“If GTA4 were a movie, it would have been directed by Martin Scorsese or David O. Russell, and we’d all be ooohing and aaahhing over its dark, ironic vision of immigrant life in a world at war with itself. But because Liberty City is a video game, where players are in the driver’s seat, so to speak, it freaks people out. Earlier installments of GTA inspired feminist and cultural-conservative outrage (you have the option to kill prostitutes!), and concern over moral turpitude from Hillary Clinton (you can beat cops to death! Or anybody!). And yet there are other video games out there, like the family-friendly role-playing game The Sims, where players can torture people to death in ways far more disturbing than those in GTA. I was just talking to a friend who told me gleefully how he’d taken one of his Sims characters, stuck him in a VR headset, and walled him into a room that only contained an espresso machine. The character kept drinking coffee and playing the headset, pissing in the corners of the room and crying until he died.” (05/07/08)