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Rockstar baulks as a Charlie Kirk assassination mission is created in GTA Online, bans it and censors his name, but there's more out there (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 41 points 9 months ago* (4 children)

Rockstar has always wanted to be edgey without "being political" and I think this is unfortunately the natural end result of that being applied to an ever bigger and bigger business model, an empty mirror of the worst of US culture without any courage even to grapple with it.

The difference between Charlie Kirk and a Charlie Kirk community mission in GTA is Charlie Kirk advocated for real violence, harassment and oppression with his platform whereas GTA is a fantasy video game.

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    I think this has to do more with real world names. In both GTA V and GTA Online you kill the equivalent of big CEOs, with the original singleplayer having an early mission where you kill Temu Mark Zuckerberg with a phone bomb, and in Online during the Doomsday Heist you kill Temu Elon Musk with a jetpack armed with missiles.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago*

    Fair, that is an important difference I just think you would be much harder pressed to prove in court GTA has meaningfully increased hateful behavior, in comparison Charlie Kirk was entirely optimized for actuating that as a media persona.

    I agree any kind of targeted media that uses real names is a different level ethically, but I can't ignore the context that in terms of real world impact here Charlie Kirk did so much harm vs. GTA which has always been a silly video game series intent on entertaining people.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Rockstar has always wanted to be edgey without "being political"

    Lol. The games have always been a satire of American politics and culture. This post has strong "I liked RATM/Star Trek before it was political" energy.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago*

    Yeah to be clear I played GTA 1, 2, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA 5, I have enjoyed the series immensely and it does have great biting satire of US politics, but it doesn't have a coherent ideology, the critique is rather one of pointing out how hypocritical US society is.... which is hilarious and great but the bigger and bigger the business success of the GTA series has become the more and more that has morphed into the series being edgey without being actually political in a subversive way.

    GTA 5 had some great moments, there is some awesome storytelling in the GTA series, its just I don't think structurally it is concerned with being political, rather it is concerned with character portraits that encapsulate the hypocrisy, struggle and ego of US culture and the more mainstream that becomes the closer and closer it gets to "edgey without being political".

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