Writing about Grand Theft Auto

In light of the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV, let me blatantly do a self promoting plug about two articles I’ve written about the Grand Theft Auto games.

The first one “To be or not to be in Liberty City” is a synopsis I wrote together with Henrik Bennetsen about the narrative structure and the impact of this on the gameplaying experience in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

And the other one “Please do not walk on the grass” is a more magazine article version of the former. This one got some big time attention at the time of publishing as it was part of the first ever Carnival of Gamers.

Man those where the days… playing games all day and just turn out a small synopsis now and then about what I thought about them, spiced up with some highbrow references to other peoples’ work on narrative and immersion in games.

I sure miss those days.

Please do not walk on the grass

On how role-playing in “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” can be difficult

By Simon Larsen

Before you starting spamming the comment function with enlightening comments such as “GTA is not a RPG you idiot!”, let me explain what I mean with role-playing in a game like Grand Theft Auto (GTA);

It is correct that GTA is not marketed as a RPG, but in it you play the role of Carl Johnson¹ in his quest for correcting all the wrongdoings that has come upon him and his family. This, in it self, does not really constitute GTA as a RPG, since then all games would more or less be RPGs, but the sheer size of the game world and the freedom to roam around in this, creates a narrative vacuum that the player has to fill out by him/her self, very similar to “normal” RPGs. Furthermore you, as a player, are free to dress up Carl in more or less any way you find suitable and “pimp his ride” in various ways. On top of that you have the element of the fitness and sex appeal of CJ. These elements are clearly added into the game in order for the players to identify more with CJ, e.g. that they share the same goals and behave in a way you would prefer etc.

The overall story arc of the game is very well constructed but in some cases the narrative that the player is creating (though his/her (inter)actions) clashes very hard with the narrative that Rockstar Games has put into the game.

When I first loaded the game on my PS2, I was expecting the grandeur of the two previous games in the series, GTA III and GTA: Vice City, and Rockstar delivered. The game is bigger, prettier, sounds better and driving around in the game is just a fun as it was in the others. It has a great and better written story than the previous game. But this is also where GTA: SA goes down an unfamiliar path for the series.

In GTA III the protagonist was an unnamed guy with a gritty past, the plot was familiar in sense of “Goodfellas” kind of way. And again with GTA: VC the setting was instantly recognizable, everything from the Miami Vice inspired intro, the Don Johnson and “that other Guy“, the pink flamingos and every thing in between.

These two games worked perfectly, because the story was lose and the setting geared towards only one kind of storyline, so there was little difference in the story that Rockstar had put into the game and the story that the player developed while playing.

I would argue that the focus on a better and stronger story proved to be San Andreas’ Achilles’ heel. As I said, the story is better, no need to argue about that, but it is also tighter and more confined, therefore limiting in the way the players act out their “inner criminal”.

An example of this is in the first part of the game. Here you take on the “Doberman” mission, a mission that involves taking over some gang territory from competing gangs in Los Santos². The game explain very clearly how the game mechanics works in connection with this and before long you and your recruited gang members are out cruising in pimped-up lowriders looking for drive-by action³. Within minutes full-blown gang war is happening in downtown Los Santos.

The gang war game play element of SA is a nice little (mini) game in it self, but wear out after some time. And this is where the real trouble kicks in.

After I’d have taken over more or less the entire city of Los Santos and in the process developed my own story of CJ as being this “don’t-you-look-at-me-or-I?ll-shoot-you” kind of guy, that doesn’t take any crap from anyone (yes, really living out my inner criminal here) I decided to take on a mission I was more or less certain that would progress the story line of the game. And the mission did indeed progress the story, but in a whole other direction than the one I wanted.

The mission starts with a cut-scene where a crocket cop named Tenpenny⁴ back-stabs CJ. Since it was a cut-scene there was nothing I could do, even though my view of CJ had now become this before mentioned hard-boiled gangster that would blow the head of anyone trying to cheat him, even cops.

So there I was, thrown out of town, with no guns, no homies to protect me, no nothing. Just seconds ago I was the king of town, I was the guy with homies on every street corner looking out for me, I was the one everyone feared and few had live to tell the tale of.
Me and CJ where one, but no more. The bond between me, as the player of the game, and Carl Johnson was lost the minute he sat foot in the hillbilly town of Angle Pine… never to be found again.

