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Taking  the Parents Television Council up on an interview offer, Phil Villarreal of the Arizona Daily Star spoke with Dan Isett (left), PTC Director of Public Policy about Grand Theft Auto IV.

Along with a number of other watchdog groups, the PTC has been highly critical of GTA IV in recent days. Villarreal, however, reports that Isett’s knowledge of what is actually in the game is a bit lacking:

Isett: I’ve actually played ‘Grand Theft Auto IV,’ and it’s right in keeping with previous versions. The series continues to lower the bar and this is the first game that has an alcohol content warning. You get points for driving drunk in this game.

Villarreal: You know that’s not true, right? The game doesn’t have points.

Isett: If nothing else, it’s a rewarded activity. Necessary for advancement.

Villarreal: I don’t think so.

Isett: But there’s an alcohol content warning and a scene of drunk driving, correct?

Villarreal: Yes. Did you play that part?

Isett: No, no. I didn’t get that far…

Our hosting company had a server issue late yesterday which caused GamePolitics to be down for about three hours. We also lost a few reader comments when the server came back up.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

On the brighter side, we’ve been working on a complete overhaul of GP which is just about complete. We hope to unveil it next week, so watch this space…

Barack Obama may have dissed Grand Theft Auto IV a bit last week, but, on the streets of L.A. at least, the candidate and the controversial game have become one.

G4TV’s Attack of the Show producer Luke Wahl spotted some Barack Obama / GTA IV mashups around town:

The Daily Mail serves up a rather bizarre video game bash piece this morning. Journalist and English mum Rosie Millard (left) writes that the Nintendo DS, of all things, turned her family dysfunctional:

The ‘toy’ caused endless rows, sessions of screaming and increasingly regular parental punishments… What is constructive about playing football on a tiny screen, or washing a virtual dog, or watching a hideous pink pony trot around a pink palace decorated with shells?

…Our Nintendo had taken the guise of a small but toxic drug which, little by little, was poisoning my children…

I have first-hand evidence that using a Nintendo turns my delightful, curious and funny children into argumentative demons full of aggression, wholly uninterested in anything apart from playing, and then playing some more.

GP: Although it doesn’t necessarily read that way, we’re thinking Ms. Millard’s article may be a bit tongue-in-cheek. By the way, did she buy her kids a chipped DS? Call the piracy police!:

When the pale blue, £150 Nintendo finally arrived last November, fresh from Hong Kong (I had bought it on the net), crammed with a ‘bundle’ of 20 games including Brain Trainer, Fifa 08, and Nintendogs, my children hugged me tightly.

Via: MCVUK

It will be a long time until we again see the like of last week’s Grand Theft Auto IV media feeding frenzy. Perhaps it will take the release of GTA V.

The highly-anticipated launch was fraught with cultural and political significance which elevated the level of interest in GTA IV far beyond that of any previous video game. Last year’s Halo 3 launch may have held the pre-GTA IV sales record, but didn’t come close in terms of cultural impact.

Love it or hate it, every blogger, watchdog group, TV news station, special interest, politician, columnist and talking head seemed to have something to say about GTA IV. Here at GamePolitics we basically turned the entire week’s coverage over to tracking the GTA IV controversy. And why not? The hurly-burly surrounding Grand Theft Auto IV was on everyone’s mind.

Game scribe Kyle Orland has penned a nice summary piece on the media frenzy for GameSpot, tracking the major coverage received by the game:

As much as Grand Theft Auto IV is being hailed as a revolution in gaming, its release also seems to herald a revolution in mainstream coverage of gaming itself…

For all the moral scolds getting column inches, many mainstream outlets seem to be offering a genuine counterpoint this time around… Overall, the mainstream media seems to be at least considering the idea that this game is no more of a threat than comic books or rock and roll were back in their most controversial days…

Judging by the media coverage, it’s a Grand Theft Auto world, and the rest of us are just playing in it.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle… Morons!

