The “union” of schools and video games is hardly the most conventional pairing. Then again, when the first games came out, schools didn’t know much of what to do with them. But then, once it became a viable career path for people young and old, many could learn about making video games. Now, though, things have evolved once again, for as we told you last week, there’s an actual college professor who uses the titles that Rockstar Games has made as the backbone for his courses. And in an interview with IGN, he couldn’t help but praise the gam dev team for doing so much with the periods of history that they constructed their games from:
“Few developers rival Rockstar in terms of the granular detail that goes into their games. But I also think Rockstar is rather rare in their eagerness to comment on the social fabric of American life. Their games – from L.A. Noire through Red Dead through GTA – are all interested in saying something about the unique strangeness of the American experiment. What they say is sometimes thoughtful, sometimes not – but that they’re trying is fascinating.”
That’s an interesting way of depicting what Rockstar Games is doing with its titles, and yet, you can see it with some of the characters and plots that have come through their titles, including one John Marston, who tried to put his life behind him, and is threatened by the government to take out the rest of his old gang if he wants to live the rest of his life in peace, only to be betrayed later on.
Now, as we look upon the upcoming title from the dev team, Grand Theft Auto VI, you can see the teasers that continue the feelings that this college professor had. In the first trailer for the game, Rockstar highlighted the weirdness of Leonida, the state that protagonists Jason and Lucia will be working their way through, and how Vice City is meant to be a kind of “modern paradise” for those who can navigate it.
That is absolutely the vibe that their real-life inspirations give off, with Leonida being a representation of Florida, and Vice City being a parallel to Miami. We also see the struggles that Jason and Lucia must go through to survive, especially after a simple robbery goes wrong for them.
What other kinds of social commentary will the game have? We’ll have to wait until May to find out!
