Grand Theft Auto

“You Gonna Read This, Fisher?” The Art of Enemy Taunts

I can’t think of another game so destroyed by its dialogue as Splinter Cell: Conviction; not by bad lines alone (which are nothing novel in gaming) but by the way Ubisoft’s designers and programmers used them. It could live on, maybe, as a cautionary tale in design meetings: “your idea would poison our game, sure…

Buy A Rockstar Game For Kids, You’re A Terrible Parent

Here’s a refreshing, if predictable dose of common sense from developers Rockstar, telling the BBC that anyone buying one of their games – like Grand Theft Auto, or Red Dead Redemption – is a “terrible parent”. “Our games are not designed for young people”, Rockstar’s Lazlow Jones tells the Beeb. “If you’re a parent and…

Game Design as Make-Believe: Participation

Based upon part five of the Mimesis as Make-Believe serial. See part four here When my wife and I played the Resident Evil remake (pictured left) and its sequels in the early 2000s, we did so by pad-passing. My wife would take control during the ominously-quiet exploration sequences, poking in the corners for green herbs…

Game Design as Make-Believe: Fictional Worlds

Based upon part four of the Mimesis as Make-Believe serial. When one plays most videogames there is a tacit understanding that one is entering into a fictional world – the term virtual world, is often deployed to mean exactly this. It is self-evident that this also happens when one plays a tabletop role-playing game, the…

A Look At The (Possible) New York City Of The Future

New York City is one of the most played locations in games, serving as the inspirational backdrop for games like Grand Theft Auto, Prototype, Crysis 2 and many, many, (perhaps too many) more. Will future visions of the Big Apple be… fun? Newsweek tasked three architecture firms with envisioning and designing how a future NYC…

Get The Ballad of Gay Tony For A Song This Week

Attention Grand Theft Auto IV fans looking to complete the “Impossible Trinity”: Rockstar’s second expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony is the Xbox Live Deal of the Week. Revisit Liberty City slightly cheaper, just 1200 Microsoft Points. [Live Marketplace]

It’s Not The Size Of The Game World, But How You Use It

Does size matter? Compare the size of these seven video game words to the amount of enjoyment you got out of playing the game. Found via Digg

Every Girl’s Crazy ‘Bout a Sharp Dressed Avatar

Clothing puts flesh on the avatar. I’m with Tim Gunn on this one (and really in a sense anthropologists and sociologists before him, like Erving Goffman), fashion is a form of rhetoric. What you put on tends to communicate, be your desire to align yourself with your favorite sports team or with a musical subculture,…

Death and Ethical Violence

It is no secret that much of the world sees our beloved hobby as a nothing but juvenile, ultra-violent, and ultimately irresponsible. Some have gone so far as to coin the term “murder simulators” for first person shooters and titles like Grand Theft Auto. These statements are often met with either blind rage or immediate…

Nice Guys, Stressed Ladies And The Curious Ways They Play Video Games

A galpal and I are discussing video games over cocktails at a bar. Well, kind of. She’s trying to tell me why she plays FarmVille, and in the course of the discussion I find out her life is a mess. This new acquaintance of mine and I have recently bonded over our fondness for farming…

Guru, Rapper Who Portrayed Grand Theft Auto III‘s 8-Ball, Dies at 43

Keith Elam, a hip-hop artist who performed under the name Guru, died Monday after ending a long battle with cancer. Elam voiced 8-Ball, the demolitions artist with whom the protagonist escapes at the very beginning of Grand Theft Auto III. Rockstar Games noted Elam’s passing in a brief obituary on its newswire today. “Guru was…

Grand Theft Auto Used To Steer Children Away From Violence? That’s New

Grand Theft Auto, often the whipping-boy for the anti-violent video games movement, is being used by a program in Merseyside, England to help stop children becoming desensitized to violence. Welcome to Bizarro world. Whenever the subject of violent video games arises, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto franchise seems to be the go-to example of a game…

The Amazing Video Game Art Of Patrick Brown

We’ve featured the art of Australian artist Patrick Brown a few times before here on Kotaku. But you know what? When someone has such a dense gallery of amazing video game art, a few times isn’t enough. So here’s a good look at some of Brown’s more recent works. While displaying an unhealthy obsession with…

Rumor: Grand Theft Auto Developers Pressure Magazine, Writer Sacked

A report on news.com.au says that a former editor for Zoo Weekly, an Australian “lads mag”, has been sacked after making public an email from Rockstar, developers of the Grand Theft Auto series, demanding more “favourable coverage” from the writer. Toby McCasker, who used to be deputy entertainment editor for the magazine, says that Rockstar…

Chinatown Wars Accounts for Half of all M-rated DS Sales — All Time

Considering the ESRB lists all of 10 Nintendo DS titles rated M, this isn’t surprising. Still, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars bragged the game accounts for more than half of M-rated game sales on that platform. Speaking to MCV, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive addressed Chinatown Wars’ disappointing sales performance by saying…

Smart Lady Sets CNN Straight (Or Tries, To!)

What did CNN decide to do after covering out-of-print Japanese adult computer game Rapelay years after the title was originally released? Follow that up with more blown out of proportion with an expert’s opinion. Unfortunately for CNN, the expert, Grand Theft Childhood co-author Dr. Cheryl Olson knows what she is talking about. “Parents, we’ve got…

The Grand Theft Auto ‘Hot Coffee’ Payout Checks Are In The Mail

If you ever owned a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, specifically the naughty version that contained the crude, digital doggy-styling mission known as “Hot Coffee,” you may already be five U.S. dollars richer. Publisher Take-Two is sending out checks. Those checks are part of publisher Take-Two Interactive’s efforts to “voluntarily fulfill all properly-submitted…

From Productive Writer To Cocaine Addict, Just Add Grand Theft Auto

Tom Bissell was a productive, healthy, and somewhat disciplined young award-winning author, before his passion for Grand Theft Auto helped transform him into a cocaine-addled gaming addict. As a travel writer with an eye for politics and history, Tom Bissell has visited Uzbekistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but it wasn’t until his first forays into Vice…

BioShock 2 Moves 3 Million, GTA IV Sales Pass 15 Million

2K’s BioShock sequel is off to a good start. Take-Two Interactive announced today that the 2K Marin-developed BioShock 2 has surpassed 3 million in sales since its release on the Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3. Good job, Mr. Bubbles. That’s a positive step in the BioShock 3 direction, with BioShock 2 quickly catching up…

L.A. Noire‘s Lead Actor Says He Skips the Cutscenes

The voice actor for the lead character in L.A. Noire is “Mad Men’s” Aaron Staton, while Staton says he enjoys games, particularly Grand Theft Auto IV, he usually skips over the cutscenes. Staton, who portrays Ken Cosgrove on the AMC series, tells Game Informer in its latest edition that he’s played all of the Grand…