The Gamechangers (2015) Reviews

• No... Just... No.

  pixlbandits2015-09-30

  After a day of hard graft in the Pixel Bandits office, we sat down and had a dinner that couldn't be beat. After putting baby bandit to bed we saw Gamechangers, the BBC Documentary about the creation of Grand Theft Auto and thought it would be worth a watch. Our night went downhill from there. Today's soundtrack on the left is from the Fifth installment of the super franchise. Now it wasn't a "bad program" from the outset. It has a decent cast, including screen bigwig Bill Paxton and Daniel Radcliffe who has certainly come a long way from the shoddy child acting when he starred as "The Little Wizard Who Could", but from the outset something was jarring at me... Following a portrayal of Rockstar after the release of Vice City and working through the construction of San Andreas the program starts heavy and hard with Rockstar celebrating a staggering amount of profit on Vice City and quickly into a depiction of Devin Moore and his brutal murder of three police officers Which leads us to the first point, that this "Docu-Drama" is, from the outset, less genuine than a cardboard Buster sword. Fiction quickly overtook fact in a poor and unsuccessful scramble for entertainment value. Seemingly within a few weeks Vice City is released, Moore is arrested, killing three officers and former attorney Jack Thompson steps in as the gallant hero on a crusade to stop parents from buying 18 rated games for their underage children stop people making violent games. In reality, Moore was arrested June 7 2003, around 8 months after the release of Vice City, and it wouldn't actually be until 2005 that Jack "Righteous Thunder" Thompson came anywhere near this case. Again, in the BBC adaptation of the truth you're led to believe that Jack Thompson has never been on a computer in his life, and yet the reason that he didn't jump straight to Moore's defense may well have been because in 2003 he was trying the same kind of thing with GTA 3 and a lad of 16 called Dustin Lynch, who murdered his friend in Ohio. The big things in the program are right, Devin Moore did kill three people, Hot Coffee was a (really rather naff) sex scene left on the disc but unreachable by normal players, however it is interspersed with misinformation and falsehoods which really brought down what could otherwise have been a factual look at the link between gaming and violent behavior, but that still would have made me angry. why? Because the media keep asking that big question. Do Violent video games make you violent. The very fact that this argument is still raging after 23 years, since the release of the first Mortal Kombat, perpetuates the myth. If there is no link, why are we still asking the question, the fact that headlines and click-bait ask this question regularly will lead anybody who doesn't look behind them to the conclusion that they must do, otherwise, what's the big hooha? A psychological study recently revealed that playing violent video games can be a "risk-factor" to exhibiting increased aggression, however not only did they also point out that there was no evidence that this influence was enough to lead to criminal acts and, let's be honest here, the same desensitizing and copy cat behavior can be taken from anything from books, to film, to television, so why the focus on gaming? To quote the Independent online newsblog, "The findings have prompted a call for more parental control over violent scenes in video games from the American Psychological Association (APA)." which again is absolutely absurd. The thing about these violent games is that, make no mistake, there is a brutal amount of gore and bodily destruction. In GTA you can pay for intercourse with a prostitute and then beat her until she dies and you get your money back. Do I want my eleven year old to play that, of course not. Do I want stricter parental controls on the game, also a no... because Video games, much like film, have something in the way of control already. It's taken out of the parents hands. The video gaming development community themselves work with various boards in order to ensure that children do not have the opportunity to perform any of these acts or even witness any of this violent content... and you've probably seen it a few times a day. Each and every one of the games listed in court cases and studies is an age 18 restricted game in the UK. This means that it is illegal for children to buy it, much like alcohol, tobacco, or firearms. So, who is to blame here. Who is the one to point the finger at when children are exposed to levels of violence that (most of us agree) they shouldn't be seeing. Do we curse out the developers, who spend time developing an adult content game? Do we take to court the classification board who rate the game for sale (by law) to only adults? Do we ransack the offices of the retail stores who 99 times out of a hundred refuse to sell these items to children due to the massive fines and jail time they could serve for doing so? Or should we blame the parents, who buy age restricted games for their children because they are not legally allowed to buy it for themselves?

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• An interesting idea that's sadly a little dull.

