The thing is, Byron can't actually find much wrong with the company's financials. Sure, it's slightly off its peak of roughly $40, but it's still about double where it was two years ago -- and keep in mind, most of that increase took place during a bear market that mauled tech stocks mercilessly. Bryon also notes that the company's accounting practices may soon be investigated by the SEC.
Still, that isn't enough to really alarm a serious investor. So Bryon devotes more than half the article to attacking the morals of Grand Theft Auto -- and, rather remarkably, urging investors to do "your fellow man a favor" by dumping the stock. He rails floridly against the game:
Wow. Grand Theft Auto 3's gameplay is worse than pedophilia, breaking stock-market laws, or causing lung cancer with cigarette smoke? I'm almost in awe of this guy's moral dudgeon.
Posted by Clive Thompson at December 29, 2003 03:36 PM
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Jesus Christ, that whole prostitute thing is so blown out of proportion. Every article that derides GTA mentions that; which is really damned weird as it's such a minor and obscure thing -- so minor, in fact, that I'm 100% sure that anyone that mentions it has never actually seen it done or has done it themselves. It's just passed along as hearsay. Which is the worst platform from which you can criticize anything.
Posted by: nowak at December 29, 2003 11:38 PM
That's a good point. One of my complaints about people who deride video games for being violent is that they rarely play the games themselves to find out what the experience of *playing* the game is like -- as opposed to *watching someone else play it*, watching a film loop of it, or merely hearing about it. Because a game is about play, a deeply interactive and awfully subtle form of human behavior. The blood and gore etc. are definitely part of why kids play the violent games, but they're not, I don't think, the *main* reason; if a game doesn't have good play, kids abandon it awfully quickly.
I just spend some time hanging out with 21-year-olds who are big fans of Vice City. And sure, they've tried doing all the super-violent stuff like killing cops or killing prostitutes, and chuckled at how outre it is. But that only lasts for a brief time; afterwards, they all got interested in seeing what sort of kooky things they could do with the incredible physics engine in Grand Theft Auto. They'd spend hours trying to see whether they could jump a motorcycle off a ramp onto a particularly remote building; they even compiled some of their best tricks into a short movie, with a soundtrack, that they passed around to their friends. They didn't seem particularly obsessed with violence or carnage; hell, that tricks-movie they passed around is almost like the digital-age version of *juggling*: "Dude, check this out! Look what I can do!"
Having said that, I actually don't have a really big problem with people making moral judgements about video games. And the gaming industry is, like all major market-driven things, hardly a paragon of human virtue. The gaming industry, among other things, is sickeningly hypocritical; as I've written before, they regularly advertise violent games to young children, while cynically protesting that they'd never dream of doing such a thing. They rarely even have the honesty to stick to their own guns.
Actually, that's one of the reasons why I like Rockstar Games. They've never been hypocritical; they've always had the attitude of "we're producing ultra-violent, fucked-up entertainment for adults and cool young people. If you don't like it, screw you." Again, hardly an exemplar of moral virtue, but that's not really why I play games -- and in any case, they're not two-faced about it.
Posted by: Clive at December 30, 2003 9:51 AM
He forgot to mention that after you beat her to death you can get your money back. Come on, that's a good deal.
Posted by: Chris Shieh at December 30, 2003 11:16 AM
Dude, "This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy". Seriously.
You know what is crazy about this game is the freedom to do these things is not necessarily built into the goal system. I've only played it once in a kind of crack addled all day session and then called it quits and haven't played since: But, if I remember correctly, you didn't have to cap granny or kill prostitutes--it was just one of the things you *could* do if you wanted to, not one of the things you have to do absolutely.
You are strangely free in this game. Granted, much of the mechanics is based on rampaging, but if you want to be good at the *game* you can't be wanton. But, if you want to blow off some steam and beat the crap out of someone...
I wonder if the critics knew more about this aspect of freedom in the game and the ability of the player to choose how perverted they wanted to be, if they would be more or less shocked.
Posted by: Alfred O. Cloutier at December 30, 2003 5:35 PM
Chris, ahahhahahaha!
Alfred: yeah, totally. In fact, I was at a machinima festival a month ago where somebody screened a movie they'd shot of themselves just wandering around Liberty City inside Grand Theft Auto, as a parody of a travel journalism.
Posted by: Clive at December 30, 2003 5:45 PM
So has anyone played Manhunt?
I love the open-ended nature of GTA as well (and of Mario 64 while we're on the subject) -- what I don't like is that the "nonlinear" approach has been bastardized into the "let's dump all of our graphics and gameplay unedited in a huge world" approach. I think there's something to be said for discernment ... and I think other developers probably underestimate the thought and craft that went into GTA's large scope.
Posted by: Chris Shieh at December 31, 2003 10:54 AM
Excellent, excellent point about the difference between just creating an open environment and designing a cool world. Quite different, really.
Yes, I'm playing Manhunt as we speak! It's actually quite fun -- the graphics and voice acting are pretty cool, and the general stealth concept works nicely. My only complaint is the one I typically have with these sorts of games -- i.e. that they force you to wander for hours and hours and hours trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle that gets you out of a level. I'm sorry: wandering around lost is not even vaguely fun, and I have no fucking clue how this became a major part of today's game design.
