From GS

Sex workers cry foul, say game " accrues points to players for the depiction of rape and murder of prostitutes."

The Grand Theft Auto franchise is getting attacked from all angles. Joining the ranks of politicians, policemen, and attorneys in their crusade to see the game lifted from shelves are the nation' s sex workers. On its Web site, the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA is asking parents to assist them in calling for a ban of Take-Two Interactive' s controversial game.

Citing a 2001 document from the National Institute on Media and the Family' s David Walsh, SWOP is calling " on all parents and all gamers to boycott Grand Theft Auto."

The organization quotes various points from Walsh' s paper, including, " Children are more likely to imitate a character with whom they identify with. In violent video games the player is often required to take the point of view of the shooter or perpetrator."

Though the organization admits to being " adamantly opposed to any and all forms of censorship," as concerned parents themselves, they " wish to inform other parents of the potential danger extremely violent video games pose to children." Likewise, in the interest of promoting the rights of sex workers, the organization is opposed to the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes.

In the games, players can solicit " services" from prostitutes by driving their cars slowly near them. No sexual acts are in clear visible view, but during the " transaction," the player regains health and loses money. Though the player cannot actively rape prostitutes in the game, a possible rape is alluded to once during the storyline of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The prostitutes, like every other character, are also subject to homicide at the hands of the protagonist.

According to its Web site, SWOP USA is an organization dedicated to improving the lives of sex-industry workers and to the promotion of a safe working environment for the industry.

Only in America......

Fuck em...

SWOP USA is an organization dedicated to improving the lives of sex-industry workers and to the promotion of a safe working environment for the industry.

I find that entire sentence simply hilarious!!

It sure isn' t a safe working enviroment they work in.

Still it is incredible that Take Two is attcked even by them :)

I hope someone stops that whole GTA thing once and for all - I hate this game - the only one I enjoyed was GTA3 - after that it' s all the same with some bonusses and new bugs/glitches.

I hope someone stops that whole GTA thing once and for all - I hate this game - the only one I enjoyed was GTA3 - after that it' s all the same with some bonusses and new bugs/glitches.

As long as it isnt stopped by sensorship, if they stop GTA, it isnt the last game that will feel the hand of the american idiocy.

I like how they get so easily provoked, im even thinking about buying a copy of a GTA game to show them support, even though i dislike the game!

now that I think of it you' re right.

I' m at a real tossup here. While I don' t want videogames censored, I look at the grand theft auto games or 25 to life and really start to wonder. I mean honestly how can we as society who for the large part share the same basic morals, ie. don' t kill, don' t steal, don' t rape, etc defend a game that rewards for exactly that and not by hypocrites to the highest degree??? Then I think well does that mean all killing/item collecting should be taken out of games?? Man that would suck. I can' t figure out the middle ground, but I do know that I have very little defence for the GTA or GTA styled games that seem to promote this. I think if we were to liken it to hollywood, which poloticians are always keen to do, most of the time if a character in a movie is murdering/stealing/raping, they are the villian, and are portrayed as such. I think the problem with the GTA games is that the murderer/rapist is the protagonist and the people being attacked are not always the antagonists even. Any thoughts?

yeah you' re right but not with all tose things.

The thing is that anyone - you or me can say :that' s game and that' s reality.

Why some people play GTA and they kill everyone , rob them , fuck some hoes and steal cars?

Cause they know it' s a game and they are doing anything they wouldn' t do in real life.Another thing we gamers have in our minds is testing - we hear that the freedom is huge , so we go and test it.

I think that killing in GTA is just silly - killing in Perfect Dark (or goldeneye) felt really brutal and really good at the same time (ofcourse you' ve been killing the bad guys) yet noone had any problems with that.

GTA' s graphics are more like some parody of realistic urban gangster' s simulation.

This game is so lame that that whole thing about " kids shot kids at school cause of it" is fuckin retarded.

Those mainstream people are so fuckin stupid if they wait for every new GTA that much.

But you know - hype does it all and it just so happens that killing hookers appears to be the cheapest way for a good commercial that actually never ends.

I' d like to state first im not fan of GTA with the exception of just driving around listening to the radio stations.

I cannot believe the amount of complaints GTA has got over the years since it' s first iteration. It' s unbelievable.I find it hard to imagine that people are killing, raping, stealing, etc, etc because of a video game. The game hardly reflects real life that well, it doesn' t look very realistic, it' s no worse than a Grime or Gangster film.
It' s not a far stretch to say I have played much more violent games than GTA and really enjoy them, with lots f blood an' all. I still have no desire in life to go killing or anything else " wrong" .

The only people who should not be playing these games are mentally unstable people and I' d agree parents should stop their kids playing it. Then again they shouldn' t be anyway it' s an 18 rated game.
Then again, cartoons and films arent much better look at tom and jerry, simpsons (itchy and scratchy), films like saw 1/2 and more examples than these.

People just look for something to blame, and given the fan club of hating GTA they, like sheep, follow everyone else.

Parents: it' s not our fault it' s the game!!
Gamers: But who should be watching what the child is playing and has access to?

Sorry for the long winded post.

I know what you mean about reality and fantasy Gangsta, and I agree, the audience these games are targeted for SHOULD be able to tell the difference, and not want to go and do those things for real. What I' m wondering is what' s a healthy fantasy, and why do we NEED to be able to act out ANY type of fantasy in a game. Now don' t go thinking I' m some fanatic here, I just wonder what' s healthy. If we can kill police officers and rape women in GTA, what else should we be able to do? Will there be an RTS in the future that let' s you run Hitler' s Forces through the jewish population and build your own gas chambers to re-create the hollocaust? Should we be able to have virtual abortion simulators? How bout an action adventure game where we get to train people to become suicide bombers and take out hundreds of people in one big explosion? Maybe in the next GTA you can run your own Crystal meth lab complete with starving children running the thing as slaves? I know those are all extremes, but I doubt you' d argue that they are healthy ideas that anyone should put in games.

I see what your saying mxpx, but GTA to me is nothing... when i kill someone in the game or steal a car... it' s not something i find enjoyable or like it' s even realisticly portrayed. Manhunt that had a lot of attention... that I didn' t like because unlike with GTA, i felt wrong playing manhunt..
I' ve played the japanese " Berserk" game and relished in cutting monsters in half and having my character covered in blood buring it. But manhunt, feels sadistic to me... and GTA falls more to the former than the latter (except so much more boring)

UUmai - Berserk was great :)

MXPX - you' re right - it may seem strange that " normal" people want nothing more than to sit down and kill , rape , steal , drive fast , crash and so on .

The only difference I see is that those things are not portrayed realistically - Crashing is just fun explosion with flying cars and stuff , driving fast is just a blurred image that while giving you a taste of fast movement doesn' t give you the adrenaline rush you get in real life.

You can' t compare killing in GTA to killing a real man.Games haven' t changed much from 8 bit era - the idea of world and interaction in games is still mostly symbolic.

Killing is fun but it' s not like real killing , crashing is fun but would anyone say that burnout games are bad because people go out and crash on the first junction they encounter?

In conclusion - I think that what you said is true but on the other hand it' s because things we do in games are completely different than those we do in real life (real killing Vs games killing for instance) - they feel different , they cause different effects and so on.