About the Project

Rockstar Games’ highly successful video games franchise, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), has become a popular symbol in recent years for depicting both the decaying values in American society and the potential threats media violence poses to impressionable teenage youth. Much of the current research, examining the causal relationship between violent video games and youth crime, delineates exposure to gratuitous violence as the primary instigator of aggression later in the child’s life course. Theorists, over the last decade, have argued that aggressive arousal, imitation, cultivation, and desensitization (to name just a few) can accurately explicate the stimulation, or lack thereof, of youth crime following a child’s participation in the violent acts of virtual worlds. While all these arguments give valuable insight into the effects violent video games have on children, they simultaneously ignore an important aspect of new media: rhetoric.

The projected essay examines the casual relationship of violent games and youth crime through an analysis of GTA IV’s rhetorical strategies. Rockstar Games, rather than just exposing children to violence, provides justification and condemnation for the criminal acts in GTA by focusing the game’s action on Niko Bellic’s pursuit of the American dream. Only through the acquisition of material goods can Niko move up in the social world and be seen as a success in his peers' eyes. However, the story of GTA IV strongly indicates that wealth cannot be obtained through conventional means. Using social strain theory (see Merton’s entry), I will argue that GTA IV portrays the world as unfair and ridden with conflict due to a society that upholds certain common symbols of success for all of its citizens while simultaneously restricting access to those aspirations for a large number of individuals. Niko must strive to achieve his goals in GTA IV through criminal innovation because he has been socialized to desire wealth but was not granted the conventional means to acquire it due to his minority status. GTA thus justifies crime by promoting the pursuit of material goods, through the game’s dialogue and product placement, and instead of promoting conformity as the means to wealth persuades children that crime is the only possible method for the acquisition of the American dream.