[quote name='Scrubking']Of course the 'rapist' would be worse, but it looks like that is the direction R* is headed. They seem adamant on pushing the limits, and apparently love getting sued.
And how do I make it sound worse than it is? Beating up kids IS what the game is about. You play as a kid in school who goes around starting fights and flushing other kids heads down the toilet for fun.[/QUOTE]
As far as media is concerned, this is not unique. Literature, television, movies, and music have most certainly dealt with this topic already. I can only think of examples of music (within the Hardcore and perhaps Hip-Hop genres) in which bullying is treated as a right of passage or a positive characteristic, but it is possible that television has also done so (Bumfighting maybe? Professional Wrestling?) and I'm sure it's been treated similarly in literature (though no examples come to mind).
What is changing is the demographic of gamers; we're getting older, but children are also increasing as a group of people who play games. What should change is the attitudes of retailers and (most importantly) parents in recognizing this trend. Gaming is not for kids strictly anymore, although conventional attitudes make you think that such topics should not be broached in gaming. Why make gaming one of the only forms of media in which this is the case? Why not recognize that gaming is for adults as well, and that more and more games are strictly for that age range, regardless of how classy or violent that subject is (after all, nobody's clamoring to get Chuck Palahnuik (sp?) or Dean Koontz off your bookshelves)?
As a gamer, I've already had conversations with my wife about what to expose our child to. I have no intention of letting him/her play a GTA game until they're roughly 14 or 15, about the same time I'll let them watch R-Rated movies (with exceptions all around, of course). Why do I need to worry about how far Rockstar is pushing it when I can make those decisions as a consumer and (not quite yet, anyway) as a parent?
myke.
...scrub, you sound like Joe Libermann.