Post by Yeti on Nov 7, 2023 14:34:36 GMT -5
This is a really good and thought-provoking question, and I imagine it doesn't have a simple answer.
It's easy to imagine it's about the criminal violence, but according to articles like this one (click) and lots of player comments it's not the violence or the crime in general but the immersive open worlds that are a sandbox of seemingly unlimited possibilities. I also feel that these sorts of games allow people to be someone very different doing things they'd never conceive of doing in real life, kind of like dressing up for Halloween. All of us have a range of emotions, good and bad, but most of us won't murder someone just because we're furious with them. We have something inside that overrides that impulse. In GTA players can unleash bottled negative feelings, like a harmless means of venting. I think it's not dissimilar to horror movies or thrill rides. Nobody wants murdered by Jason Voorhees, but they can be scared watching him in a horror movie and that allows us to explore and deal with our own mortality without any actual threat to our lives.
