Part of the enjoyment of trying to evaluate some of the most important games of all time involves the revisitation of a specific time and place when recalling those games, either in our memories or through actual, physical play.
In one of our earlier entries, we touched on “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater,” a definitive gaming masterpiece for the original PlayStation that exceeded its own worth as a game by also being a cultural touchstone.
The late 90s were alternative AF, and Tony Hawk was basically the perfect game at the perfect time, becoming more popular, and ergo, more important, as a piece of our pop culture in the process.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to call “Grand Theft Auto III” a similar phenomenon, capturing a gritty, depressed, and even violent moment in our nation’s history with a game that suited much of our population’s sensibilities.
By any measure, 2001 was wild, man.
To set the scene, stocks were tumbling from the highs they had enjoyed at the height of the “dot-com” surge in the late 90s, wherein for a while there it seemed like every entrepreneur within sniffing distance of the Internet was trying to sell some website of some kind, often for dollars on the penny (is that an expression?).
That bubble, as of 2001, was bursting, and perhaps not coincidentally with economic times being tough, the crime rate was going up for the first time in a decade.
In general, musical tastes were trending super commercial, away from the soulful melodies typified by the grunge scene and the overarching environment of creativity we enjoyed in the 1990s, becoming instead an overly polished pop machine bearing fruit the likes of a flood of boy bands, Britney Spears, and so forth. This is oversimplifying things by quite a bit, but a hyper-produced (soulless?) sound had unmistakably taken over the top of the charts. The big exception, of course, was the upcoming rush of emo music, which was replacing “soulless” with “sad.”
In theaters, “darker” films were the rage, with even more popular fare like “The Matrix,” “X-Men,” and “The Lord of the Rings” trending darker than what was common with the more brightly adorned offerings of the 90s. More artistic fare included such “uplifting” films as “Mulholland Drive,” “Vanilla Sky,” and “Blow.”
So, you had economic uncertainty, violent crime rising, sometimes soulless but more often moody themes dominating entertainment, and then … 9/11 happened.
Yeah, that too.
I think everyone who lived through 9/11 was personally affected by it to some degree, whether you or someone you knew physically went through the tragedy or not. There was a nationwide trauma that occurred.
Weirdly enough for me, I was supposed to be at the first day of a new job I had taken out of desperation in an attempt to kickstart my life. Post-graduation, I had gotten a couple of nibbles in my job searches, but I was finding that most of my relevant experience interning in various communications capacities in and around my college campus didn’t make me a hot hiring prospect at the various advertising agencies around the state/country/world.
Shocker.
That had led me to do some soul searching in trying to figure out what I really wanted to do, and how to go about getting it.
You see, advertising was always a compromise choice, a thing that seemed practical but still allowed me to work in a creative field. It was a “please your parents” decision for someone who had previously dabbled in art. Ultimately, though, it didn’t light a fire under my ass. My failed job search was a reflection of that.
I wasn’t willing to go to the mat for grabbing a spot in the industry, since I just didn’t feel that strongly about it.
What sparked that passion for me, eventually, was sports journalism (go here for a little background on where that passion took me).
The only problem with sports writing?
I had even less experience with that.
So I decided for myself I’d go volunteer at the local sports information office and get as much practical experience as I possibly could there (the idea being, at some point, someone would pay me for those services). In the meantime, I would work a garbage telemarketing gig during the day to pay the bills (and to show off my work ethic to prospective employers).
Yes, I secured my spot in hell with the decision to become a telemarketer, but hey, we’ve all gotta get paid.
9/11 was my first day of that shitty telemarketing job.
They sent us all home.
Which was more than fine with me, because holy hell, I couldn’t even begin to imagine trying to work through that. Let alone calling people to try to sell them something they didn’t need whilst they processed that unimaginable tragedy.
“Yes, people are dying right now, but have you considered your business not getting the reach it could be? THAT’S the real tragedy, my friend!”
Thankfully, we didn’t do that.
Instead, I watched everything unfold on television with my parents.
The breadth of emotions covered on that day is difficult to describe to anyone who didn’t live through it.
Shock, fear, grief, and anger are a good starting point, but I think one of the biggest things going through my head that day, as I think back on it, was defiance.
An unrequited yearning to help in some way, a helplessness at not knowing how to do so, and a hope that heroes would continue to emerge (and that our government would do the right thing) were surely central to the experience through the first several hours, but eventually I remember settling into a mindset of “I’m going to live my life and no one is going to be able to stop me.”
I wasn’t going to live in fear.
The day was like 15 straight hours of consuming CNN and the network news reporting, soaking in every detail, every story, every development, until finally, mercifully, by the end of the day, as a kind of catharsis, I recall watching an elderly gentleman covered in ash recount his day. At the end of the interview, after talking about all the crazy shit he’d seen and lived, he raised his arm in the air, Judd Nelson-style, and declared, “But I’m still here!”
That guy got it.
He embodied the reaction to the tragedy that I wanted to embrace. Moreover, with my newfound direction in life in regards to a career path, I was properly motivated to get to work.
This mindset and determination sustained me through literal years of internships, volunteerism, and part-time work that finally allowed me to break through with a full-time sports producing job with CBS in 2005.
But before all that, there was a lonely desperation at play in that fall of 2001, and in the wake of tragedy, when America was at its absolute angriest, THAT is when “Grand Theft Auto III” hit store shelves.
Naturally, it was a gigantic, absurdly successful hit.
Grand Theft Auto III at a glance:
Genre: Open-world action adventure
Released: 2001
Platform: PlayStation 2
GamePro’s most important game of all time
Continue reading Grand Theft Auto III — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 45)
