The Rotten Core of GTA IV

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Guest Contributor

Excerpted from How Pac-Man Eats by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Reprinted with Permission from The MIT PRESS. Copyright 2021.

Understanding Games through Logics and Models 

There are many ways of playing video games. There are many ways of understanding video games. But unless we take an approach that ignores the specifics of how games are experienced and how they function—perhaps, studying games only with the tools we’d use for research on stamp collecting or movie watching—logics [which combine an abstract process and a communicative role, each refined through implementation to drive an ongoing state presentation and play experience—for example, collision detection or navigation] and models [which are constructed from logics and structuring information, serving as procedural representations of particular domain—for example, an urban open world as in the GTA series] can help ground and guide our understanding.

While I am most interested in how a focus on logics and models helps us understand innovative games made by small teams, they are also at the core of our experiences with mainstream games made by hundreds of people across multiple companies. Consider, for example, the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise. 

I remember the opening moments of GTA IV.[1] The player character is introduced as Niko, now at the end of a trip from Serbia to Liberty City, after having seen and done some bad things during and after the war. He steps off the boat, waiting a moment before his cousin, Roman, drives into view (figure 6.1). Then, because Roman is clearly too drunk to be driving, the first interactive section of the game is the player driving, while Roman gives directions to his apartment and spouts childishly sexist fantasies.

Figure 6.1: Roman (right) welcomes Niko (left) to Liberty City. (Image by author during play.)

When I begin playing, it becomes quickly apparent that my Niko’s not a very good driver. He probably didn’t have much opportunity when he was growing up. Plus, I’ve never been great at driving games. That is to say, as soon as interaction begins, I start to understand my experience of GTA IV as an interplay of the game’s fictions, its systems, and myself as a player.

In these first interactions I learn that GTA IV has a model of driving that enables and rewards play. The model employs control/navigation, movement physics, and collision-detection logics, as well as supporting animations, sounds, and dynamically applied tire tracks. Driving takes place in an urban environment that includes cars and pedestrians that try to get out of my way (for the cars, often unsuccessfully), a wide range of objects that my car can damage (the wreckage of which my car may plow over or get caught in), and patrolling police who don’t care about speeding or red lights, but don’t like to be sideswiped.

I also think I understand, as I play more, that the condition of vehicles is handled by a less complex resource logic. While damage to the car appears, cosmetically, in the position where an impact happened, as far as I can tell a vehicle’s driving condition seems to move steadily toward general inoperability as it is increasingly damaged (rather than specific damage in a particular area causing a specific type of inoperability). In fact, it is much more complex, but this is something I will only learn after a colleague (Adam Summerville) points it out to me, rather than through my hours of gameplay. That is to say, the model of driving is more learnable and playable than the model of vehicle condition.

And the contrast with learnability and playability of driving is even more apparent for character interaction. Some characters move out of the way as I drive, some cars honk, and Roman will sometimes complain if I crash the car into something—“ Man, stop that. I’m going to puke!” But if Roman is in the middle of one of his scripted monologues, he won’t stop delivering it even if I drive us both into the river—as I discover through restarting the game to experiment, amazed he didn’t pause after a head- on crash (figure 6.2). And choosing something to say to him is not one of my options for this drive, or any other. In fact, the only detailed interaction I can choose to have with another person is combat.

Figure 6.2 Even as you drive Roman’s cab backward into the water, he doesn’t interrupt his juvenile monologuing about women’s anatomy. (Image by author during play.)

Through playing, I develop my own version of Niko, interacting with the game’s fiction and systems. He goes to the stores and comes out dressed as I want. When he needs to fight, engaging the game’s combat model, he does so as I prefer—using his fists when he can avoid gunplay. When he needs to regain his health (resource), he goes to the restaurants I think fit him best. He makes a priority of spending time with his cousin and girlfriend, going out when they call to suggest it, and raising the simple “like” or “fondness” value that GTA IV tracks in its affinity (resource) logic for each of these characters. He explores the available areas of Liberty City, following my curiosity and engaging in solo and pair activities ranging from bowling to watching cabaret acts—all of them pre-scripted after selection, except in their physical interactions. And my Niko becomes a much better driver, given he has to drive before, after, and during most of these activities.

