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videogames

The Media Universe Of Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto IV is not so much the apotheosis of modern console entertainment as the first post-modern video game. While it provides the usual bloody entertainment, the latest installment of Rockstar's hit title is also a fully-imagined alternate world—complete with a witty satire of 21st century media. Serbian hardman Niko Bellic, the game's central character, can browse a self-mocking version of photo sharing site Flickr ("perfect for hopeless losers who like to spend days categorizing, alphabetizing and organizing their online galleries") and scour the missed connections on Liberty City's craplist.net ("sorry for checking out your 13-year-old daughter"). Most absurd of all are the mock cable shows—though they contend with their real-world equivalents. The newscasters of Weasel News are even more rabid than Bill O'Reilly and his colleagues at Fox News. If you have a friend with a Playstation, get them to show you I'm Rich, a celebrity show which in this episode profiles a cocaine heiress called Chloe Parker and as absurd as Paris Hilton. A campy British narrator—resembling that of the Daily Show's John Oliver—provides the voiceover.
Chloe Parker went from tycoon tot to tycoon twat... She's got it all. Daddy, money, and one of those tiny little dogs that rich people keep in their vagina... Her penthouse in Algonquin's exclusive Little Barkings district is a palace in the sky complete with a motor drawbridge, torture dungeon, and servants with scurvy. This is real estate we can only watch on television and masturbate over. (After the jump, the clip, and two screenshots from Liberty City's self-mocking version of the web; and here's blow-by-blow coverage of Grand Theft Auto's new release from Kotaku.)
More »

12:34 PM on Thu May 1 2008
By Nick Denton
17,887 views, 42 comments

Latest by pheagan: @Fugees-and-Funyuns: Listen. Prostitution, fine. Driving over prostitutes with your car just like you can all the other people, fine. Raping them (there is a cheat, my cousin showed me) is possible, if you don't know your cheats don't blame me. more »

grand theft auto

Liberty City's Architectural Inspiration

Restaurants and bars in Liberty City are like other landmarks based on places in New York, the real-world city on which the universe of the latest Grand Theft Auto game is based. The names, locations and designs are all slightly off, like a riddle made for trivia-night nerds. Ed Levine has risen to the challenge. Liberty City's rowdy Steinway (here's the video) is pretty clearly based on Astoria's Bohemian Beer Garden. But Levine, a food blogger, has identified possible models for half a dozen virtual eateries and drinking holes—even this bland and Starbucks-like coffee shop which he places in a gamer's version of Midtown's Rockefeller Center. [Serious Eats via Kottke]

10:13 AM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Nick Denton
9,347 views, 22 comments

Latest by n/a: @Nick Denton: At the very least I hope you're watching somebody else play through parts of GTA. Even driving around the city looking for landmarks is an impressive experience. more »

sneak peek

Grand Theft Auto's Warped View of New York City

The Liberty City of Rockstar's crime-celebrating Playstation game, Grand Theft Auto, was always based on New York. In the videogame's fourth outing next week, the city is much more fully realized—but intriguingly off-kilter. For example, Liberty City (like the metropolis upon which it is modelled) has five boroughs. Broker is the equivalent of Brooklyn, Queens is Dukes, the Bronx is Bohan and Manhattan is Algonquin. And the fifth? Staten Island was too dull, so the makers of Grand Theft Auto have annexed New Jersey, renamed Alderney. (Both Jersey and Alderney are islands in the English Channel.) As you can see from these screenshots from the game below, Liberty City is recognizable, but altered, disturbingly. Of course, the screenshots we want are from the live gameplay. The central character of Grand Theft Auto, a tough immigrant called Niko Bellic, has in this latest version of the game the ability to perform new actions, such as calling women for dates. He can also become intoxicated, causing him "to stumble and the camera to blur and bounce about". Any GTA fans: please send video of a drunk Niko on the equivalent of the Lower East Side. After the jump, spot the differences between the real New York, and Grand Theft Auto's vision of the city. More »

10:01 AM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Nick Denton
24,834 views, 67 comments

Latest by Sabre_Justice: Okay, no more long name.: @sassypants: You've been able to steal boats since GTA III. Jetskis? I wouldn't be surprised. more »

contests

Celebrate Art, Win a Grand Theft Auto Video Game

One of our delightful sponsors, Rockstar Games, has painted murals around New York City to celebrate (promote) the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, a quiet, peaceful video game about making friends. Want a free copy? All you have to do is a take a photo of yourself in front of one of these murals, then post it here in a comment. The first 20 to do so win a free copy of the game and our undying respect. The locations are:
  • Williamsburg - Bedford & N5th
  • Harlem - 112th Street & 1st Ave
  • Lower East Side - 2nd St. & Ave A
  • SoHo - Lafayette btw Spring & Prince Street
Photos of the locations after the jump. Murals will be up through 3/19. Happy hunting! More »

10:01 AM on Wed Mar 5 2008
By Richard
9,563 views, 126 comments

Latest by Kadaj: I just want to thank GAWKER..KOTAKU..for the game..you guys rule... thank you!!!!!! more »

things we actually like

This Game Is An Entirely New And Better Internet

My favorite kind of game is role-playing games that turn repetitive real-life work into repetitive game work with fewer rewards. I'm not impressed by PMOG, the massively multiplayer RPG played by just surfing the web. It's cute, but it's too distracting for anyone doing Serious Business on the Internet. I want to intentionally waste a few hours. The real game to play is Forumwarz, which launched early this month. It's stupid, insulting, and really damn clever. [UPDATE: I've started playing and the game is requiring me to have cybersex with a predator. This game rocks.] More »

