Grand Theft Research Articles

Mechanisms for RNA Capture by ssDNA Viruses: Grand Theft RNA

Viruses contain three common types of packaged genomes; double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), RNA (mostly single and occasionally double stranded) and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). There are relatively straightforward explanations for the prevalence of viruses with dsDNA and RNA genomes, but the evolutionary basis for the apparent success of ssDNA viruses is less clear. The recent discovery of four ssDNA virus genomes that appear to have been formed by recombination between co-infecting RNA and ssDNA viruses, together with the high mutation rate of ssDNA viruses provide possible explanations. RNA-DNA recombination allows ssDNA viruses to access much broader sequence space than through nucleotide substitution and DNA-DNA recombination alone. Multiple non-exclusive mechanisms, all due to the unique replication of ssDNA viruses, are proposed for this unusual RNA capture. RNA capture provides an explanation for the evolutionary success of the ssDNA viruses and may help elucidate the mystery of integrated RNA viruses in viral and cellular DNA genomes.

Replacing preconceived accounts of digital games with experience of play: When parents went native in GTA IV

Cautionary frameworks continue to dominate evaluations of games within political contexts, obstructing consideration of the specific conditions and experiences offered by particular game texts. This paper challenges this tendency of prior government-instigated research to promote viewpoints that are not textually evaluative or play-derived when reporting on perceptions of games possessed by the public. Instead, it prioritizes Dovey and Kennedy’s (2006) argument that ‘we cannot have recourse solely to [games] textual characteristics; we have to pay particular attention to the moment of its enactment as it is played.’ More concretely, this paper describes research sparked by the NZ Classification Office’s interest in exploring ‘the extent to which the public’s perception of causal links between game playing and various social ills’ might be ‘moderated or even undermined by [knowledge of] how players actually respond to and negotiate their way through the content and characteristics of the medium’ (OFLC 2009, 24). Using both game-play observation and in-depth interviews, we concluded that the participants’ preconceptions of Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North, 2008) were drastically reevaluated after experience playing the game, shifting attitudes and beliefs as to how games should be regulated.

Moral Complexity in Videogames: a Pragmatist Approach

The field of videogame ethics has already achieved a differentiated view on many ethical questions in regards to videogames, their players and the industry. However, most of these approaches have neglected the benefits of a less abstract, more pragmatic view on videogame ethics. Thus, in this paper, I will introduce the concept of moral complexity to formulate a device that allows a pragmatic identification, categorisation, discussion, and design of moral content in videogames. Moral complexity is defined as (or by) the degree to which a game offers alternatives and/or commentary to violence and deceit to players and is exclusively referring to how the issue of morality is implemented in past and contemporary game design. It is a reductionist approach, which treats morality as a game design element and shall help to understand the experience of morality in a closed player/ game circuit. To introduce and explain the notion of moral complexity, this paper will begin with a brief overview of fundamental developments and perspectives in the field of videogame ethics. Further, moral complexity is introduced based on a rendering of Kantian metaphysics into virtual space. Then, elements of Aristotle’s ethics, Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow and Habermas’ principles of communicative action are defined to articulate the phenomenological aspect of experiencing moral complexity ingame. Based on these theoretical building blocks, a comprehensive definition of moral complexity is presented. To illustrate this construct, cases of videogames (Grand Theft Auto V, Spec Ops: The Line and Detroit: Become Human) are introduced to exemplify different degrees and manifestations of moral complexity in contemporary game design. Moreover, a discussion on issues shall forward a differentiated picture of the concept. In the end, a conclusion presents prospects and chances for the notion of moral complexity.

Digital: A Love Story; Bully; Grand Theft Auto IV; Portal; Dys4ia (review)

Digital: A Love Story; Bully; Grand Theft Auto IV; Portal; Dys4ia (review)

Cultivation Effects of Video Games: A Longer-Term Experimental Test of First- and Second-Order Effects

This experiment examined cultivation effects resulting from a repeated, longer-term exposure to a violent video game, Grand Theft Auto IV. Over a period of three weeks, participants in the treatment condition played a violent video game in a controlled laboratory setting for a total of 12 hours. Following this period, participants completed a questionnaire which included demographics as well as first- and second-order cultivation measures and their scores were compared with the control group of participants who did not play the game. The findings provide some support for first-order effects, but only very limited support for second-order cultivation effects. Unexpectedly, second-order effects were in the opposite direction from a theorized one, suggesting a possible counter-cultivation mechanism at work. The theoretical implications of the findings for cultivation research are discussed.

