Like just about everyone else this month, I’ve been captivated by the awesome Grand Theft Auto 3.

It’s one of those games that’s so good you have to make sure you never load it up if you’ve got something important to do any time in the next 12 hours. But while its freeform gameplay and living city are wonders in themselves, the thing that’s impressed me most about GTA3 is its generation of emotion.

Normally, games are really bad at generating emotion, which is one of the reasons they appeal to such a relatively narrow audience compared to movies or music. The reason is an inherent problem to do with the fact that they ARE games. Games are by nature interactive, and interactivity is the reason why games can't generate the same sort of emotional responses as other forms of media. And of course, if you take the interactivity out of a game it isn't a game at all.

Imagine if you were watching a horror movie and you could press a button which made one of the characters say "Hang on, isn't splitting up and going down into the basement to look for the axe murderer a really stupid idea?" How scary and tense would it be then? Imagine if, by hitting two buttons really fast, you could
make Father Whatsisname sprint to the Capulet tomb and tell Romeo that Juliet wasn't really dead before he kills himself. Would the play/movie tear your heart out in the same way if they lived happily ever after? Imagine if your football team could save the status of the league before every game, then reload and replay it if they lost. Would football give you the same rollercoaster ride of joy and despair then?

Emotion springs, a very large percentage of the time, from a lack of control. If you can control the outcome of something, there's very little occasion to feel emotionally about it. That's the elemental difference between games and the other media we're talking about, and it's inherent and unavoidable. To make a game generate emotional impact, you have to make it stop being a game. Catch 22.

Emotional content is what separates games from art, and the separation from art is the reason why our hobby doesn’t get the same respect as other forms of leisure media. A journalist once tried to convince me that games could be art because all art was essentially interactive, and which the viewer was required to “engage in a discourse” with. Quite apart from not being sure how one would "engage in a discourse with" some loony's manky old bed covered in crisp bags and snot (disclaimer: I really hate Tracey Emin), I'm really not convinced that interactivity is the essence of art at all. Isn't the purpose of art to provoke thought and/or teach the viewer something they didn't already know? In what way do you "interact" with the Mona Lisa other than looking at it? Wouldn't you, in fact, be arrested if you tried to "interact" with it?

It's a bit like idiots who heckle comedians and think that they're part of the performance - occasionally you'll get a comic who can turn it into something good, but most of the time it's just some annoying git getting in the way and spoiling the "art" for everyone else. Do you think Madonna wants audience members to get up on stage with her on her forthcoming tour and play the spoons if they feel like it? Would Irvine Welsh like it if someone translated Trainspotting from thick Scots dialogue into "proper" English and re-printed it? Most art, I'd argue, is very fiercely non-interactive. Make it interactive and it stops being "art" and starts being a "creative self-awareness community workshop". Or a videogame.

Which is why GTA3 is such a welcome rarity in gaming. Perhaps BECAUSE you’re given so much freedom, perhaps BECAUSE the city is so convincingly alive, you really feel the emotional impact of your actions. The game is already notorious for the fact that you can pick up (“In-car aerobics instructors” – Ed) off the street as a way to improve your health. But I read on a discussion group that afterwards, you could jump out of your car, beat them up and get back all the money you’d paid them. Just out of curiosity I gave it a try, and while it worked, I felt absolutely terrible about it. Which, since it’s just a game and no-one really got hurt, is pretty strange. (Same goes for all the unfortunate civilians who got caught up in my Triad flamethrower rampage. Sorry.)

It might seem odd to acclaim the totally immoral, violence-splattered, 18-rated GTA3 as one of gaming’s few examples of a true work of art. But if only because it actually gets to your emotional centres in a way that almost no game does, I think it deserves the accolade.