A pair of New York State officials have raised the red flag over video game violence in a jointly-signed letter to Newsday.

Mindy A. Bockstein (left), head of the New York State Consumer Protection Board and Denise O'Donnell, commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, were prompted to take pen in hand following last week's Nassau County incident in which police linked Grand Theft Auto IV to a crime spree committed by a half-dozen teens.

In addition to expressing their concerns, Bockstein and O'Donnell took the opportunity to tout some parental resources available for game buyers in New York:

[The arrest] raises serious questions about whether violent video games desensitize our youth to violence, or glamorize violent behavior. It is essential that parents are aware of the content in the games their children play or want to play, so that they can make an informed decision on whether a particular game is appropriate...

 

With more than 5,000 game titles available, some of which contain graphic violence, sexual themes and adult content, parents must be proactive, cautious and vigilant in deciding which games their children should play.
 

GP: As GamePolitics revealed in December, it was O'Donnell's department that cobbled together a PowerPoint presentation which cited a notorious video game hoax site as a parental resource.

GamePolitics has been tracking the case of six teens arrested in Nassau County, New York last week following a bat and crowbar-wielding crime spree.

While the Nassau County P.D. said early on in their investigation that they had made a connection between the six defendants and Grand Theft Auto IV, the specifics of that linkage was never made clear.

GamePolitics has learned today that the information came from statements made to investigators by one of the suspects who told police that the group had been drinking beer and decided to act out as if they were playing GTA IV.

Although he would not name the particular defendant who made the statement, Detective Lieutenant Raymond Cote told GamePolitics:

It was rather shocking that these kids would mimic what they see in a fictional video game.

We inquired as to whether the GTA IV allegations would appear in any publicly-accessible court documents. Lt. Cote, however, said they would not. The Lieutenant did reveal that two of the defendants had prior arrests. One had been busted for a drug offense while another had a record for burglary and grand larceny (a crime known in some states, ironically enough, as... grand theft). 

Forever pushing the envelope, Rockstar's P.R. department has apparently shipped out a Grand Theft Auto IV bat to selected media types. The bat features a GTA IV logo smeared with faux blood.

It's apparently by way of kicking off their holiday season sales push. Glenn Derene of Popular Mechanics writes:

Because they couldn’t legally send us an Uzi thorough the mail, [Rockstar] sent us the 14th most deadly weapon in the blockbuster game’s new arsenal: a metal bat... It just arrived with a press release informing us “‘Tis the Season To Swing Big and Go GRAND,” promoting GTA IV as a perfect stocking-stuffer for the Christmas season.

 

But who needs the game when you’ve got the bat? In the spirit of giving, we can now give a GTA-style beat-down to random strangers on the street, just like our favorite Eastern European criminal thug, Niko Bellic. And when the cops catch us, we can say that we never would have done it were it not for the influence of violent video games. And for the first time, we’d be right!

It's kind of ironic when one considers the Nassau Six, a dirty half-dozen juvenile delinquents busted last week for going on what police claim is a GTA IV-inspired crime spree armed with a crowbar and a baseball bat. While the cops haven't said exactly why they're pointing the long arm of the law at Rockstar's controversial game, wouldn't the mainstream media go bonkers if it turned out that the bat used by the Nassau Six was this bat? 

Last week, GamePolitics was the first game-oriented site to report on a New Haven Advocate story detailing Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg's controversial remarks about Grand Theft Auto IV.

The newspaper reported that Sen. Slossberg, a Democrat, was concerned about a possible rape scene in the game and was considering introducing game-oriented legislation in the upcoming session.

The following day, however, Slossberg issued a statement to the effect that her comments were "misrepresented" by the Advocate. 

Despite the Senator's protestations, the paper is standing by its story. Following an inquiry by GamePolitics, we received the Advocate's statement a short time ago:

The Advocate defends its reporting on this story. Sen. Slossberg was clearly speaking about stricter video game labeling in her capacity as a lawmaker, rather than as a mother or a private citizen. Also, our story said nothing about the senator wanting to restrict video game content, only video game labeling.

 

While we are sympathetic to the senator's concerns, there is no privacy protection for public speech. It is misguided to assume a conversation between an influential state senator and a reporter, or reporters, occurring in a public place, is off-the-record. The Advocate is happy to talk on background, if it's requested. In this case, it was not.

GamePolitics reported on a pair of tempests involving Grand Theft Auto IV this week.

First came Wednesday's report on shoot-from-the-lip comments attributed to Connecticut State Sen. Gayle Slossberg (D), who apparently used the terms Grand Theft Auto IV, rape, legislation and sociopaths [as in GTA gamers are...] in a rant that she only thought was off-the-record.

Oops...

