found that movies like this actually reduce crime because it keeps the people most likely to commit crime (i.e. young white males) off the streets in an alcohol free environment at the time when they would be most likely committing crimes (i.e. night).

I imagine this could be projected onto video games like this.

@meaghan2k: *castrating

i asked a male friend if he was going to get this game. and then i asked him about killing the prostitutes. he said that he wanted to save the prostitutes. now, i'm not going to get into how patriarchal his statement is, but my question is, are there characters that do "save" the prostitutes? i have no idea since i have never played this before.

@NewsBunny: Uh yeah, GTA 1 had this shit in it. I love feministing and wake up to it daily (even on Saturdays when there's no new postings), but this is hardly news. Misogyny in gaming is hardly news. The princess is in another castle.

@SedateMe: If kids are playing this game, then their parents need some reeducation. They're not rated "adult" for fun.

Nasty.
Got any good news?

You've always been able to kill the hookers in GTA. You can also kill everyone else. Old news. I hate how much fun I find this game. I know I should think it is evil, but OH. MY. GOD. SO. EFFING. FUN.

I played a little GTA back in the day. I never really enjoyed any of the missions. My S.O.P. was always to steal a couple of cars, drive around listening to the radio station, then find a prostitute and do it. Yup. Sadly enough that was all I could get into.

It's a lame game that I got tired of pretty quickly, but it'll keep surviving til the market dies off, and nothing that we or anyone else says is gonna change that right now.

ah, remember wolfenstein/doom? aliens, nazis, hitler...violent games yes, but better targets.
prostitutes? what kills me is that the nyt review was glowing, and today i was listening to someone on npr reviewing the game and the guy sounded like he was just full on blown away by how good the game was. no mention of the misogyny, etc. they just mention "violence" as possibly offensive, as if the violence was your typical mortal combat crazy stuff.
what if it was a video game where all the characters were white, and they were seeking out blacks to torture and kill, while wearing white sheets? just fantasy right? with great graphics and music?
vomit.

@calitexican: I'm sure there's some kind of Captain Save-A-Ho in there somewhere.

I know I will be burned at the stake for this, but I can't wait to play this. It's a video game; nothing more than a fun diversion and something to entertain me while stoned.

@meaghan2k: My vote for best comment of the day.

I should commission one of the computer engineering students to design that exact video game. God knows they spend the better part of their days on the computer designing stuff anyway...or playing video games.

My roommate is bringing home this game today. I'm really, REALLY tolerant of the fact that all the guys I live with ever do is play video games. But while I'm in the house, this game will be played about as often as I allow them to have sex with random prostitutes while I'm sitting on the couch next to them. i.e. NEVER

The point of this game is to create a world where players can be something they're not.

Everyone dreams of having power. This game provides it by allowing you to climb to the top of a criminal world, something that very little of us will be able to do.

What is more disturbing than our desire to be mob bosses is our apparent desire to harm women who are in less than desirable conditions, women who "deserve it." Hookers, prostitutions, drug addicts- they're not women, they're "bitches" who will get in your way on your rise to the top and are expendable items. There are more than enough hookers to rape and kill in this game.

There's no excuse for this game at all.

OK why would the programmar geniuses think this sick stuff up? Back in my teen years GTA was all about killing mobsters and criminals. I feel that was slightly better.

So now instead of having several windows open to encompass video games and porn, they only need one.

Now I see why every guy I know is itching for this game. Gross.

@lisas:

I agree. However, when as I remember from my youth, if my parents wouldn't allow me to do something, I would sneak over to the house where you could get away with shenanigans.

@meaghan2k: *prostitutes. What the fuck is wrong with me today? I think in my anger I forget how to type.

And you know, in San Andreas, a good chunk of the missions were led by a woman. Catalina killed lots of people and pretty much raped me a couple a times.

And I enjoyed it. I ENJOYED IT.

For some reason, the sexual explicitness doesn't bother me as much as the violence. My little brothers play a lot of video games, and while the lapdances are a little premature for teenagers (to say the least), it's the nonchalant murder that really bothers me. That's why I was really happy when they got Rock Band and didn't have to use trigger fingers for a while. The game makes killing sex-workers a subject for laughs and fodder, which I'm pretty sure can never lead to positive things.

@MaeHemm: Yes because there isn't enough violence against prostitutes...Oh wait...
[www.bbc.co.uk]

@hoodienerd: Mr. Lovett and I had a weekend marathon playing, and it was a little scary driving to work on Monday morning. You get so used to smashing into everything and driving the wrong way down roads that the thought does occur to do it in real life.

Oh, god, someone please call Joe Liberman! Our children are being virtually corrupted!!!

i think the more you villanize something like this, the more people want to play it. i played the original and the miami one (i think), and then i just wrote to explain why i would not be buying their next games.

but i love killing me some aliens.

