On Sunday I took a baseball bat to some lady and, after clubbing her unconscious, took all of her money. At the time I felt that she deserved it. She'd taken a ride in my cab and tried to leave without paying me. Apparently I wasn't quick enough in getting her to her destination, which, for the record, was a 'roach-infested diner under an overpass by the docks.
So, rather than let her get away with daylight robbery, I followed her out the cab and pummeled her with my trusty bat right there by the roadside. That's when I took her money. I also beat on some other guy who decided to try and stop me. After I'd put them both on the ground, I took his money too. Hey, he wants to join in, he's got to pay up. Once I had his stash, I hit him a couple more times, just to be sure.
I felt bad, but it's not like they were dead. Well, I don't think they were. What am I, a doctor? To be honest, I'm not a Taxi driver either. I'd stolen the taxi only a few minutes before, dragging the surprised cabbie out onto the street while he waited at a stoplight.
So, I took their money which, like I said, was rightfully mine, and left them the taxi in exchange. It was a wreck anyway, and I wanted a change of wheels in case the police were looking for me.
Yes, I'm playing Grand Theft Auto 3. Yes, it's horrid. No, the above is not the worst thing I've done since I've started playing but it was the most justifiable act of violence and robbery, which tells you a lot about what I've been up to.
Normally I wouldn't bother to discuss video games like this. It's just that, well, it seems like the sort of game that demands a degree of self-examination. I mean, while I was playing, I was doing the most horrible things to perfectly innocent bystanders. I ran people over. I clubbed them with a bat. I started fights for no good reason. I deliberately pushed people on the street, just to see if they would pick a fight with me. I stole cars. Lots of cars. Most of them I wrecked while racing around the streets of Portland, just for kicks. After I wrecked a car, I'd wait for someone to slow down near me and I'd steal his or her car too.
I stole pick-up trucks, sedans, station wagons, foreign sports cars, delivery trucks, mini-vans, and of course, taxi cabs. If it had wheels, I stole it, drove it and abandoned it when I got bored of it, or wanted a change, or just needed to do a job for one of the seedy crime lords I occasionally 'help-out.' I even stole an ambulance at one point. And I loved every minute. Lord help me, for the first twenty minutes of playing I couldn't stop laughing. I mean, I was so criminally dangerous I was making the mafia under boss I served look like Barney the dinosaur. I was a greater public health hazard than smallpox and I hadn't even pickup up a gun yet.
If you're not familiar with the game in question, it essentially drops you into a dirty, dangerous city somewhere in the US and lets you get on with it. The environment is very interactive, meaning that all sorts of stuff can be moved, altered, shot at, stolen or generally interfered with. Also, it's large, which means there's lots of places to go and things to see, and finally it's full of people, walking around, driving their cars, doing their jobs. Speaking of which, there are a number of local villains who will give you jobs, and when you succeed, they give you money, and more jobs. Currently I'm trying to bump off two members of a Hispanic gang who have been causing trouble. Seems only reasonable.
Without any moral framework and with the reassurance that mistakes ultimately carry no real consequences, the gloves are off. I was able to behave however I wanted, to make money doing whatever was necessary. Frightening, fun, and not for the fainthearted. Now, clearly there's no opportunity for me to get a bank-loan, open a pizza parlor and meet some nice girl at the church social, but by the same token, I didn't *have* to club some guy to a bloody pulp down by the docks when I stole his delivery truck. I didn't *have* to, but I did. Why? Because it was fun.
Here's the interesting question. It has been said (possibly by Aristotle, although I'm prepared to be corrected on that,) that man is never so authentically himself as when he's at play. We 'play,' it is argued, not to escape, but to find ourselves. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe I should shrug my shoulders and just remind myself that I would never do any of those things in real-life. As we get older we live lives increasingly trammeled within ever narrowing social expectations. Sometimes, it's nice to cut loose and pretend, just for a few minutes, to be something else.
My wife asked me, when I'd finished for the evening, if I'd had enough of being violent for the night. I said, yes, yes I had, thank you.
But here's the question. Am I being most authentically myself when I'm playing the game, or when I'm picking up butter at the supermarket? Hmm? Which? Don't you think I should know by now? Answers on a postcard, please.