A day later, cops in Nassau County, New York busted six teenagers for a bat-swinging, crowbar-wielding rampage that one of them apparently said was inspired by Nico Bellic, protagonist of GTA IV.

The week's happenings - in particular their sizeable publicity potential - were not lost on GTA-hatin' attorney Jack Thompson, who has waded into both situations with press releases blazing.

First, Thompson dashed off a breathless paean to Sen. Slossberg:

I commend you for your concerns about the Grand Theft Auto games.  I have been on 60 Minutes about the killing of police officers by teens who train on the game to do so.  I have addressed NOW in New York about the targeting of women by the game.
 
I do not believe there is a "rape" in the game, unless it is in a mission that has yet been discovered (that is possible), but there is plenty in the game by way of forced sex, killing of women after sex, and murdering police officers that must be addressed.  I am, for better or worse, the leader of the effort against this game, and if you saw the New York Post yesterday, a gang of teens went on a crime spree on Long Island in acting out the game!  Please contact me asap, and I can help on this.
 

Miami Jack, please explain how there is no rape in the game, but there is "forced sex"?

The likely-to-be-disbarred barrister also weighed in on the Nassau Six, cc'ing GP on an exchange with someone at G4TV. Not surprisingly, the camera-cravin' Thompson hopes to grab some air time for his mug:

...G4TV, as usual, gets it wrong.  Why am I not suprised?  The headline on this story is ridiculous.  The "hoods" are not the ones blaming the game.  The cops are!  Note this from Detective Cote: "These teens have difficulty separating fact from fiction, fantasy from reality . . . It was quite alarming." 

 

...Thus, Cote has handed all of the defendants a "video game defense."  It will be used.  How do I know?  Wouldn't you like to know.
 
I think it is time for Jack Thompson to be back on G4TV, don't you all think.  There's so much disinformation on the channel and so little time to correct it all.  Somebody tell Kevin to get off his lazy butt and give me a call...  
 
 

On Wedneday GamePolitics reported on comments attributed to Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg (D) regarding an alleged rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV.

No such sequence exists, however.

PSXextreme now has Sen. Slossberg's response to the furor created by the earlier report, which appeared in the New Haven Advocate. Slossberg's statement reads:

The article in the New Haven Advocate misrepresented my off-the-record-comments during an informal conversation about parenting. I was in no way announcing a legislative proposal, announcing intent to introduce legislation or taking a public position on restricting the content of video games.

GP: It's unclear what Sen. Slossberg means when she says that the Advocate "misrepresented" her remarks. Her insistence that her comments were "off-the-record" would seem to indicate that she may have indeed made the remarks, but did not anticipate that they would be reported. We can't help but notice that the Senator has not issued a denial of what the Advocate reported.

GamePolitics has requested comment on the issue from the Advocate. We will report that when it is received.

Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg (D) is eager to do something about the rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV, she told the New Haven Advocate.

But she faces a major hurdle: There is no rape scene in the controversial game.

From the newspaper story:

[Sen. Slossberg] wants confirmation of the rumored rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV—but she can't reach that level of the game. The Milford state senator's never played GTA, but she fears it's corrupting the youth and thinks a law requiring better warning labels might be the fix. She told the Nose as much at a Capitol press conference last week...

 

Slossberg hints she'll... introduce legislation next session calling for clearer labeling of depraved video games like Grand Theft Auto...  Slossberg's a bit unsure of how the warning labels might read: "I mean what would it say? 'This game will make you a sociopath'?"

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has become the latest group to call out Grand Theft Auto IV over the game's edgy content.

As reported by The Telegraph, the NSPCC charges that the game trivializes pedophilia via an in-game spoof of an underage site.

While playing GTA IV, players can enter Internet cafes and access parody websites. One of these, www.littlelacysurprisepageant.com triggers a message from the Liberty City Police Department and automatically elevates theplayer's "wanted level" to five stars. The high wanted level triggers a massive police search for the player's character (see video). In real life the URL forwards to Rockstar Game's official GTA IV site.

The NSPCC's Zoe Hilton told The Telegraph:

It is disturbing that it is meant to be funny and that it is glamorising something that is actually really shocking and upsetting. I just think it is in very poor taste and they should withdraw it.

GP: While we commend the many good works of the NSPCC, this seems like a non-issue. The spoof website is part of GTA IV's parody of the online environment, which also includes such faux elements search engines, scams and dating services. Moreover, there's no underage content to be accessed and the high-level police alert triggered by visiting the site makes it an annoyance more than anything else.

Spiegel Online International speculates as to whether some of the attacks in Grand Theft Auto IV were inspired by al Qaeda tactics:

Islamist forums are abuzz with a new theory: The designers of the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, they say, were inspired by killing methods developed by al-Qaida. But did the idea for the car bombs and suicide attacks in the game really come from Osama bin Laden?

