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Trigger Happy
363
kill, you can find stylistic inspiration anywhere: in a
detective novel, a film, a painting by Hieronymus
Bosch, a heavy-metal album or a videogame. They
won’t, however, implant the murderous desire in the
first place.
A videogame can even be seen as positively
valuable if it enables the formal imitation of dangerous
or criminal activities in a safe and consequence-free
environment. Sam Houser, president of Rockstar
Games, which published Grand Theft Auto 2 in 1999,
quotes the New York Police Department as happily
approving of the joyriding and cop-killing in his
notorious product: “We’d rather they did it in your
game than on the street.”
And yet, precisely because of their huge
commercial and cultural successes, videogames cannot
be immune from ethical considerations. We have, after
all, been discussing them as art.
54
So let’s return to one
of our primary themes: our old friend, the reality of the
unreal world.
_________________
54 “Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus.