Grand Theft Auto IV TODAY

Big day in the world of gaming. Tonight at 12:01am, Grand Theft Auto IV is launching. Like with books and movies, video games sales are structured like tournaments where the winner takes a large chunk of the market. Usually you'll see sales of games as dominated by the select few (called "power law distribution"), and the GTA series is one of those lucky few. A highly celebrated game because of its nonlinear storytelling format, it's also one of the easiest targets for that nexus of political calculus, the media and frightened parents. My local newspaper devoted a story to GTA IV that covered the entire front page, and looking around, I think that's not just because I live in a small, conservative city.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the comic book industry, and how it too once was believed to be a plague on society and youth morals. Now it's almost hard to imagine such claims being made. But I think what happens is interesting. The prohibition of some commodity, whether it's an illicit drug, a comic book, or a video game, follows certain patterns of mass frenzy, rational ignorance, and political responses that take such frenzy seriously in order to capture moderate voters.

I'm currently working on a project that will hopefully make a contribution to our understanding of whether there is a causal effect of violent video games and violence more generally. After all, since the early 1990s, crime rates have only fallen as violent video games have increased in number and severity, but that is not evidence of causality, only correlation. So my project will attempt to isolate short-run effects of violent video game exposure on subsequent "real life violence." Too bad the paper won't be ready for another year, at least. It would've been perfect to have it come out in time for some big violent game event, like GTA IV.