 

For user "Abd al-Wahhab," it is obvious. It isn't just military men all over the world who are studying the murderous methods employed by the terror group al-Qaida. Rather, designers, developers and graphic artists in the video game world, he argues, have realized that "al-Qaida is a killing school."

To support his premise, Abd al-Wahhab posts five YouTube videos. We've included one here, depicting a car bomb, at an airport, detonated by cell phone. Hmmmm.... Catch the rest of the videos with the Spiegel Online story.

Spiegel games writer Christian Stöcker, however, doesn't think much of the theory:

To say that al-Qaida influenced Grand Theft Auto IV is just as absurd as claiming that al-Qaida invented violence... No way. You can carry out a suicide attack in almost every video game that contains bombs and grenades, simply by not running away.

How huge is the cultural impact of the Grand Theft Auto IV launch? 

So huge that even a bastion of old-school literacy like The New Yorker paid heed to the GTA IV release with this cartoon from the May 19th issue.

Note to self: Give Stockton, California a wide berth. The townsfolk there have apparently turned violent, thanks to Grand Theft Auto IV.

At least, that's the impression given by a report in the Stockton Record. Running under the headline Grand Theft Auto IV Criticized by Stocktonians, the story cites interviews with just two people and gives the clear impression that GTA has adversely affected their lives.

Parent Greg Within told the paper:

My son Peter was never really aggressive, but once he got into video games, 'GTA' being one of them, he started to push, hit, talk back, and just become a different person.

A GTA player blamed his bad behavior on the game as well:

Mark Wellis, 19, said he was involved in an altercation a week after he purchased "Grand Theft Auto IV." At the time he noticed that he had become less sensitive to violence. Wellis doesn't completely blame the game for his violence, but it did affect him.

Given the widespread criticism of Grand Theft Auto IV following the game's April 29th release, reporter Gary Stern (left), who pens Blogging Religiously for news site LoHud.com, wonders why church groups haven't weighed in:

Religious groups, of course, protest just about anything... So it surprises me that there has been little—any?—religious outrage over Grand Theft Auto. Lot of groups have protested against the incredibly violent video game—police, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and prostitutes among them (the game allows interaction between prostitutes and clients and alludes to the rape of prostitutes).

 

To be clear, I’ve never played the game (or seen it). But based on what I’ve read about its contents, I’m simply surprised that the religion world hasn’t taken notice. Religious groups complain about a lot less. And GTA, you would think, would be a target that liberals and conservatives could agree upon.

PALGN reports that a comparison of the Australian and UK versions of Grand Theft Auto IV indicates that blood and animated sex scenes with prostitutes were removed from the game in order satisfy government censors. 

As GamePolitics has previously reported, the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification threatened to ban GTA IV unless certain cuts were made. PALGN credits a reader known only as "Mick" with chronicling the edits:

According to Mick, when players pick up a prostitute in the Australian version, there is no way to select a 'service' from the prostitute. The sexual intercourse sex animation has also been completely removed, so players will only see the car bounce from a locked rear-view. In the uncut version, after selecting a service from the prostitute, players can rotate the camera to see the prostitute's actions.

Also in the Australian version, no blood pools will appear beneath a dead person after shooting or stabbing them to death. There are blood splatters, but no blood pools. In the uncut version, blood will slowly ooze out from under a body...
 

Via: IT Wire

GamePolitics received an e-mail ealier this week with an unusual subject line:

Keep Grant Theft Auto IV Away From Kids - Donate Now

The solicitation was from watchdog group Common Sense Media, which awarded itself some of the credit for the video game industry's recent impressive gains in retail ratings enforcements:

When Common Sense Media was founded just five years ago, the latest data from the FTC suggested that kids could walk into a store and buy an M-rated game, like Grand Theft Auto, nearly 70% of the time. That figure was simply unacceptable.

 

Since then, we've worked closely with other advocates, parents, legislators, and retailers to end the sale of M-rated games to underage gamers. New data from the FTC shows that number has fallen to just 20%. We're proud to see this vast improvement, and with your help, we can bring that number to zero.

CSM also accused GTA IV of the now-standard litany of offenses:

Games like Grand Theft Auto IV promote murder, sexual exploitation, and violence towards women. Exposure to this type of violence, which is common in most M-rated games, at a young age has been shown to make children anti-social, numb to violence, and more aggressive.
 

Of course, what CSM's message is really about:

Donate today...
 

The picture at left, which suggests a pair of adolescents playing GTA IV, accompanied the e-mail.

Among the many criticisms leveled against the Grand Theft Auto series are complaints that it is misogynistic. This judgment typically stems from the oft-heard  "have sex with a hooker and then kill her to get your money back" complaint.

