Can you post a link to one of these ads? I’ve never seen an ad for GTA that singles out “picking on women”.
That’s literally the opposite of what an easter egg is.
Inside joke. Hidden. Not “encouraged”.
It’s depressing how people feel compelled to warp the narrative into something that suits their political needs. Doing so just undermines their argument – or worse, screams “I haven’t played this, but I sure have some strong opinions about how I imagine it works!”
There are plenty of examples of crappy portrayal of women in media without making stuff up, or intentionally misrepresenting what’s there.
Relevant to where this thread has gone, Helen Lewis’ spot-on GTA-V opinion from two years ago is still relevant.
In the latest installment, released last week, women are once again pushed to the margins.
You can rescue one whose car has broken down, spy on another having sex with her boyfriend while she checks her phone, and, of course, visit the obligatory strip club and “make it rain” bank notes. There aren’t any female characters to root for, be impressed by, or even fall in love with. It was the same in the last game: women were there to nag you, or be bribed – whether with fancy dinners or cold, hard cash – into having sex with you. Women are GTA’s wallpaper.
Given all this – and the way the series has allowed you to visit a prostitute, then kill her to get your money back – perhaps the horrified reactions shouldn’t be surprising.
As long as violence against women is a societal problem, and as long as violence against sex workers is prevalent, then GTA deserves this criticism. I still love the series (only one I didn’t play was San Andreas), AND I love the criticism directed at GTA.
The medium has grown up, and now the GTA franchise is a giant juggernaut that appears to be punching down instead of up," says female games journalist Leigh Alexander. “I think that’s why its problematic elements rankle – not because I’m ‘offended’, but because it seems lazy, repetitious. I’m not ‘offended’ that I can’t play as a woman; I’m disappointed at the missed opportunity.”
Hey, this Alexander seems to be a keen observer. Wonder what she’s up to these days.
This is where game fans’ defensiveness becomes a problem. It takes a brave critic to slaughter a sacred cow – particularly by pointing out sexism in games – because the backlash can be so fierce. Anita Sarkeesian, who appealed for crowdfunding to make a web series about female characters, became the subject of an internet hate campaign as a result.
Aaaaand, now we’ve come full circle.
I’m saddened to see Humbabella withdraw from this discussion, though that is certainly their prerogative. I’m just grateful for HB’s comments in this discussion, as I was in agreement with much of the sentiment expressed.
.#notallgamers, really? It’s in there, it’s a triple-A title, it sold bucket-loads of copies, and it normalises this crap for those who play it. That’s a lot of big-G gamers matey.
Can you purchase male prostitues in GTA? And, it’s the literal disposability of the prostitues that’s the major problem. Isn’t the health boost exactly the same as a can of soda? And, what if you couldn’t kill prostitutes in the game after you “used” them? Would that affect overall game play?
That is a legit criticism, along with not having female characters as protagonists or even strong supporting female characters. That was Carolyn Petit’s gamespot review criticism, coming from a transgender person. It is fair.
All pedestrians are equally disposable in the world of GTA 5. And they all carry token amounts of money you can liberate by killing them or beating them up.
I wish more people willing to have strong opinions on this would actually play the game so they know what they’re talking about. If you had played the game, you could critique the in game lap dance mini game which is pretty cringe inducing and you are absolutely encouraged to do it since you end up owning a strip club and many scenes happen in the strip club. But if you do well you get two ladies at once!
I wasn’t sure exactly what @codinghorror meant by that - (1) I’m encouraging you to play the lap dance game? (2) I’m encouraging you to critique the minigame? Or (3) unlike killing prostitutes, this is something that the game actively encourages you to do as it opens up otherwise unavailable parts of the game? I suppose one productive way to look at it would be to explore the things you can’t do in GTA games. There are no children to interact with, even though their existence is alluded to in most games (school buses, abandoned strollers, “children at play” signs etc.). So apparently even in a sandbox game, there are some things that are not even allowed as possibilities. You can’t force someone to have sex with you, although you can kill them afterwards. There are no male prostitutes, and you can’t have sex with just anyone. Other games have prostitutes that you can’t have sex with, although you can interact with them (and presumably kill them like other NPCs). The choice to use prostitutes as a device to add health is a conscious one in GTA, and there are many other possible ways to achieve this.
Street prostitutes may well eclipse all other professions as the one where the job makes you inherently more at risk of homicide (there seems to be very little hard data on this, for obvious reasons - e.g. none of Joel Rifkin’s 17 victims in the New York area had a missing persons report filed on them; the vast majority of street prostitutes in London are migrants). While there are sex workers who are happy with their work, 74% of British prostitutes claimed to have entered because of poverty and 92% of prostitutes in another study stated that they wanted to leave immediately. Based on this, it should be possible to make prostitutes less of a central part of the game (or to eliminate them from the game altogether, or not to glamorise their experience), and to put more effort into how women in general are presented.
The pedestrians don’t restore health though, do they? That is the issue with the prostitutes in GTA - they’re equivalent to a can of soda. And it was a conscious choice of the developers to make them equivalent.
Regardless, it’s an annoying and inefficient way to get health since you have to trigger the “sex” scene, find yourself in one of the few areas where prostitutes actually are, etcetera.
edit: I’ll admit I did do a prostitute scene in the game once, mostly by accident. But I got curious about it and looked up the way it happens:
this only works at night
must be in an area where prostitutes exist
must be in a car that is “nice”
must then drive to a “secluded area” with no pedestrians or cars
Looks like they will approach your vehicle if the conditions are right, which is probably how it happened to me. I don’t remember honking the horn.
As you can see, it’s a fair bit of work to get this to happen. Kind of like an easter egg, really, when you think about it
Here’s the official trailer for GTA5 to see what the developers think the elevator pitch for the game is:
