On this day in 1997, however, the caller from BMG Interactive didn't want to publicize a celebrity or a politician. He needed help promoting an upcoming computer game, Grand Theft Auto. Could Clifford feed their hamster to the press? The decision by the marketing team at BMG Interactive to hire such a powerful publicist—let alone a specialist in scandal—was unheard of in the game industry. BMG, with roots in the music business, thought a bit of rock-and-roll flair might do justice to their little punk game.
Yet as Gary Dale, the avuncular head of BMG Interactive, made clear, they had to get it just right. GTA was clearly going where no game had gone before—portraying an over-the-top criminal underworld of carjacking, Krishna-killing, drug-dealing, and chaos. It made Lara Croft look like the Church Lady, and the parent company wasn't willing to go to hell for its deeds. “Bertelsmann is a very large private company,” Dale told Clifford, “and we want to check out that we can manage the nature of the content in the right way. This is a new area. We want to get advice from a corporate responsibility point, and make sure we get the right positioning on the game and the right messaging on the game.”
Blunt and opportunistic, Clifford urged BMG to forget about convention and embrace GTA's criminality in all of its glory. “If it's part of the game,” he said, “it's part of the game. In the same way in the music and the movie business, the rating system governs what's legal or illegal. As long as it's complying with that, my advice to you is don't shy away from the fact. It won't appeal to everybody, but it will appeal to some.”
Clifford recommended not only owning up to the violence, but cooking up the most outrageous hamster possible—and shoving it down the media's throat. What better way to get people talking? Clifford said he “knew there would be the wonderful elitist members of the establishment that would take and find something like this absolutely repulsive.”
Dale relayed the news to his team. “The advice from PR was as long as you're legal, you shouldn't back away,” he said. Sam loved the plan. GTA needed a marketing plan as brash and bold as the game. Jones, however, wasn't so convinced. He didn't want controversy for controversy's sake. Sam and the others at BMG seemed more intent on being rock stars, but Sam argued it was more about pushing boundaries. “Look,” Sam said, “you're pushing the envelope for gaming.”
“Yeah,” Jones said.
“Apart from this, games have been seen for kids. Here's one doing something different, like movies. We can actually use that as a marketing angle.”
Jones wasn't so sure and had an additional concern. Looking to grow his business, he was striking a deal to merge DMA with a publisher called Gremlin Interactive. As word spread that the company was going to float itself on the market, the press put the value at £55 million—and heralded Jones as UK's next digital titan. Jones didn't want to rock the boat. Others at DMA shared his ambivalence about hiring Clifford to promote GTA on controversy alone.
When Jones met Clifford, he marveled at the assuredness of his plan. Clifford told him how he'd put the word out to his high-powered contacts in politics, telling them to plant the bug in the appropriate ears. “We'll encourage the right people that it would be good for them to speak out on how outrageous this is and criticize it,” Clifford said. This, he promised, “would get publicity and, most of all, encourage the young people to buy.”
Yet, as Jones later recalled, he began to grow skeptical the more Clifford talked. “It was like…I offer a three-month plan, what I'll say is, ‘I'll feed these stories—Shock! Horror! You should see this!—into the ear of a lord somewhere, that there's this game developed in Scotland which is utterly despicable and encourages people to drive over pedestrians and kill them!' He'd say these things, and then, at the end of three months, ‘You'll be in prime time.' And I was, like, ‘Yeah, right.'” His skepticism about Clifford didn't last long, though. “Everything he said came true,” Jones later said.
It started while the game was still being developed, six months before its release. On May 20, 1997, Lord Campbell of Croy, the former Scottish secretary and a member of the cross-party Consumer Affairs Group, spoke in the House of Lords about a scandalous new computer game called Grand Theft Auto. The game, he explained, had hit-and-runs, joyriding, and police chases. “There would be nothing to stop children from buying it,” he warned. “To use current terminology, is this not ‘off message' for young people?”
