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High Art/Low Life: The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto

High Art/Low Life: The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto HIGH ART/LOW LIFE The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto Soraya Murray I am not a thug . . . but I play one on my PlayStation. Armed with a cache of weapons that would make your garden-variety sociopath blush with envy, I slip into a simulated territory, in the hopes of conquering the underworld that is Grand Theft Auto. While on one level Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto series (GTA) is all kitschy, gratuitous violence for entertainment purposes, it is also a masterpiece of interactive design. Arguably, it presents one of the most sophisticated developments in commercial video gaming to render a highly traversable urban space, one in which a player performs actions with a tremendous degree of freedom and unscripted spontaneity. This accounts for its wild popularity in the gaming market. The best-selling video game in America in 2001, GTA III’s success was usurped only by the release of the game’s next evolution, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which became the year’s bestseller in 2002. With the October 2004 release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, likely the most anticipated game of the year, Rockstar has once again set the gaming world on fire with its http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

High Art/Low Life: The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Volume 27 (2) – May 1, 2005

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References (3)

Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2005 Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
Subject
Feature
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/1520281053850866
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

HIGH ART/LOW LIFE The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto Soraya Murray I am not a thug . . . but I play one on my PlayStation. Armed with a cache of weapons that would make your garden-variety sociopath blush with envy, I slip into a simulated territory, in the hopes of conquering the underworld that is Grand Theft Auto. While on one level Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto series (GTA) is all kitschy, gratuitous violence for entertainment purposes, it is also a masterpiece of interactive design. Arguably, it presents one of the most sophisticated developments in commercial video gaming to render a highly traversable urban space, one in which a player performs actions with a tremendous degree of freedom and unscripted spontaneity. This accounts for its wild popularity in the gaming market. The best-selling video game in America in 2001, GTA III’s success was usurped only by the release of the game’s next evolution, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which became the year’s bestseller in 2002. With the October 2004 release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, likely the most anticipated game of the year, Rockstar has once again set the gaming world on fire with its

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and ArtMIT Press

Published: May 1, 2005

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