Social exclusion, power and video game play: new research in digital media and technology

Part I. Introduction Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Exclusion, Power and Video Game Play David G. Embrick, J. Talmadge Wright and Andras Lukacs Part II. Social-Psychological Implications of Virtual Play Chapter 2: Marking the Territory: Grand Theft Auto IV as a Playground for Masculinities Elena Bertozzi Chapter 3: Discursive Engagements in World of Warcraft: A Semiotic Analysis of Player Relationships Elizabeth ErkenBrack Chapter 4: The Intermediate Ego - The Location of the Mind at Play Vanessa Long Chapter 5: Producing the Social in Virtual Realms J. Talmadge Wright Part III. Social Inequalities in Video Game Spaces: Race, Gender, and Virtual Play Chapter 6: Racism in Gaming: Connecting Extremist and Mainstream Expressions of White Supremacy Jessie Daniels and Nick LaLone Chapter 7: Worlds of Whiteness: Race and Character Creation in Online Games David Dietrich Chapter 8: Gendered Pleasures: The Wii, Embodiment and Technological Desire Adrienne Massanari Chapter 9: Sincere Fictions of Whiteness in Virtual Worlds: How Fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Games Perpetuate Colorblind, White Supremacist Ideology Joel Ritsema and Bhoomi Thakore Chapter 10: The Goddess Paradox: Hyper-resonance Shaping Gender Experiences in MMORPGs Zek Cypress Valkyrie Part IV. Game Fans Speak Out Chapter 11: To Play is to Design: An Analysis of Player/Designer Interactions in World of Warcraft Sean C. Duncan Chapter 12: Western Otaku: Games Crossing Cultures Mia Consalvo Chapter 13: Beyond the Virtual Realm: Fallout fans, Producers, and the Troublesome Issue of Ownership in Videogame Fandom R.M. Milner Part V. Summary and Conclusions Chapter 14: Conclusion Andras Lukacs, David G. Embrick, and J. Talmadge Wright

Grand Theft Auto IV

This article has two goals: one is to establish techniques for content analysis of a virtual environment, Liberty City, as part of a dynamic textual object, Grand Theft Auto IV ( GTA IV). The second is to demonstrate these techniques with an analysis in the narrative of GTA IV as a very modernist, dystopian version of the American Dream. Further, the suitability of the video game as a medium for modernist themes and concerns as exemplified by the work of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot will be explored. Liberty City is an interactive city which a player can experience, rather than read about, answering many of the questions modernist writers posed to their frustrating, linear medium.

Influence of Black Masculinity Game Exemplars on Social Judgments

In this investigation, the authors ask how media exemplars of Black masculinity influence the views of and intentions toward other Black men. An experiment compared the effects of exposure to Black video game characters fitting the exemplar thug or street criminal (e.g., Carl Johnson from GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS) versus exemplars of professional Black men (e.g., political leaders), on evaluations of an unknown and unrelated Black or White political candidate and on pro-Black attitudes. Results revealed significant interactions of exemplar type and candidate race on favorability and capability candidate ratings and on pro-Black attitudes. These data demonstrate the power of mass media exemplars of Black masculinity to prime meaningfully different outcomes in viewers. As the face of gaming evolves with advances in technology, so too should the characterization of race in games.

Promoting inclusive education, civic scientific literacy, and global citizenship with videogames

In this response to Yupanqui Munoz and Charbel El-Hani’s paper, “The student with a thousand faces: From the ethics in videogames to becoming a citizen”, we examine their critique of videogames in science education. Munoz and El-Hani present a critical analysis of videogames such as Grand Theft Auto, Street Fight, Command and Conquer: Generals, Halo, and Fallout 3 using Neil Postman’s (1993) conceptualization of technopoly along with Bill Green and Chris Bigum’s (1993) notion of the cyborg curriculum. Our contention is that these games are not representative of current educational videogames about science, which hold the potential to enhance civic scientific literacy across a diverse range of students while promoting cross-cultural understandings of complex scientific concepts and phenomenon. We examine games that have undergone empirical investigation in general education science classrooms, such as River City, Quest Atlantis, Whyville, Resilient Planet, and You Make Me Sick!, and discuss the ways these videogames can engage students and teachers in a constructivist dialogue that enhances science education. Our critique extends Munoz and El-Hani’s discussion through an examination of the ways videogames can enhance science education by promoting inclusive education, civic scientific literacy, and global citizenship.