“The government is very concerned about violent computer games, as are the public,” concurred Junior Home Office minister Lord Williams of Mostyn. “All computer games which encourage or assist in crime, or which depict human sexual activity or acts of gross violence, must be passed by the BBFC [British Board of Film Classification], which can refuse classification. If there is a refusal, that automatically makes supply illegal.
“I do understand that the general description which you attached to Grand Theft Auto is correct,” continued Lord Williams. “One has to bear in mind very carefully the vice of these computer games. It deals not only with the sort of activity you referred to but also to acts of gross violence.”
“We simply cannot allow children and young people to be given the idea that car crime or joyriding is in any way an acceptable or an enjoyable thing to do,” added Lord Campbell, who called on the BBFC to examine GTA and determine whether it should even be legal to release. It wasn't bluster. The BBFC had recently refused to rate Carmageddon—a darkly comic destruction-derby title marketed as “the racing game for the Chemically Imbalanced”—unless it toned down the violence and gore, all but ensuring that it wouldn't be carried at major retail stores.
With the politicians' debates making headlines, Clifford's carefully scripted battle over GTA played out in the tabloids on cue. “Criminal computer game that glorifies hit-and-run thugs,” the Daily Mail hyped. “Imagine yourself being an up and coming low-life car thief, stealing exotic cars, and then add murder one, cop killing, car-hacking, drug-running, bank-raids and even illegal alien assassination!”
Despite the aging demographic of the industry, the sheer mention of the word games set off a load of critics who feared GTA would corrupt kids' impressionable minds. A spokesperson for the Scottish Motor Trade Association said, “It is deplorable to open young minds to car crime in this way.” “This game is sick, and parents should refuse to buy it for their children,” said a spokesperson for a group called Family and Youth Concern. “But even that may not be the solution, because children will still get their hands on a copy. This kind of material is dangerous and will make children think it is OK to rob cars and kill.”
As the press spread, BMG and DMA rode the back of Clifford's hamster. “Once those quotes got quoted, we were happy to have them out there because, of course, they generated interest in the game,” Dale later said.
To keep the controversy brewing, they launched a radio ad campaign featuring excerpts of the House of Lords debate. At a video game convention, they left fake parking tickets on cars that read “Penalty: For Having a Flash Car is to have it nicked and driven in a high-speed car chase with gunplay involving the Police until it is spectacularly written off. You have been warned.” The GTA logo appeared below in red-and-orange letters with a trail of flames, along with the tagline, “it's criminal not to.”A GTA promotional poster showed a car careening in the street. A list of crimes was printed along the side: “Murder, drug busts, hijacking, smuggling, bank raids, police bribes, road rage, bribery, extortion, armed robbery, unlawful carnal knowledge, adultery, pimping, petty thievery, and double parking!” The penal code for Grand Theft Auto appeared on the game's cover. Said Baglow, “The BBFC didn't really get the joke.”
Yet the joke was also on him. One night he was driving home when he brushed against a tree. It was a minor fender-bender for his beat-up old car. When Clifford heard about it, however, a sparkle of possibility flashed in his eyes. Baglow later cracked open the News of the World to find the story that had been entertainingly spun.
“Sick car game boss was banned from d
riving,” it read. “The computer buff behind the sick car-carnage game Grand Theft Auto was once banned from the road after writing off a car. Programmer Brian Baglow was at the wheel of his high-powered Ford Fiesta XR2 when it careered out of control and smashed into a tree. Baglow was arrested and taken to court, where he received a year-long ban for careless driving. ‘It was unfortunate, but you learn,' said the businessman, who stands to make a fortune from the game this Christmas.”
While Baglow laughed off the controversy, Jones wasn't taking it so well. When asked how he felt about the press, he said, “Good and bad.” Clifford, in a way, had done his job too well. Jones couldn't believe how many people were willing to criticize an unfinished game that they had yet to even see. He wasn't the golden boy of Lemmings anymore.
