GTA IV’s setting sparks outrage in NYC for being too close-to-home (Gamepro)
Comments(1) Based on the game’s highly-publicized trailer, examples include such spot-on pixelated representations of famous New York landmarks as Coney Island’s Cyclone roller coaster (renamed as the “Screamer”) and the MetLife Building (renamed “GetaLife”). Many of the other examples require no such clever name changes, including the city’s iconic Statue of Liberty, the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge, and the distinctive architecture of the Flatiron Building. –Gamepro Staff
[Jeff Gertsman, editorial director at Gamespot.com, is quoted as saying “We’ve seen games that have been set in real cities, and that has been a weird route to take. By setting it in Liberty City they can get away with that satire” in the report by NY Daily News. Gertsman is right about fictional settings based on real-world equivalents and how commentary may be made using that method, but Erich Auerbach discusses that phenomenon in Mimesis: Representation of Reality in Western Literature and Aristotle also talks about mimesis in his Poetics long before Gertsman. Comics are notorious for using mimetic settings and the best example is probably Marvel since almost all of its heroes reside in New York City (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Daredevil). BK
category: Gaming, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics