Every spare moment since April 29th has been spent playing and thinking about GTA IV in anticipation of putting together a paper on the geography of Grand Theft Auto.
The latest instalment takes you back to Liberty City boasting an increased level of realism; so much so in fact that the design fanaticism involved in it's creation is already legendary.
Despite this apparent increase in credibility, these environments are not re-creations of real urban locales, but rather reixed, hybridized cities fashioned from popular culture's myths around American geography.
With GTA being one of the moist culturally significant video game franchises in history it begs some serious questions about whether or not the tools and philosophies we've developed for decoding real cities and space are applicable. Are there new ways of looking at 'half-real' spaces that will help us better understand the cultural impact of Liberty City and perhaps games more generally.
Still early days but I'm currently reading the following:
- Nate Garrelts' The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto (McFarland, 2006)
- Jesper Juul's Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (MIT Press, 2005)
- David J. Leonard's article Not a Hater, Just Keepin' It Real (Games and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1, (2006)
- Soraya Murray's High Art/Low Life: The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto (PAJ, Journal of Performance and Art, May 2005)
- Zimmerman and Salen's The Game Design Reader (MIT Press 2006)
- Le Gates and Stout's The City Reader (Routledge 2007)
- Henry Jenkins on Why Grand Theft Auto Should Be Taught in Schools?
- Kurt Squire's From Content to Context: Videogames as Designed Experience
Any other suggestions or recommendations would be welcome.
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Posted by: BradyDONA24 | July 02, 2011 at 01:53 AM