GTA players kill hookers. But they also kill police officers, businessmen, joggers, and old ladies. In the upcoming game they will also kill animals. The only thing they don't kill is children, because they don't appear in the games (if they did, they wouldn't be any safer).<p>This has nothing to do with sex workers' otherness.<p>> <i>There aren’t consequences for these actions. You can always load a previous save, or you can always wake up at the hospital after you reach five stars and lose the chase.</i><p>What separates the real world from a game is not that one has consequences, but that in the game you are killing simple computer programs, whereas in real life you'd be killing real people, like you.<p>Moreover, the games we're discussing are RPGs. When you play them, you are playing the role of a villain. This is analogous to reading a book or watching a film with an anti-hero, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
The article misses the point.<p>There is nothing wrong with killing in-game characters. It doesn't matter if they're innocent sex workers or children or pedestrians. It's part of the game.<p>The problem is that games handle this kind of violence so poorly. There's no examination of why someone might be a sex worker; what they do to protect themselves; what the consequences are to them for being sex workers; or to you for using a sex worker.<p>These characters are disposable, and that's what's wrong with them. Their disposability reflects how real people are thought of by game creators and players.