You can spend all your time fucking and killing prostitutes in GTA, that doesn't mean it's the purpose of the game, but it does mean someone in production decided you should be able to fuck and kill those women. Equally, if I see that on your shelf [...]

That seems a bit weird to judge someone by possessing a game about which someone in production thought including an optional unpleasant act was a good idea. I own a couple of GTA games and have played them through to completion without ever (knowingly) interacting with a prostitute in any way. GTA4 even goes nuts the opposite way, trying to encourage you to take fake women out on romantic dates and bring them gifts!

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Hey, you may read Playboys only for the articles, but if I see that in your bathroom, I'm going to form an opinion. You may not like it, but it's still true.

I didn't say that killing prostitutes was the only aspect of GTA I find distasteful, nor are all the distasteful things optional. You may own it because you really like to take fake women out on romantic dates and give them gifts and you think Grand Theft Auto is absolutely hands down the best way to do that. I'm still going to be a little wary of you.

I also don't date anyone that likes Rush. Feel free to think that's a bit weird too.

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Yeah, that's fair enough I suppose, and a good analogy to explain your point of view - though also a good analogy to explain mine, in that Playboy is mostly owned for the porn, and an article-reader would be an exception; I don't believe GTA is mostly played for the prostitute-malarkey, since driving gets you to the end of the game and prostitute-malarkey doesn't.

I like GTA for the crazy driving things, which make up the bulk of the game and thus I assume make up the main reason most people play it. (Though GTA4 was horrible because the driving felt more like slug-wrangling, so perhaps the reason people play that one isn't for the driving!)

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Eh, there are plenty of driving games. I suspect GTA is mostly played for LOOK AT ALL THE TRANGRESSIVE THINGS I CAN DO!!! I think this suspicion is borne out by the advertising focusing on how each version is trashier and more violent than the last, not an improved driving experience.

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As I say, that's probably true of GTA4, but the earlier ones were more fun to drive than driving games. Driving games are mostly racing games, which means you have a fixed track that your goal is to go around. Jumping from a rooftop through the window of an office building on a motorbike is not part of generic driving games.

So yes, it is transgressive things, it's highly illegal driving and running from police, but it's certainly not all murdering and sex crimes. As I said, the main track of the game doesn't even include any sex (except possibly in GTA4 which I didn't finish because it kept trying to make me do that sort of boring thing instead of fun driving, and even things that should have been fun driving were horrible because of the new 'realistic' physics.)

Carmageddon is the only other "do whatever you want" driving game I can think of, and that, too, was marketed on "slaughtering random people" (or zombies in many countries to avoid a restricted rating), but it was the free-driving, ridiculous stunts and wrecking cars that people mostly enjoyed (at least people that I know), not the slaughter.

I agree that they were increasingly marketed as trashy violence, but I think that reflects one or both of two things:
1. The company believes that's what sells their product.
2. The company (rightly) believes that if that's what they push they get a metric asston of free marketing because the stupid media leaps all over it.

But I don't think the people who play the games play them for that - an opinion reflected in reviews of GTA4, which are largely complaints about the new horrible driving experience, not gushing about the new prostitute-eating experience (or whatever). I don't think I've even seen anyone saying they enjoyed a GTA game because of the prostitutes, or even that they enjoyed that about the game! The most positive spin I've seen on it is it being presented as an extra "degree of freedom".

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Heck, in GTA: San Andreas, the prostitutes would kick your ass up and down the street...

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There's a ton of 'insane crashes' videos on Youtube. Admittedly, I do want to try out the 'nudge swingset with car, go flying across map' glitch.

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Yeah, you could do insane crashes because of physics glitches or mods, that's not the same as fun driving crashes. You could also do insane crashes without a glitch relatively easily because the entire game was in slow motion like driving through treacle, but again, that didn't make driving through treacle fun.

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In the 'Hitman' games the entire point is to kill horrible bad guys. But you -could- murder an entire boatload of innocent people and get away with it (At least in 'Blood Money'). Does this mean I'm a bad person for owning the Hitman games?

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That's really been you and you God(s) or lack thereof. I could spend all my time in Wow slaughtering townsfolk, but I don't. The key is really how far you stray from the main purpose of the game, and how enthusiastically.

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