British newspaper The Guardian has published yet another p🍃ro-gaming piece off the back of Grand Theft♋ Auto IV.

In an article written by Catherin🐭e Bennett entitled, 'I'm game for Grand Theft Auto. You should be too,' Bennett criticises politicians for condemning games w🐬ithout experiencing them and suggests that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown might benefit from a session on the game.

"Had Hillary Clinton, for instance, subjected herself to Grand Theft Auto before she fingered it, in 2005, as a 'major' moral threat to Americans?" writes Bennett. "Had [Obama] ever played a video 💮game [after his comments last week]? No, gamers suspect, given ❀his obsolete references, any more than David Cameron had last year, when his party attacked their 'extreme, casual and callous violence in a context of social indifference and social ambiguity'."

Bennett continues her pro-gaming tirade througho🎶ut the article and highlights one of the main problems with both parents and politicians getting first-hand experience for themselves.

"With a violent and nasty movie, or corrupting literature, the thing is simple," she writes. "You merely have to buy a ticket for, say, No Country for Old Men, or There Will be Blood, and watch it, with a keen eye for anything that might be violent 🧸or nasty.

"How different for the mature student of Grand Theft Auto IV, who discovers that acquisition of the game, an Xbox 360 and a wor꧂king television will not be nearly enough to expose the sickening extent of its moral bankruptcy. For that, you need t🥀ime, skill, dedication and, I suspect, youth."

We concur. To get even close 🅷to the extent of the depravity GTA allegedly contains, you've got to be playing it from start to end with a 6-staಌr wanted rating.

More revealing is her final comment though. She writes, "Gamers beware. If there is one thing worse than 💟the middle-aged gaming ignoramus, it will ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚshortly be the middle-aged gaming know-it-all, who's discovered that, misogyny aside, they're really quite an art form."

Has GTA finally broken games out of the specꦐialist arena? We'll have to see if The Guardꦛian continues it's gaming coverage in a couple of months, when the game of the week isn't GTA and all that's out is some Wii Shovelware.

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May 6, 2008