Jet Set Radio: Mischievous?

Here’s part of an article written by Mike Antonucci of the San Jose Mercury News, saying that controversy is starting to brew over the morality of Jet Set Radio. Sega’s starting to get calls:

Sega’s director of communications, Charles Bellfield, was checking his messages just before the start of a demonstration session for the graffiti-friendly Jet Grind Radio video game.

With a small, nonchalant smile, he noted that the latest call was from the Keep America Beautiful organization. In a way, Sega invited that call, as well as other trouble that’s sure to be incited before and after the release of Jet Grind Radio later this year.

We’re selling a fantasy world, said Rob Alvarez, who’s overseeing the marketing of the game. We’re always expected to do the unexpected, to deliver content that’s on the edge.

Sometimes edgy just means different. Sometimes edgy means provocative. Jet Grind Radio, already released in Japan, is both.

To play, you take on the identities of inline skaters who belong to one of the game’s competing gangs or “crews.” Your objectives are daredevil skating and “tagging” — spray painting graffiti — while eluding a veritable army of cops in a cityscape loosely based on Tokyo. The game’s name refers to a pirate radio station, whose dreadlocked, Svengali-style DJ is a narrator of sorts.

One of a number of Dreamcast titles generating tremendous buzz, Jet Grind Radio embraces its controversial qualities on artistic grounds. Assuming an outlaw perspective, says Sega’s staff, is not the same as endorsing outlaw behavior. But it does raise the question of where the line is between right and wrong, just like a lot of urban pop culture.

It really reflects the times, Alvarez said.

Detractors are going to regard that as an excuse for making criminal mischief look attractive, or even heroic. Video games have been accused of glorifying violence, indulging a tawdry sexuality and romanticizing everything from thievery to the occult. Guess how Jet Grind Radio is going to fit into that worldview.

Game magazines, normally bastions of insolence, are acting a bit skittish. They’re running splashy previews of Jet Grind Radio, but adding self-protective little observations or headlines about the immorality of tagging. By the time the game is released in the United States, sometime in the final months of the year, its content could be a hot issue for everyone in the video-game industry.

The game has an underlying premise about the skate-taggers rebelling against an oppressive government and the city’s financial power brokers. In that environment, the graffiti could be seen as a form of protest, or even the triumph of personal expression in an authoritarian society.

Unfortunately, judging from the opening narration of the preview version, that context is fuzzy — more implicit than explicit. It’s clear from the actions of the police, who respond to graffiti with anything from handguns to helicopters, that law enforcement is extreme in its methods. But there’s no sense that the skate-taggers represent any more of a subordinated populace than themselves.

The notion of graffiti as artistic expression is part of the game’s subtext, noted Alvarez.