I kept on playing the game, but CJ was no longer an important part of the game for me, now I was just looking for quick ways to complete the missions, earn money to buy property and scouting for nice cars to drive around.

After this “incident” I played the game in the way Rockstar properly wanted me to play it. The problem was that they had open up this huge game world for me and told me that I could do anything I wanted in. But in really they wanted me to act in a very specific way in it, and not walk on the pretty grass even though I could.

1. or just plain CJ among friends [↩]
2. the first of three cities in the state of San Andreas [↩]
3. note the deliberate use of “you” and “your” [↩]
4. brilliantly voice-acted by Samuel L. Jackson [↩]

To be or not to be in Liberty City

Looking closer at importance of the story arc in the emergent game world of the Grand Theft Auto series

By Simon Larsen and Henrik Bennetsen

Supervisor: Espen Aarseth
Course: Computer Game Theory – E2004

IT – University of Copenhagen
November 2004

THIS IS AN UNFINISHED WORK. It is only a synopsis that contains many unanswered questions.
DO NOT QUOTE.

See Liberty City and Die

Many games have tried to give the player the feeling of total freedom to roam around a living breathing game world before Grand Theft Auto (GTA), but few have had the huge commercial success these games had. At the same time the game has got mission that you have to complete to finish the game, so it?s basically a progression game.
In this synopsis we will look closer at these two terms progression and emergence games by examining the three last installments in the Grand Theft Auto series: Grand Theft Auto III (GTA3), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (VC) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (SA).

The question that is going to be addressed herein:

• Is the overall story arc vital to drive the playing experience forward because of the nature of the offline single player game that the GTA series is?
• Is the narrative vital to keep the player entertained and the get the player accept the setting?
• Could the game evolve into a game more in the form of e.g. Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Battlefield 1942?
• Or would GTA have had been a more fascinating game as a MMORPG?

Complexity

In any given part of the GTA games you can find periodic systems. If you for example stand still by a way side for some minutes the same cars will start to drive past you and the same dialogue will be spoken by the pedestrians in your vicinity.

Image 1: Four kinds of systems (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, p. 155).

But on the overall scale of the game, nothing will be in a periodic state. There are too many random events occurring. This places the game in the complex system category. It is not total chaos since nothing in the game is completely random (e.g. you will never find Haitian gangs in the Cuban controlled parts of Vice City). It is in complex systems like these that emergence in the gameplay can become apparent.

Sandbox

You could easily write a walkthrough for the GTA games but hat would only cover 50% of the game, and all the different missions can be solved with a variety of different strategies.
There is a very well-defined story arc in the games that the player can chose to follow. The keyword here is chose, since it is not required for the player to do so, although some areas of the game will be locked to the player until certain mission in the story have been completed. Beyond that the player is free to pursuit any action he or she may desire¹. Jesper Juul (2002) defines two different types of games as Games of Progression and Games of Emergence respectively. So what exactly is GTA; a game of progression or a game of emergence? It is both.

Emergression

A new term might be need here: Emergression. Games that are both progression and emergent at the same time, but cannot exist without both being present in the game. In order to keep the player occupied and interested in the game, you will have to have some form of narrative to keep getting the player to accept the setting and drive the emergent gameplay forward. Without the narrative the game would still be highly entertaining but the average player would properly not spend more than 5-10 hours on it. When the first three “unique jumps” have been found and you have played taxi-driver for 10 customers, the game would become trivial and extremely repetitive.

Image 2: The emergence is increasing as you progress in the game (adapted from Juul 2004).

Platform

To avoid letting the game become repetitive you will have to have “a series of interesting choices” as Sid Meier would say or as Rollings and Ernest (2003) calls it “One or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment”. The openness of the mission structure is only part of the equation that makes the GTA series such a successful formula. In the future the series might become a platform of gaming, where the game just establish the setting and then let the players live out their inner Godfather or Bonnie and Clyde without forcing any given story on the play. Then we can speak of simulations, as defined by Gonzalo Frasca (2001), when talking about GTA.

