The Interview Controversy Sheds Troubling Light On Video Game Acceptance

Rather than script hokey gangland chatter amongst themselves, Lazlow claims Rockstar were more than willing to work alongside these one-time voiceover artists, some of whom would "look at the lines and say, 'I wouldn't say that,' so we say, 'OK, say what you would say?' […] There's a lot of sessions where we would just throw the script on the floor, [saying] 'this is is irrelevant, let's just work on something rea


The studio's reluctance to pursue big name actors likely has as much to do with outrageous wage demands and ego trips as it does with authenticity. Tommy Vercetti's Ray Liotta reportedly made life difficult during his tenure in the recording booth for Gta 5 Secrets|Https://Gta5Play.Com/ Vice City , veering between Goodfella s-like excellence and other less-than-stellar cond

But saying that this dimension is "a game-changer" is overzealous. The first-person perspective in Grand Theft Auto V constantly evokes an aura of novelty. It doesn’t fit in. Grand Theft Auto V, and the Grand Theft Auto series in general, was never built for first-person. Many of the actions benefit from a more peripheral viewpoint, as you can attackers easier and see a nearby getaway vehicle without fiddling around with the camera too much. Firefights are not the focus of GTA, nor are the driving segments. Grand Theft Auto’s appeal has always been the open-world. Moving around a city, launching off a ramp, shooting enemies, and making a clean getaway are not that valuable on their own, but the cohesion between these elements is what make GTA into what it is. The first-person perspective disjoints that synergy; it frames the firefights and vehicles as the most core elements, when they’ve only been pieces of a bigger puzzle.


Along with a stock market where players can go from rags to riches, Strangers and Freaks side missions, and the general multiplayer gameplay of GTA Online , players have rarely been stuck with nothing to do. Yet with so many GTA V players having completed the game's story mode, fans are still asking if Rockstar will add more single player content into the g

Hatred saw the effects of this much more than GTA V. Being pulled from Steam Greenlight can be a death sentence to indie game developers, as Steam is essentially the only game in town for newcomers. Fortunately for them, Gabe Newell decided that this wasn't a good decision . Without extrapolating his reasoning, it's nice to see someone in the gaming industry care about whether a developer has an honest shot and releasing their creation, regardless of how tasteless the content may be.

The video game industry has been embroiled in this sort of controversy for the past few weeks leading up to the news about The Interview. In two separate events, the gaming community (and even some outside the gaming community) have shown a willingness to accept and often times support acts comparable to Sony's just as often as it condemns them. The first happened when Target and Kmart stores in Australia decided they would not carry Grand Theft Auto V due to its depictions of violence against women . Then days ago, Hatred, the game that may yet actually morph into a scolding-hot button, was pulled from Steam Greenlight .


Fortunately, as seen above, Rockstar Games has introduced a brand new trailer for the multiplayer feature that may or may not hold people over until next year. Also, as it turns out, the heists are a four-player co-op mode, with one person as the leader and the other playing simple crew members. The player in the leader role is tasked with recruiting other players, assigning roles, picking appropriate heisting outfits and the like, while the other members just have to show up, do their job correctly, and make it to "each Heist’s epic fina

It baffles me as to why Rockstar would even consider a first-person mode for GTA V. Perhaps it was the success of open-world shooters like Far Cry 3 that inspired them to do this, which is understandable. However, Far Cry 3 is a shooter. It’s built as a shooter and the shooting is a huge part of the game’s appeal. Sure, there’s exploration, but the action is Far Cry’s appeal by far. Grand Theft Auto V, for all its gritty action and violence, is not a shooter. Its action comes from something less primal and more intelligent. If anything, this first-person shooter setup does more to pander to the FPS crowd than to thoughtfully expand on what Grand Theft Auto has always been about.

When both of these incidents took place, there was controversy. Debate ensued with two sides each offering up different points and demanding equal validity. But Sony has been met with almost universal admonishment after pulling The Interview. A quick search of The Interview mentions on Twitter reveals a starkly one-sided picture. A tweet by Judd Apatow (long-time associate of Rogen's) calling the move by Sony "disgraceful" was retweeted more than 5 thousand times in 11 hours.


For example, CVG reports that the game smashed retail records in the UK, quickly becoming the biggest video game launch ever seen. The game sold 1.57 million units for a total of around $104 million in Britain, plowing through the previous record set by Call of Duty: Black Ops which sold around 1.41 million units on its launch day. To put that in perspective, the UK has a population of around 63 million, meaning that more then 1 in 60 people in the entire country own a copy. That is a lot after just one day on the mar