Roughly a dozen GTA sequels later, that level of fear and enmity-the kind that made my mom, who knew virtually nothing about video games, forbid me to play GTA-feels foreign. The game “put us back into the line of sight of people in government and policy and media who then typically defaulted to what they always defaulted to, which was, ‘This is terrible, violent video games are bad for kids, and this one is the worst one we’ve ever seen.’” “ GTA III, with a lot of innovative technology, pushed the envelope creatively and artistically and also from a content standpoint, and in so doing became the new poster child for those who would attack the social effects of games on users,” he says. Two decades ago, it was Lowenstein’s job to defend the industry from mostly state-based efforts to regulate games or ban games.
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“When GTA III came out, there was already a continuing spotlight on video game industry content by people in the media and people in policy and in the broad parent advocacy community, which spanned conservative, religious organizations to more mainstream watchdog organizations,” says Doug Lowenstein, the founder and former president of the Entertainment Software Association, the Washington, D.C.–based video game industry trade association.
Twenty years ago Friday, when GTA III debuted, the country was enmeshed in a moral panic about video game violence, which in the short term was only going to get worse. But that rapidly increasing compliance in the early 2000s was a symptom of a widespread, preexisting concern surrounding violent video games, which GTA and its sequels further inflamed. I don’t mean to suggest that retailers shouldn’t have respected the ratings system, or that those age-related restrictions shouldn’t have existed (though I would’ve loved to revoke them when they applied to me). That was down from 85 percent the previous year, though, and the rate was falling fast, to 69 percent in 2003 (when I resorted to asking upperclassmen at my high school to help me get games), 42 percent in 2006, 20 percent in 2008, and 13 percent in 2010. A December 2001 FTC report based on a study of undercover consumers found that 78 percent of 13-to-16-year-old shoppers had been able to buy an M-rated game that year without anyone checking their age. If I’d been more persistent and willing to endure the embarrassment of potentially being carded, I probably could have gotten the game myself. (And by then, as Patrick Stewart says on Extras, I had already “seen everything.”)Īfter ‘Grand Theft Auto III,’ Open-World Games Were Never (and Always) the Same Every 3-D ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Game, Ranked How Does ‘Grand Theft Auto III’ Hold Up in 2021?
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Eventually I got greedy and brought the PS2 home, where my scheme was discovered and my hardware was confiscated. I holed up at my grandma’s house, spending sweet summer days with my body in Brooklyn but my mind in Liberty City, an underage GTA player in exile. Who knows how my mom had decided that GTA was unsuitable for my 15-year-old eyes? A scary story in the paper? A fearmongering segment on the local news? Maybe a warning from some other meddling mom? It didn’t matter anymore. Aside from frequently decreeing that I stop playing and start practicing piano, my mom paid little attention to video games, but she knew one thing: Grand Theft Auto III was not to be bought by me. GTA III had been out for almost a year, and I was desperate to play it, but the grandma method was my only hope-not just because of GameStop store policy, but also because of the commands of my mother.
In the summer of 2002, I was two years too young to buy GTA on my own, but I’d finally saved up enough to purchase a PlayStation 2 and the precious software that went with it. She just stood by my side in the store as I grabbed the game and forked over cash from my first summer job, her well-over-17-year-old self serving as a largely unwitting accomplice to my end around an M rating. It didn’t cost her anything, because she didn’t actually get me the game. Īside from making it possible for me to be born, the greatest gift my grandma ever gave me was Grand Theft Auto III. Twenty years later, we’re taking a look at its legacy while we wait for the upcoming GTA trilogy remaster, prepare to purchase yet another version of GTA V, and read rumors about the still-unannounced GTA VI. GTA III became a bestselling sensation that defined the open-world genre, spawning several sequels, inspiring countless imitators, and causing a cultural uproar. On October 22, 2001, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto III, a game that transported the publisher’s trademark criminal mayhem to an unimaginably immersive 3-D Liberty City.
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