As Swiss Tony would put it, giving a name to a video game character is little like making love to a beautiful woman; if you get it right, the ride will be long and smooth and everyone will be happy: get it wrong and it just won’t sound right and you may not get another go!
Before GTA 5 and RDR2 took the world by storm, Rockstar Games stole Need for Speed’s thunder with the racing game Midnight Club 2.
According to a new report, Rockstar Games has asked writers on GTA 6 -- the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto series -- to be "less crude" toward transgender people and other minorities.
I wish we still lived in that world, but this is the way things are now. Some people are considered acceptable targets and others aren't, even though instead of that building tolerance all it really does is create resentment from anyone that's 'allowed' to be mocked by everyone else.
I honestly think it comes down to freedom of expression in its totality. That is to say, you should be able to make fun of someone and that person should be able to say they don't like it. You have to have both. You can't restrict either. This is real freedom. This is what is missing from the conversation. So in an ideal society, you should be able to make fun of trans people, or Muslims or white people AND trans people and Muslims and white people should be able to complain about it. If you want true equality you have to embrace it fully. Everything else is hypocrisy.
A quick example: remember when the game 'Hatred' came out and people were complaining about it? And then people were complaining that other people were offended. Well thats hypocrisy because if you have a society where people can speak hate, you HAVE to also be able to speak against hate. Otherwise you are just running around in circles.
Let the people make jokes about trans people and let people get offended. Period. Everyone must be free or no one is free.
Your comment is far from reality. No group is considered an acceptable target, and don't pretend that LGBT and minority groups were not traditionally treated poorly by the majority.
In a GTA game everything and everyone should be an acceptable target. They can do whatever they want, it will sell 100 million in a year :)
But they didn't say off limits. They literally said to not go as harsh and specified that they had used them for lazy and easy targets for jokes in the past. Read: they've been targeted while others were not and now they don't want them to just be the targets but to spread it out.
I really hate that people either have no reading comprehension or see any form of equality as oppression.
But you know off limits is what they meant- of course they meant that. They aren't going to say something like this and then 'only' mock them a little. That sort of joke is off the table now. I have no problem with that much, it's who they're going to go after instead that bothers me. Equality should be about evening the odds, not turning the tables.
Punching down is punching down
There are not enough trans people in the world. There are more of everyone else. It's a numbers game.
Also how do we know this is even true? Every time something seems even slightly woke the nerds of the Internet jump on it
***But you know off limits is what they meant- of course they meant that.***
Oh, so words don't matter? You can't just read what was said, you have to create your own meaning to them?
How can anyone have a conversation with you with this logic?
The anti-woke crowd have gone so far in the opposite direction that they can't see they're either part of the problem or creating new problems. Any one group of people being off-limits for jokes, sure, that would be an issue. But why would any reasonable person be upset by the jokes and targets just being more fairly distributed? It shouldn't be an issue unless these people just hate minorities and the trans community.
"The report doesn’t elaborate on why Rockstar Games has asked its writers to make this change or what type of material impact it has has on the game’s development." The writer of the article feels they've been targeted not Rockstar. Tell us about reading comprehension again.
***The writer of the article feels they've been targeted***
I can't with this.
What I am referencing are direct quotes from Rockstar provided by the author.
What you are referencing are the author's 'feelings' and not what Rockstar said.
Again, reading comprehension.
Edit: I'm loving this debate. People do not realize they are arguing against Rockstar dictating what content they want to make and calling it censorship. It's as if censorship means it's something you disagree with and not what it actually means. "But some of the writers dont like that." Yeah, so? They don't like a lot of things they have to write. Do people really think every writer wanted to leave all the worthwhile lore bits till the end of the second and third-act of Veilguard? Or make characters seem extremely one-dimensional? Nah, but that's what those people in charge of stuff get to do. Same way most developers don't want MTX, but they add that anyway. This is how jobs work. How the heck do people think we got multi-colored ME3 ending? Because the guy in charge of the story made that happen.
Nothing to do with comprehension. Knowing how the a certain community reacts, any kind of joke will set them off regardless if it's harsh or not. Imagine playing GTA of all games, and getting upset at the kind of content the game offers.
