Bill Shore’s Letters
Letter from the video game store
With the economy in recession and record number of 28 million Americans on food stamps in the next year, nearly 4 million Americans managed to plunk down $59.95 for the latest video game.
Originally published: May 2008
It’s been a week of news reports that make you stop and think. Especially the numbers.
100,000 projected dead as a result of the cyclone in Myanmar. Obama winning the North Carolina primary by 14 points. The Dow Jones industrial average down another 200 points.
But there is one numbers story in particular that I have not been able to get out of my head. It is about the video game Grand Theft Auto. On Wednesday the New York Times reported that graphically violent Grand Theft Auto IV sold 6 million copies in one week, for a total of $500 million in sales. 3.6 million copies were sold on the first day.
On my way to Barnes and Noble in the mall I passed a video game store and stopped to stare at the window display for Grand Theft Auto. The game retails for $59.95. I was headed for the bookstore to buy a memoir, also in its first week on sale, by John Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorenson, a wise and gentle man who played as big a role in shaping the last half of the 20th century as anyone on the planet. His book retails for $27.95. If it manages to sell 75,000 copies over the next year the publisher will consider it a best seller.
Our economy is teetering on recession. There will be a record number of 28 million Americans on food stamps in the next year. The price of some essential grains has more than tripled in the last 12 months, triggering food riots around the world. But nearly 4 million Americans managed to plunk down $59.95 vicariously to experience what it is like to be a criminal who is chasing and shooting and being chased and shot at.
Born a generation before the full fledged popularity of video games, I can only speculate as to their appeal. Some of it must be the drama of winning and losing, the exhilaration of racing and chasing, or simply finding out how something suspenseful will turn out.
My response to the record breaking success of Grand Theft Auto IV can be summarized in one word: envy. Video games are pretend drama. Our work at Share Our Strength involves real survival dramas and requires even more sophisticated strategies than the most creative video game designers have imagined.
We have to communicate the drama in what we do at every opportunity. It is the drama of whether a child starts down a path of health or a blind alley of hurt, whether a family can overcome long odds and escape poverty’s dead-ends, whether an intervention of assistance, education, or advocacy can result in big wins.
When we get 3.6 million Americans to all reach for their wallets at the same time, we’ll know we are on to something.
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