Grand Theft Auto

luka

Well-known member
seems to me theres two really visible influences among the youth/pop culture of the 00s. one is vice magazine which is just the face for a more affectless generation the other, much more potent pervasive influence is this computer game.
it must be in more homes than any recent album or dvd or anything. and the amount of people who played it a fair bit would be even greater still. this game is presumably a foretaste of the future where games will routinely have greater cultural impact than any musician or filmaker or whatever.
i think a lot of otherwise inexplicable phenomena can be explained by this game. temps t's flat top, the huge resurgance in NWA love among people far too young to remember it from the first time around, even the fact that every forum on the internet has an 80s r&b thread that runs to hundreds of responses (80s/early 90s revival time too but part of GTAs success comes from capturing that era anyway. )

if i wrote this at a different time of day it would be more conherernt but i think you lot can fill in any gaps for me..... just wanted to make the point...
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Interesting.

The one I was never sure about - was that Sunglasses At Night remake done before or after the original was on Vice City? The soundtrack discs for that one certainly did generate an interest in all things 80s in our high school common room.
 

luka

Well-known member
but even the convergence itself is an indication of how spot on the games have been.
when i first saw GTA3 round my mates house i thought the makers had done a deal with the devil, it was so amazing and im not even a gamer boy. never owned a console or anything....
 

swears

preppy-kei
seems to me theres two really visible influences among the youth/pop culture of the 00s. one is vice magazine which is just the face for a more affectless generation the other...

I reckon 95% of young people haven't even heard of Vice magazine. Part of the mythos they've built up is this idea that they're uber-influential, when in fact that's total bollocks.
 

luka

Well-known member
nobody needs to have heard of you to be influential though. i think grand royal were pretty influential but how many people would have actually purchased it? the vice aesthetic is ubiquitous at the moment.
 

luka

Well-known member
i also credit GTA (in part) for turning american djs onto house and other dance music. my guess (possibly utterly wrong) is a lot of the posters on the low bee forum and associated sites came to dance music through this route.
i also think its far better and important and complex and witty than the wire or whatever else dissensus is waking about this week.
 
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Blackdown

nexKeysound
i think games are undeniably a massive influence. Rampage were talking on 1Xtra yesterday about the top selling game of 2008 shipping 2million units in a weekend, whereas Ronnie Herel said the Beyonce album sold 70,000 units. (I assume they're UK sales only).

Either way when computer games are outselling albums by several orders of magnitude, it stands to reason that they have more influence.

When i was writing my piece on youtube grime videos, i was aware games were a massive part of the culture but the penny dropped as to just how many references were being made: Streetfighter (Dizzee), Crash Bandicoot (Wiley) and Spyro (Sir Spyro).

i also think there's a tech question here too. isnt it the case that you cant easily crack/download computer games? whereas MP3s are everywhere. Surely when games do become easier to download than buy, these mega-sales figures will fall. that doesnt mean their influence will fall, as people will still play them, but their revenue might - and games arent something small indie players make and sell for small units (like music...).
 

luka

Well-known member
Either way when computer games are outselling albums by several orders of magnitude, it stands to reason that they have more influence.

white bread and baked beans outsell beyonce not sure that means they have a greater cultural impact. i think gta is unique in the way it leaks into real life. i'm not sure you could make a similar claim for, for example, half-life or something.
 

luka

Well-known member
how old are you Martin? you always seem strangely insulated from the world you live in. the only times i've seen you i've been reeling drunk but you look my age if not younger. surely you played streetfighter as a kid?
 

hint

party record with a siren
luka said:
i also credit GTA (in part) for turning american djs onto house and other dance music. my guess (possibly utterly wrong) is a lot of the posters on the low bee forum and associated sites came to dance music through this route.

I think this is a bit skewiff.

The soundtrack to GTA isn't influencing people like the posters at the LowBee forum - it's being picked by people like the posters at LowBee forum. The people who call the shots in the games industry are around 25-35. Growing up with Big Beat, Backpack Hip Hop, Turntablism, Grunge, Rave (and the subsequent pop dance crossover)... pretty much covers all the bases for the music that crops up in the game. Although that's from a UK perspective I suppose, since GTA is a UK game.

If you're looking for people who have discovered old music through the games, you have to go to a younger age bracket I think - 15 / 16. Plenty of comments on Youtube along the lines of "I herd this on GTA its gr8".

It's certainly true that games are now seen as a way to fill the void left by declining music sales - didn't G'n'R do an exclusive deal which made some of their new material available first through Guitar Hero or a similar game?
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
There is an interesting piece in the current London Review of Books on video games...written by someone who does know a little about them but is older so its not the cultural river he swims in - more to the point though its directed at an audience unlikely ever to have played a game or know much about them.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/lanc01_.html

Touches a little on what is being discussed here...also good on the place of 'work' and 'play' in games.
 

luka

Well-known member
yeah it is a uk perspective and thats not just an largely american/canadian board, its also primarilly a hip-hop board and as i understand it in those countries its not normal to listen to both, let alone play both out at clubs. but yeah, maybe it is too big a stretch. i assumed most people there would be about 23, so not too old i think....
 

john eden

male pale and stale

luka

Well-known member
and losing. interesting case. decision was an engineer isn't the creator, regardless of the name on the album sleeve and the producer got the money instead. they included the whole of his rids the world of evil vampires......
 
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