Navigating sociotechnical spaces: Comparing computer games and sat navs as digital spatial media

Digital media increasingly mediate everyday spatial and navigational practices. From in-car satellite navigation (sat navs) to computer games, overpowered gadgets are combining multiple sources of abstract information to give users spatial guidance and experiences of movement. For example, open world computer games such as Grand Theft Auto IV render rich fictional spaces, and include intricate maps and indicators that allow players to navigate large gamespaces. Sat navs such as the TomTom Navigator follow similar practices of automated navigation in helping to guide cars through actual spaces. Their calculated routes display on personalized maps, including live data and visualizations that complement, or even override, what the driver sees through the windscreen. Games and sat navs are harbingers of historical shifts in technosocial space, suggesting that Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) influential critical analysis of space deserves to be revised. Digital spatial media open up abstract relationships to space, but not from the distance that Lefebvre associates with ‘conceived’ spaces. Instead, they work in ‘lived space’, which is becoming dominant. They calculate space in real time, and open up new political and aesthetic questions. The article examines three characteristics of navigation with digital spatial media: (1) they reify routes as persuasive data and procedures; (2) their maps become subjective and privatized; and (3) they offer an array of spatial information that become incorporated into the user’s ‘perceived’ space. These examples show that critical understandings of social space need increasingly to incorporate readings of digitally mediated spatiality.

Brief report: Does exposure to violent video games increase moral disengagement among adolescents?

Several studies have repeatedly shown that violent/action video games increase aggressive tendencies. The present study provides preliminary evidence that exposure to these games also affects the process of moral disengagement. High school students (N = 385) were recruited, and the impact of both recency and frequency of their exposure to the video game Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA; 2008) on moral disengagement was explored. Results showed that exposure to GTA predicted higher levels of moral disengagement. Recency of exposure had a primary impact on the considered mechanisms of moral disengagement. These findings provide insights into a relevant detrimental effect of exposure to video games, to our knowledge not explored yet. Future research is needed to provide evidence of the causal link in the observed relationships.

‘Grand Theft South Africa’: games, literacy and inequality in consumer childhoods

Discussions of ‘game literacy’ focus on the informal learning and literacies associated with games but seldom address the diversity in young people's gaming practices, and the highly differentiated technologies of digital gaming in use. We use available survey data to show how, in South Africa, income inequalities influence consumption patterns, shaping experiences of digital games. Two case studies of young people's play practices involving digital games in Cape Town suggest the fragmentation and inequalities of contemporary play practices and the need for a more inclusive understanding of digital gaming. Mobile phones offer more accessibility than other digital gaming platforms and local appropriations include display of micro-commodities, concealment of outdated technology, control strategies and deletion of functionality. Young people move between multiple overlapping communicative spaces and hence complex cultural articulations arise when global game narratives are appropriated to make sense of racial otherness, crime and politics in South Africa. Since educational curricula cater for highly fractured publics, we ask whether it is advisable to speak of ‘game literacy’. We suggest the need to validate less strongly mediatised forms of play, and to address diverse identification practices in consumer culture, including prestige and status as well as othering and shame.

The political geographies of Liberty City

Liberty City is a virtual city, created for use with several versions of Grand Theft Auto (GTA), a best-selling series of video games concerning the world of crime. Millions of people all over the world have spent large amounts of time exploring this virtual space, making the city an important cultural artefact and a meaningful landmark in the urban imaginary on a global scale. The aim of this paper is to analyse Liberty City in terms of the imagined urban political geographies nested in the aesthetics of this space in the video game GTA IV. In order to develop this analysis, a theorization of urban politics will be presented, where politics is identified as consisting of representation, government and contestation. The paper will introduce methodological notes concerning the analysis, carried out mainly on the basis of a personal exploration of Liberty City. The paper then outlines the neoliberal political unconscious embedded in the urban dimension of Liberty City and proposes final theoretical reflections on the possible relations between the urban, the political and the aesthetics of video game practices.

Aesthetic theory and the video game

This book draws on aesthetic theory, including ideas from the history of painting, music and dance, to offer a fresh perspective on the video game as a popular cultural form. It argues that games like Grand Theft Auto and Elektroplankton are aesthetic objects that appeal to players because they offer an experience of form, as this idea was understood by philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Theodor Adorno. Video games are awkward objects that have defied efforts to categorize them within established academic disciplines and intellectual frameworks. Yet no one can deny their importance in re-configuring contemporary culture and their influence can be seen in contemporary film, television, literature, music, dance and advertising. This book argues that their very awkwardness should form the starting point for a proper analysis of what games are and the reasons for their popularity. This book will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the increasingly playful character of contemporary capitalist culture.

