The video game “Grand Theft Auto IV” is likely to be a cultural, business and technological milestone.

The game targets 18-34-year-old males who are hardcore, or play a lot of games all of the time

I’m on the hardcore fringe, part of the aging male demographic — and so not really part of the target group. I’m also wary of the violence and sexual material for which GTA games are known (more on this in a sec).

So I guess it speaks volumes then that I am ready to play this game. I think GTA IV is going to define state of the art for the leading edge video game business.

In the past, I have drawn the line at playing bad guys in crime games. I just didn’t get a thrill out of playing games where I don’t have much choice but to kill cops and score with prostitutes. I’d rather be a hero, not an anti-hero. Maybe there is a generational gap between people like me — who grew up with the innocence of Pong and graduated to opera of violence in “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” – and those youngsters who grew up with the sex and gritty street violence of the GTA series. In the past GTA games, you could do anything. They had open worlds where you could explore, wander, and discover. But it wasn’t fun unless you were bad. Nolan Bushnell, the father of video games, shares this opinion that video games lost a lot of their audience and innocence when they took a turn toward violence. We can blame Rockstar Games, the company that developed GTA, for being part of an industry where game companies constantly try to one-up each other, resulting in a race toward new lows.

The newest GTA IV game from Take-Two Interactive’s Rockstar could be one of the most controversial of all time, igniting a culture war that will play out in our political campaigns and courtrooms (sites such as GamePolitics.com write about it almost every day). Don’t even think about giving it to your kids unless you think that cold-blooded murder is good for them. Florida attorney Jack Thompson has already succeeded in getting public transit ads for GTA IV pulled in Miami and Chicago. Thompson has battled Take-Two for years on whether its violent games cause school shootings and whether the company intentionally targets its mature content at kids. The company says its games are mature entertainment targeted at adults.

Yet, either because of the controversy or in spite of it all, GTA IV is expected to be one of the best-selling games ever. Game sites such as IGN.com have given GTA IV a perfect 10 out of 10, an unprecedented game rating. On average, GTA IV has scored 99 percent on the Xbox 360 on GameRankings.com, which aggregates critic scores, and a perfect 100 on Metacritics.com. Microsoft’s “Halo 3,” which sold eight million-plus units since the fall, scored 93 percent on GameRankings.com and 94 on Metacritics.com.

The Nintendo Wii has taken the gaming market by storm with its much more casual fare that is fun for families and other gamers to play in a light social setting. GTA IV is more for the lone gamer who plays in the dark. But with sales projections so high, this game is a test as to whether the hardcore gamers — including the aging Pong veterans like me who only have a little time to play — are ready to strap on their six-shooters in such numbers to prove that hardcore gaming is still a mass market.

For business readers, this game is even more interesting because it has sparked a hostile takeover bid by Electronic Arts, which has offered to