Notorious M.O.M.- How GTAV Helps One Mom Cope

Description: From the game Grand Theft Auto V, a behind
the shoulder perspective of a man firing a machine gun at a gas
station, with multiple fireballs, explosions and plumes of smoke.

Last week, I linked to an article in the Guardian written by Keza McDonald that gave advice for new moms wanting to balance gaming with the responsibilities of being a new parent. This week in the Guardian Sarah Lee Donlan talks about how playing Grand Theft Auto V helps her cope by offering a little escapism:

My daughter’s constant night feeds are keeping me awake, but not awake enough to do anything useful. So I pass the time in my preferred way. I steal aircraft. I take a sleek black jet, fly it over a sleeping city and land it smoothly on a desert strip, narrowly avoiding a wild dog... 

Suddenly faced with a new and overwhelming responsibility that came with a seemingly endless list of dos and don’ts, GTA V allowed me to break the rules, mess about and act in a wildly dangerous manner. 

During the day I was an exhausted new mother making small talk at Brighton baby groups, but at night I escaped to San Andreas, where I lived a life of violent crime and irresponsibility.

One complaint about open world sandbox style games in general, and the GTA series in particular, is that lots of times it's just a lot more fun to mess around causing mayhem or exploring the game world instead of doing the quests that advance the main story. For Donlan, this is part of the game's appeal. After she recounts the effort she undertook to create a gigantic explosion by taking down a jumbo jet:

The amazing thing is, all of this adventure exists outside the plot. To me, GTA V is at its absolute best once the campaign is done. San Andreas is filled with detail, most of which is barely touched upon in the main story.
It has luscious scenery and diverse wildlife. I have been eaten by a shark, swum with orcas and even found a humpback whale singing gently off toward the upper limits of the ocean. I also have my favourite places to find peace: a sea cave on the bottom right of the map and the quiet mountain stream just north of the city. GTA doesn’t just give you permission to be irresponsible, it gives you permission to rest.

How about you, readers? Does this sound like the appeal for open world games for you, or is it something else? Comment below!

Fashion Is A Legit Gameplay Mechanic

Image courtesy of Janine Hawkins

Janine Hawkins has an excellent article in Paste Magazine today entitles "How Grand Theft Auto V Is Just Like Barbie" about the intersection of dress-up play, fashion and video games, and argues that whether it is in a video game centered exclusively around fashion, or is an incidental part of the overall game, it is an intersection that is both crucial and fascinating to explore:

When you think of the intersection of fashion and gaming, it’s unlikely that Grand Theft Auto V is the first thing that surfaces in your mind. Instead, you might think about those “Girl Games,” almost invariably packaged in a shade of pink equal parts magnetic and repellant, interspersed between the “good” games on a store shelf. If you’re up to date on your mobile gaming, you may just think of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and the polarized reception it received. Fashion is a common subject of many games targeted towards girls and women, and it’s also easily one of the most derided in gaming...
...My point isn’t that there are good fashion games—it’s that placing an importance on fashion-play doesn’t taint a game. If you don’t believe me, just look at Grand Theft Auto. The fashion system present in Grand Theft Auto is a significant part of the experience of existing in its open world, and has been developed and refined with each installment... Players now post videos on YouTube modeling their favorite outfits and the latest clothing DLC for GTA V and Grand Theft Auto Online, and these videos have nothing to do with what pieces provide the best stat bonuses or buffs.

This is absolutely true, and not just for the GTA series. One of the key appeal for the WWE franchise of videogames to me from the 32-bit era and beyond has been the ability to completely customize  and create your own wrestlers' appearance, from the exact body proportions to every pattern and stich of clothing. The last few installments of the series even let you create 3 seperate outfits: one outfit for cinematic scenes, another outfit for your wrestler to wear during the entrance to the ring and a third outfit to wrestle in, plus 4 other "alternate" attire outfits and clothing layering. That's a lot of outfit designs that's just for aesthetics, but still a big part of the game!

 That's how I spent  a bunch of time creating the jobber parody of "The Apex Predator" Randy Orton called "The Apex Redditor":