grand theft auto Archive

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The Grand Theft Auto V Trailer

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 2, 2011Posted in: Video Games

I drive past one of the locations shown in this trailer every day in real life and got a real kick out of recognizing it. Something about the marriage of real life and fantasy in an open world sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto is quite appealing.

Still, I kinda wish Rockstar would just use “Los Angeles” as the city name with real landmarks, rather than resorting to approximations such as “Los Santos” and “Vinewood.” I get that they’re just creating caricatures of actual cities in their GTA games, but so what? Last I checked, the First Amendment was still in effect.

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Why Grand Theft Auto Won’t Be Annualized

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 7, 2010Posted in: Games Industry, Video Games

I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Zelnick. It makes me much more confident and excited about the quality of Take-Two titles in the future. Look at Activision completely driving the Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk franchises to the ground. Even EA has wised up a little bit too. (Non sports-games withstanding)

Take-Two Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick:

“My belief is that even a very, very high quality, annualized franchise runs the risk of burning customers out. ‘I’ve seen that five years in a row, I’ve had enough,'” he said. “If we had to use a film analogy, we’d like to be James Bond. You may have to wait a few years in between, but you’ll always want to see it.”

“I think that’s a more valuable approach and we’ve proven that for Take-Two that works.”

Read: Why Grand Theft Auto Won’t Be Annualized – PC News at IGN.

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Dan Houser Houses Casual Gaming

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on May 2, 2008Posted in: Video Games

dan houser grand theft auto

I gotta hand it to Rockstar Games VP of Creative Dan Houser for sticking up for core gamers and video games as an art form.  In an interview with New York Magazine, Dan says:

Yeah, fuck all this stuff about casual gaming. I think people still want games that are groundbreaking. The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic. We’re hopefully going to prove that there’s also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies.

Games as an artistic medium are still in a developing stage and the potential is there to completely blow away established art forms.  While there’ll always be a market (and a need) for casual games, the danger is there for the industry to get stuck in a rut of churning out derivative products in order to appease shareholders.  We need great developers like Rockstar to be successful so that innovative game designers and developers can continue to have their chance to further the art form.

Read the whole interview [nymag.com]

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