Extender Tax Provisions

This is testimony submitted at the invitation of the Senate Finance Committee for its hearings on January 31, 2012 on tax provisions that had expired at the end of 2011, but which the Finance Committee was considering for extension for two more years. For 13 of the provisions, worth about $18 billion over ten years, the testimony recommends that they be left expired. For nine of the provisions, worth $12 billion over ten years, there is a worthy cause, but the provisions need to be reworked to refocus with less waste and with greater efficiency. The three most important provision on the “keep dead” list are(1) Exception under Subpart F for active financing income. ($5.2 billion over 10 years). The testimony says that financing income can be sourced offshore without any economic substance. Subpart F which taxes mobile income to U.S. owners properly applies to this income.(2) 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements, qualified restaurant buildings and improvements, and qualified retail improvements. ($2.9 billion over 10 years). The expired provision allows a 15-year tax life for improvements to buildings for the lessee. The testimony says the normal 39 year life for nonresidential real property is more appropriate. (3) Deduction for state and local general sales taxes. ($2.8 billion over 10 years if AMT is patched). The expired provision would allow an itemized deduction for state sales taxes. The testimony says that the deduction is inappropriate. The purchaser voluntarily pays the sales taxes by buying the product and we know that the product contributes to the purchaser’s standard of living by at least its cost including sales tax because the purchaser is willing to pay for it. The most important issue on the list of provisions that should be re-enacted but only after better focus that cuts down government caused waste is the tax credit for research and experimentation expenses ($7.7 billion over 10 years). The expired provision would give a research tax credit equal to 20 percent of increases in research. The testimony says that moneys currently qualifying as “research” are not required to give benefit to the general public worth the cost of the credit. Games like Dead Zone 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV that are not good for the general public are considered to be research. When the credit is applied to benefits consumers pay for, the subsidy distorts real demand. The testimony recommends that product development not be eligible as research and that the benefit to the general public should be ascertained only after the fact by a reward administered by National Science Foundation.

The Semiotic Hitchhiker's Guide to Creaky Voice: Circulation and Gendered Hardcore in a Chicana/o Gang Persona

This paper aims to build on some of Jane Hill's contributions to the understanding of indexicality and the creation of an intertextual media series (Hill 2005), as well as to elucidate the varying levels of awareness that speakers have of linguistic features in the circulation of a stereotype. I show how creaky voice, a type of nonmodal phonation, becomes enregistered within an early narrative context, and is then catapulted by centrifugal media forces, taken as part of a constellation of features that cluster around the persona of “hardcore Chicano gangster.” The data presented come from four separate but intricately related sources. One is a narrative of a Chicana girl from Northern California, collected in the 1990s when she was involved in gangs. I also analyze a media-based data set that includes songs about cholos by a Chicano hip hop artist, web-based text and video tutorials on how to act like a cholo, and a representation of a Chicano gangster in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I explain a mechanism through which a metapragmatically less-than-salient feature can become a semiotic hitchhiker, co-occurring with more overtly ideologized and stereotyped phenomena such as codeswitching and the usage of specific discourse markers. [creaky voice, intertextuality, metapragmatic awareness, enregisterment, Chicanos]

Grand Theft Auto IV Comes to Singapore: Effects of Repeated Exposure to Violent Video Games on Aggression

Given the increasingly dominant role of video games in the mainstream entertainment industry, it is no surprise that the scholarly debate about their impact has been lively and well attended. Although >100 studies have been conducted to examine the impact of violent video games on aggression, no clear consensus has been reached, particularly in terms of their long-term impact on violent behavior and aggressive cognitions. This study employs a first-ever longitudinal laboratory-based experiment to examine longer-term effects of playing a violent video game. One hundred thirty-five participants were assigned either to the treatment condition where they played a violent video game in a controlled laboratory setting for a total of 12 hours or to the control group where they did not play a game. Participants in the treatment group played Grand Theft Auto IV over a period of 3 weeks and were compared with a control group on the posttest measures of trait aggression, attitudes toward violence, and empathy. The findings do not support the assertion that playing a violent video game for a period of 3 weeks increases aggression or reduces empathy, but they suggest a small increase in proviolence attitudes. The implications of the findings are discussed.

The Geographical Imaginations of Video Games: Diplomacy, Civilization, America's Army and Grand Theft Auto IV

Video games are important sites for critical geopolitics, and this article engages in the analysis of Diplomacy, Civilization, America's Army, and Grand Theft Auto IV in order to understand how the geopolitical imaginary works in popular culture. It makes the argument that the claim to geopolitical and tactical verisimilitude is at odds with the representations of violence and the body in war. It concludes by mapping new directions for the study of video games.

Removing the Checks and Balances That Hamper Democracy: Play and the Counter-hegemonic Contradictions of Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV provides an unparalleled opportunity to consider the outcomes when textual play and game play not only intersect, but operate in concert. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked to each other and to the social commentary which contributes to the game's story, humor, and thematic unity. This article considers the modes of textual play in Grand Theft Auto IV, as well as the locations and situations when players encounter them while playing the game. It also explores the subversive of potential of textual play as it relies on and departs from game play, and attempts to reconcile whether or not the success of such motives hinges on the very act of playing a game, or if the specific game (and its franchise) overdetermine the result.

Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do

Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do