Posted by: Clive at December 31, 2003 11:12 AM
Posted by: levitra at January 2, 2004 4:56 PM
I agree, the GTA series is pretty bad but it is a choice! Oh, and whoever commented on Manhunt, yes I have, and GTA has nothing on Manhunt.
Posted by: Daniel at January 7, 2004 2:54 PM
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Posted by: julia at January 24, 2004 6:58 PM
Jesus Christ, that whole prostitute thing is so blown out of proportion. Every article that derides GTA mentions that; which is really damned weird as it's such a minor and obscure thing -- so minor, in fact, that I'm 100% sure that anyone that mentions it has never actually seen it done or has done it themselves. It's just passed along as hearsay. Which is the worst platform from which you can criticize anything.
Posted by: nowak at December 29, 2003 11:38 PM
That's a good point. One of my complaints about people who deride video games for being violent is that they rarely play the games themselves to find out what the experience of *playing* the game is like -- as opposed to *watching someone else play it*, watching a film loop of it, or merely hearing about it. Because a game is about play, a deeply interactive and awfully subtle form of human behavior. The blood and gore etc. are definitely part of why kids play the violent games, but they're not, I don't think, the *main* reason; if a game doesn't have good play, kids abandon it awfully quickly.
I just spend some time hanging out with 21-year-olds who are big fans of Vice City. And sure, they've tried doing all the super-violent stuff like killing cops or killing prostitutes, and chuckled at how outre it is. But that only lasts for a brief time; afterwards, they all got interested in seeing what sort of kooky things they could do with the incredible physics engine in Grand Theft Auto. They'd spend hours trying to see whether they could jump a motorcycle off a ramp onto a particularly remote building; they even compiled some of their best tricks into a short movie, with a soundtrack, that they passed around to their friends. They didn't seem particularly obsessed with violence or carnage; hell, that tricks-movie they passed around is almost like the digital-age version of *juggling*: "Dude, check this out! Look what I can do!"
Having said that, I actually don't have a really big problem with people making moral judgements about video games. And the gaming industry is, like all major market-driven things, hardly a paragon of human virtue. The gaming industry, among other things, is sickeningly hypocritical; as I've written before, they regularly advertise violent games to young children, while cynically protesting that they'd never dream of doing such a thing. They rarely even have the honesty to stick to their own guns.
Actually, that's one of the reasons why I like Rockstar Games. They've never been hypocritical; they've always had the attitude of "we're producing ultra-violent, fucked-up entertainment for adults and cool young people. If you don't like it, screw you." Again, hardly an exemplar of moral virtue, but that's not really why I play games -- and in any case, they're not two-faced about it.
Posted by: Clive at December 30, 2003 9:51 AM
He forgot to mention that after you beat her to death you can get your money back. Come on, that's a good deal.
Posted by: Chris Shieh at December 30, 2003 11:16 AM
Dude, "This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy". Seriously.
You know what is crazy about this game is the freedom to do these things is not necessarily built into the goal system. I've only played it once in a kind of crack addled all day session and then called it quits and haven't played since: But, if I remember correctly, you didn't have to cap granny or kill prostitutes--it was just one of the things you *could* do if you wanted to, not one of the things you have to do absolutely.
You are strangely free in this game. Granted, much of the mechanics is based on rampaging, but if you want to be good at the *game* you can't be wanton. But, if you want to blow off some steam and beat the crap out of someone...
I wonder if the critics knew more about this aspect of freedom in the game and the ability of the player to choose how perverted they wanted to be, if they would be more or less shocked.
Posted by: Alfred O. Cloutier at December 30, 2003 5:35 PM
Chris, ahahhahahaha!
Alfred: yeah, totally. In fact, I was at a machinima festival a month ago where somebody screened a movie they'd shot of themselves just wandering around Liberty City inside Grand Theft Auto, as a parody of a travel journalism.
Posted by: Clive at December 30, 2003 5:45 PM
So has anyone played Manhunt?
I love the open-ended nature of GTA as well (and of Mario 64 while we're on the subject) -- what I don't like is that the "nonlinear" approach has been bastardized into the "let's dump all of our graphics and gameplay unedited in a huge world" approach. I think there's something to be said for discernment ... and I think other developers probably underestimate the thought and craft that went into GTA's large scope.
Posted by: Chris Shieh at December 31, 2003 10:54 AM
Excellent, excellent point about the difference between just creating an open environment and designing a cool world. Quite different, really.
Yes, I'm playing Manhunt as we speak! It's actually quite fun -- the graphics and voice acting are pretty cool, and the general stealth concept works nicely. My only complaint is the one I typically have with these sorts of games -- i.e. that they force you to wander for hours and hours and hours trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle that gets you out of a level. I'm sorry: wandering around lost is not even vaguely fun, and I have no fucking clue how this became a major part of today's game design.
Posted by: Clive at December 31, 2003 11:12 AM
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Posted by: levitra at January 2, 2004 4:56 PM
I agree, the GTA series is pretty bad but it is a choice! Oh, and whoever commented on Manhunt, yes I have, and GTA has nothing on Manhunt.
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