Sexist video games: Boys just being boys?

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The new Grand Theft Auto IV was released today and both professional gamers and amateurs alike are lining up to score their copies, which is being touted as the most explicit one to date. Will you be buying one for your household? If you live with a gamer (child or man-boy), chances are you're already feeling the pressure. But should you give in?

Even though I know tons of adults (and oddly, children) who play any one of the Grand Theft Auto video games on a regular basis, I never thought it was exactly appropriate for impressionable young minds. Something having to do with the language and um, "mature" themes like violence, sex, drugs, you know, stuff like that. But in a week where we just wrote about sexual images being banned in advertising, Rockstar Games easily passed the industry green light when they added more-explicit-than-ever-before simulated sex scenes and in this NSFW video from gaming news site IGN, gamers are encouraged to have sex with prostitutes and then um, murder them afterwards.

As I was writing this post, NPR aired a radio broadcast about the game's launch. Apparently, it took a group of extremely talented designers, writers and engineers four years to develop this new version.

And this is what they came up with?

In their defense, one of the creators claims that the game is a "satire of American consumerism." Okay, that sounds cool and all, but somehow, I don't think the majority of young gamers exactly get the joke (or know what the word "parody" even means). When asked what they have to say about the public outcries IV will inevitably attract, he compares the game's perception to that of another controversial art work: "When Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' was first performed, people were outraged."

Okay, buddy. Wow. But thanks for the history lesson.

I get that this is just a game and all, and every now and then, I'll line up for an adult serving of sex and violence, but did they really have to go there? I'm sure the box has a warning sticker on it and all, but just like all the GTAs that came before this one, kids will be totally be playing it. (In fact, one teen they interviewed in the NPR piece assured reporter Heather Chaplin that "every kid in my school will be playing this game.") And now that I think about it, as much as I hate to think of kids and teenagers having er, virtual sex with prostitutes and subsequently running over them, I'm not sure I love the idea of grown men playing that dirty either.

Sigh.

Anyone?