The press lamented that “the computer genius who developed the best-selling Lemmings was at the centre of a storm . . . over a new game which encourages players to steal cars and knock down pedestrians in a hit-and-run joyride.” As the Sunday Times later put it, “It is quite a shock to realize that the charming naivety of Lemmings and the Grand Guignol bloodthirst of Grand Theft Auto were both developed by a reticent Dundonian, Dave Jones.”
With the BBFC threatening to refuse classification, the game developers had a serious problem on their hands, potentially causing them to miss the lucrative holiday season. BMG commissioned a psychologist from Nottingham Trent University to study the game, which he ultimately approved for adults. Baglow defended the game's wanted levels to the press. “We are being moral,” he said. “Every time the player does something illegal, that increases the determination of the police to catch them, and they will be caught. In fact, we stress that crime does not pay.”
Finally, just before the game's release, came the ruling on GTA. “We are confronted with new problems and new forms of violence,” the BBFC said in a statement. “This kind of video has already provoked concern in Parliament and government. They involve the player in potentially criminal behavior and the infliction of violence on innocent parties. Such subject matter is unprecedented.” But not something to ban. The game would be rated for players eighteen and over.
Max Clifford had scored big time and soon let the cat out of the bag. “We got it across to twelve to thirteen million people because it's controversial,” he said. “Do you think the News of the World would have come out with a piece like they did just because it was a great game? I don't.”
Jones tried to transform the controversy into a teaching moment. In the final weeks leading up to the release, the team had been coding around the clock to improve the handling of the cars (each of which now drove with the appropriate physics, like big vehicles with sluggish maneuvering) and work out the bugs. He didn't want their achievements to get lost in the noise. “People assume that computer games are for kids, and that's very wrong,” he said. “The trouble is when people judge games on hearsay and out of context. Grand Theft Auto is all in the best possible taste.”
ON NOVEMBER 28, 1997, gamers in England got their first spin at GTA. The plan was to release it first in the United Kingdom, then, some time later, in the United States. By now, however, the release of GTA seemed like an afterthought to the hype, with it having already been declared, as the Guardian put it, “the most controversial game in a decade.” This left DMA and BMG with the unenviable by-product of such an elaborate PR campaign: living up to the buzz. The cheeky tagline under DMA's credit read “Disgusts Governments, Policemen, and Parents.”
Yet it didn't take long to get the verdict. As GTA's producers feared, some players thought it paled in comparison to games such as Tomb Raider. One player dismissed its “horrendous game play due to the crappy controls. Graphics are terrible. I've seen better on 8 bit systems. When you answer the phone, it sounds like you are talking to a chipmunk.”
The guys at BMG found such criticisms infuriating. “What the fuck does that mean?” Dan once said. “If it's fun to play, it doesn't matter how it looks!” Yet as more reviews came in, there were plenty of gamers who didn't care about the graphics at all. “Though not up to the moral standards, Grand Theft Auto is great fun, in a twisted sort of way,” wrote one gamer in a review. “GTA is quite addictive, as there is so much freedom in the way one can accomplish the different missions.” “GTA is a gas,” another effused. “You find yourself becoming immersed in the role of being the best criminal in the city.”
Across the United Kingdom, a small but passionate cult following began to form. One day, the guys at DMA found a website where gamers had assembled a timetable to keep track of the trains that randomly pass through the cities of GTA. A story spread that a shopkeeper had come back to find that his store had been broken into, and all of the copies of GTA had been stolen. Though the numbers were modest, the game sold steadily out of the gate, churning more and more copies out by word of mouth, while others would have long gone by the wayside. GTA was moving about ten thousand copies a week. Before long, total sales were approaching five hundred thousand—at roughly £50 a clip—bringing revenues of £25 million. Considering that the game cost roughly £1 million to make—largely, the cost of salaries—the game more than earned its right to a sequel.
