The top story on a local news website informed me that the first day of sales for the new Grand Theft Auto V game totaled $800 million.
Who buys those games?
People of all ages. It’s a fun game but I like the Gran Turismo series the best. I’m looking forward to the release of Gran Turismo 6 but I will borrow or rent it before I ever buy it.
My 16yo son for one.
I am not a GTA fan but I love Call of Duty. I play twice a week with guys all older than myself and I am north of 50! The average age of gamers is 40. The gender is nearly 50/50 male female but females are not a staple of GTA or COD. Females play other games like Mafia Wars or Farmville.
I’m 34. And I have been playing video/computer games since we got a PC back in 1984. I do 95% of my gaming on the PC, but I do have a PS3. I don’t have GTA V, but I do have few of the other ones, My Steam library currently sits at about 80 games, I probably have about 20 more on Origin and another 20 or so that are stand-alone titles, plus another 40 or so old school DOS games. Only have maybe a dozen PS3 games, I gave most of my PS2 stuff away, I still have some older N64/SNES/Genesis/NES games around, but those haven’t seen the light of day in years and you can get emulators for them for the PC anyway.
@Missleman if you want a “real” driving simulator check out GPL for the PC or iRacing.
I don’t think most forum regulars are in the target demographic for Grand Theft Auto. I have a PS2, and I rarely use it, but I’ve never played GTA
I went out and bought one of them (I can’t remember if it was 3 or “Vice City”) after Ted Koppel did a long piece trying to paint them as the doom of society. (I remember him asking a kid who was playing the game “What redeeming social value does this game have,” to which I thought the kid should reply “What redeeming social value does Pac Man have? It’s a GAME.” But I digress… ) While the news story was meant to horrify us into never buying the game, it made the mistake of showing the game. At the time, video games were either exceedingly linear, or small, or extremely sparsely-populated with objects, mainly because computers weren’t powerful enough to simulate a world which was both large and richly-detailed.
So I bought the game simply to see this amazing technology. I guess I’m a nerd like that. 
@FoDaddy have you tried Race '07 yet? It’s older, but the physics are still the best I’ve yet seen.
I am one of the people that bought it, its great fun. Its an escape from the real world, Its sort of like scarface the movie, people watch it and enjoy it although they really don’t condone those things.
In GTA 4 you could get prostitutes, kill people, steal, drive drunk ect… I have never done those things so Blaming a video game for bad behavior is silly.
When I visit friends and neighbors at their homes, like if I’m invited for dinner or one family invites me to play ping pong in their family tournaments, it isn’t at all unusual to see the kids there – ranging maybe 10 years to 18 years old – playing Grand Theft Auto or some derivative of it. They’ll be sitting in a row on the couch transfixed, totally ignoring what is going on around them. I think that is why it is popular, allows them to forget their actual problems and substitute fake problems like the police are chasing you at 100 mph down a 25 mph street instead. These teenagers are completely focused. President Obama could walk in, give a 30 minute speech with tv cameras and reporters watching just behind the couch, these kids, they’d have no idea he was ever there. I must admit, it looks sort of a fun game; I sometimes ask them to show me how, so I could play a turn, but they look up at me – like they’ve been in a trance or a daze for 2 months – finally realizing where they are, still confused, seeming to say "why does that old dude want to bother us "? … lol …
video gaming causing bad behavior was all the talk when Columbine happened. I believe a little while later the rating system came out for video games that was similar to movie ratings.
They tried then and it failed, and they’re STILL trying and still failing to link violent video games to violent behavior. I think one study showed that when Doom first came onto the scene, violent behavior went DOWN; saying the virtual world violence allowed people to vent their anger onto inanimate things rather than people.
I think the biggest thing, though, is that as long as a person knows the difference between fantasy and reality, then video games are an escape from reality. Where else can you steal a tank, kill countless innocent bystanders and police/military without any real consequences? In real life, you’d be lucky to even find a real tank, let alone steal it, and even then, would it have tons of ammunition sitting on board where you could somehow run everything by yourself?
Violent games may have an unintended,negative effect on someone with reasoning problems. But I think that almost all users have no problem taking a different persona of the shelf for a game, enjoying it, then putting it back at the end of a session. I think almost everyone wants to feel a little naughty and this is a benign outlet.
Mind Rot…Wasting your life away playing with a box of dancing lights and violent images…Nobody even goes outside anymore…As I enjoy my daily bike ride, I can travel for MILES through suburban neighborhoods and rarely see another human being…They are all in recliners manipulating joy-sticks…Sad…
Video games are as foreign to me as the Chinese alphabet, although I have been aware of the effort to link the content of movies and video games to the actions of some of the mass murderers. The $800 million first day sales figure flabbergasted me, though. How much does the game cost? And how easily can it be purchased? And how great is the public’s demand for immediate gratification?
The debate about video game violence is an old one, and it is age dependent. Give a young child a game where the character goes around kicking things to get points, and he will go around kicking things and people in real life. Give a violent video game to a well adjusted high school kid, and he’s probably not going to reenact scenes from the game in real life.
There are advantages to playing video games. They help with hand-eye coordination and they can be a welcome distraction from the daily grind.
I once experimented with using a video game (Tekken) to resolve conflicts, but it wasn’t a long term solution to the conflicts. Back when I was in my late 20s, we used to have Tekken parties where the reigning champion got to sit on a nice chair and everyone else had to sit on the floor. It kept things interesting without it getting too personal.
“There are advantages to playing video games. They help with hand-eye coordination and they can be a welcome distraction from the daily grind.”
I’ve heard that you want a surgeon that played a lot of video games when he was young because of the improved eye-hand coordination and fine muscle control.
Well, I don’t want the surgeon who is too tightly wound because he doesn’t know how to have a good time. I also don’t want a surgeon who can’t handle a game controller because it’s too complicated.
Give a young child a game where the character goes around kicking things to get points, and he will go around kicking things and people in real life.
Sorry…I don’t buy it. My kids all played violent video games since they were 8. And not one of them had any problems separating them from reality. And they were NEVER EVER violent toward anyone. If your one of those parents that use video games as a baby sitting tool then yes…there may be problems…but it’s NOT the games fault…it’s the parents fault.
Sorry, I guess our concept of “young child” is different. I was thinking 6 years old and below.
…and I’m sure playing violent video games at the age of eight hasn’t done any harm at all. 
...and I'm sure playing violent video games at the age of eight hasn't done any harm at all.
It may…but I still content it’s NOT the video games fault…it’s the parents fault.
From my not so intellectual insight into the influence of violent games and videos it appears that some adolescents are lacking in their grasp of “humanity,” whether from lack of mental ability or from a poor environment or some combination and they assimilate the make believe as reality. There is a great deal of benefit to a highly structured lifestyle for many kids, if not most, where viewing violence is somewhat rare and then in the company of a great many including responsible adults.