Haitians protest game; blog protests coverage

Well, the flood gates are officially open on this one.



The gate-opener, by most accounts, is this WCBS-TV report that says "Shame on You" to Rockstar Games and their game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, in which "players are instructed to exterminate an entire ethnic group," according to the report.



It's unclear whether the report started the flood of action we've seen recently or whether it simply helped fuel the debate. Regardless, protests outside New York's city hall and calls for a "boycott and legal action among some in the Haitian community are probably only the beginning of this story.



I'll get to the mainstream and specialist coverage of the events so far in a different post, but first let me air out a laundry list of problems I have with the original WCBS-TV report on the topic. Please read the transcript, or better yet watch the video of the report on their site before reading my comments:

• The first line of the report calls Grand Theft Auto: Vice City the "best-selling video game of all time." As far as I can tell, this is just an inexcusable factual error. The New York City Daily News puts Vice City's sales at "nine to ten million copies," putting it far behind even classic games like Super Mario Bros. 3 (which sold 17.28 million units according to Gamecubicle). The error was repeated in this Miami Herlad article which adds that the game grossed "more than $160 million even before it hit the stores, making it the best-selling game ever." This quote suggests that the Herald might be neglecting the difference between "fastest-selling" and "best-selling", which is an important distinction. To me, "best-selling" means that the game has sold the most units overall, regardless of time since release, while "fastest-selling" would mean that it sold the most in a specific time period (i.e. before release). This might seem like semantic nitpicking, but it shows a distinct lack of attention to detail on the part of both these reports.
  
  
• Early in the piece, Arnold Diaz says that the object of Vice City's is "to kill, kill again, then kill some more." Looking at it a different way, you could say the object was to "completely run the city," by buying businesses or "to do tasks around Vice City without getting caught or dying, as these two sites did. Heck, for most of the (admittedly brief) time I played the game, my object was to "escort passengers to their location in a stolen taxi." The alarmist, narrow description of such an open-ended game shows how little Mr. Diaz understands this game or this medium.
  
  
• It should also be noted that, if you stick to Vice City's mission objectives, then most of the violence is not "random and indiscriminate," as the report claims, but rather motivated by a struggle for power and profit in a town ruled by gang-warfare. It is up to the player whether or not to participate in indiscriminate killing, and the CBS report implies that this is not the case. The truth is that there is an important distinction between allowing players to kill random bystanders and requiring it, a distinction that is not even alluded to in the report.
  
  
• The interview with John Difenderfer was well done, but perhaps not indicative of the Vice City playing public in general. Difenderfer's quote saying that "you have to have a strong mind to be able to play this game and not want to go out and kill people," is especially suspect. A ridiculous majority of the ten million people who've bought the game must be extremely strong-minded, then, or they would all be gunning each other down in the street. A more discerning journalist probably would have filtered out such a quote. The report would also benefitted from comments from other gamers, or any indication that the reporter even talked to any other gamers in his reporting.
  
  
• As has been pointed out elsewhere, gamers in Vice City are not instructed "to exterminate an entire ethnic group," as WCBS-TV claims, but instead to take out a rival gang called "the Haitians." I will only add that Mr. Diaz should have become aware of this fact as he got "deeper into the game" to file his report.
  
  
• The characterization of Rockstar President Sam Houser as "hiding" is a bit much. If he refused to comment, say that he refused to comment. There's no need to go on and say that he is "refusing to speak with us at all, refusing to even acknowledge the community's concerns about the game." Sure, it's true, but it taints your coverage with a stench of bias that is hard to remove. The use of a picture that makes Houser look like a convicted felon does not help your case.
  
  
• The use of sources from the National Institute for Media and the Family and the Haitian Centers Council is a good start, but where are the sources on the other side of the issue? I understand Mr. Houser didn't speak with you (and that this might have hurt your feelings), but did you bother to look for anyone else to present a defense of the game? New York Newsday and The Miami Herald, among others, were able to find sources outside of Rockstar willing to defend the game, including other Vice City gamers. "It's not anti-Haitian. You join the Cuban gang to kill the Haitians, but after that you join the Haitian gang to kill the Cubans," an undidentified Vice-City-player in the Herald says. "It's like the movie Scarface. Did the Colombians sue Al Pacino after it came out?'' I can't imagine that there was no one in New York who could have given Mr. Diaz a similar comment to balance his coverage.

Maybe it's a bit much to expect objective reporting from a series entitled "Shame on You," but this report is so far from a fair and balanced look at the issue that it really troubles me. Am I being too extreme, or do you readers agree that the report was at worst horribly biased and at best terribly unbalanced? Feel free to leave your comments below.