  Sleepin_Dragon2015-09-23

  Not being a gamer I'll be honest and say I'm not exactly fully aware of how huge some games are, but even I knew the stories of GTA and Sam Housers goings on. I had no idea he was a Brit. I'm sure lots of it was dramatised, it was a fairly interesting concept for a TV movie, but did it deliver? The story focuses on the moral story of GTA. Houser wants to push the boundaries of gaming, make them more graphic, bigger and more realistic. The moral argument is brought by Attorney Jack Thompson, a god fearing man that believes the game is responsible for the plight of America's youth, and the cause of a teenager's killing of two cops. I like Daniel Radcliffe, I feel he had a tough time of it, as he was the only real interest throughout, I found some of the other performances a little flat and unforgettable. Put it this way I won't be buying the DVD, it passed the time whilst I assembled a bench, not particularly engrossing or exciting, quite dull on the whole. 4/10

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• Do video games make people violent?

  colinevans-201302015-10-04

  When I read what this was all about I wanted to watch it, as it's a question that's been in our family for years, are video games any good for youngsters, if played to excess. I found this to be watchable enough, the acting was particularly good, I just found it boring. There were times when it transformed into melodrama, the court scenes were tedious. I find Jack Thompson's argument about the morality of the video games a little rich, I'd have thought his argument would have been initially about the ease at which you can obtain a firearm stateside. It poses an interesting argument. I found it quite strange that Daniel Radcliffe accepted this part, good though he was it could perhaps have been written for anybody. He's too accomplished an actor for so anonymous a part.

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• Liberty City

  Prismark102015-09-16

  I have been playing arcade games since the late 1970s. Computer games since the Home Computer revolution of the early 1980s and I bought a copy of GTA III for the Playstation 2. Despite this I do not consider myself as a gamer. However I am known to show my skills off to my kids every now and then to let them know that their old dad has a trick or two up his sleeve when it comes to Mortal Kombat or Virtua Fighter. What struck me about GTA III was the expansive almost free flowing game-play. You had missions to complete but you could just wander off and do something else. For the first time I felt video-games had made that leap forward more than the hype from console manufacturers going on about Emotion chips. People might be surprised to discover that GTA is actually British created by two brothers, Sam and Dan Houser who in this BBC film are based in New York. Daniel Radcliffe plays Sam Houser, the Don Simpson obsessed visionary who wants to take gaming to the next level. He also comes across as brattish rather than a maverick. After a shooting incident the game's developer Rockstar lock horns with Jack Thompson (Bill Paxton) a God fearing conservative lawyer on a moral crusade against rap and video-games and its insidious effects on kids. Thompson struggles at court and is at risk of being disbarred but Rockstar rather ineptly or deliberately left hidden coding in one of their later version of GTA which brought them further trouble in the US courts. The problem with the film was it was too slight. The BBC received no cooperation from Rockstar who also enforced their trademark to not to allow them use the game footage. I think this was unwise of them. The film is based on true events but some scenes have been changed for dramatic effect. In short padded out to create tension where probably none existed. Like a lot of recent BBC one off films its noticeable that the 5 years licence fee is having an effect. Part of it just looked a little too cheap and low budget even though there was New York location shooting and it had a style of filming in parts to give it an immersive computer game setting. The makers hoped to create a buzz like the film The Social Network but here the battle about a moral crusader who uses grandstanding to destroy Rockstar felt overlong even at 90 minutes. Paxton also reminded me too much of the righteous character he played in his directorial debut, Frailty.

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• misinformative misrepresentative conservative dull

  kailomonkey2015-09-30

  This film is overtly right-wing and portrays Jack Thomson as a crusader for good despite him in reality being disbarred for many good reasons. He is a person who lied and used people to further his reputation and career which ultimately collapsed on him, but the film shows him as the saint he tried claiming to be. I am clearly not of this view, so this film might perhaps appeal to those on the conservative side. However, I would expect most viewers to be those with an interest in GTA and Rockstar Games, to whom only dissatisfaction is bound. The script has Dan constantly coming up with ideas for the next game which nods to GTA San Andreas but in the most pointless way. Him and his team are portrayed as reckless perverts but maybe this all plays into how Rockstar like being portrayed, as the social deviant, which they do on purpose to help market Grand Theft Auto games. This isn't explored in this film however, which just shines light on the BBC's ignorance. It should also be noted that at the start of the film we are told straight off that the order of events has been changed. That's because Jack Thomson wasn't disbarred until way after these events and it certainly wasn't down to Rockstar Games, it was down to an entire expanse of his career being based on manipulating felons into blaming games for their crimes and bullying games companies and others with unfounded legal threats. So to conclude, this film was frustrating for its misrepresentation of its characters, dull in its delivery of a game being developed and misinformative with the historical facts making it overall unproductive to watch.

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