N’Gai Croal, Brian Crecente, Stephen Totilo… Losers!

So sayeth Glenn Beck, anyway.

Beck exploited the popularity of the Grand Theft Auto IV phenomenon again this evening. It was Beck’s second GTA IV-themed segment in the last few days.

GamePolitics readers will recall that Beck allowed Jack Thompson to smear the ESRB and several major retailers last week without once advising his CNN Headline News audience that they were listening to a lawyer facing possible disbarrment.

Dr. Cheryl Olson, co-author of Grand Theft Childhood was Beck’s guest this time. She was quite reasonable, but Beck made faces during certain parts of her commentary.

The highlight of the segment came when Beck played the role of the martyr:

I will tell you that all these video gamers… they’re bloggers, as well as video gamers - they’re writing all kinds of stuff about me [that] I’m the enemy now of video gamers. I could care less about video games. Video game bloggers? They’re losers…

UPDATE: Mark Methenitis, an attorney who pens the excellent Law of the Game blog, has written an open letter to Glenn Beck regarding Jack Thompson’s appearance.

Here in the GamePolitics command bunker we’ve grown weary of this campaign season’s unending parade of online fighting games featuring presidential candidates.

And so too, apparently, has the Wonkette. While the Washington, D.C. gossip blog’s criticism applies in particular to the NY Posts’s 2008 Democratic Fight Night, the same commentary could be applied across board to the cheezy, online marriage of politics and martial arts.

Hey look, the New York Post has created an online video game where you can beat the shit out of Hillary Clinton! All you have to do is select a character and then click your mouse forever.

In the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune, columnist Katherine Kersten has a lengthy whine about Grand Theft Auto IV:

Games like GTA IV stimulate and glamorize our dark impulses. They create a taste for the psychological thrill that can come from dominating and degrading others. They encourage us to strip our fellow human beings of their dignity, and view them merely as objects of violence or sexual desire.

The hazards of violent games will only increase as new, more advanced technologies like the Wii system take hold… you can act out a game physically.

The average 32-year-old man who plays violent video games — and spends his free hours fantasizing about murdering passersby and roughing up strippers — is likely to be someone’s husband and father. What qualities of character will his wife find when she looks to him for love, steadiness and fidelity?

And when his young son looks to Dad as a role model — well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Via: GoneMicrosoft

Neil Conan, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation gave Jack Thompson the bum’s rush during a three-minute appearance that also featured G4TV’s Adam Sessler and a guy named Jim from BushLeague.TV.

Highlights of Thompson’s brief appearance include:

Conan: I understand that you think one of the characters in Grand Theft Auto IV is based on you

Thompson: Well, they go into a lawyer’s office and they kill him. I had my house vandalized, by the way, today by gamers. I get calls, death threats all the time by gamers… The real issue here is, though, that there is so much sex and so much graphic sex… I’m working with various law enforcement agencies,hopefully with the result that Take Two corporately and the chairman Strauss Zelnick will be indicted for that because this is way, way over the line…

Sessler: I hope you don’t mind if I step in there, Neil. Having played the game I have yet to discover the graphic sex Mr. Thompson is identifying…

Conan: John Thompson… Have you played the game?

Thompson: It just came out and I have a life… 

Conan: And which law enforcement agencies are you working with?

Thompson: I’m not gonna tell you.

(GP: this answer seemed to convince Conan to terminate the interview… it’s also a question that I have asked Thompson without receiving a satisfactory answer…)

Conan: Alright, well, thanks very much for speaking with us.

Thompson: (chuckle) I’m done?

Conan: You’re done.

Thompson: Oh, great. I’ll go play the game now.

Conan: Good luck… (click)

UPDATE: To listen to an mp3 of Thompson’s 3-minute segment, click here… Or, get the full 16 minutes from NPR’s website.

UPDATE 2: Thompson found a more sympathetic ear on Glenn Beck’s CNNHL program, which I just caught. Can someone YouTube that? Of course, that nonsense about the military desentizing recruits with video games has been debunked before, but now Beck is parroting it.

