{"id":946,"date":"2008-05-06T12:55:03","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T16:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/05\/06\/a-matter-of-literacy\/"},"modified":"2008-05-06T12:55:03","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T16:55:03","slug":"a-matter-of-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/05\/06\/a-matter-of-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Matter of Literacy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This will probably be my only post about Grand Theft Auto IV<\/em>, a game which has been dubbed not only “great”, but “important” by a number of very savvy critics. Seth Schiesel’s review in the New York Times<\/a> epitomizes the form, being (as usual) well written enough to persuade my wife that GTA4 is something we should try and wide ranging enough to put the game in a convincing societal and design context.<\/p>\n

But, like I said, we haven’t tried it. Like many people, I suppose, I’ve never been attracted to the gang warfare\/criminal themes of the GTA series but there is a growing sense that I have missed what could be one of the most important game franchises in the history of the industry, both in terms of design creativity and cultural importance.<\/p>\n

I guess it comes down to gamer literacy. As a critic I play as many things as I can, but I’m a genre specialist so I’m more concerned with trying marginal Euro-RTSes than I am with, say, marginal Euro-FPSes. Games are expensive, but I try to use my media credentials for good instead of evil; I suppose I could get a lot more stuff for free, but I feel weird about getting games that I *know* I’m not going to review or preview or write about. Now that I write columns, though, I guess that attitude can change. Of course, to catch up and be literate I’d have an even larger backlog to get through than I already do.<\/p>\n

I’m a bit of a hypocrite here, too. I’ve often said that no one can meaningfully comment on film comedy unless they have seen Dr. Strangelove<\/em>, The Producers<\/em> and Some Like it Hot<\/em>. I have similar lists for other pastimes. <\/p>\n

If GTA4 is important because it does new things with narrative complexity then anyone who thinks about storytelling in gaming is required to play it. If GTA4 is important because of how it uses emergent gameplay, then anyone who thinks about games as more than rulesets is required to play it.<\/p>\n

This isn’t an issue of GTA4 being “canon<\/a>“; it’s too soon for that in any case. But as a professional, I am obligated to play it, right?<\/p>\n

So how do I get around my personal ethical issues with the game? I like ethical complexity and gray areas in games, and I’m not one of those blue stockings who thinks that the games are dangerous, but I will confess to being uneasy about car jacking, especially considering where I live – not exactly a low crime area. (I will nuke the French though, without much thought. Strange how our calculus works…). I also hate driving games, because driving is no fun in the real world either.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s easy to say “suck it up” and play, but this is a fifty or seventy hour enterprise we’re talking about. Every hour spent getting up to speed on the latest Important Game is an hour taken away from work that I know I can sell or from that book that I still have to finish.<\/p>\n

So I ask you, gentle readers. What are the limits of gaming literacy? Is this an entertainment division that is impossible to stay on top of?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will probably be my only post about Grand Theft Auto IV, a game which has been dubbed not only “great”, but “important” by a number of very savvy critics. Seth Schiesel’s review in the New York Times epitomizes the form, being (as usual) well written enough to persuade my wife that GTA4 is something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[69,78,21],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-fg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}