Grand Theft Auto IV is a very ambitious game, but developer Rockstar has treaded on these lands before and is making millions on one of the most popular franchises in the video game industry.
It is a franchise that immerses you into a land of almost total freedom in terms of choices and decisions, and now in the newest game, players can visit strip clubs and drive drunk.
Rockstar has become famous for their scandals regarding the so-called corruption of the minds of the youth, such as the hot coffee incident in which early copies of the PC version of GTA: San Andreas let you play mini sex games with a 3rd party mod. So what are they thinking–putting in the option of going into strip clubs and driving drunk?
Well Rockstar is actually expecting people to argue with them against these choices, they’ve been pounded upon for so many reasons they pretty much know they are going to receive some kind of flak from someone.
"I expect it because we’ve had so much of it in the past,” said Houser, Rockstar Games vice-president and GTAIV writer. “I wish people would treat video games the same as other media. They seem to not want to do that for reasons that I don’t understand. It’s a convenient enemy for people.”
“We wanted to make the storytelling more sophisticated and more organic,” said Houser. “We give you choices to really recreate the experience of an immigrant moving to New York in the present time and emulate walking down the street and meeting the freaks that you meet. It’s largely streamlining and adding to the ideas that were there before.”
No matter how many scandals might come out of this game, video game analyst Mike Hickey at Janco Partners expects five million copies of GTA IV will sell the first week of release, on par with last year’s record-breaking $300 million first-week sales of Bungie Studios’ Halo 3. Hickey says that Rockstar’s hush-hush promotional effort — more viral, less in-your-face than the Halo 3 campaign — could give GTA IV an edge.
"Maybe the first week GTA IV sales won’t do what Halo 3 did, but I can almost guarantee they’ll probably outsell Halo 3 in the first year," said Hickey.
With such great anticipation for this game since it’s announcement in 2006, it wouldn’t be that big of a surprise seeing GTA IV surpass Halo 3. I’m certainly excited.
[via theglobeandmail.com]
