The latest in the Grand Theft Auto video game series is opening for pre-orders on June 25, and predictably it is garnering controversy. I say “predictably” because conservatives have been condemning the series since it was first released in 1997; Grand Theft Auto was denounced in Britain (where a peer called for it to be banned in the House of Lords), Germany, and France. Brazil prohibited it entirely.
The new entry, Grand Theft Auto VI, promises much of the same first-person wickedness as the previous editions. Players steal cars, run down pedestrians, exploit prostitutes to restore their “health,” and then kill them to get their money back. Rockstar Games has ignored criticisms of the amorality of their product, but previously removed content condemned by the LGBT movement as “transphobic.” Presumably, you can still kill hookers — but they can’t be trans. The new morality can be confusing.
My dislike of video games is easily my second least popular opinion. (The first is my opposition to public combat sports for entertainment, including the human cockfight recently hosted on the White House lawn.) These opinions overlap. The early Christians were universal in their denunciations of violent public spectacle not only because of the harm to the participants but because they glorified violence, hardened hearts, and inflamed sinful passions.
As Tertullian put it bluntly of the amphitheater: “If we can maintain that it is right to indulge in the cruel, and the impious, and the fierce, let us go there. If we are what we are said to be, let us regale ourselves there with human blood.”
I suspect that few Christians would be willing to argue that Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games are not “cruel” and “impious,” and thus I would suggest that those who defend them must explain why they are justified entertainment for Christians. You will look long and hard to find a Christian theologian of the past two millennia willing to sign off on the idea that it is morally licit to relax by kicking back with your console to cosplay as a fornicating master criminal and serial killer.
The instinctive defense usually offered at this point is that these games are “just entertainment,” an argument that manages to miss the point while being self-defeating. (I would add that C.S. Lewis neatly defined entertainment as “the devil’s substitute for joy.”) To play Grand Theft Auto, you must play a role. In that role, you will not be a good father, a loyal husband, an honorable warrior, or even a decent man. You play at being someone profoundly, proudly, and persistently evil. That’s not “entertainment.” That’s practice.
Now, some of my readers will accuse me of being “dramatic.” Video game enthusiasts don’t turn into killers! That’s true, for the most part — although it’s worth mentioning that the military uses violent video games to train soldiers, in part due to the fact that the video games assist in desensitizing users to killing. But that’s beside the point. The question is not whether playing at being a car thief and serial killer of prostitutes will prompt you to actually do these things. The question is whether it is moral to do so. The answer seems obvious to me and would seem obvious to every previous generation of Christians.
In order to get the satisfaction that comes with genuine achievement, young men once had to do things. Now, that sense of achievement can come merely from sitting behind a screen, indoors, aping the behavior of a degenerate. Combine that with the toxic effect of widespread porn addiction — allowing men to ape at sex while gawping at a screen and sapping their will to pursue courtship and marriage in which sexual intimacy was once largely confined — and the effect on young men has been predictably devastating.
Anyway, all of that is to say: Don’t buy the new Grand Theft Auto game.
Bizarre take. You can make a fair case against games like Grand Theft Auto where you can roleplay as a total scumbag (these activities are optional if I understand correctly, but playing Grand Theft Auto and only doing virtuous things would be akin to going to McDonald’s and only ordering a salad). But there’s a lot more to the medium and hobby than hyper-violent RPGs and first-person shooters just as there is more to the internet than pornography portraying rape and strangulation (Tetris and Wordle are video games too). And video games are no less productive or fulfilling than spending hours every day doomscrolling or watching sportsball/reality television.
The title was click-baity, granted. But you’ll note that the critique was specifically of violent video games, not video games writ large. I agree wholeheartedly with your final point. I’d compare violent video games to watching UFC, in that they are morally degrading in the same way.
Bizarre take. You can make a fair case against games like Grand Theft Auto where you can roleplay as a total scumbag (these activities are optional if I understand correctly, but playing Grand Theft Auto and only doing virtuous things would be akin to going to McDonald’s and only ordering a salad). But there’s a lot more to the medium and hobby than hyper-violent RPGs and first-person shooters just as there is more to the internet than pornography portraying rape and strangulation (Tetris and Wordle are video games too). And video games are no less productive or fulfilling than spending hours every day doomscrolling or watching sportsball/reality television.
The title was click-baity, granted. But you’ll note that the critique was specifically of violent video games, not video games writ large. I agree wholeheartedly with your final point. I’d compare violent video games to watching UFC, in that they are morally degrading in the same way.