At the same time, mixed in with all the things I choose to do, those around Niko make certain events feel inevitable, via the game’s mission structure. Niko needs to do things to help his cousin Roman, to bring in money, or to curry favor with members of the community. One set of missions comes from Vlad, an unpleasant Russian mobster to whom Roman owes money. These involve driving, and some fighting, and a little thuggery. I have lots of choice in how I drive, some choice in how I fight, and one choice in the thuggery—when I chase down Ivan. Vlad tells me Ivan was planning to rob Roman, but as I chase Ivan up to and over rooftops, he says he was set up. At the end of the mission, Ivan is dangling from the side of a building and the game gives me the choice of killing or sparing him. There’s no question—especially after the war, the Niko I’m playing would never execute someone defenseless.

Or so I thought. Eventually, it is revealed that Vlad is sleeping with Roman’s girlfriend. Niko and Roman go to confront him—leading to fighting, vehicular chasing, and finally cornering Vlad at a construction site beneath one of the city’s towering bridges. As I approach Vlad, the game instructs me in performing executions (figure 6.3). But whatever murderous things Niko said in voiceover as I chased after Vlad were out of my control. The Niko I’m playing would not do that. I try waiting, but Vlad keeps walking around, waiting to be executed (figure 6.4). I try walking away, but come back to find the situation the same. 

Figure 6.3: The GTA IV interface, explaining how to execute the unarmed Vlad. The box in the upper left reads: “To perform an execution on Vlad, lock on to him and fire. When locked on, the reticule will flash if an execution can be performed.” (Image courtesy of Nathan Wardrip-Fruin.)

Figure 6.4 Vlad waits around for death no matter what Niko does. You can break line of sight, climb around on the scenery behind him (seen here), or even leave the area entirely. GTA IV will not progress until the player directs Niko to execute Vlad. (Image courtesy of Nathan Wardrip-Fruin.)

GTA IV will let me play a Niko who drives almost any way I could imagine. I could learn to drive precisely and tightly or be wild and destructive. I could decide to drive everywhere backwards—the acceleration and steering work in reverse, and I can swing the camera to point in the direction I desire. In any case, the game will respond in a fluid and satisfying way. But if I want to play a character—specifically the character of a killing-weary war veteran I feel the game’s fiction has suggested to me—GTA IV can only respond minimally, on occasion.

And at the moment I am forced to execute Vlad or stop making progress, the sense that I am playing my own version of Niko is lost. I never go any further with GTA IV.

Understanding Grand Theft Auto IV

Talking with people who don’t play them, most discussions of the GTA games focus on things we might say if each game were a movie. We might talk about the demeaning depictions of women, from Roman’s fantasies to the interactions (including violent interactions) available with female prostitutes. Or we might talk about the sympathetic depiction of Niko, an undocumented immigrant who is forced by circumstance into a life of crime. Talking with people who do play them, most discussions of the GTA games focus on non-obvious elements of the games’ spaces and systems. We might talk about where to find hidden pieces of body armor, weaponry, and health boosts, or unusual cars, and so on. Or we might talk about how to get achievements and trophies, hidden features or cheats, or alternate possibilities that arise from the game’s few story choices.

But if we look at what the game’s models and logics support richly, at the experience where players have the most agency and opportunity for expression, we see a game about something else. Not surprisingly, given the series’ full title, Grand Theft Auto IV is a game about urban driving and fighting. It is a procedural representation of urban life, primarily as seen from behind the wheel of a car. This procedural representation operates through the specific ways its logics and models have been implemented technically and the specific 3-D models, animations, and sounds created for those logics and models to communicate.

