Player autonomy and responsibility in GTA, a game between open world and social network

In his article « Malaise dans le jeu vidéo[^1] », Angelo Careri assumes that there exists a malaise in video games. What would be the nature of this malaise that nests in this videogame space, and in what forms does it find expression? Through the various milestones that the author sows, starting with the choice to focus his analysis on Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) and its ultra-violent characters caricaturizing a certain image of America, we will seek to understand how the player's autonomy is constructed and in what way it is revealing of the concepts of responsibility and moral conscience.

1- Autonomy in GTA

GTA V is an open-world video game where the player has the possibility to make choices to guide the plot. This characteristic immediately raises the question of the player's autonomy, which allows them to freely explore the game's universe. This is largely what made it successful. In the absence of a prescribed path, this freedom fosters the emergence of a personal narrative, built from the decisions and experiences lived through exploration. We find this exploration configuration in The Legend of Zelda, a video game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and produced by the Japanese company Nintendo. Like Grand Theft Auto, the series has evolved from 2D to 3D, developing a universe that encourages the player to contemplate the landscape and freely define their own path. This freedom of action, greater than in real life, leads Careri to refer to the Malaise dans la culture[^2] observed by Sigmund Freud in his text of the same name, leads the player to explore a new form of independence, by making their own decisions and freely defining their relationship with the game's universe.

Why make decisions, what is the difference between story mode and free play?

Concretely, the game constitutes an experimental space where it is possible to accomplish actions that are not feasible in social life, and thus becomes a space of expression freed from any authority, fostering the emergence of a personal narrative. The player develops their autonomy by assuming the consequences of their choices. This freedom paves the way for bold and transgressive decisions, stimulated by curiosity and the possibility of exploring without real risk. The player can explore unexpected options or test new combinations without fear of definitive error. A guiding line is nevertheless proposed in GTA with the "story" mode that one can choose to follow. The instructions given favor a personal narrative where the player follows a complex and scripted plot that mixes crime, social satire, and personal drama. This feature notably offers a modular progression, the player has a margin of freedom in choosing missions and in how to approach them.

2 - Player Responsibility and Consciousness

The player can therefore decide to follow the missions or to wander and interact with their environment. However, one quickly realizes that choosing a walk as the main game action can be difficult. NPCs (Non-Player Characters) are afraid of the player even before interacting with them, and the only possible interactions are therefore linked to violent behavior from the NPC and then the player, or the NPC's flight. Moreover, the game is designed so that death is not an end in itself. Indeed, when the player dies, they often find themselves in front of a hospital as a symbolic step of their return to life, in exchange for the payment of medical fees. Thus, the notions of life and death do not mean an end or a beginning of the game and can be resolved by financial means. This aspect of the game may contribute to the player's moral disengagement and thus a loss of the concept of responsibility.

In « Malaise dans le jeu vidéo », Careri speaks of the superego, which operates as a social or moral constraint and pushes us to internalize our impulses. This superego would be less present in the game and would explain this lack of morality and responsibility « By offering the possibility of unprecedented immersion in virtual universes, it privileges the discharge of impulses at the expense of the control operated by the superego ». However, we notice that some game scenes put this responsibility in tension, notably in the context of cinematics showing mass murder scenes. It can happen that the player refuses to watch them even though these scenes are a faithful representation of what they could do in the game. One can then wonder to what extent the player perceives themselves as responsible, and question this willingness to act or not to act which relates directly to their agency within the gameplay.

This tension is also visible in the choices made outside of missions. Indeed, free mode allows exploring the vast map of the game. Couldn't the player evolve in this world by choosing not to commit violence? Seeing GTA as a contemplative game could be a way to consider the game. Christopher Bartel talks about it well in Free will and moral responsibility in video games: « [...]I suggest that videogames represent deterministic worlds in which players lack the ability to freely choose what they do, and yet players can be held morally responsible for some of their actions, specifically those actions that the player wants to do [^3]». Thus, decision-making is here paramount in an environment where freedom is the rule.

A Moral Involvement of the Player?

The player's responsibility implies the concept of morality. One can therefore legitimately question: Grand Theft Auto V is it really a game without morality? The universe it offers seems indeed dominated by crime, violence, and transgression. However, behind this apparent total freedom, the developers pose a political and social critique of our society. The absence of children and people with disabilities, for example, illustrates this invisible boundary well. Thus, GTA V is not only a distorted mirror of society; it is also a product calibrated to remain transgressive without crossing certain unacceptable lines. The player therefore feels less anchored in reality with, for example, the possibility of carrying out actions that would normally be condemnable.

The Grand Theft Auto series by Rockstar is a good example of this complex intertwining between impulse and politics. It integrates ironically into a global ecosystem where visual and narrative representations tend to overlap with historical and political events themselves. These representations — literary, filmic, videoludic — have, among other things, the function, almost therapeutic, of making political violence morally and psychically acceptable.[^4]

Careri speaks of a solution to these immoral impulses. The game thus appears as a coded transgressive space allowing the player to experiment with an alternative reality to their own without real repercussions.

