Aoun investigates the new video game 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City' in which a player can create a gang war, travel around a fully immersive city, jump out of their car and decapitate someone. 'A game like Vice City might be able to turn on many more light bulbs above people's heads. It is itself the consequence of a problematic causal chain of events, and illuminating insofar as it reflects a tendancy towards social violence in the acceptable form of (say) objectification and commodification. And it mediates those tendencies by giving expression to them in a 'playful' way. It suggests that society is really the cause of violence, and Vice City merely the site of its effects.'
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