Grand Theft Auto - cont.

Nearly one year later, in October 2003, two families from Tennessee filed a $246 million lawsuit against Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Wal-Mart. The families sought compensatory and punitive damages for one family's loss of a member who was killed and for the other's whose was injured when two teenaged boys fired upon their cars with rifles in the Smokey Mountains--an act the boys claimed they learned from GTAIII. The rifles were allegedly acquired from the boys' homes. They were 14 and 16 years old, too young for M-rated games. The boys are currently serving an indefinite sentence in state custody after pleading guilty to reckless homicide, endangerment, and assault in juvenile court in August 2003.

Mugging cab drivers for fun and profit.

Rockstar fought the charges, and in November 2003, GameSpot reported that Rockstar had asked the judge presiding over the Greenville, Tennessee, case to throw it out for good. Rockstar alleged that the victims held the company accountable "based on the expressive content of the video game," and the company claimed that such "'ideas and concepts,' as well as the 'purported psychological effects' of the shooters, are protected by the First Amendment's free-speech clause." The victims' counsel, Miami lawyer Jack Thompson, dismissed Rockstar's claims and is seeking to move the case back into state court for consideration under Tennessee's consumer protection act.

Months after the game made its debut, GTA: Vice City made the press again in November 2003 when two Haitian-American interest groups, the Haitian Centers Council and Haitian Americans for Human Rights, protested in front of New York's City Hall and Rockstar's Manhattan offices. The group was up in arms over the line "Kill the Haitians," a directive found within the mission-based game but, to the game's credit, extracted from the greater context of the mission's storyline. In the original editions of GTA: Vice City, players were awarded, as rival gang members, points for killing the Haitian characters involved in the plot. The line fit into the greater whole as a rival gang's (the Cubans) wish to eliminate the competition (the Haitians). Out of context, a person suggesting she or he would "kill" someone for sharing a secret before divulging it would be incriminating, too. But kids say this sort of thing all the time. However, given the game's reputation, the media did not cut the game any slack.

According to a GameSpot news story, Henry Frank, executive director of the Haitian Centers Council, called the game a "cultural attack on the millions of Haitians living in the United States." Frank further noted in a press release that his group objected to the portrayal of Haitians as "thugs, thieves, and drug dealers."

On December 8, 2003, New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a public statement in defense of the city's Haitian-American population, which had in the past faced numerous, notorious run-ins with the city government due to police violence against Haitian members: "If I don't get a decent response, we are going to do everything we possibly can," said Bloomberg. Take-Two announced that Rockstar would remove the questionable line.

The mayhem isn't without consequences.

In late December 2003, Vice City met the press again on this issue. Haitian interest groups, spearheaded by the Haitian-American Coalition of Palm Beach County, filed suit against Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, Sony, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Best Buy, and Target for the "Kill the Haitians" line. CNN reported on January 1, 2004, "Earlier this month, about 100 Haitian-Americans demonstrated outside a Wal-Mart Supercenter in nearby Boynton Beach chanting, 'Stop Vice City.'" In late January 2004, the group dropped the federal case to pursue the case in a local Florida court, where the group said it suspected it would "avoid the more lenient federal freedom-of-speech standards."

As the battle ensued, in January 2004 the Miami Herald reported that the city of Miami would enact an ordinance that would make it illegal for retailers to sell or rent "violent" video games to anyone under 18 without a note from his or her parent. Three of the city councilmen who voted for the ordinance were Haitian-Americans. The two who voted against the ordinance were not of Haitian decent. Retailers and rental outlets would incur warnings or fines of $250 per day or up to $500 for repeated offenses. GameSpot reported that Mayor Joe Celestin, a Haitian-American who introduced the ordinance and who is also one of Vice City's most vocal critics, said, ''We don't believe the First Amendment was written to protect those who want to incite violence."

Although the game series had once again taken a tumble through the court system, it continued to sell extremely well; morality aside, people like to play the game because it is good. And it, too, isn't all bad. A little-publicized fact is that in GTA: Vice City, players may also be rewarded "good citizen" for helping the police catch muggers and petty criminals.

Senator Lieberman has been known to say that not all games are bad. He is not antigaming in general, he says. But Grand Theft Auto was on his list. In January 2004, the senator, as a democratic presidential hopeful, denounced GTA as "horrendous" while speaking at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

"The player is rewarded for attacking a woman, pushing her to the ground, kicking her repeatedly, and then ultimately killing her, shooting her over and over again," said Lieberman. "I call on the entertainment companies--they've got a right to do that, but they have a responsibility not to do it if we want to raise the next generation of our sons to treat women with respect."