***Interesting point. So, can men become women? Words matter, right?***
There's a reason it's called the trans community and not just absorbed into men and women.
***Equality... then "target" the other types of people just as much as the ones "perceived" to be picked on. That'll make things equal as well.***
Literally what R* is saying. They are literally saying they've been discriminating with the target of their jokes and want to fix that.
You can never tell people what they meant, especially when they DID NOT SAY IT. That was the most teenage girl response ever: “They said what they wanted, but that’s not what they meant.” Something is seriously wrong with the guy who said this
Personally, i think some people are forgetting what kind of game GTA is and what kind of characters we're playing. They're, you know, criminals. And criminals break the law and say some awful, dumb, obscene -ist and -phobic shit, it's kind of their shtick. How often do you see criminals on the news or street quoting Shakespeare and making inspirational speeches like Martin Luther King Jr.?
The whole appeal, in my personal opinion, to many in GTA games is to act unhinged, cause chaos, steal, kill hundreds, blow stuff up, vent, do some weird and crazy stuff.
Asking to be "less crude" to certain groups of people [in a GTA game] is, the way i see it, a way to disaster. Let me quote one South Park miniseries, called «Cartoon Wars» (it's applied to TV show, but i'm sure you'll be able to make the connection):
«If we convince the network to pull this episode for the sake of Muslims, then the Catholics can demand a show they don't like get pulled. And then people with disabilities can demand another show get pulled. And so on and so on, until Family Guy is no more! It's exactly what happened to Laverne & Shirley.»
Next they'll stop joking about millionaires (they got feefees too, you know), police, army, education system, food industry, oil companies and so on and we'll get the most sterile boring game ever in the end (again, to get an idea, rewatch South Park, «Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo» episode, when they tried to make christmas play to be as non-offensive as possible and how everyone "loved" that in the end).
P. S.: And before someone will start saying stuff that only minorities were the butt of the joke in previous GTA games or something like that - GTA was making fun of everyone, no exceptions, always have. But looks like never will anymore.
Brother, read. Please. Stop being needlessly reactive.
That's not the argument... The argument is that they're going to do it LESS.
Grand Theft Auto is a product of the culture. It always was. Always.
GTA has never said anything or anyone is above critique and criticism. But culture and politics have always been at the heart of the humor. They've made jokes about race, gender and even disability which they've done well because they never leaned into it too heavily. It was always in context and funny because they don't beat you over the head with the writing. The conservatism and liberalism bashing? Hilarious and well done. The race and gender stuff? I'd say funny and well done too, but GTA frequently strives to make sure we're laughing with each other, not really at each other. Nothing malicious, more like a diverse group of people at a high school lunch table roasting each other. But people change and by extension, so does the culture.
There will be jokes that will be crude towards everyone. But this adjustment I'm sure is a reflection of the divisiveness that's come since GTAV. It's a VERY different world since the last GTA and like I said, GTA is a product of the culture.
If it upsets you that much, there is always the option to ignore or boycott the game.
I'm looking forward to it personally.
Knushwood Butt,
That's not up to me, and I'm not measuring. My guess is that Rockstar staff are revisiting the older games and see what feels out of place or cringe in today's society. They've always done a great job showing humor through dialogue without telling you the joke. Like Big Smoke in San Andreas: they played into him being fat when ordering at the drive thru, but he doesn't just go "I'm fat, so I'm gonna order a lot. Here goes: I'll have a number 9...."
I think they could make some pretty funny trans jokes too if it's done well and doesn't feel hostile. Like if they had a character based on JK Rowling and she hooked up with a character based on Buck Angel, there's a lot of potential there.
Really, I take it to mean they're going to approach it with a bit less over the top satire and balance it out with cheekiness. Their goal, I'm sure, is to be funny, not taking a strong political stance.
This is not to say they're just killing all of the over the top satire though. Would they really dig their heels in on these minority groups? They might, but probably not without making them look like lunatics at the same time. They might have an insanely racist white nationalist character who says overtly terrible shit... But then he's got kids who are grossly inbred and only one of them lived past the age of 18.
One of the main points of this series was that it made fun of everyone and no one was spared.
Where will the humour be.