But a video review on lesbian site AfterEllen looks at GTA IV from the gay woman's perspective and finds it not so bad. Or, at least, an equal opportunity insult to both sexes since all of the guy characters portrayed in the game are lowlifes.

As one of the reviewers, Tracy, explained it to GamePolitics in an e-mail:

The review looks at the political satire in GTA IV and came as a shock to many readers since it didn't simply jump on the GTA = evil bandwagon. We run a lesbian video gaming site and received many emails and comments about how well-rounded our review was and how it made people rethink the GTA IV political debate.
 

Catch the video here.... (fast forward to 19:00 for the GTA IV review)

UPDATE: While the video appeared on AfterEllen, the reviewers call Lesbian Gamers their home base.

Texas A&M professor Christopher Ferguson pens an op-ed on the Grand Theft Auto IV controversy for the Eureka Reporter:

Violent video games do not cause violent behavior. There are no good data at all to suggest that they do.... as the consumption of violent video games in our society has skyrocketed, violent crimes, including those among youths, have plummeted... We can be sure that violent video games are not sparking a youth violence epidemic because there is no youth violence epidemic.

 

In my own research, I have found that family violence exposure as a child and the individual’s innate (probably genetic) personality are related to violent criminal behaviors, but that violent video game exposure is not...

 

we need to give the current generation of youths more credit. Today’s youths are healthier in most respects than any other group of youths since the 1960s. Today’s youths are less likely to engage in violent crime, use drugs or alcohol, get pregnant, commit suicide or drop out of school than were youths of previous generations.

Today is the deadline for shareholders of Grand Theft Auto IV publisher Take Two Interactive to accept Electronic Art's tender offer of $25.74.

So, will the deal get done?

Probably not - at least not today. Forbes speculates that EA will extend its deadline. Adding a little sweetener to the offer wouldn't hurt, either.

Oft-quoted Wedbush-Morgan analyst told Forbes that EA screwed up by making its initial offer too high:

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter believes Electronic Arts started by offering too much for the company. EA could have started its bidding at $22 a share, or $1.7 billion...

 

By publicly starting at $26, then a rich 52% premium, EA must have figured Take-Two would jump at the offer. Zelnick Media was, after all, brought on in 2007 to turn around the faltering Take-Two. Instead, Zelnick stonewalled. "EA didn't know how to react," says Pachter.

Meanwhile, analyst Colin Sebastian told the San Francisco Chronicle:

I think it's more than likely the deal gets hammered out. Maybe it happens at a slightly higher price, but it's good for shareholders.

A British government commission studying violence in urban areas heard a grieving mother blame violent video games and television programs for leading young people into ciminal behavior.

The panel is headed by Cherie Blair, wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. As reported by the Birmingham Post. Ann Oakes-Odger (left), whose son was stabbed to death during a robbery, said:

When advertising first became a medium on TV...subliminal shots... were banned... because it was considered to be interrupting the natural psyche of one's thinking. I believe video games and violent computer games have the same effect... We have a responsibility as adults to protect our children and the information that is input into them...We can't allow them to live in a twilight world of reality and non-reality...

The censorship of Grand Theft Auto IV will likely force the Australian government to add an R18 rating by year's end, according to The Australian.

GamePolitics readers will recall that some of GTA IV's sex scenes had to be cut in order to qualify for the current highest rating, MA15+. Without the edits, the game would have been banned by Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Greg Bondar, who heads the Game Developers Association of Australia told The Australian:

I think the release of GTAIV is a defining moment; it goes to show how far the games industry has come. The ratings system has not kept up.

The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia also supports adding a R18. IEA chief executive Ron Curry said:

Anecdotally, there was always a lot of hostility towards the classifications, but that is softening now as people are becoming more comfortable with games as just another form of media.

John Douglas, a former game industry worker who says he has played over 7,000 titles, has once again criticized violence in video games.

As reported by Christian news site OneNewsNow, Douglas has called upon Congress to create legislation regulating video games. From the report:

Douglas... contends that the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV shows that the video game industry will not regulate itself. The former police officer points out that the game has received an "M" (Mature) rating, which means that anyone under the age of 17 years should not play the game...

Douglas is especially critical of the ESRB, and advised parents not to trust its ratingss:

Currently the people rating these games for the ESRB don't even play these games. There's needs to be some kind of common-sense application that's put forth as to how these games are rated... Why isn't there a law to prevent it? Because every time the state passes a law that says children cannot play these games, it's [labeled as] a crime. The media coalition and the industry itself, they hire attorneys, they file an appeal, they find a judge, and they have it overthrown saying it's a violation of the First Amendment.

Douglas, who now runs Grand Design Productions, a "family friendly" animations studio, refers to violent games as "spiritual cyanide" in a video interview.