We can only understand this procedural representation if our discussion engages its full specifics. We can’t ignore the game’s systemic and play-driven elements, as statements from non-players often do. We can’t ignore the game’s larger communicative and cultural elements, as statements from the game’s players often do.

Some elements of the procedural representation connect to models and logics in obvious ways. For example, the apathetic police, ignoring all driving infractions except when the player’s vehicle damages theirs, are clearly responding to the collision logic that is key to the game’s model of driving and using it to represent an idea of urban policing.

But thinking about the game’s models and logics is also important to our understanding of other elements of the game. If we examine GTA IV’s pedestrian population in isolation, for example, it might seem very odd. Why would a simulated city’s sidewalk population include many different types and ages of characters, but no children or even teenagers? We can connect this back to the wide range of driving styles the game’s model supports—presumably it was seen as unacceptable (by the developer, or perhaps for the deliberately provocative developer’s place in the wider culture) to have players with wild, destructive driving styles run down children. In a game without as much focus on driving, or as much player choice in where and how to drive, or even in a game that rewarded activities other than destruction with more interesting responses from its models, this would not be necessary.

This kind of attention to logics and models, within the wider context of the game, provides a foundation for understanding games in ways that connect game systems, media, and player experiences. This can be done with a focus on the game’s most central, complex, and player-engaging models and logics—as I believe is important when trying to understand what a game is about. But it can also be done by contrasting particular examples of a game’s models and logics, then looking at the interactions between them.

For example, as mentioned in chapter 4, in the book Expressive Processing[2] I look at the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,[3] contrasting the freedom provided by the game’s spatial movement model with the limited choices of its story models. KotOR is in many ways an admirable game, pushing its story models to their limits, giving the player some sense of responsibility for story events and character relationships. But this same act of ambition also leads to breakdown, as the much more flexible spatial movement model interacts, through play, with the brittle story models.

A similar comparison for GTA IV reveals story models providing almost no meaningful choice, perhaps working to absolve the player of any sense of responsibility for the harrowing acts Niko carries out in the story.[4] Together with the fact that the game’s models and logics offer more opportunity for meaningful interactions with vehicles than people, we might see this as giving license—or even encouragement—to explore the violent, antisocial behavior (especially directed at non-story characters, from pedestrians to prostitutes) enabled for players by the driving and combat models. This, in the end, is the sense I came away with of what GTA IV is about.

GTA IV is a procedural representation of urban life focused on enabling players to explore the pleasures of destruction and violence without empathy. The models enable such actions, the wider game environment rewards them, the mission structure requires them, and the unreality of the game’s other people (they can really only be interacted with as crash dummies, punching bags, gun targets, and vending machines) removes any sense of consequences. While GTA IV dresses itself in the appearance of a crime drama, it is not about what drama is about—the tensions and evolutions of human relationships. Instead, the catharsis it presumably aims to provide, through players’ explorations of destruction and violence, is closer to the genre of unreflective action, or even titillation horror.

In the end, the elements of GTA IV that had humanized Niko—and that had led me to feel I was playing a particular Niko—just made it taste more rotten the further I played. For me, it would have been much more enjoyable as a cartoony playground of destruction, rather than a set of actions presented as carried out by a real person, especially one that I identified with.

Part of my interest in logics and models is in considering new ways they can be used (and inventing new logics and models) that will allow games like GTA IV to move beyond the choice of being disconnected from our world or offering dehumanizing procedural representations.

[1] Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto IV.

[2] Wardrip-Fruin, Expressive Processing.

[3] BioWare Corporation, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

[4] As a general rule, player choices in GTA IV do not have an impact on the plot. See: Taylor, “Grand Theft Auto IV—Plot Guide.”

Excerpted from How Pac-Man Eats by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Reprinted with Permission from The MIT PRESS. Copyright 2021.