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In an unexpected report, GTA Online has been used by the UK government as part of an internal scheme. Being paid to play GTA has led to some senior members in the government sharing the frustration about it.
Last week, The Telegraph have revealed how civil servants have been engaging with Grand Theft Auto Online “regularly”. The employees were from Department for Education and Policy Lab teams and around 30 participated in this scheme.
Launched in late 2024, The scheme’s objective was to “help the researchers to create an emotionally safe space” in the game for members of the public. There was hope The experiment could “reveal impactful insights about people’s lived experience”. The public’s actions would be observed. This was part of a “lived experience” experiment funded by taxpayer money.
How Did They Do The Research?
How’s the experiment took place was fairly simple. The civil servants would participate in GTA Online missions against randomly matchmade players. They would then ask these players about their experiences.
Findings Released
The Telegraph managed to discover such information about the GTA-based research via a government blog. Conclusions from this research was published there.
One person said they “enjoy spending time at their nightclub business or on their yacht” in the game, while another person said that virtually “driving around while talking made it really easy”.
DfE/Policy Lab
Staff also found out that “meeting people virtually is especially useful for people in remote locations”. Plus, GTA gamers do enjoy experiencing things they can’t in real life “such as running a successful in-game business”.
Facing The Axe
Whilst some game in this would see this as a positive, a source told The Telegraph that it was “nonsense” and that there is a desire for it to be cancelled.
“This sort of nonsense is exactly the kind of Tory hangover this Government wants to root out. Ministers did not sign off these projects and don’t want to see taxpayers’ money wasted on video games when there are bigger problems the public care about.”
Meanwhile Conservative MP for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire and shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood had this to say:
“Hard-working families will be in disbelief that their taxes are bankrolling this nonsense.
Public-sector productivity is spiralling and yet officials are busy playing board games and video games and clay modelling. It’s important that civil servants have the right skills – but playing Grand Theft Auto isn’t among them. The Government must halt this absurd waste of resources immediately.”
It will be interesting to see if video games such as GTA are used by governments in other forms later down the line. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been used to help dementia patients. They’re certainly can be some good application of video games outside of just playing them.
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