Grand Theft Auto (series)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a sandbox style video game series created by Dave Jones and primarily developed by Scottish company Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) and published by Rockstar Games.
The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, adventure, driving, and occasional role-playing, stealth and racing elements and has gained controversy for its adult nature and violent undertones. The series focuses around many different protagonists who attempt to rise through the criminal underworld, although their motives for doing so vary in each game. The antagonist in each game is commonly a character who has betrayed them or their organization or someone who has the most impact impeding their progress.
The series began in 1997 and currently has eight stand-alone games and two expansion packs for the original. Film veterans such as Michael Madsen, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Penn, James Woods, Joe Pantoliano, Frank Vincent, Robert Loggia and Ray Liotta have all voiced major characters in many installments in the series. The name of the series and its games are derived from grand theft auto, a term referring to motor vehicle theft. As of March 26, 2008, the franchise has sold over 70 million copies worldwide; according to Take-Two Interactive.[1]
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[edit] Overview
The games allow people to take on the role of a criminal in a big city, typically a lowly individual who rises in the ranks of organized crime over the course of the game. Various missions are set for completion by the figureheads of the city underworld, generally criminal, which must be completed to progress through the storyline. Bank robberies, assassinations, and other crimes feature regularly, but occasionally taxi driving, firefighting, pimping, street racing, or learning to fly an airplane are also involved as alternate adventures, which can be done at any time during the game, with the exception of the periods performing main missions.
In later titles, notably those released after Grand Theft Auto 2, the player is given a more developed storyline, in which they are forced to overcome an event where they are either betrayed and left for dead or experienced an unfortunate event, which serves as motivation for the character to advance in the criminal ladder, and eventually leads to the triumph of the character by the end of the storyline; specific examples of this are the plots for Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
The Grand Theft Auto series, belonging to a genre of free-roaming video games called "sandbox games," grants a large amount of freedom to the player in deciding what to do and how to do it through multiple methods of transport and weapons. Unlike most traditional action games, which are structured as a single track series of levels with linear gameplay, in GTA the player can determine the missions they want to undertake, and their relationships with various characters are changed based on these choices. The cities of the games can also be roamed freely at any point in the game, offering many accessible buildings and minor missions. There are exceptions: missions follow a linear, overarching plot, and some city areas must be unlocked over the course of the game.
Grand Theft Auto III and subsequent games have more prevalent voice acting, and radio stations, which simulate driving to music with disc jockeys, radio personalities, commercials, talk radio, pop music, and American culture.
The use of vehicles in an explorable urban environment provides a basic simulation of a working city, complete with pedestrians who obey traffic signals. Further details are used to flesh out an open-ended atmosphere that has been used in several other games, such as The Simpsons Hit & Run, which has less emphasis on crime or violence.
The series has courted a great deal of controversy since the release of Grand Theft Auto III. This criticism stems from the focus on illegal activities in comparison with traditional "heroic" roles that other games offer. The main character can commit a wide variety of crimes and violent acts while dealing with only temporary consequences, including the killing of policemen and military personnel. Opponents of violent video games, such as Jack Thompson, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Julia Boseman, believe that players will try to emulate this behavior, while proponents believe it provides an emotional outlet, as such actions in real life would have serious consequences.
[edit] History
The Grand Theft Auto series may be divided into canons, based on the inclusion of a numbering after the recognizable title name (e.g. Grand Theft Auto III) after the original Grand Theft Auto's release, and to a certain extent, the type of graphics engine used.
[edit] Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto, the first title in the GTA series was released on PlayStation in 1997/1998 and also for Windows PCs.[2] The game is set in three different fictional cities, Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City. A reduced Game Boy Color port was later released. Subsequently, two expansion packs were offered, set in 1960s London.
[edit] Grand Theft Auto 2
The second game in the series, Grand Theft Auto 2, was developed for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Dreamcast and released in 1999. Set in the indeterminable future,[3] it featured updated graphics and somewhat different gameplay based upon the player's appeal to various criminal organizations. A reduced Game Boy Color port was also produced.
[edit] Grand Theft Auto III
Grand Theft Auto III was released in October 2001. The game's setting takes place around that time,[4] in fictional Liberty City, which is loosely based on New York City, but also incorporates elements of other American cities.[5] Grand Theft Auto III brought a third-person view to the series, rather than the traditional top-down view of earlier titles (although the view is still made available as an optional camera angle). Graphics were also updated with a new 3D game engine. While not the first of its kind, the gameplay engine expanded the explorable world of GTA III, doing away with a traditional game structure where the player faces a "boss" at the end of the level and moves onto a new level, opting instead for more realistic mission-based approach. Multiplayer was discarded (third party mods were later released, allowing for multiplayer gameplay), but GTA III improved in many other areas such as voice-acting and storyline (in previous GTAs, there was speech only in short animated cut scenes between levels, other communication was simply subtitles running on the bottom of the screen). Grand Theft Auto III sold very well and became the first blockbuster game in the series.
After the success of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released in 2002. This game was set in 1986 in Vice City, which was based on Miami. Vice City was also the first game to introduce fully functional flying vehicles that could be used by the player, such as sea planes and helicopters.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released in October 2004, had its setting in the summer of 1992, focusing on California gang life and the awakening of the drug epidemic brought on by crack cocaine. The setting was in the fictional state of San Andreas, which was based on some California and Nevada cities, specifically Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Their counterparts are Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas respectively. The game also included a countryside in between Los Santos and San Fierro and also between Los Santos and Las Venturas, and a desert in between Las Venturas and San Fierro.
San Andreas also attracted controversy when a sex minigame that was cut from the game, but remained in the game code, was discovered in both the console and Windows versions of the game. Dubbed the Hot Coffee mod, the minigame allowed players to have sex with their in-game girlfriends. As a result, GTA: San Andreas was pulled from a number of retail outlets and was re-rated from "M" (Mature) to "AO" (Adults Only) by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB); the first game in the series to be given an AO rating. Rockstar has since released an edited version of the game for the Microsoft Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, and has reclaimed the "M" rating.
[edit] Handheld games
Grand Theft Auto Advance was also released in 2004. Originally developed to be a top-down conversion of GTA III for the Game Boy Advance, it ended up becoming its own original adventure. Unlike the Game Boy ports of I and II, Grand Theft Auto Advance did not tone down the violence and adult dialog common to the GTA series. The game received an "M" rating from the ESRB. It was developed by an external developer, Digital Eclipse.
In 2005 and 2006, Rockstar released two games for the PlayStation Portable, both developed by Rockstar Leeds. Liberty City Stories is a prequel to Grand Theft Auto III set in Liberty City in 1998. A PlayStation 2 port was released by Rockstar on June 6, 2006.
Vice City Stories was released on October 31, 2006 and set in Vice City circa 1984, two years before the events of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. A PlayStation 2 port of the game was released on March 6, 2007. It was the last installment of the third generation series, and the final game set within the Grand Theft Auto III canon.
[edit] Grand Theft Auto IV
The latest installment of the series, Grand Theft Auto IV, was released on April 29, 2008, after a six month delay.[6] It was the first Grand Theft Auto game to be released simultaneously on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. GTA IV's game engine is the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (also known as RAGE) used in Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis. The game once again takes place in a redesigned Liberty City that very closely resembles New York City, much more than previous renditions.[7]
It has been confirmed that exclusive episodic content will be released for the Xbox 360. Microsoft officially announced a "strategic alliance" with Rockstar Games over the rights to some episodic content through their Xbox Live service at their X06 event. Times Online reported that Grand Theft Auto IV recorded 609,000 copies in first-day sales, in the UK.[8] In its first week, Grand Theft Auto IV sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide and grossed over $500 million.[9]
[edit] Controversy
The Grand Theft Auto series has been a source of considerable controversy since the release of Grand Theft Auto III. Some controversy can be attributed to publicist Max Clifford, who planted sensational stories in tabloids in order to help sell the game[10].
The fourth game in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, also came under criticism. One mission in particular, in which the player must instigate a gang war between Haitian and Cuban gangs, has been controversial. Haitian and Cuban anti-defamation groups criticized the game. Jean-Robert Lafortune of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition is quoted as saying that "The game shouldn't be designed to destroy human life, it shouldn't be designed to destroy an ethnic group," for this and similar scenarios, including lines in the game's script such as "kill the Haitian dickheads" during an altercation between the player and a Haitian gang. After the threat of being sued by the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, Rockstar removed the word "Haitians" from this phrase in the game's subtitles.[11]
After the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, hackers managed to find unused code in the game and released unofficial patches for the Windows version enabling the player to engage in sexual mini-games (dubbed "Hot Coffee" in reference to a euphemism for sex used in the game). These mini-games were never intended to be playable in the final version of the game, but were left partially intact in the game's code. This prompted application of an Adults Only (AO) ESRB rating to the version of the game containing the leftover code. Take-Two Interactive was forced to re-release the game in order to restore the Mature (M) rating. A class action lawsuit against Take-Two was also filed as a result of the "Hot Coffee" code.[12][13]
Critics have also targeted the exploitative and violent attitude toward women in the series. Although not encouraged to do so in any of the games, players may utilize the services of prostitutes, and then subsequently rob and murder them[citation needed].
[edit] Jack Thompson lawsuits
Lawyer Jack Thompson has been involved in a number of attempts to get families of murder victims to hold the Grand Theft Auto series accountable for the death of their loved ones. He is currently facing permanent disbarment.[14]
[edit] The shootings by Joshua and William Buckner
On October 20, 2003, the families of Aaron Hamel and Kimberly Bede, two young people shot by teens William and Josh Buckner (who in statements to investigators claimed their actions were inspired by GTA III) filed a US$246 million lawsuit against publishers Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive Software, retailer Wal-Mart, and PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment America.[15][16] Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two, filed for dismissal of the lawsuit, stating in U.S. District Court on October 29, 2003 that the "ideas and concepts as well as the 'purported psychological effects' on the Buckners are protected by the First Amendment's free-speech clause." The lawyer of the victims, Jack Thompson, denied that and is attempting to move the lawsuit into a state court and under Tennessee's consumer protection act.[17] Two days later, the plaintiffs filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal, and the case was closed.
[edit] The murder by Devin Moore
In February 2005, a lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003 when Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was brought in for questioning to a Fayette police station regarding a stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car.[18][19] One of Moore's attorneys, Jack Thompson, claimed it was GTA's graphic nature - with his constant playing time - that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agrees. Damages are being sought from the Jasper branches of GameStop and Wal-Mart, the stores from which GTA III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher Take-Two Interactive, and the PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment. The case is currently being heard by the same judge who presided over Moore's criminal trial, in which Moore was sentenced to death for his actions.
In May 2008, Jack Thompson appeared via satellite on the Glenn Beck program on CNN's Headline News. Thompson mentioned Devin Moore and said regarding Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City "There's no doubt in my mind [...] that but for Devin Moore's training on this cop killing simulator, he would not have been able to kill three cops in Fayette, Alabama who are now dead and in the ground. We are suing Take Two, Sony, Wal-Mart, and GameStop for having trained Devin Moore to kill. He had no history of violence. No criminal record."[20]
[edit] The murders by Cody Posey
In September 2006, Jack Thompson brought another lawsuit, claiming that Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father Delbert Paul Posey, stepmother Tryone Schmid, and stepsister Marilea Schmid on a ranch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The suit was filed on behalf of the victims' families.[21] During the criminal trial, Posey's defense team argued he was abused by his father, and tormented by his stepmother.[22] Posey was also taking Zoloft at the time of the killings.[23] The suit alleged that were it not for his obsessive playing of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the murders would not have taken place.[24] Named in the suit were Cody Posey, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, and Sony. The suit asked for US$600 million in damages.[25]
[edit] Similar games
Due to the success of the Grand Theft Auto series, notably Grand Theft Auto III and subsequent games, several other developers have attempted to emulate GTA's driving/shooting formula and open-ended sandbox game style play. Subsequently, the term "GTA Clone" has come into use by video game critics and players alike to refer to the many titles released following the massive success of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, which attempt to emulate the gameplay style of games from the Grand Theft Auto series. More specifically, a GTA Clone is often an action sandbox game that usually contains a large free-roaming map that can be explored on foot or in a vehicle, as well as a large crime element with a crime-related storyline and missions.
Notable games that are sometimes seen as GTA Clones are Crackdown, True Crime: Streets of LA and True Crime: New York City,[26][27] Saints Row[28] and Scarface: The World Is Yours.[29]
As a result of such similarities, Rockstar has placed several Easter eggs to mock the competition. One such Easter egg in GTA III references Tanner, the protagonist of several games in the Driver series. In a mission called "Two Faced Tanner" players must kill a "strangely animated" undercover cop who is "useless out of his car" (they even go so far as to give the pseudo Tanner a female pedestrian's walking animation).
In GTA: Vice City, during the mission "Autocide", the targets that the player must kill are subtle references to the main characters of Driver 2 (Dick Tanner, after Tanner), The Getaway (Marcus Hammond and Franco Carter, after Mark Hammond and Frank Carter), and True Crime: Streets of LA (Nick Kong, after Nick Kang Wilson). Driv3r responded by sticking water wing-wearing characters named Timmy Vermicellis, after the protagonist of Vice City, Tommy Vercetti, since none of the protagonists in the GTA series could swim before GTA: San Andreas.
In GTA: San Andreas, while breaking into Madd Dogg's mansion, players will see a man playing a video game and making fun of the way the main character walks stating "How could Refractions [a parody of Reflections Interactive] mess up so bad? Tanner, you suck ass!!" (Tanner's walking animations were often criticized.) Another San Andreas Easter egg mocks True Crime, which was depicted on several billboards in the city of Los Santos, in addition to the "TRUEGRIME" garbage truck cheat code, which also mocks the game.
