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Finally live your thug
life dreams in ‘San Andreas’
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In 1987, Carl Johnson fled West Coast gang life, moving to an East Coast metropolis to get a fresh start. It’s five years later: He learns that his mother has been killed, and he has to come home.
CJ returns to a world he barely recognizes. Many of his gangbanging friends have been killed; his former gang has become a laughingstock; and his neighborhood is infested with crack cocaine. In the new video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," you can help CJ find his mother’s killer, resurrect his neighborhood and revive his gang.
By any means necessary.
Stop for a second. In your mind’s eye, what race is CJ?
If you think he’s black, you’re right; Rockstar Games, the makers of "San Andreas," takes the unusual step of making a video game with a black male as the lead character.
Like Hollywood, video games have few minority male dramatic leads. Last year’s "True Crime: Streets of L.A." had an Asian male lead; other titles have included minority athletes, police officers, good guys and bad guys, but no game this big has featured a black male as the central figure.
Predicted to be a top seller, "San Andreas" could help cut through the notion that the white male gaming audience doesn’t want to slip into the skin of a non-white character. It also could open a wider discussion of race in video games.
CJ’s skin color is not something that most people will even think about. But black gamers like me certainly are aware of it, just as female gamers notice that most video game heroes are male.
"San Andreas" is progress – with an asterisk.
"Even though there’s a lead black character, which is in some sense progress, that lead character is in a violent, urban environment, which is typical of non-lead (black) characters in other games, engaging in gang activity, drug activity, running from police," says Nina Huntemann, a Suffolk University assistant professor who studies race and gender in video games and other media.
As CJ, you can stray from the path of the main story and play games-within-the-game, as in 2002’s "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," whose non-linear format drew raves from gamers and led it to become the all-time sales champ with 10 million units sold. You also can kill police officers, bludgeon pedestrians and commit all the mayhem that drew howls from critics angered by "Vice City."
Does the fact that you are doing those things as a black man matter?
"Gamers see great characters, not color," says Alex Kakoyiannis, managing partner from Navigame, a company that helps marketers reach video gamers.
Anyway, "It’s not Rockstar’s job to further cultural understanding," adds educator Huntemann. "I don’t look to the industry to further progressive social change."
True, Rockstar is in the business of selling games, not raising consciousness. If that means tapping into a gamer’s longing to live the life glamorized by gangsta rap, then that’s what the company – and presumably others like it – will do. After all, if there’s a market for "San Andreas"-style games, it says more about us than it does about Rockstar.
"You examine video games as you would any artifact of any culture to see what a culture values," Huntemann says.
"San Andreas" furthers the action/adventure genre by incorporating more elements of role-playing games. You can earn respect by getting haircuts and tattoos, by pumping up in the gym to shed the weight CJ gains as he eats to maintain stamina. That sort of interactivity further ties the player to CJ, making it all the more interesting that Rockstar chose to make him the central character a black man.
I wished I knew what guided Rockstar officials’ thoughts; whether they considered the implications of CJ’s race. They received my e-mailed questions but hadn’t responded by my deadline.
I want to ask them about small, barely noticeable touches in "San Andreas" that tell me somebody put a lot of thought into re-creating the hip-hop world. When former East Coaster CJ goes to his closet for the first time, you hear East Coast hip-hop, such as "Rebel Without a Pause," by Public Enemy. When CJ is in a car in the mythical West Coast state of San Andreas, the radio blares gangsta rap by N.W.A. and other West Coast groups.
Gamers can play in casinos, parachute from planes, bet on horse races and enter low-rider competitions, among other things. The scope of the game is so broad that its soundtrack can encompass songs as varied as "Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang" by Dr. Dre and "Three Cigarettes in the Ashtray" by Patsy Cline; car radios play house music and country music stations as well as hip-hop and gangsta rap.
However, the predominant music – and accompanying language – are part of Rockstar’s re-creation of the gangsta lifestyle. Dialogue is studded with obscenities. Characters toss around the N-word, the B-word and other profanity.
Certainly for most gamers, being CJ won’t make them feel black any more than they felt Italian while playing mob-connected Tommy Vercetti in "Vice City." As Kakoyiannis said, "Gamers see great characters, not color."
Eric Gwinn
Chicago Tribune
