May 25, 2012 ARCHIVES | Entertainment | COLUMNS David Kushner
Wiley
ISBN 978-0470936375
298 pages
$25.95
Reviewed by Mike Musgrove
In the late 1990s, a crew of young video-game designers found themselves worried that their latest project was going to be a flop. In the new game, players were supposed to take on the role of police officers, chasing down thugs across the streets of a small virtual city. Technically, the software worked well enough, everyone on the team agreed, but there was still one little problem: The game was a yawner.
It was boring to follow the strict rules of being a lawman in this video-game world. To the annoyance of some of its programmers, the game's early testers amused themselves by driving on the sidewalks and running over virtual pedestrians. Eventually, the developers decided to try out a revision: Let the player be the bad guy instead of the cop, they shrugged. Maybe that would be more fun.
It was a lot more fun. And a dippy-sounding game that had been put together under the working title of "Race 'n' Chase" evolved into "Grand Theft Auto," the first entry in what eventually became, after a pile of sequels and spin-offs, one of the video-game industry's biggest and most controversial franchises. Today, the "Grand Theft Auto" games have sold more than 114 million copies, raking in sales of more than $3 billion. The first was released in 1997. A new version is in the works.
The story line in each GTA game is basically the same: A young thug wannabe starts out at the bottom of a city's organized crime structure and climbs the ranks by impressing mob bosses and knocking off rivals. The game's most iconic moment is the carjack, where a player runs up to a car, throws its driver out onto the street and speeds away in his newly stolen ride. Every GTA fan, this one included, has probably executed this move a few thousand times.
GTA fans may have spent dozens or even hundreds of hours exploring the streets of crime-plagued virtual towns like Vice City or Liberty City, but the studio making those games, Rockstar, has always remained in the shadows, an enigmatic figure in an industry that is usually happy for any media or fan attention. In "Jacked," David Kushner tries to shed some light on the studio, but his success is limited by Rockstar's reclusiveness.
It's tempting to draw parallels between this disruptive company and the antiheroes depicted in its games. One of the regular diversions for a GTA player is to create mayhem on the virtual city streets, then hop in a car and flee as the authorities arrive. In the real world, Rockstar seems to take a similar approach as parents, activists and even video-game industry executives complain about the games' violent content. "Don't answer the phones," orders co-founder Sam Houser during one flap. "This is going to get ugly."
When Rockstar does speak up, the studio can make things worse for itself. In its early years, Rockstar courted the "modder" community, a group of ardent, programming-savvy fans who loved to explore and create new content with the game's software code. But when one of those fans discovered that sexual content had secretly been built into the code of the latest GTA version, Rockstar denied any knowledge and blamed hackers. This was a lie. Hackers didn't create the sexual content, Rockstar did, only to change its mind and cover that content in the software code because retail chains like Wal-Mart wouldn't have sold such a raw game. After an investigation by the video-game industry trade group, the game in question, "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," was taken off the market at a huge cost. No wonder Houser had days when he didn't want to pick up the phone.
Fans of the GTA games already know much of this. Although Kushner has unearthed some tantalizing details about life behind Rockstar's closed doors, most fans would probably love to hear more. Kushner's book speeds along as quickly as an exotic sports car jacked from the streets of Liberty City. It's a fun ride, though not quite as satisfying as the games themselves.
Mike Musgrove is a former technology reporter and columnist for The Washington Post.
Copyright 2012 Washington Post Writers Group
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