August 4th, 2008

GTA Sin City!?!

GTA, Sin City? If I recall it well, the city in the GTA franchise is called Liberty City, and not Sin City, but it seems people started to have problems with the fine line between reality and the virtual world. No matter how good is a game, no gamer with his mind in full working order will go out and do what he has done on the computer. Just think about Blood Rayne fans drinking other people's blood and hacking them to pieces, Carmageddon fans driving exactly as they shouldn't, going for the kill each time they see a pedestrian, or... GTA addicts robbing and killing people!

I know the above doesn't sound right at all, and it's not right, but it seems that it just happened, unfortunately. What happened? A robbery, followed by a murder, all ending up with GTA 4 being pulled back from Thailand. But... how did it go so far?

Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, Grand Theft Auto 4's Thailand distributor, said "We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games... We are also urging videogame arcades to pull the games from service."

The reason is that a looney 18-years old robbed and murdered a taxi driver, saying to the Police that "he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game." I tell you one thing - if he wouldn't have become obsessed with GTA 4, then it would have been something else. It's not the fault of the game, but of the parents who allowed an 18-year old to get to that age and not be able to live in the real world and distinguish between reality and fiction.

I have nothing else to say without using foul language, so I'll stop here. If you think that a computer game can really be accused of a crime, or not, please share your opinions with the rest of us - as long as you have an opinion, I am really curious to see what you have to say about this topic! GTA, Sin City? No way, for me, GTA remains Liberty City!