Chapter 1017: The Future of the Virtual World
The live-stream barrage was flooded with overwhelming "666" comments, and the audience at the scene was completely dumbfounded.
It could be said that the vast majority of people present never expected Chen Mo to come out with this line of reasoning.
Professor Xu’s expression was extremely agitated, clearly wanting to slam the table and call this "nonsense," but even though his hand was raised, he couldn’t bring it down.
The other two guests exchanged glances, their brains clearly racing to find a rebuttal, yet for a moment, they were at a loss for words.
Was there something wrong with what Chen Mo said?
There was plenty wrong!
At least, the first reaction of the opposing guests upon hearing Chen Mo’s words was, isn’t this pure rubbish?
But when they traced the logic from start to finish, it actually seemed quite coherent...
The examples Chen Mo listed—including Mike’s sarcastic remarks about capitalism, the words on the police car, the plot related to FIB, and so on—were all indeed present in GTA. Under the watchful eyes of everyone, Chen Mo couldn’t possibly fabricate lies publicly. Since these elements existed, saying that GTA was exposing the ugliness of capitalism seemed logically very smooth.
Moreover, simply harping on the violent elements of GTA wasn’t a very solid argument.
When a medium primarily aims to "expose" and "criticize" while presenting its plot, excessive beautification of the scenes would greatly diminish the impact of that criticism. To put it simply, consider some essays describing beheadings in old society, where ignorant and foolish commoners use the blood of revolutionaries to dip man-tou buns in an attempt to cure illness. This plot is actually quite bloody, even more so than most movies or TV shows where people are shot dead.
But if one wanted to eliminate the influence of this bloodshed and violence by overly beautifying the scene, the "critical" effect it aimed to achieve would no longer exist.
If all similar themes were forcibly made to resemble fairy tales, they would only come across as utterly fake, ultimately turning into complete cultural garbage.
The doubts these people had about GTA mainly focused on its superficial "violence," while Chen Mo elevated the issue to a higher level of "spiritual connotation," directly raising the topic and achieving a kind of "dimensional reduction strike."
The key to making this work was that GTA had to have sufficiently rich connotations.
And GTA did indeed have them.
Was it a game that encouraged crime? Not really.
Most people only scratched the surface and thought GTA encouraged crime, but that wasn’t the case.
GTA didn’t encourage crime, nor did it induce players to indiscriminately kill or massacre. It wasn’t the thrilling, heroic passion of the underworld that most assumed, nor the unrestrained freedom and vengeance that youths yearned for. Instead, it was an increasingly tightening shackle. It told the story of repeatedly defeating visible enemies, only to be toyed with by invisible ones, a tale of sorrow.
In the world of GTA, there were never any fake tropes of winning the love of a beautiful woman or reaching the pinnacle of life through crime. Instead, it was about constantly being betrayed by friends, or betraying them, having to bow and scrape temporarily to more powerful evil forces, and acting as a biting dog for those well-dressed beasts at the FIB.
Those stories that seemed to stimulate players’ hormones were actually just about constantly cleaning up others’ messes, completing one task after another, yet never being able to redeem their freedom from the FIB.
A protagonist who could command the wind and rain in a previous installment might die like a stray dog in the next, with no one caring whether they lived or died.
When first entering the world of GTA, many might indulge in the thrill of killing and looting. But as the plot deepened, players experienced the joys and sorrows of the protagonists and discovered that every character in the story, even the minor ones, had their own tragedies. The deeper exposure of the entire social reality derived from this was the key that set GTA apart from a mere thrill ride and made it a masterpiece worthy of a perfect score.
...
The debate on "Today’s Current Affairs Debate" was still ongoing, but the online sentiment had completely tilted in Chen Mo’s favor.
Of course, Chen Mo’s argument couldn’t convince everyone. For people like Professor Xu and Chen Baiyou, their brains had already preset the stance that "violent games inevitably lead to crime," so no amount of explanation could persuade them.
But Chen Mo’s words weren’t meant for the three opposing guests; they were for the audience watching on TV and computers, all those paying attention to this hot topic.
What Chen Mo wanted was public support for GTA, or at least no opposition, and a more tolerant and understanding social environment for the development of games, especially virtual games.
In the latter part of the program, the opposing guests and some audience members continued trying to refute Chen Mo’s points, but Chen Mo responded to each one, fully taking the initiative in the discussion.
At the end of the program, Hu Yue asked Chen Mo: "Thank you very much, CEO Chen, for joining 'Today’s Current Affairs Debate' today to provide an official explanation of GTA and help us better understand the true connotation of this game. Finally, I have one more question, which was raised by an audience member earlier: traditional violent games might not have much impact, but as a next-generation VR device, the Matrix Game Pod has immersion and realism far beyond traditional PC and mobile games. Could it have a more severe impact?"
Chen Mo didn’t answer directly but instead asked back: "May I ask everyone, what do you think the future of virtual reality technology is?"
Hu Yue was taken aback: "The future? I think it should become increasingly closer to the real world."
Chen Mo nodded: "Yes, the so-called virtual reality focuses on 'reality.' Whether some people are willing to admit it or not, the ultimate form of virtual reality will be a perfect reproduction of reality, or even surpassing it. What kind of virtual reality world will we create in the future? Will it be a 'paradise' where everyone lives and works in peace, with no crime at all?"
"Unfortunately, although this is a beautiful wish, it might only exist in the unrealistic ideas of a very few. Looking at current literary and artistic works—whether novels, movies, TV shows, comics, or games—similar false depictions almost don’t exist. If you don’t believe me, think about it: is there any popular movie or best-selling book where 'everyone lives and works in peace and happiness'? I think such scenes only exist in paradise."
"Why is that? Because most people don’t like this kind of falseness."
"As virtual reality develops in the future, it will inevitably be diverse, with truth, goodness, and beauty, as well as falsehood, evil, and ugliness. The positive and negative are two sides of the same coin. If you remove all the negative aspects, the positive becomes fake, and the entire world becomes pale and powerless. The negative elements are meant to inspire people’s longing for beautiful things, helping them better recognize what beauty is."
"So, will the violent elements in next-generation VR have a more severe impact? My answer is no. Not only no, but this is an inevitable path for virtual reality. The future virtual world will be an all-encompassing world. As for what is good and what is bad, it is the vast majority of players who have the right to judge."
Recommend the new book by the great god of the city, Lao Shi: