GTA's Controversial Success
Violence and Explicit Content in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto Series
GTA's astounding success and sales records strictly depend on its unique and highly controversial gaming features including violence, murder, and explicit scenes.
Worshipped by teenagers and frowned upon by parents, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto is a highly controversial, yet extremely successful videogame series. Featuring state of the art graphics and innovative gaming possibilities, the series mainly owes its unprecedented commercial success to the violent and explicit scenes featured in its gameplay.
The Success of the Grand Theft Auto Series
The astounding success of the series seems to have found further confirmation with the highly anticipated release of GTA IV, the fourth episode of the saga, which saw its worldwide debut April 29, 2008 for the popular Microsoft Xbox and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles.
According to Franklin Paul in his May 7, 2008 article "Grand Theft Auto First-Week Sales Top $500 mln" appeared on Reuters, Take-Two Interactive has surpassed the already optimistic industry expectations of a $400,000,000 first-week revenue by selling 3.6 million copies at the game's debut day, totaling some 6 million units sold by the end of the week and defeating the first-week sales record for a videogame, which was previously held by Microsoft's Halo 3.
Chris Nuttall and Matthew Garrahan also reported in the April 28, 2008 issue of the Financial Times that, for the first time in the history of entertainment, a videogame is threatening the movie industry: Iron Man producers, in particular, seem worried that the commercial pacts stipulated by Rockstar might interfere with their own sales and earnings.
GTA Controversy and Related Murder Cases
The recently released fourth episode of the saga features Nico Bellic, an Eastern European immigrant who is being assigned dangerous missions by a local mob gang fighting for supremacy over an unspecified urban area which closely resembles the city of New York. Missions include auto theft, car chases, shameless killing of innocent people, and even prostitution.
GTA IV faithfully follows the format of its predecessors which, needless to say, are surrounded by great controversy. The third episode in particular, GTA San Andreas, has been the most heavily criticized, and was even subject to a temporary ban in Australia in July-August 2005 because of the discovery of a hidden sexually explicit scene, according to the July 29, 2005 article "Australia Bans 'Grand Theft Auto'" appeared on CBS News website.
Sadly, at least three murder cases are speculated to be linked to the GTA series and have been brought to the court's attention by lawyer Jack Thompson: Americans Joshua and William Buckner, along with 17 years old Devin Moore, are said to have played the game for several hours before committing their criminal acts.
GTA Imitations and Rockstar "Easter Eggs"
Many software houses have attempted to emulate the success of this formula, with various degrees of success. Some GTA clones include The Getaway, True Crime and Scarface, to which Rockstar responded by placing several hidden references to their competitors, known in the computer jargon by the name of "Easter eggs", into the gameplay.