Thompson also (again) linked the Red Lake school shooting to GTA and Virginia Tech to Counter-strike.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, a longtime critic of violent video games, was quick to relate a recent London stabbing to Grand Theft Auto IV.

Will Vaz be as quick to retract his comments now that further investigation seems to negate such a link?

As initially reported by the Times, the incident occurred late Monday night as buyers queued up for the midnight launch of Rockstar’s controversial crime game. Initial news reports indicated that the attacker was in line for the game:

A hooded man queuing to buy the new Grand Theft Auto IV, the notoriously violent computer game, stabbed a passer-by in the head and neck. Up to 100 people witnessed the attack.

Vaz told the newspaper:

[Grand Theft Auto] is a violent and nasty video game and it doesn’t surprise me that some of those who play it behave in this way.

However, VNU reports that linkage of the stabbing incident to GTA IV may be a case of “media panic”:

“The victim had categorically not pre-ordered the game and GameStation is confident that he was not a GameStation customer; neither was he a part of the queue outside the Croydon store, a source told the Games Radar blog.

The source also said that the stabbing did not occur outside the store, but a quarter of a mile away outside East Croydon station.

Via: Kotaku

Okay, so it wasn’t the funniest bit we’ve ever seen on The Daily Show.

But host Jon Stewart and “Senior Virtual Correspondent” Aasif Madvi take a look at GTA IV in this video.

Via: Whip It Out

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) president Hal Halpin appeared on the CBS Evening News last night during tech reporter Daniel Sieberg’s segment on the Grand Theft Auto IV launch.

Hal spoke about how games are becoming as influential as movies in terms of entertainment.

And while it doesn’t appear on this video, did anyone notice the snotty aside which Katie Couric directed toward GTA IV?

As Sieberg wrapped up the GTA IV segment he said: “Of course, that’s assuming you’ll want to spend more time with characters… like these…” As Couric came back on camera she dropped an acid, “No thanks.”

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics reader Mark of Cain for YouTube’ing the video of Hal’s appearance!

Full Disclosure Dept: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics…

Tim Rutten, media critic for the Los Angeles Times, flays GTA IV - and its fans - in today’s column.

To be candid, Rutten’s comments sound rather generation gappish from here. Perhaps he should be called the LA Times “old media” critic:

One of the hallmarks of a healthy consumer society is that its older generation habitually despises and decries the entertainments of the young. The young, in turn, elevate their aesthetic rebellion to respectability over time…

There’s a new world of entertainment here… But what does it contain? In this case, [protagonist Niko Bellic] kills, maims, has sex, then kills and maims some more, while also stealing various forms of transportation…

Where earlier generations of youthful art crossed boundaries… they also affirmed something else, some alternative or countercultural value…

What “Grand Theft Auto IV” affirms is the pleasure of eschewing decency for obnoxious violence… One of the most interesting things about this game is that it’s the product of a global youth culture whose frame of reference has been shaped by mindless American action films, by post-apocalyptic Euro-American fantasy fiction and Japanese graphic novels…

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) president Hal Halpin will appear on the CBS Evening News to discuss the Grand Theft Auto IV launch.The program airs at 6:30 PM Eastern. More details to follow…

Full Disclosure Dept: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics…

Ben Fritz (left), who writes The Cut Scene blog for Variety, questions the journalistic ethics underlying exclusive game reviews.

At the center of Fritz’s concern is IGN’s recent perfect score for Grand Theft Auto IV. Fritz writes:

I’m not at all accusing IGN of being dishonest in this particular case… HOWEVER… what the hell is with the concept of an “exclusive review?” Is anyone else as troubled by this entire concept as I am?

…being the first outlet to review a highly anticipated new videogame is a big deal. It means a major boost in Web traffic or magazine sales. …But how can we trust a videogame review when the outlet running it has been given a major commercial favor — one that’s worth money — from the publisher of the game?

