Sinds dat het eerste deel van de Grand Theft Auto in de winkels lag heeft deze game van alles de schuld gekregen, schiet je een agent dood? GTA gespeeld. Knuppel je wat voorbijgangers neer? Uiteraard kwam dit door het spelen van Grand Theft Auto. Zo dook er vandaag een triest verhaal op over Tom Bissell, een prijswinnende schrijver, en die-hard sporter. Tot hij GTA ontdekte ging het allemaal zo goed, maar om een lang verhaal kort te maken: hij ging naar de klote door de game en hield er niet alleen een mooie gamerscore maar ook een cocaïneverslaving op na. Dat hij de drugs van een vriend kreeg en vrijwillig innam doet er schijnbaar even niet toe.

When I was walking home from my neighbourhood game store with my reserved copy of GTA IV in hand, I called my friend to tell him. He let me know that, to celebrate the occasion, he was bringing over some "extra sweetener". My friend's taste in recreational drug abuse vastly exceeded my own, and this extra sweetener turned out to be an alarming quantity of cocaine, a substance with which I had one prior and unexpectedly amiable experience, though I had not seen a frangible white nugget of the stuff since.

Soon I began to wonder why the only thing I seemed to like to do while on cocaine was play video games. And soon I realised what video games have in common with cocaine: video games, you see, have no edge. You have to appreciate them. They do not come to you.

There are times when I think GTA IV is the most colossal creative achievement of the last 25 years, times when I think of it as an unsurpassable example of what games can do, and times when I think of it as misguided and a failure. No matter what I think about GTA IV, or however I am currently regarding it, my throat gets a little drier, my head a little heavier, and I know I am also thinking about cocaine.

Niko was not my friend, but I felt for him, deeply. He was clearly having a hard go of it and did not always understand why. He was in a new place that did not make a lot of sense. He was trying, he was doing his best, but he was falling into habits and ways of being that did not reflect his best self. By the end of his long journey, Niko and I had been through a lot together.