Dood San Andreas is chuck full of stereotypical black/gang stuff. VICE is stereotypical Italian. To the point where it comes off as offensive at times.
No, it really didn't. GTAV was heavily racist towards Franklin in many respects (cabs, NPC responses in shops, etc.). None of that was reciprocated or 'went hard' like that towards others at all.
Add to this, the humor in GTAV is shit. It's made for people who still get off on dick jokes, rape references against just women, and more.
I'm all for good jokes against everyone, but GTAV definitely pounded home the racism and transgender stuff, let alone the misogyny. It got old and tired real freaking fast and is one of the reasons I never completed the game. It's infantile, at best. Sure, you can say it's just not 'my type of satire' but the fact I've seen better on Family Guy is saying a ton.
And if comedians are complaining because people don't find that stuff funny, perhaps start being funny again or live with a crowd that is slowly diminishing over time because people find it just as funny as the comedy about 'Take my wife, please' did for the boomers.
Have you even played GTA? The humour is always infantile even going back to GTA 3. That was the beauty of it. Life doesn't always need to be serious.
You take the "blind" in a blind playthough literally. Doesn't know what kind of game he's playing.
GTA is a satirical take on a wide variety of communities, cultures, and societal aspects.
It's taken jibes at:
1. Urban Subcultures: hipsters, gang culture, street racing & car modding
2. Mainstream American Culture: Hollywood & Celebrities, Consumerism, News Media, The American Dream
3.Political Groups and Ideologies: left and right wingers, government and law enforcement
4.Regional Stereotypes: California, New York, South&Mid West Cultures
5.Corporate and Tech Culture: Big Tech and Corporate Greed
6.Music and Entertainment: Reality TV and Pop Culture
7.Criminal Underworld: Organized Crime and Drug Culture
8.Global Stereotypes: British, Eastern Europeans and South American Cartels stereotypes.
There aren't getting rid of crude humor.
We know a few things based on the article.
1 there's crude humor
2 they are asking to be less crude towards some groups.
If the crude humor is tuned to 11 and they are asked to tune it down to am 8 there won't be a problem. I don't see the devs going soft here but it is entirely possible. It's also entirely possible that the writers were so overtuned on crude humor that it just wasn't funny.
I don't see an issue here, let's be honest most players aren't playing the story the are playing gta online or just causing mayhem. The story is a huge part of the initial appeal of the game but its not going to stop anyone from buying the game and having fun.
Reminds me of when Isaac Hayes quit SP because he got offended by a joke, but the whole show was offensive from the start.
I wonder if this new GTA will get slated like Saints Row did.
Hayes only got offended and left when they joked about his precious scientology not when South Park insulted blacks, jews, Mexicans, Canadians, Mormons, the French, poor people, women, gays, native Americans, Saharan Africans, fat people, Christians, Muslims, Asians, people with disabilities and everybody else.
Hayes was a hypocrite.
Does this really surprise anyone?
I just hope the writers tell them no. Comedy should NEVER be censored.
Either everything is off limits, or nobody is. This is stupid. And there's a reason there has been a ton of backlash by comedians lately.
How cruel has any Minorites? Rockstar is being clever to act like this will be the woe and not their lack of ambition.
In a time when Rockstar has forgotten everything else except GTA and RDR, it's about time the developer got back to some of its gems.
Wonder what happened to the leaked medieval game that they were working on ... hope that's still on going and gets released sometime after GTA VI
eh wat?
its been on "break" for 11 years now ha 5 came out literally 11 years ago
Seeing as how it's been like 12yrs between releases, i don't think taking even more time is a good decision for the series
So make one GTA every human generation instead of every other console generation?
Come on...
Rockstar didn't make the game...
Factual Evidence - Its not that I never heard the name Cole, there are so many names to choose from why use the same name as another in a major video game release?
Martin Lawrence was not born in the 1920s! And yes you do hear the name a lot now. But this game is set in the 1940s!
You missed the point of this article completly Well Done! Though you stepped neatly into my trap - Thanks!
OMG, they gave him an atrocious name Oh NO!! This is totally a game breaker... >_> right.... (sarcasm)
they should have called him master chief.
More importantly, Why do we care?