grand theft auto: digital city learning concepts of digital humanities while running from the

cops and shooting pedestrians

Warm welcome

My love for this violent, complex game started in 2002, when I bought my

first Playstation 2. In my childhood, I had my share of experience with video

games; Pokemon on my Nintendo Game Boy; NBA 2K on my Sega

Dreamcast; even old PC puzzle games like Myst, The Incredible Toon

Machine and Redneck Rampage.

Visually, I grew up privileged with the opportunity to play these games.

Experiencing the visual stimulation of flying a spaceship or exploring foreign

lands made me embrace the visual elements on the screen as I played

these games.

Back then, I had no concept of how designers put the levels together. I

simply played the game. Aside from the fascination with the visual

representation, what was equally stimulating for me was the constant

interactivity with the game. I wasn’t just looking at the inside of a lost, ancient

world; I was walking around IN that world. I was there. I was experiencing

the game from both a visual and tactical perspective, and it fascinated the

shit out of me.

grand theft auto III

Before I united with the Grand Theft Auto series, I had

never truly experienced a freedom-based video

game, also known in the gaming world as a

“Sandbox” game. Most of the games I played were

very linear and forced you to follow a storyline. Instead

of exploring these digital worlds under my own free

will, I had to follow the path that the level designers

intended to completely absorb the game play.

Then, I met Grand Theft Auto III. There were no

distinct boundaries; I could choose whether to follow

the storyline (and the linearity associated with it) or explore their tasteful

depiction of New York City, called Liberty City. The 3-Dimensional design of

the city, from skyscrapers to traffic to trees and pedestrians, made the city

feel alive. This was a huge breakthrough

for the gaming world.

This new found freedom to explore a large,

digital city was, of course, coupled with the

thematic violence found in the game. Sure,

it was fun to steal cars, run from the cops

and blow up pedestrians, but it wasn’t the

violence that sparked my interest the most.

It was how I was controlling my character

every step of the way. I wasn’t blowing up

innocent pixilated individuals, my character was; I was simply controlling his

actions. I could get away with digital murder.

Telling a story

Aside from the freedom to wreak havoc in Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto III

also utilized a key literary element to drive the full experience of playing the

game: storytelling. Once you got tired of committing random acts of

violence, you would travel to a distinct location to trigger “missions,” which

would require you to commit violence in a controlled, meaningful way. This

would progress the story, and offer meaning to the game.

What made this style of gaming refreshing for me, though, was that it let me

choose when I wanted to progress through the story and when I wanted to

dick around in the city.

The story was imbedded in completing the missions; as I played them, I

wasn’t just being told a story, I was living the story. The events of the

storyline were based on my successful completion of these tasks, and when

I finally completed the final mission, the experience was complete. Sure,

there were several animated cut-scenes that kept me connected to the

storyline, but it was as if I was acting in a movie, and playing the main

protagonist.

It was a very unique experience for me, and even inspired me to pursue

some acting in high school. I really enjoyed the feeling of being someone

else, especially when I could actively live through the story. Many games

before had that same feeling of interactivity, but never this immersive.

grand theft auto: vice city

That same year, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released. Like GTAIII, Vice

City offered the player an open-world, an engaging storyline and plenty of

vehicles to steal, but this new game added some significant elements to my

fascination of these digital worlds.

Vice City introduced a true main character to replace

the no-name mute you controlled through GTAIII. His

name was Tommy Vercetti, and he was a foul-

mouthed psychopath who was voiced by Ray Liotta

and rocked a teal Hawaiian shirt and 80’s Adidas. For

me, Tommy added to my already thorough

absorption in the story. Having a distinct main

character completed the story, and allowed me to

completely mask myself while committing horrific

acts of violence and cruelty to my digital enemies.

Though Tommy fit the role as the game’s main

protagonist, possibly the main character in the game

(and, arguably, in all GTA games) was the city. Vice

City, a Miami replica set in the far-off year of 1986, exposed me to a world I

could only dream of seeing first-hand. The story was set two years before I

was born, but I felt a momentous rush when I first experienced the neon

lights, palm trees, glistening water and vast beaches. That change in setting,

both in time and place, made this game a new experience for me after

spending so much time in the world of GTAIII.

As I grew out of adolescence and into the teenage world, I began to further

embrace this outlet of digital phenomena I experienced in Grand Theft Auto

III and Vice City. I started to play other sandbox games, in different worlds,

with different stories and different characters. Immersing myself in these

digital worlds made me want to delve deeper and deeper into their

existence.

Who made them? How were they created? What was the process? My

curiosity fueled my research, and I began to learn about the world of digital

writing and visual design. I like to think that had a lot to do with me

becoming a Professional Writer.

grand theft auto: san andreas

When GTA: San Andreas came out, I experienced two more unique add-

ons to my GTA arsenal. The first of which was a significantly larger map. San

Andreas was a fictional state region that included digital geographical

depictions of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, northern California

and the desert. This offered many more areas to explore, and many more

storylines to follow. It truly satisfied my taste for more digital world to explore.

It’s been five years since the games release, and I still haven’t explored the

whole map.

The other unique experience for me in this new episode of GTA was the

differences I experienced with the main protagonist, Carl Johnson. CJ, as he

is called in the game, is an African-American gangster from the streets of

Los Santos (Los Angeles), who is thrust back into the culture surrounding the

hood and his “homies.”

At first, I was a little skeptical about playing as CJ, since I had no real

connection with the initial character of CJ himself; but I realized that his race

or background didn’t matter at all. As with the previous two games, I simply

played the game. I could customize CJ in many ways (hair, tattoos, clothes,

cars, etc.), and when I played the game, I felt an interesting sense of identity,

even though I was playing through the game as CJ.