3 - Difference between Free Play and Online Play

Story Mode and Online Mode

GTA V takes on another dimension when comparing story mode and online mode. In story mode, choices are made within a closed framework, where the player acts essentially for themselves, facing an artificial intelligence. They evolve in a huge city, where they can choose their missions, ignore the main scenario, or simply explore the universe without a specific objective. This autonomy gives the impression of an infinite world, an open world, but in reality, it remains contained by the predefined rules of the developers: the police react to certain offenses, pedestrians have programmed behaviors, and the consequences of the player's choices only exist within this closed system. Thus, even when actions seem varied and free, they do not have a real impact outside of the player's personal experience. On the contrary, switching to online mode changes the game: the game's universe is no longer rigid nor programmed, but shared among thousands of other players. Decisions no longer concern an avatar but other individuals, real ones, who will react in an unpredictable and non-programmed way in their action choices. The game space then becomes a space of collective freedom, as each individual decision impacts the other's experience.

GTA LIFE, Total Involvement

It is in this context that specific servers like GTA Life appear, which go even further in the immersive experience and are composed solely of real players. There are no more NPCs, and any infringement of the law is punished. This type of mode pushes the player to fully embody a role, as in a life-sized role-playing game. Thus, players are led to have real responsibilities in the game, and the rules are framed by the community itself: respect for the character, realistic interactions, sanctions if a player "breaks" the illusion (it is indeed strictly forbidden to talk about simulation). We then move from purely ludic freedom to a much more marked social and moral involvement, where the player must reflect on the coherence of their acts vis-à-vis others and the common world they build together.

A Social Space

Just like Instagram or Facebook, GTA life is a full-fledged social network, where players build an identity, maintain relationships, and participate in a community that has its own codes. Like on traditional social networks, they seek to showcase themselves through their avatar, their performances, and their personal belongings. Self-presentation is a central issue, the universe of GTA acts as a social showcase, where aesthetics, status, and recognition count as much as videoludic efficiency. These elements function as social markers, comparable to the photos and publications that we highlight on Facebook or Instagram. Like on networks, GTA Online relies on collaboration: we observe groups forming, alliances, but also conflicts and leaders. Players compare themselves, challenge each other, show off, and sometimes build lasting friendships or rivalries. GTA Life is therefore a real social place.

Rockstar has long supported this social dimension via the Rockstar Social Club, a platform launched in 2008 with Grand Theft Auto IV. It allowed players to create private groups (crews), share screenshots, consult rankings, and manage an online profile and chat. With GTA V and GTA Online, the Social Club became crucial for the multiplayer experience, offering social continuity beyond the game itself. In November 2023, the PCGamesN website published an article titled « Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar is getting rid of the Social Club » where one could read:

As of Tuesday, November 21, Rockstar has made some significant changes to its official website. A lot of the Social Club functionality has been integrated into the Rockstar site itself - if you log into your account, and select 'games' from the menu bar at the top, you can now check your progress, stats, character details, and more without accessing a separate site or page for Social Club.

This announcement provoked a significant wave of negative reactions in the community, users highlighting the loss of a space of collective memory. On Reddit, testimonies insisted on the fact that the disappearance of profiles and crews erased a large part of the social history of GTA Online. The closure of the Social Club shows that for many, GTA Online was more than a game, a place where the experience lived online really counted, beyond the framework of videoludic entertainment.

Whether it's solo mode or online mode, GTA illustrates the tensions between individual freedom and social responsibility in video games. In free play, we have seen that the player benefits from a decision-making process of their own, leading them to explore the city, choose their missions, or simply have fun without direct consequences on other individuals. But this autonomy is framed by technical and narrative limits, and responsibility remains confined to the personal experience of the avatar. Online, and even more so on role-play servers like GTA life, freedom becomes social. Each action has an impact on the community, whether it concerns reputation, narrative coherence, or relationships with other players. GTA Online then becomes similar to a social network, where the player's image, their choices, and their interactions produce concrete effects on the community. It thus questions the way we exercise our autonomy and assume our responsibilities, and this even in a virtual universe where the player is both an actor, a narrator, and a member of a digital society, confronted with moral and social choices that reflect, on a small scale, the complexity of the real world.

Notes

[^1]: Careri, Angelo, « Malaise dans le jeu vidéo », Immersion n°1, 2019. [^2]: Freud, Sigmund, Malaise dans la civilisation (1930), trad. fr. Charles et Jeanne Odier, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Quadrige », 2010. [^3]: Bartel, Christopher, [^4]: Careri, Angelo, « Malaise dans le jeu vidéo », art.cit.

Bibliography

Freud, Le Malaise dans la culture, Paris, PUF, 2015.

Bailleul, Nicolas, « De GTA-like à GTA life. Vers un réseau social vidéoludique », Marges [En ligne], 36 | 2023, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2026, consulté le 09 octobre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/marges/3226 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/marges.3226

Careri, Angelo, « Malaise dans le jeu vidéo », Immersion n°1, 2019, [en ligne], https://immersion-revue.fr/angelo-careri-malaise-jeu-video/

Translated by AI from the French version.