To begin, above are two 16th century paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The first painting is entitled Netherlandish Proverbs and the second The Triumph of Death.

Essentially, I think that Grand Theft Auto is similar to these works. To begin, I disagree with some of the conclusions that Bogost draws concerning GTA. Bogost defends GTA in that it “offers a convincing and meaningful world in a technically bereft environment.” Bogost explains that as the player makes choices, he or she can alter how the game is played. Instead of condemning the game for its narrative, Bogost looks past its brutality at the game’s structure. However, to Bogost, the game presents a core problem: “how to understand and refine each unit operation of our possible actions so we can interrogate and improve the system of human experience.” I do not agree that the game’s narrative can be overlooked nor should it. I think the narrative is as essential to the game’s success as the technical components.  GTA does not present a core problem.

To be perfectly honest, when I first played the game I could not stop laughing. Somehow shooting random pedestrians, running from the cops, clumsily jumping off of things and stealing cars was totally hilarious. There is no way that I would have same reaction if, say, I was shooting some kind of creature and jumping off of rocks while running from the wizards. Playing GTA, I was acting out human folly at its best. The game takes society’s worst offenses—murder, theft, lawlessness—and packages them into a single game where the player runs about repeatedly offending.

And now to connect to the paintings. Briefly, both works satirize 16th century society and are commonly read by critics as worlds turned upside-down. The paintings are both detailed and realistic while depicting fictitious scenes. The first, can be read as depicting human flaws or, more accurately, human folly. According to the Merrian-Webster online dictionary folly is defined as:

1 : lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight
2 : a criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct
3 : a foolish act or idea
4 : an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking

The definitions of folly imply a certain amount of humor. I am not going to go into what makes something funny, but foolishness, excessiveness, a lack of sense can all make something funny. Anyway, the painting is serious in that it aptly criticizes social ills but it is also funny. I think that the same holds true concerning GTA. GTA is a modern display of human folly. And as for the second painting, the world is turned upside down and is in chaos and havoc. GTA is the same.

I realize that the interaction between a player and a video game is different than the one between a viewer and a painting and I am not sure exactly how far I’d take the comparison. However, parallels can be drawn between the two and the paintings can help GTA to be read differently.

Anyway, a Columbia University psychologist studied the effects that praise has on a child’s achievement. The children in the study were given puzzles—games ?—that they could successfully complete. After solving the puzzles, some of the children were praised for being intelligence and others for showing effort. Next, the children were asked to choose a new puzzle to complete, either a difficult puzzle that would help them learn or an easy puzzle. 90% of the children praised for effort chose to do the more challenging puzzle. The majority of the students praised for intelligence opted to complete the easier puzzle. In a similar test, the children were not given a choice of what puzzle to solve in the second round. All the participants were asked to solve a challenging puzzle designed for children of upper grade levels. The children were set up to fail. The children that were praised for effort, focused closely on the puzzles and enthusiastically tried for the answer. The children that were praised for intelligence became agitated and seemed to assume that failing meant that they were not smart. In conclusion, researchers believe that children praised for intelligence might be weary of challenging themselves academically because they are afraid of failure.

Here is a link to the article: “http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/”>

Technological determinism is a reductionist doctrine that a society’s technology determines its cultural values, social structure, or history.
Technological determinism has been summarized as ‘The belief in technology as a key governing force in society …’ (Merritt Roe Smith), ‘… the belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows an “inevitable” course.’ (Michael L. Smith), ‘The idea that technological development determines social change …’ (Bruce Bimber), ‘… the belief that technical forces determine social and cultural changes.’ (Thomas P. Hughes); ‘… a three-word logical proposition: “Technology determines history”‘ (Rosalind Williams)
Most interpretations of technological determinism share two general ideas:
1) That the development of technology itself follows a path largely beyond cultural or political influence, and
2) That technology in turn has “effects” on societies that are inherent, rather than socially conditioned
Technological determinism stands in opposition to the theory of the social construction of technology, which holds that both the path of innovation and the consequences of technology for humans are strongly if not entirely shaped by society itself, through the influence of culture, politics, economic arrangements, and the like.

Technology is not seen as the main instigator of social change. Instead, technological innovation is combined with social situation and institutions to create new technologies. In chapter four Kline explains, “the introduction of radically new technological directions and the creation of organizational forms capable of taking advantage of these technologies is rare.” Technology tends to improve incrementally and social institutions must facilitate such improvement. The genealogy of the video game is an example of the many components—social as well as technological—that, together, promotes innovation. Highlighting social components, Kline writes, “It is at the intersection of warfare state and hacker culture that we find the point of departure for the digital play industry.”

Avatars in the virtual world can travel to the Reuters Atrium to get news about the real world and in real life people can go to secondlife.reuters.com to get news about Second Life. The site even has a chart that compares the US dollar to the Linden dollar.

It is interesting to see businesses creating a presence for themselves in Second Life. Does presence in the virtual world add value to the company in the real world? Or is a Second Life presence valuable to companies in itself? Also, it is interesting to consider how the boundaries are blurred between the real world and virtual worlds. The two seem to be intermixing and Reuters’ use of Second Life complicates the relationship.

On the surface it is obvious that imagination and alternate worlds are present in the poem and in many games (ex: the World of War Craft video). And accordingly, I wondered if the poem and if these imaginary worlds fit into an era of becoming or into an era of being. I would argue that both the poem and video game—as well as Second Life –‘worlds’ are unique because they can fit into the world of both Heraclitus and Plato.

As for The Snark fitting into the world of Heraclitus, the characters are constantly hunting the Snark and are, therefore, participating in ceaseless play. The rules of the world in The Snark are unlike the rules of the real world. They seem absurd. Obviously the logical order of our world does not exist in the poem. In much the same way, video game worlds fit into an era of becoming. Whenever a game is on, ceaseless play is being practiced and the ‘rules’ of this play do not correspond with the rules of reality (flying in second life for example).

However, the poem also fits into the era of being. The world in the poem is not one of chaos. It is a world of order. The world in the poem follows its own logical system, albeit different from the logic of the real world. If a character in the poem says something three times, then whatever is said is true. In our world this would seem a logical fallacy but in the Snark world, such a rule is an example of a kind of order present in the poem. The Snark world is simply an alternate logical world. The same is true of video game worlds. There may be ceaseless fighting, flying and winning but it is all governed by code. A character in World of War Craft or in Second Life cannot act outside the bounds set up by the codes, the rules, of the game. The same is true for the characters in Snark world; they cannot act against the world’s logic.

It seems that video games are interesting because they exist in the era of becoming as well as in the era of being.