[edit] See also
[edit] Similar games
[edit] Soundtracks
- Grand Theft Auto soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto 2 soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto III soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Official Soundtrack Box Set available on Epic Records
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City OST - Greatest Hits also available on Epic Records
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Soundtrack available on Interscope Records
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Soundtrack Box Set also available on Interscope Records
- The Music of Grand Theft Auto IV also available on Interscope Records
[edit] Other
- List of gangs in Grand Theft Auto series
- List of Grand Theft Auto voice actors
- List of best-selling video game franchises
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Recommendation of the Board of Directors to Reject Electronic Arts Inc.'s Tender Offer (PDF) 9, 12. Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (2008-03-26). Retrieved on 2008-04-01.
- ^ The actual release date of Grand Theft Auto is not clear. While Rockstar Games asserts in its official website that the game was released in October 1997, GameSpot and IGN indicated that the game was only released on February or March 1998, respectively.
- ^ Grand Theft Auto 2's manual uses the phrase "three weeks into the future", and phrases such as "X weeks into the future" or "X minutes into the future" are common phrases meaning "near future"; fictional journal entries on the game's official website, however, suggest 2013 [1].
- ^ According to the final entry of the official Liberty Tree "online newspaper", Grand Theft Auto III is implied to be set around the first release of GTA III, specifically, October 2001.
- ^ GTA IV: Building a Brave New World. uk.xbox360.ign.com (2008-03-28). Retrieved on 2008-04-23.
- ^ MCWHERTOR, MICHAEL (2 August 2007). Take-Two Execs Explain GTA IV Delay. kotaku.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-02.
- ^ Totilo, Stephen (2007-03-29). 'GTA IV' Revealed: Game Returning To City That Made It Famous. MTV. Retrieved on 2007-04-01.
- ^ Sabbagh, Dan. "Grand Theft Auto IV records 609,000 first-day sales", The Times, May 1, 2008
- ^ Franklin Paul (2008-05-07). Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto 4 sales top $500 million. Reuters. Retrieved on 2008-05-08.
- ^ Grand Theft Auto in the dock over US road killing | The Register
- ^ Take-Two self-censoring Vice City. GameSpot. Retrieved on 2008-05-02.
- ^ IGN: Hot Coffee Lawsuit Finally Mopped Up. IGN. Retrieved on 2008-05-02.
- ^ Take-Two Announces 'Hot Coffee' Lawsuit Settlements. Gamasutra. Retrieved on 2008-05-02.
- ^ "Ruling in Jack Thompson Bar Trial May Not Come Until End of Summer", GamePolitics.com, April 21, 2008
- ^ Lawsuit filed against Sony, Wal-Mart over game linked to shootings. CNN. Retrieved on May 6, 2006.
- ^ Families sue over GTAIII-inspired shooting. GameSpot. Retrieved on May 6, 2006.
- ^ Rockstar seeks to dismiss GTAIII lawsuit. GameSpot. Retrieved on May 6, 2006.
- ^ "Suit: Video Game Sparked Police Shootings", ABC News, 2005-03-07. Archived from the original on 2005-03-07.
- ^ Grand Theft Auto sparks another lawsuit. GameSpot. Retrieved on August 18, 2006.
- ^ CNN Headline News - Grand Theft Morality Pt.2 YouTube. Retrieved 2008-05-07
- ^ Video-game maker blamed in '04 killing. The Albuquerque Tribune. Retrieved on September 27, 2006.
- ^ Jack Thompson Lawsuit to be Filed in Albuquerque. Game Politics.com (2006-09-25). Retrieved on 2007-07-11.
- ^ Vera Ockenfels, the Cody Posey defense team's mitigation specialist, discusses his conviction (transcript) (Feb. 8, 2006). Courtroom Television. Retrieved on September 27, 2006.
- ^ Antigame Crusader in ABQ. ABQnewsSeeker. Retrieved on September 27, 2006.
- ^ Jack Thompson becomes boring. Joystiq (2006-09-27). Retrieved on 2007-07-11.
- ^ True Crime: Streets of LA, IGN, October 31, 2003
- ^ Gameranking PS2 Average 77%
- ^ Douglass C. Perry, Saints Row Review, IGN, August 28, 2006
- ^ Chris Roper, Scarface: The World is Yours Review, IGN]], October 6, 2006
[edit] External links
- Official Grand Theft Auto website
- Grand Theft Auto series at MobyGames
- Grand Theft Auto series at the Open Directory Project
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