Any minute now, someone will steal your car and drive it recklessly through crowded city streets on the way to an abandoned warehouse, where it will inevitably blow up in an epic shootout involving missile launchers and strippers. I’m not joking. That is a scenario from Grand Theft Auto IV, which recently set the record for the highest-grossing first week of sales for a video game — more than $500-million. According to politicians like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York City’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the growing popularity of the game poses a clear and present danger to American society.
Critics warn that anyone who plays the game will end up doing in the real world exactly what they do in the virtual world. In other words, watch out for a run on missile launchers and vigilante strippers.