You never see a paper or TV station getting special access from a movie studio or TV network or book publisher to run an “exclusive review.” Imagine the L.A. Times or Roger Ebert touting their “exclusive review of ‘Iron Man.’” Absurd, right? So why do we tolerate it for a videogame?

Via: That Videogame Blog

UPDATE: IGN responds in an interview on Game Daily. Xbox Editor Hilary Goldstein said:

My problem with online journalism in general is that nobody does their due diligence. Nobody from Variety called us and said, “Hey, would you like to comment about this?” …A lot of people didn’t get the game early. So if Variety didn’t get the game early then you’re looking at somebody, I don’t know, who had a grudge on his shoulder because he didn’t even have the game yet and we’d already put out the review.

I just wish people would call. We had so many people writing comments about us and not a single person contacted us. Not Kotaku. Not Variety. Nobody called. They just all made assumptions. And of course we gave it a 10. But so did everyone else.

With Grand Theft Auto IV critics claiming that Rockstar’s controversial new release will corrupt America’s youth, Minusworld is having a bit of fun with a parody feature detailing a GTA IV activity and coloring book for kids.

Given the amount of misinformation bandied about concerning video games (e.g., virtual rape), we wonder whether this satire will eventually find its way into the various claims of how “depraved” GTA is:

They say GTA IV isn’t for kids, but there’s even a coloring book…

Today’s crucial Pennsylvania primary will surely be nothing like this over-the-top WWE video of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton facing one another in the wrestling ring…

UPDATE: Wired reports that game publisher THQ created the Clinton-Obama wrestling animations…

An MCV UK report on a recent episode of Am I Normal?, a TV show featuring Dr. Tanya Byron, has caused some concern among gamers.

During the program, Byron, author of the widely read, British government-commissioned report on the effects of video games and the Internet on children, looked at video game addiction. Byron made comments that appeared to liken video game addiction to dependence on street drugs:

It might seem ludicrous to compare a childish computer fantasy game with hard drug addiction. But addiction counsellors offering treatment to gamers argue that there are key similarities in the way that the consumer gets hooked into coming back for more…

[Staff at an addiction clinic] treat computer game addicts exactly as they treat cocaine addicts.

Spong did a little more digging on the controversy, and found that the show was taped last summer. That is, before Byron accepted Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s commission to undertake her video game review. A comparison the Byron Review to her comments on the program leads Spong to ask:

It might be us, but we do tend to see a change in attitude in the Review itself compared to the TV show. Could it be that Byron - like the industry - learnt something along the way?

GP: Maybe it’s me, but this one looks a bit overblown. If game addiction does exist - and that’s an enormous ”if,” since the American Medical Association hasn’t decided that it does - wouldn’t we expect that it would impact victims in much the same manner as more traditional depencies such as alcohol, gambling and drugs?

I mean, it’s not as if Dr. Byron advocated that violent games should be banned like heroin as this guy did…

Watchdog group Morality in Media marks the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre with a press release in which MiM president Robert Peters (left) blames violent media for Hseung Hui Cho’s murderous rampage.

Peters also refers to court rulings upholding the First Amendment as turning the Constitution into a “suicide pact.”

From the press release:

Undoubtedly, there are loopholes in our nation’s gun control laws that need plugging, but in remembering that the Virginia Tech killer used guns to slaughter fellow students, we should also remember that the killer grew up in a culture that glamorizes and even celebrates gun mayhem.

…the media [V-Tech anniversary coverage] should also be reporting on the irresponsible TV shows, films, rap lyrics and video games released in the past year that wallow in deadly gun violence and that are popular among children and young adults.

The media should also reconsider its blind adherence to modernistic Supreme Court decisions that have made it almost impossible to hold entertainment media companies responsible for harm caused by their reckless disregard for human life. Surely, this was not the intent of our nation’s founding fathers, which never meant for the Constitution to become a ’suicide pact.’