Lieberman. Agh.

As a fairly avid video games, and owner of a couple GTA games, I can say that my playing the game has never induced any of the consequences suggested, and most of the people I know who are in the same boat as me are similarly well adjusted. I suspect that the people who would suffer the adverse consequences of gameplay - those people who are unable to draw the line between reality and what's on their TV screen - will come to suffer those consequences no matter what, through GTA or other means. GTA is NOT the only culprit in inducing destructive behaviors - instead of doing whatever to counteract what appears on someone's TV screen, perhaps it would be better to figure out why exactly some people can't draw that line, and respect it.

Sorry.

/soapbox.

So many of my high school students play games like this. Don't get me wrong, I'm a gamer, too, but there's a line that I have to draw when it comes to certain aspects of games. Personally, I can't handle GTA or GTA-style violence. I know I could work up to it, but I'd like to keep myself sensitive to that kind of violence.

ladies, no sense of humor?

everyone knows that prostitution, rape, and murder are hilarious.

it's not like they're real things that happen to real people.

Meh. It's rated M for a reason. If only parents would have a little backbone and not buy the crap for 10 year old Timmy just because he wants it. As an adult woman, I enjoyed playing GTA 3 and Vice City, but I never did much of the mysogynisic stuff - mainly had fun sniping passers-by from the top of a parking garage and shooting down police copters when they came by, then going real fast on the motorcycle. GTA San Andreas got too big and cumbersome, really turned me off, so I'm not hyped up for the latest installment. It's the whole drug-cartel-mafia mentality when it comes to women, which is pretty caveman-esque. A game is fiction, just like a movie is fiction, though you are a little more involved. If you can establish that line between reality and something someone made up, you should be good (which, again, is why folks under the M-for-Mature rating def shouldn't be playing the game).

I'm rambling. Sorry.

Sigh. This is making me long for the good old days when my friends and I would hang around in a basement, drink and play Driver. Or PaRappa the Rapper, which was HILARIOUS when you've had a few drinks.

No killing or lap dances in those games.

err... misogynistic. Brain is still waking up...

I think it's just a ploy to get people to buy it. What horny 13 year old boy is NOT going to want to see it after so much controversy is over it.

Were those sound clips really from the game or added? The sex noises were funny and really explicit. That's what bothered me more than the other things.

This shit should be illegal.

I'm also enjoying dressing CJ.

Right now, he's wearing boxer shorts with hearts all over them; cowboy boots; an eyepatch, and a pink mohawk.

I've also gotten CJ a boatload of tattoos. And he is BUFF.

@expatriatedjerseyan: Games are becoming more and more realistic every day. Not in the "raping sex workers and killing them" way, but visually, these games are getting creepier and creepier. So maybe one day we will have a problem helping others distinguish reality from a game.

It's not only video games that promote violent behavior, you're right. But we have to start somewhere, and this game is a great example of something that needs to be destroyed. Or at least toned down. I don't think it's appropriate at all for children (yes, children, because those age suggestions on boxes mean shit) to be playing a game where raping and killing women is part of it.

I feel like I've taken crazy pills. This kind of shit isn't cool. At all.

@meaghan2k: if you did that then the mens will cry out about how they're so powerless now that FEMINISM is out there making fools of all the men with our misandry. And that is SO NOT FAIR ladies.

@mrsnigeltufnel: And as others have pointed out, it's not just GTA 4 or the GTA franchise at all; it's a pervasive misogynistic mentality throughout the gaming world. It bothers me that there is still such a divide between "girl" games and "guy" games.

I remember playing the original GTA in '97 when its most notorious element was the ability to murder cops and steal their cars. True story: I did it once while a 14-year-old boy watched and he literally said, "Oh my God, OH OH OH OH!" Prositiutes aren't the only victims in the GTA games, the gamer has the equal oppurtunity to murder anything that moves in the game. Like a lot of entertainment such as music and movies, it's demented, amoral and it's money in the bank. The debate over whether or not violent games influence gamers' behavior is nearly three decades old and it'll never end as long as there are video games.

@Bellina130: It's called sexualized violence.

@Lulu82: Color me naive, but I can't believe this is allowed/legal. Disgusting.

Where can I sign a petition?

@expatriatedjerseyan: Sorry, but it's like a legalised snuff movie. I'm sure there are people out there who look at child porn without ever acting on their impulses, but that doesn't make it OK. Likewise, pretending to kill prostitutes is not OK.

The only reason I ever played GTA Vice City was to beat up hooker, shoot cops, steal cars, and drive on the beach listening to awesome 80s tunes.

Sometimes you just need to vent.