Social media plays a big role in many people’s lives today. The creators of Grand Theft Auto V recognized this and included social media throughout their game. Each of the three characters you can control has an “Ifruit” phone. With this phone, they can surf the web, check “Bleeter,” the game’s version of Twitter, and use their own “LifeInvader,” which is similar to Facebook.
The main characters can’t post anything on “Bleeter” or “LifeInvader,” but their friends do share comments on their walls about the missions you’ve completed. On “Bleeter,” you can see Bleets from everyone in Los Santos. I’ve finished the main storyline, and the Bleeter in my game shows a total of 47 pages of Bleets, with 10 Bleets on each page. Besides these two social media sites, there’s a feature on the “Ifruit” called “SnapMatic,” which is basically like Instagram. Characters can take photos of whatever is in front of them or snap “selfies.”
Social Media and Gaming
The way all of this connects to our own social media is anyone who has GTA V can sign up for a free account on Rockstar Games’ real life social media platform “Social Club”. This is made up of a community of people who play GTA V as well as other Rockstar Games. Within this site you can go onto “LifeInvader” pages of businesses within GTA V and “Stalk” them, which is basically “liking” them. When you do this you get discounts within the game. On each of these pages there are posts that you can “Stalk,” comment, or share on your actual Facebook or Twitter.
On top of this you can view others’ images they’ve taken in game using “SnapMatic” and you can comment, like, or share these on Facebook or Twitter as well. Grand Theft Auto V also has a companion app that you can use on your smartphone. In this companion app you can access your Social Club Account, play with Chop the dog, customize you car in Los Santos Customs, and access “LifeInvader”.
Art Imitates Life
Even though GTA V pokes fun at social media so much and so often, they are guilty of using it in a very effective way. “LifeInvader” has two taglines:
“The reason the world never gets anything done anymore”
and,
“Information isn’t about imparting knowledge anymore. The internet changed that”
The tagline for “Bleeter” isn’t actually bad but the description makes up for that:
“Bleeter is the perfect storm of blogging, social networking, and text messaging. We’re demolishing 100,000 years of complex linguistic development 140 characters at a time”.
They created a fantastically immersive game with so much social media to play around with, that just browsing the Internet in-game can leave you wondering where the previous two, or more, hours went.
Have you ever experienced the world of social media within Grand Theft Auto V or any other video games?
