Grand Theft Auto IV: For most players, it’s just a game

Grand Theft Auto IV’s virtual city is a haven for prostitution, drug use and murder.

Nico Bellic, the game’s main character, is an Eastern European immigrant who adopts a life of crime after arriving in America. He steals cars, runs drugs and hires strippers. He kills civilians and police officers.

He is no role model.

Yet millions of law-abiding citizens will spend countless hours moving him through Liberty City, the game’s New Yorkesque landscape.

Many worry that video games like Grand Theft Auto IV corrupt young minds, numbing children and young adults to the realities of violence.

But others see violent video games as society’s newest scapegoat, following rock 'n’ roll and even the printing press in a distinguished line of former social ills.

“If you look back through history, you really see that these moral panics have been involved in every form of new media,” said Brian Keegan, a graduate student in Northwestern’s Media, Technology and Society program. Keegan studies power relationships and deviance in online multiplayer games.

“They’re [Grand Theft Auto players] not attracted to the game because it’s violent,” Keegan said. “They’re attracted because ... it affords players a unique kind of agency to engage in problem solving, and the fact that there’s violence involved in the process can be immaterial.”

Keegan also noted that some violence is accepted by the mainstream.

“The Passion of the Christ is an incredibly violent movie, but that [the violence] was somehow minimalized within our society,” Keegan said. “There was blood and it was very graphic, much the same way [as with] these games that are criticized. But that was kind of diminished or reduced because there was an idea of religion.”