The breaking point stated by Selmer Bringsjord (2001) is also the need for a smarter AI. This begs the question: Will GTA develop into a multiplayer game or even a MMORPG? Is playing against other people the ultimate AI?

Player types

Another question is then; do the GTA series include gameplay for all of Richard Bartle’s player types (1996)? Gameplay for the explorers and achievers are certainly there. But what about the socializes and the killers? Well, everyone who has played the game, loves to talk to others how have also played to game² and the killers might find pleasure in killing innocent bystanders and pedestrians, and in the mission that requires killing of certain characters. Then again is it at all relevant to talk about player types in an offline single player game like GTA?

To be or not to be in Liberty City

It is clear that the emergent nature of the GTA games attracts a big crowd of gamers, but would the games have had the same commercial and critical success without the narrative to help the game progress? And this leads us back to the question of whether the narrative really is vital in an emergent game such as GTA? Would the story be apparent in Grand Theft Auto 7? Will it become a MMORPG?

This game series might very well eventually become the final battleground for the death match between narrativism and ludology. And the battle might never be settled. This is why we call for the coining of a new term. We use the term “Emergression”; for games that currently cannot exist without both progression and emergence.

• Are emergression games the future of gaming or a necessary step on the ladder?
• Historical perspective: Traditional games are often emergent, chess etc. Was narrativism a necessary step in the development of computer games, or just a sign of immaturity of the medium (e.g. something needed to ease the marketing of the games)?
• If we look back at GTA San Andreas in 10 years will we find it amusing that it was considered a very emergent game?

A critical look

Are GTA games really emergent? T.L. Taylor brought up the point at a seminar at Copenhagen University, November 2004, that you don’t actually use the emergence to advance in the game. So is this emergence really just a null event in the progression of the game? Something indisputably cool but essentially immaterial; like choosing the color of your car in a racing game.

• Can the game be played in a non-emergent manner and still be completed?
• Is completion the only goal when playing a game? How does this relate to Bartle’s player types?

References

All links checked as of November 2004. Not all are referenced directly in the text.

Books

• Holland, John H.: “Emergence: From Chaos to Order“. USA, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0192862111.
• Johnson, Steven: “Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software“. USA, Penguin Books, 2001. ISBN: 0140287752.
• Salen, Katie & Zimmerman, Eric: “Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals“. USA, The MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 0262240459
• Rollings, Andrew & Adams, Ernest: “Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design“. USA, New Riders, 2003. ISBN: 1592730019

Articles

• Aarseth, Espen: “Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse” in Ryan, Marie-Laure (Editor): “Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling“. USA, University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN: 0803289936
• Bartle, Richard A.: “HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS“. 1996.
• Bringsjord, Selmer: “Is It Possible to Build Dramatically Compelling Interactive Digital Entertainment (in the form, e.g., of computer games)?“. GameStudies.org, 2001.
• Frasca, Gonzalo: “SIMULATION 101: Simulation versus Representation“. 2001.
• Frasca, Gonzalo: “Sim Sin City: some thoughts about Grand Theft Auto 3“. GameStudies.org, 2002.
• Frasca, Gonzalo: “Simulation versus Narrative. Introduction to Ludology” in Wolf, Mark J.P. (Editor) & Perron, Bernard (Editor): “The Video Game Theory Reader“. USA, Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 0-415-96579-9
• Juul, Jesper: “The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression“. 2002.
• Juul, Jesper: “Hvad spillet betyder: om Grand Theft Auto 3″ in Engholm, Ida & Klastrup, Lisbeth: “Digitale Verdener: De nye mediers ?stetik og Design“. Denmark, Gyldendal, 2004. ISBN: 8702023687
• GameSpy: “Bored in San Andreas“. GameSpy.com. 28th October 2004.

1. You could argue that the emergent gameplay elements are more apparent than the progression elements, but none are more important one [↩]
2. See GTAforums.com (http://www.gtaforums.com) for an example of this. As of November 2004 the forum had 50,000 active users that is discussion everything from mission solutions to unique jumps. The socializing is ”off-line”, so to speak [↩]