Video games muscle in on movies

For all the recent attention paid to "GTA" and its moneymaking potential (the whole franchise has sold more than 32 million units to date), the coverage has also raised public concern about the extreme violence, stereotypes, and cartoon-like characters typical of many video games, including "GTA." According to one of the industry's most prominent critics, violent video games make children more aggressive. "They learn that there are lots of bad people out there who will hurt them," Iowa State University researcher Craig Anderson testified before the US Senate recently. "They come to expect others to be mean and nasty. Perhaps as importantly, they do not learn nonviolent solutions to interpersonal conflicts."

But neither this sort of criticism nor the lag in mainstream acceptance for a new entertainment form is new, say pop-culture pundits. "Movies were embraced by the young in the early 1920s," says Gerard Jones, adviser to the MIT comparative media-studies graduate program. "It wasn't till the '30s or so that the people who run the cultural debates of the country started to wonder and worry. The same thing happened with comic books. They were catching on in the '30s, but it wasn't until the '50s that everyone said, 'What is this that our kids have been into?' " Mr. Jones, author of "Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make-Believe Violence," suggests that video-game violence is simply new technology applied to an age-old need for testing one's limits in a safe environment.

This generation gap is most obvious when it comes to reviews of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." While the game is drawing fire from the mainstream media for the mayhem it contains, inside the gaming world, it is being heralded as a landmark achievement. Reviewers praise everything from the sophisticated technology it employs to the storylines, freedom, and moral choices it offers players. A major interactive-game website, IGN.com, says: "GTA: San Andreas is the single best PlayStation 2 title I have ever played." Even the Chicago Tribune called it a "masterpiece ... that moves toward the next generation of consoles and the kinds of evolving human tales waiting to unfold."

Attitudes will begin to shift only as generations change, says Helmut Kobler, a game consultant. "We've gone beyond just kids playing the games because those kids who started with the industry back in the '70s and '80s are now parents and many of them play with their own kids."

Mr. Kobler, who is also a game designer, says lack of familiarity with games breeds contempt. "It's largely fear of the unknown," he says of critics. He points to the widespread acceptance of violent behavior in films. "Why is the 'Godfather' trilogy, which is about the same kind of stuff [as the GTA games], considered an icon in American culture, while this game is seen as completely bad?"

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