Everyone knows that if there’s a group of people most accurately representative of the UK general public, it’s the GTA Online player base. Of course, a video game series that prides itself on being distinctly, unapologetically American is precisely where, oh, I don’t know, a department of the UK government would turn to for data on the behaviors of its citizenry. According to The Telegraph (paywalled), that’s precisely what’s been happening since late 2024, when the Department for Education (DfE) initiated a taxpayer funded program in which employees are paid to play GTA Online with random people on the internet to get into their heads.
The experiment, conducted by a small unit of the DfE called Policy Lab, involves government employees “[spending] time with participants in video games they played regularly” and “[experiencing] the world” with them by “observing their in-game interactions.” One of the reported goals of the project is to learn “impactful insights about people’s lived experience” while researchers play the game in a curated, “emotionally safe place.”
Specifically, and this is particularly surreal, members of Policy Lab reportedly joined players in GTA Online and talked with them through missions including stealing from a jewelry shop, using a bomb to blow up the CEO of a company, and driving prostitutes to their clients in a timely fashion. Some key insights from the study found that members of the public “enjoy spending time at their nightclub business or on their yacht,” and that some people find that “driving around while talking made it really easy.”
Policy Lab researchers also reportedly learned that “meeting people virtually is especially useful for people in remote locations,” and that some participants enjoyed doing things in GTA Online that they couldn’t do in real life, like “running a successful in-game business.”
The Telegraph reports that the project is the subject of intense scrutiny on both sides of the aisle from within the UK government. Policy Lab was founded under the most recent Conservative Party, but funding for the GTA project has reportedly continued under the Labour Party, which has been in power since 2024.
“Hard-working families will be in disbelief that their taxes are bankrolling this nonsense,” said shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood, a member of the Conservative Party. “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. Taxpayers rightly expect value for money, and Labour must ensure they get it.”
Meanwhile, an unnamed government source who’s clearly a member of the Labour Party, said: “This is a decades old Tory initiative that we are now looking into.”
As a self-professed ignorant American, I simply don’t know what to make of this. The findings gleaned from the study as reported by The Telegraph, although potentially cherry picked to support a certain political ideology, seem to hold very little significance and aren’t surprising in the least.
Again, as an American, I’m certainly no stranger to seeing my federal tax dollars being used in all sorts of seemingly senseless ways, but this one is particularly baffling because there doesn’t appear to be an underlying motive. It’s just the government playing video games with people to learn that people like the escapism that video games provide, which has been the case since the very beginning. If anything, you’d think they’d dig into the Dark Souls community to see what’s wrong with them. (I kid.)
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