Though Sam wasn't in a position yet to get rich off the game, he seemed vindicated. The twenty-seven-year-old had long admired Rick Rubin—an iconoclast who changed the music industry on his own terms. Maybe Sam could do the same for video games. This little Scottish outlaw fantasy had finally put him in the driver's seat, and he knew just where he wanted to go: Liberty City.
6
Liberty City
MAP 01: POINTS OF INTEREST
Just as Sam was riding high on the success of GTA, he hit a new obstacle: BMG Interactive was being sold. The division had been bleeding cash. Though still relatively green in business, Sam saw examples of mismanagement—such as opening offices in twenty-seven countries around the world. The executives of the German conglomerate were souring on video games. With buzz building about the nascent Internet, Bertelsmann had turned its sights on television and the Web. Dale, BMG's head, tried to convince the company to stay in the game business, but to no avail. “Bertelsmann ultimately decided they didn't want to be in the video game business,” he later recalled. “Games just weren't part of the strategy.”
With the Interactive division on the block, Sam panicked. “I gotta put the food on the table!” he said. His heart sank as he looked for opportunities with more corporate publishers. Sam felt too iconoclastic to fit in. “They didn't want nutters like us,” he later said.
Then he met a nutter just as bold as him: Ryan Brant, a young guy in New York City who was considering buying BMG Interactive. They had plenty in common. Like Sam, Brant had been born into a glamorous family steeped in popular culture. His father, Peter, owned the magazines Interview and Art in America and cofounded the tony Greenwich Polo Club. Unlike Sam's mom, who had merely acted in gangster films, Brant's father had actually served time for tax evasion. Brant's stepmother was the supermodel Stephanie Seymour.
After graduating from the prestigious Wharton School of Business, Brant, a wiry guy with close-cropped hair, wanted nothing to do with his father's world of old media. In New York, Internet start-ups dotted the downtown area newly dubbed Silicon Alley. Brant knew exactly which part of the high-tech industry he wanted to crash: video games. At the time, the game industry was dominated by big publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision and then a number of smaller companies. Yet Brant saw opportunity. In 1993, at the age of only twenty-one, he used a $1.5 million investment from his dad and other private investors to found Take-Two Interactive, his own game publisher.
Brant, who had grown up hobnobbing with downtown celebrities, decided to differentiate himself by putting out CD-ROM games that resembled B-movies. He wanted to cast real stars, a practice still largely unheard of in the mainstream game business, and combine them with adult subject matter, cinematic pretensions, and a deliberate, if ham-handed, edginess. Hell: A Cyberpu
nk Thriller starred cult actor Dennis Hopper and sold three hundred thousand copies worldwide, earning Take-Two $2.5 million in profits. For a game called Ripper, Brant spent $625,000 of its $2.5 million budget to cast Christopher Walken and Indiana Jones heroine Karen Allen. “I want to create the best possible software,” Brant told Forbes, “and make as much money as possible.”
Brant showed an Ivy League prowess for figuring out how to cash in, completing an initial public offering that raised $6.5 million for the company. Yet he knew he couldn't remain stagnant for long. One mor-
ning, he woke up with the terrifying thought: “We're going to get killed here unless we get bigger.” He began to gobble up distributors from the United States to the United Kingdom and Australia to provide both an outlet for his games and another stream of revenues. By 1997, with a number of games on the market, the company's revenues neared $200 million, with more than $7 million in profit.
With licensing deals in place for Sony and Nintendo, Brant needed to shore up his publishing resources, and that's what led him to BMG Interactive. Jamie King, the BMG producer, thought that Brant was “ballsy as fuck,” a newbie willing to take on the big boys at Activision and EA. Sam desperately wanted in and pitched Brant on his vision of the future of games. “I gave a very energetic pitch to him, where I must have sweated through three layers of clothing in my own insane sweaty way,” Sam later recalled, “and everyone in the office is like ‘Who the fuck was that guy?”
Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto Page 5
