Do you think that reaction was amplified by the fact September 11th had just happened? You guys delayed the game because of it, right?
It was not just the content, it was also practical. We were working flatout, trying to finish that and Smuggler's Run II. Both were in submission and we were working around the clock here and around the clock [at DMA Design] in Scotland.
Obviously, the guys in Scotland could continue working but we couldn't come into the office for five days because there were roadblocks up. It was a practical issue, we couldn't do any work.
It was a very strange time, but we were very close to 9/11, far closer than the vast majority of people, and therefore I believe we were capable of making sensitive judgments about what was appropriate and what wasn't appropriate.
I think one mission got removed. There was a non-interactive jumbo jet, just to give some life to the sky, that looked like it could pass through a building. That got adjusted, and a few lines of radio dialogue in the talk show. We were really very sensitive to stuff though because we'd watched on our doorstep, you know?
The only other thing that changed that not really many people in the U.S are aware of, is the box. So there was an old box that you can still see online because it was the packaging in Europe. It was the same drawing style but done like an old movie poster with a blown up bridge and some police firing in the air and some helicopters and a bunch of the characters are different sizes. We thought, "that's a bit heavy, actually, it doesn't really gel." And so the artist came up with a couple things, and he just came up with a new one overnight. What's become the very staple of our marketing and presentation was done in an evening as a response to 9/11.
Rockstar's always had a very hands-off approach as far as the media is concerned. At the time, did you guys think about changing this policy? Did you want to come out and respond? Was there talk of you on TV and talking about what was happening?
We felt that engaging with them, whether people liked what we were doing or not – we were clearly protected by the constitution in an overt way - vindicated their particular belief. Beyond that, we're not completely anonymous but we really like to push the idea that Rockstar is a sort of collective and the games are a collective idea and they're made by a group of us, not by one person or two people or three people, it's the whole team in Scotland and New York, and we're really very passionate about that idea.
We want to feel like location, character, story, and mechanics are all the same thing
Everyone knows how a movie's made so it makes them seem less believable, you know? Nobody knows how a game is made so you kind of believe, you stick this disc in and suddenly this world is on your TV screen. We thought we were justified and we thought what we were doing was valid or we wouldn't be doing it.
Our job is not to say what we do is. It's to make something that's as good as it can be and is as compulsive as it can be and as exciting as it can be and as entertaining and thought-provoking as it can be. If you think that's an entertainment experience, if you think that's art, or you think that's a load of rubbish but a happy diversion, it doesn't really matter as long as you have an enjoyable time and hopefully a thought-provoking time playing with it.
For games to develop into a fully fledged art form, they have to do things you can't do in movies, you can't do in books, you can't do in painting or photography or whatever, and I think those are the areas, interactivity and life and witnessing life and movement are what it can do so well.
We want to feel like location, character, story, and mechanics are all the same thing, so you won't go "well I like the story but the characters are shit," or "I love the mechanics but the story and the driving..." We want it to all feel as cohesive possible and have as consistent a tone as possible across fairly divergent things like the story, what are you doing in the story and the missions and the mechanics and the feature set. They should all feel the same thing.
So both for practical reasons and for a more conceptual and emotional reasons, I want the game to be about, what do you want the tone of the game to be? Do we need a map first, or do we need to start thinking about a place so you can start researching that, so they can begin laying stuff out? Then you're going to put stuff into that, and also, how or what's this about? Well, is there countryside? Okay, what would you have in the countryside? Are there hills? You know things like that. You can't get that until you've got a place. Everything comes from the place. I think place is something games do very well.
Is this how GTA III started?
With GTA III we did a hybrid city that was an empty city but it wasn't meant to be New York.It was a post industrial Midwest slash east coast generic, a deliberately generic feeling, American city. But making that we realized, actually, if you base this more on a real place you have a lot of things you can say about it. So that was one thing we learned. I suppose everything we learned about making the games we make, we really learnt one way or another from GTA III.
One of the things we take very seriously and really push ourselves on is to make sure the games are distinct. To make sure they feel different from one another in as many ways as possible, while retaining some core mechanics. But you evolve, innovate everything as much as possible so they feel like very different experiences, or it will just get very stale very quickly.
We really have never released a GTA that we weren't very proud of and we'll do our best never to do that.
What's Rockstar's future?
Who knows? I think there's something really interesting in the open world experience. Obviously we've made like ten of them now and they still don't feel boring to me. It still feels that we're only scratching the surface of that potential. But who knows what we'll be doing?
We'll hopefully have done a bunch of interesting games in the next ten years. That's always the goal. I've never been that good at the futureology side of game-making. We never really care what the name is on the box, either. The name Grand Theft Auto, the name Max Payne, the name's Red Dead, the name's Table Tennis, it doesn't really matter as long as the game's cool.
I would never have believed you would have been talking about this in ten years time. We were still talking about Space Invaders [ten years ago], and that was already 20, 30 years old then. Hopefully we'll continue to do interesting stuff, that's you know, that's kind of all you can hope for.
IGN's Ten Years of GTA III
Tomorrow: More from Dan Houser AND a celebration of GTA III's radio stations