Keep your panties on, Keep your panties on...
I'll put it this way. The inventive, creative world of fantasy generated by videogames and other forms of 'escape' as you rightly term it, is wasted on an escape to a reality tailored to be, in most ways, identical to ours. I feel the potential for ingenuitive fantasy is more suitable in creating worlds other than our own. Thus, a game where you date, walk around, drive around, listen to the radio, etcetera, seems wholly mundane. Naturally, the criminal aspects are a redeeming value as in a normal situation one cannot steal cars and kill people and get away with it. But those aspects seem minor as in each successive title in the franchise, the expansive elements are those of the mundane rather than the fantastic. Hence my comment, "this is the Sims with guns." It confounds me that people would relish the idea of dating in a virtual world, going to virtual strip clubs, and running around an otherwise ordinary virtual city. I ascribe the appeal to "practice" without consequence for people who do poorly at real relationships, communication publically, and social situations. While other games also boast elements of realism, those elements are not the focus but rather are used to enhance the credibility of the fantastic.
So GTA doesn't appeal to me. Still got your panties untwisted? I hope so.
