INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightGetty ImagesWe hear a lot about how video games are to blame for violence, but how about a video game project that highlights
violent gun crime in American societyThat's what Professor Joseph DeLappe is trying to achieve with his Grand Theft Auto livestream,
Elegy.Elegy is a "hacked" version of Grand Theft Auto 5 which you can find on games streaming platform, Twitch.In it, non-playable
characters (NPCs) do nothing but shoot each other dead.But there's more to the action on screen than senseless violence.Image
copyrightRockstar GamesImage caption
In Joseph's Twitch stream, non-playable characters like this shoot each other dead
in relation to 2018 gun deaths in America
The stream is connected to American gun crime deaths from 2018
Every NPC killed in the stream represents one US citizen who has died this year in a shooting incident.The stream resets at midnight and the
carnage begins again, and soon the fictional streets of San Andreas are filled with bullet-ridden corpses - each day with more than the
previous.Joseph says this is a way for people to make sense of the official figures.Website Gunviolencearchive.org reports that there were
7,165 gun deaths in America in the first six months of 2018."When you see those numbers get beyond the thousands, it's very hard to realise
what that translates to in actuality," says Joseph, who grew up in the US but moved to Dundee to teach at Abertay University in early
2017.Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Protests against gun laws in the US have taken place in 2018 after several
school shootings
He's a professor of games research and his GTA hack was inspired by his time living in America."I lived for
quite some time in Nevada, it's very much a gun state," he says
"I remember going to a coffee shop to get a latte and walking past a guy at the table and he's got a pistol sticking out of his waistband
It's scary.Joseph says he feels much safer now he lives in Scotland.Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Grand Theft
Auto 5 was released in September 2013 and has sold 95 millions copies worldwide
Grand Theft Auto was chosen for how easy it
is to modify and also because it has a reputation as an exceptionally violent game."Elegy is very visceral; it's very disturbing and quite
an intense visual experience," says Joseph.He also hopes that this project will flip the "frustrating" belief that video games can cause
violence by using that format to highlight those real-life gun crime issues."It's just a way of ironically using the very systems that
people think are contributing to violence and putting something out there that perhaps considers the entire situation from a different
angle."Earlier this year, President Donald Trump promised to "do something" to tackle the violence young people see in video games.But many
people believe video games can have positive effects on mental health, despite some of their content.Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on TheIndianSubcontinent Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back