GTA: San Andreas helped me realize that I could create an identity in the

digital and online world. When I stole a car I liked, I would take it to a

garage, paint it a specific shade of blue (which in my mind, represented my

own personal symbolism in the game) and customize it to my liking. It was

as if I was living in the world of San Andreas, even though I was sitting in my

room with a PS2 controller in my hand.

grand theft auto Iv

After a four year wait, Grand Theft Auto was back on the Xbox 360, which I

specifically bought for its release. The 360 offered a more detailed visual

representation of a re-designed Liberty City, which made everything seem

even more realistic, especially with my High-Definition Samsung TV. When

GTAIV finally came around, I locked myself in my room and devoted my life

to the game.

What really set GTAIV apart from the previous stories, apart from creating

another definitive world separate from the others, was the complexity of the

storyline. The story centered on Balkan immigrant Niko Bellic, and

showcased his struggle in Liberty City,

which now included specific parodies of

New York landmarks like the Statue of

Happiness and the GetaLife Building.

Liberty City had a different vibe to it; like

it was the real New York City. It added to

the sense of realism I felt every time I

played the game.

A few months later, Rockstar released an additional episode to the story of

GTAIV called “The Lost and The Damned,” which focused on biker Johnny

Klebitz, a recurring character in GTAIV’s story, and his biker gang “The

Lost.”. The episode was available as “Downloadable Content,” and could be

purchased while using Xbox Live. This was one major focus for the world of

gaming, especially with the release of next-gen consoles like the Xbox 360

and the Playstation 3. There was a huge market for allowing gamers access

to each other nation-wide and world-wide, and GTA was involved. Though

I’ve never had Xbox Live myself, as it requires a high-speed connection, I’ve

played on the network plenty of times with friends. The idea that I could be

stealing cars in

the same digital

environment as a

gamer in Russia

truly fascinated

me.

What also

fascinated me,

with the release

of TLAD, was

how the story was

told from a

different

perspective. Sure, the story had a completely different focal point in this new

episode, but you clearly see how the different stories of happenings in

Liberty City intertwined to create a distinguished theme, something that ios

often overlooked with violent games like GTA. I could see through the

pixilated violence and mayhem, into the raw, emotional tale of a city

strikingly similar to New York City.

hyping it up

Because of the digital brilliance these

games brought upon me, I couldn’t

wait to see what the next episode in

the GTA line would bring. To make my

poor, teenage mind even more

anxious for the game’s release,

advertising and hype was everywhere

in the months leading up to the next

GTA.

Commercials filled the airwaves with

carefully-constructed game trailers,

hinting at the new features included in

the game. These digital trailers would

serve the same purpose for the game

as Hollywood movie trailers would for a

movie: get people to buy the game.

On magazine covers, billboards and

web pages, millions of dollars are spent promoting the game, which helps

make Grand Theft Auto one of the most successful game franchises in the

world. However, Rockstar Games, developer of the GTA series, utilizes the

internet for the bulk of their promotional needs. By using their own web

space to host content about the game, they not only feed the public’s

curiosity surrounding the game itself, but also gain a significant audience to

fill visit their sites. This whole process fascinated me, and really helped me

realize how the online world can be so vast and mainstream.

This large, cult-like following spends a good

amount of time on message boards like

www.gtaforums.com and

www.gtagaming.com. Here, people who

share my passion for Grand Theft Auto can

discuss essentially every aspect of the culture.

The extent to which these users communicate

about missions, secrets, vehicles, characters

and upcoming games is thoroughly endless.

It’s as if they have more interest in the digital

worlds of Grand Theft Auto than in the actual

real world; the weird thing is: I completely

understand.

Listen while you steal

While you’re driving around in the worlds of GTA, odds are you’ll be listening

to one of the many songs playing on one of the

many radio stations playing in one of the many

stolen vehicles. Rockstar helps drill these (mostly)

quality songs into our minds as we play the game,

which help nullify the sometimes long trips around

the city.

Each radio station has a distinctive musical

theme, such as pop, hip-hop or rock. The game

developers pay to use the songs in the game, and the player gets to listen to

them as they nonchalantly run over pedestrians in a stolen Hummer (or

Patriot, as they call it in the games). For Vice City and San Andreas, all the

music comes from that particular time period, to continually add to the

atmosphere.

The use of music in GTA introduced me to new

artists and styles of music that I may not have

heard without the game. Over the years, I credit

Grand Theft Auto with giving me that unique

access to new genres of music, and fueling my

desire to build my musical library with mp3’s from

the game’s soundtrack.

virtual reality

As far as understanding the digital humanities, I would think that an entire

world creating using concepts of visual design, artificial intelligence and

interactive environments in order to create the illusion of a digital world

would be a great place to learn. Sure, the gratuitous violence and high-

speed chases are adrenaline-filled and satisfying, but the real stimulation,

for me, comes from the world itself. In each of these games, the world was

created using computers and digital design.

In establishing a digital identity, I think my earliest experience came with

acting as a character in the world of Grand Theft Auto. It was not I who was

beating hookers and blowing up helicopters, it was the character in the

game’s story. Perhaps I was not creating an identity in the literal sense of the

word, but I was establishing myself in an environment that was completely

digitized, in the story and in free roam.

Either that or I’m simply trying to justify the many, many hours I’ve spent

racing around in a blue and white Ruiner with a three-star wanted level and

LCPD cruisers hot on my tail. Well, at least I was doing it digitally.