Living The GTA V Life

This past week, I spent the majority of my free time playing the new Grand Theft Auto. If you’ve never heard of the game, it’s a series of video games that lets the player act out the roles of fictional gangsters throughout various points in history. The storyline of the game involves robbery, murder, extortion, drugs, racism, and prostitution. In other words, it has the same topic content as the nightly news and most action movies except instead of just watching and listening, you’re virtually enacting the scenarios. Some people have demonized the game as the downfall of all society and the cause behind all the random acts of violence in the world. I understand where those people are coming from. I disagree with them. I believe that violent video games are the product of a violent culture, not the cause of one. I agree that the media currently over glorifies violence and that overall it has more of a negative effect than a positive one. But personally, I don’t think playing video games has subverted my mind. Maybe there are some people who can’t handle playing video games. But for everyone else, Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most fun video games I have ever played, and I highly recommend it.

In its first three days on the market, the game produced over $1 Billion in sales (IGN). With so many people signing on to this trend, one must wonder what it is about the game that draws in players like moths to a flame. At first glance, the game is graphically beautiful. Many of the cars in the game bear an almost identical resemblance to those of modern car companies. The characters are depicted in great detail, as is the landscape. The map of the game is enormous and follows the principles of “free-roam,” meaning that the character can access any part of the map at any time and has the option to choose missions. Upon further inspection and game play, it becomes obvious that the developers took as much time with the storyline and functionality as they did with the aesthetics. In this game, the player has the option to switch between three characters who are simultaneously living within the fictional city of Los Santos. When you change characters, the computer takes over the other two. This is an innovative and exciting feature for a video game. In the previous Grand Theft Auto games as well as many other popular games, the player only has the option of being one main character.

Those are all awesome features of the game but I think the wide-scale cult following of the game is something more. It’s the limitlessness that the game offers to the players.  In the game, a player can drive up a mountain, ride a motorcycle off a ramp, parachute to the bottom of the mountain, rob a jewelry store, escape a high-speed chase, and then go home to do some yoga and spend some time with the family. The game allows players to surpass boundaries that he/she could never overcome in real life without risk of death, serious injury, or arrest. Every person is born with both light and darkness within his/her heart. For many people, I think this game is a cathartic release to explore their dark sides. This game makes it safe to break the rules without hurting oneself or anyone else. Some people say this game creates criminals but I believe it may do the opposite.  Criminals have existed long before the game. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some people with pent up anger or anxiety saw the game as a form of therapy. They may release their feelings virtually so that they don’t do so physically. Either way, I find the game to be cathartic. Even just speeding in cars, flying around in helicopters, and operating a submarine makes me feel free and relaxed.  It’s exciting to virtually transcend the boundaries of reality without consequence.

That’s not all. There are lessons to learn from the game as well. It’s not all primal rampage. At a few points in the game, you have the option to see a psychologist. I chose to do so and this opportunity provides you with an in-depth psychoanalytical analysis of the dysfunctional life and behavior of the main character. As you play through the story of the game, you also start to understand why these characters feel they must resort to crime. You begin to understand that just like anyone else, they are searching for meaning and understanding. They are searching for happiness. They walk dark paths, but they are not pointless undirected evil. On some level, all three of the main characters have a good guy complex. They truly believe that they are some sort of hero that is “doing the right thing”. They believe that they are doing the best they can. They believe they are doing what they have to do. Watching these characters in their struggles, I can find similarities within my own life. I can learn from their mistakes. I can admit to myself that at times, I have also justified a negative action by saying, “I had to do it,” telling myself that it’s the truth. But in reality, we always have multiple options, and we are always the ones who choose our paths.

One of the coolest features of this game is that you have multiple options of how to complete missions and even on what missions to complete. The game even has three different endings based on the player’s decisions. There are 69 storyline missions that you must complete in order to play through the “main story” of the game. However the game also has side-quest missions. In the game, the missions are referred to as strangers and freaks and random events. These are optional and can be completed either during the story, after it, or not at all. For me, the coolest part about these missions is that even though you don’t have to do them to complete the main story, some of them help you with it anyway. In one of the side-missions, you can run into a character from Grand Theft Auto IV who can accompany you on missions and help you complete them. Life works the same way. Along the way, you run into the option to go off on tangents. You don’t need to. You can complete the story without them. But sometimes they completely enhance the experience. And sometimes they seem like a waste of time. Personally, I like to take the chances on side-quests, because I always find a way to make them worth the time.

This weekend, I went off on a real life side-quest to see a few of my friends in Manhattan. On the train ride there, I ran into one of my friends from high school who I haven’t seen in a while. We had a chance to talk for a bit and exchange phone numbers. If this were the game, this would be the part where I just gained a new contact to follow up with that might help me on future missions. I understand that life is not a video game, but still, I’m not the type of person who believes in coincidences. I don’t believe in random encounters. I believe every person you meet has something to learn from you and something to teach you. When I got off the train, I went to get a hotdog. As I made my way to the subway, I ran into my Uncle Stu. Surprisingly, we didn’t have each others phone numbers so we exchanged them as well. Apparently he had rode in with  me on the same train. For someone who doesn’t believe in coincidence, it’s hard not to notice that I gained two phone numbers, two connections, in one day, from an interaction stemming from all three of us making a decision to hop on a train in the same direction to arrive at the same place. To me, that means something.

This week, let’s meditate on taking more of a “free-roam” approach to reality. Obviously we have to respect many more boundaries than we would in a video game. We still need to be civil and obey the law. But we can loosen up a little bit. We can explore the world. We can imagine that there is a map we want to uncover every inch of. We can switch up our character every once in a while. We can go on side-quests. We can analyze ourselves as characters. We can wonder how our decisions will branch off into multiple options for endings. We can connect with other characters that may make the story seem more complete. So whether you play video games or not, relax. Realize that life is an experience to be enjoyed. The world is meant to be explored. You’re supposed to meet new people and do new things. It makes the story better.

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