5:27 PM on Tue Feb 26 2008
By Nick Douglas
5,618 views, 15 comments

Latest by keki: clean up comment form after comment iz sent, plz [index.hu] more »

boy's club

I'm Not Offended, I'm Just Bored: Why Gaming Journalism Should Stop Treating Women Like Meat


I'm not saying gaming news should become as mature a genre of journalism as politics, business, and world news. It's still a new field and will always be as subjective as covering music or film, with the accompanying celebrity culture. But now that women outnumber men in online gaming, party games like Rock Band appeal to both sexes, and casual games (popular among women and adults) are the fastest-growing segment of the gaming industry, gaming journalism should be an all-inclusive genre. Why does it still pander to a core audience of straight young males with outdated misogynistic material, to the boredom and frustration of all of us who can get laid outside of World of Warcraft? More »

3:46 PM on Tue Jan 15 2008
By Nick Douglas
28,485 views, 103 comments

Latest by n/a: half of you people act like a buncha guys ran in there, dressed these women up as sluts, eat them until they acted like morons, filmed it, and then ran away. you seem to forget THEY CHOSE TO DRESS/ACT/RESPOND/LIVE that way. So more »

gizmodo.com

Gawker Media January Junkets

While we're sitting here in New York enjoying the global warming, all the cool kids from the "office" are on the road. Both crews of supernerds from Gizmodo and Kotaku are hitting the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Also in Vegas are a few worthies from Fleshbot, covering the Adult Video News Awards. Lastly, Jalopnik is filing reports from the hoon-packed floor of the Detroit Auto Show. Travel vicariously through their mellifluous reportage. More »

11:20 AM on Mon Jan 8 2007
By Chris Mohney
69 views, 3 comments

new yorker

'New Yorker' for Nintendo DS

Most of these fictional tie-in games for the Nintendo DS range from lame to silly — usually just a book cover or movie poster slapped in for the briefest of chuckles, if that. However, as usual, Jason Kottke takes/kicks it to/up the next level/notch, with his "The New Yorker Draw Your Own Cover Electronic Entertainment With Noncompulsory Co perative Mode." It's the diaeresis that seals it. More »

1:10 PM on Thu Dec 28 2006
By Chris Mohney
240 views, 2 comments

second life

Second Life: Rape for Sale

What's the fun of enjoying your second life in Second Life without a little ultraviolence? Click the above to enlarge. We're not as conversant with SL's moral conventions as your average nerd, but it surprises even our jaded souls that you can indulge in rape fantasies (options: "Rape victim," "Get raped," or "Hold victim") for a trifling 220 Linden dollar things. Nice that the purchase takes place in an evocative back alley, with the actual rape set in some kind of red cobblestone gimp-dungeon. More »

8:50 AM on Fri Dec 15 2006
By Chris Mohney
20,527 views, 26 comments

Latest by n/a: It amazes me that people are actually trying to RATIONALIZE fantasy rape. Just because it is through second life rather than real life somehow makes the thought of raping someone okay? People everywhere suffer horrible mental and physical effects from more »

clips

Comic Stylings of Charlie Murphy Forestall PlayStation 3 Riots


Pity the poor geeks huddling together in hopes of being one of the first folks to get the new PlayStation 3. Adding to the indignity of standing on line for days (time that could be better spent masturbating to grainy images of Lara Croft), they're now becoming crime victims: A man was shot in front of a Connecticut Wal-Mart early this morning; Gizmodo runs down the rest of the craziness. Here in New York, however, the lucky throngs who were able to make it inside the SonyStyle store last evening (including Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley) found themselves in the presence of Sony Chair Howard Stringer, Ludacris, and comedian Charlie Murphy, who showed that there's humor to be found even in the sorry spectacle of aging virgins getting robbed. It's a performance you won't see anywhere else, unless some other website sent a guy with a videocamera. More »

11:30 AM on Fri Nov 17 2006
By abalk2
489 views, 6 comments

Latest by Elaine Chow: Yeah, can somebody with superhuman hearing please sub that for the rest of us? All I get from that clip is that Charlie Murphy can say something pretty funny without ever looking amused himself. more »

youtube

The Beginning of the End of YouTube Beginning

Ever since the Google/YouTube buyout was at its rumor stages, Mark Cuban wouldn't shut up about how it was going to be a legal land mine, and while we have yet to see a lawsuit against Google, he has been kinda right as takedown requests are happening more frequently than pre-buyout. More »

12:50 PM on Mon Oct 23 2006
By suki
880 views, 3 comments

video games

Rockstar's Kinder, Gentler Video Game

So today Rockstar Games, scourge of finger-wagging politicians everywhere, unveils its newest title. The Times, whose growing coverage of video game culture is especially impressive when you consider that anyone who plays video games is functionally illiterate, describes the new entry an attempt by Rockstar to avoid controversy and further federal investigation. Well, we've yet to play the thing, but if the ads are any indication, they've succeeded admirably. More »

3:10 PM on Thu Aug 10 2006
By abalk2
165 views, 2 comments

kotaku

Kotaku: Live From E3

Who doesn't love video games? (OK, fine; we don't. But we hear they're huge with the kids.) If you're into videogames, then you've got to be into E3, the gaming industry's huge annual confab in L.A., at which all videogame things new and exciting are unveiled and discussed. Naturally, Gawker Media is there, in the form of our pimply-faced brother, Kotaku. For all the inside scoop on the gamers' inside scoop, check out Kotaku Live From E3, all week long. With reporting, insight, and tons of streaming video, it's just like being at the L.A. Convention Center yourself, except that you don't get to eat the free food. More »

1:47 PM on Wed May 10 2006
By Jesse
31 views, Comment