Shifting social topography within videogames
Ed. This piece was originally published at cityofsound.com on 12 September 2002, one of a slew of posts reflecting on Grand Theft Auto 3.
Matt Webb has been posting about games recently, including a reference to an earlier piece I wrote on ‘Grand Theft Auto 3’. Matt closes by saying:
“At the very least making a move doesn’t just alter the physical pieces-on-the-board representation, it adds that move into the history of the game. But more than that a move may change the rules themselves, as a side-effect, without the player intending it.”
To respond to a bit of what suggested here, in terms of my earlier post, Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001), in a very basic way, does appear to have a notion of game history altering the space within it, and in a sense, what you can do there. Though these are not really rules as such, as in formal boundaries, but rather conditions altering the space, via the various characters’ interactions within those spaces.
What this boils down to in GTA3, is that I can no longer crawl through the Mafia-controlled district of St. Marks because of the numerous previous offences I’ve now committed against the Mafia. Yet I now have to do a mission which involves driving through St. Marks. I was offered the mission earlier in the game. I could’ve taken it then, but ignored it in favour of pursuing a different, and more central, narrative thread. Having followed that thread, I’m now finding it extremely difficult to ‘go back’ and do the other mission. Because it involves driving through St. Marks—where Mafioso hitmen seem to enjoy standing on street corners waiting for me, with big guns … so I have to drive like Schumacher, albeit Schumacher with Uzis blazing, to avoid them. Which is my own fault, admittedly, but still.
But I appreciate the fact that ‘the city’ has now actually changed — in social topography, if not geographical. My mental map of the city now features a glowing danger sign hanging over the entire neighbourhood of St. Marks.
Like I said, it’s a very basic development … but something I think.
Ed. This piece was originally published at cityofsound.com on 12 September 2002. Related posts include the following:
City of Sound 
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