Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

Grand Theft Auto: National Identity, Transnational Production, and the Ambivalent Politics of Play

The document analyzes the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise as a liminal cultural artifact, exploring its complex relationship with national identity, transnational production, and the ambivalent politics of play.

• The Grand Theft Auto franchise is a transnational product, originally developed by DMA Design in Dundee and later by Rockstar North in Edinburgh, with creative labour, capital, and cultural value moving unevenly across borders.
• The authors argue that the series' fictional America is a constructed myth assembled through a Scottish and British lens and drawn largely from mass media imagery, rather than a faithful representation of the United States.
• The paper's central thesis is that the game's appeal lies in ambivalence: players can inhabit an outlaw fantasy of entrepreneurial freedom and transgression while the game simultaneously mocks that fantasy's moral emptiness.