Grand Theft Auto V's new star: older but not wiser

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/nov/12/grand-theft-auto-v-older-wiser

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The renowned and controversial Grand Theft Auto series of video games is returning, and this time a leading character won't be some teenage street thug or ambitious master criminal – but a rich retiree with a spoilt family.

The first details of Grand Theft Auto V, due out in spring 2013, have emerged this weekend, sending gamers into paroxysms of excitement.

The crime adventure titles, created by British developers and all set in vast open-world environments based on major US cities, have together sold more than 120m copies worldwide since the series started in 1997. The latest instalment is expected to shift in excess of 20m copies and is likely to make more money than most Hollywood blockbusters.

A major change from the previous games is that players will swap between three characters instead of just one, dropping in and out of their lives at will.

But the fact that one of them is an ageing ex-bank robber named Michael has raised some eyebrows. "We had the idea of using an older protagonist — it was something interesting, something different," says Dan Houser, who co-founded Rockstar Games – the company behind Grand Theft Auto – with his brother, Sam, in 1998 and has been a writer on the series for 14 years. The brothers grew up in south-west London.

"We wondered, what happens to the hero of a GTA title – or is it anti-hero? I don't even know myself! But what happens to them after their game ends? Well, this is what happens to them: they try to retire, they may have a wife and children, but they're still lunatics in some ways. For people like this, there isn't a pipe and slippers happy ever after."

Although based in America, the GTA games are developed at Rockstar's studio in Edinburgh. "It was a response to watching a combination of gangster movies and those Police, Camera, Action! programmes," says Houser, in a rare interview. "It was always about this British take on the country, a more nuanced look at Americana."

Although critically acclaimed, the series has run into trouble over the past 15 years. There have been numerous calls to have the games banned, mostly from the sorts of attention-seeking politicians and grandstanding lawyers the games have cleverly parodied. Rockstar has faced legal action and tabloid protests, and in 2006 senior staff were interrogated by the US Federal Trade Commission for nine hours after a sexually explicit scene, which was cut from GTA III: San Andreas, was discovered in the game's source code by hackers and distributed online.

Yet the series has survived and seems to have matured in the process. Grand Theft Auto IV, set in a dark, gloomy version of New York named Liberty City, follows a disillusioned immigrant searching for the American dream but falling into crime and despair. GTA V doesn't just have an older character at its core, its setting — Los Santos — is a pastiche of contemporary LA, painted as a crumbling edifice of lost hopes. "The game is about LA in the post-Hollywood world," says Houser. "When you go there, the movies are all leaving. That's more thematically interesting to us. This game is about the people left behind."

It's also an interesting cultural full-circle: the movie Drive, which many believe was heavily influenced by the Grand Theft Auto games, was also set in a downbeat LA.

Rockstar is premiering a new trailer of the game this Wednesday, showing new footage of the richly detailed environment, which extends over hundreds of virtual miles, taking in towns, deserts and even ocean floors. For Houser, the fun and freedom of the world is one thing, but there is also a desire to think about the nature of criminality, loss and spent dreams. "New York is America's response to Europe," he says. "But LA is America's response to America. This is where the western world ends, literally and metaphorically."

Asked about the new GTA title featuring a retiree prominently, Paul Green, director of communications at Saga, noted that the character was a criminal, so this was perhaps not "the perfect leap forward" for depictions of older people in popular culture, but paid credit to the developers for "reflecting real life".

"It's important that games and other parts of the media give meaningful roles to older people," Green said. "Also, the over 50s have 80% of the nation's wealth, so they have more money to spend on entertaining themselves – look at the growth of older people with gaming devices such as iPads."