Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto

by David Kushner

  He had come a long way since his crusade began, besting rappers 2 Live Crew and Ice-T and taking his battle against violent video games to court and 60 Minutes. Every time he walked into his house, he knew why he was on this mission: his son, Johnny. As a stay-at-home dad, Thompson had enjoyed a frontline view of Johnny's childhood. When he looked into the eyes of his boy, he saw a future he desperately wanted to protect. Although most parents shared that feeling, Thompson gave his life over to that fight.

  Despite coming from completely different worlds, Thompson had something fundamental in common with Sam Houser. They were both obsessed with the same kind of game. Thompson was as committed to destroying the new generation of violent games as Sam was to creating them, and neither of them would let anyone or anything stand in their way.

  While Rockstar brought GTA III to life, the controversy over violent video games had reached a new peak. Videos and diaries of the Columbine killers surfaced, including one shot of Eric Harris comparing his rampage to the video game Doom. Thompson made the rounds, warning viewers on NBC News about the causal link between violent games and school shootings. He was playing to a powerful and vulnerable audience—other moms and dads. No matter what side of the political spectrum, so many of them shared the same concern that a strange new world online was spinning out of control. The Internet and video games had become synonymous with sex and violence, respectively.

  Even more daunting was the fact that so many parents didn't know how to gain access to these worlds well or at all. The fact that their kids were seemingly running free behind the wheel only made it seem more out of control. This was not a stereotype of out-of-touch adults. These were decent people with sympathetic desires: to protect their kids, just as Jack wanted to protect his boy. Based on the escalating number of media requests, Thompson knew he had struck a nerve.

  He realized this when Tom Brokaw asked the presidential candidates about the Columbine tapes during the 2000 Republican primary. “Do you think that the gun industry, the video game industry, and Hollywood have any role in what happened?” Brokaw said.

  “There is a problem with the heart of America,” replied Texas governor George W. Bush. “One of the great frustrations in being governor is I wish I knew of a law that'd make people love one another, because I'd sign it.” Though a fellow Republican, Thompson felt his stomach twist. “If a presidential candidate was not troubled enough by the entertainment industry's role in Columbine to want to do something about it,” he later wrote, “he would also not be troubled by the overall coarsening of our current culture.”

  Ironically, he thought, the Democrats had waged a stronger fight against games. President Clinton had called for an FTC investigation into the marketing of violent entertainment to children. The committee on the Judiciary for the U.S. Senate released findings that accused the entertainment industry of marketing harmful products to kids—85 percent of thirteen- to sixteen-year-olds, it determined, had been able to buy M-rated games.

  Thompson's blood boiled. What could he do? Lawsuits were still unproved. A federal judge had dismissed the suit filed against a group of entertainment and computer game companies by the families of three girls killed in Paducah—despite Thompson's efforts to link the violent media with Carneal's rampage. “We find that it is simply too far a leap from shooting characters on a video screen (an activity undertaken by millions) to shooting people in a classroom (an activity undertaken by a handful, at most),” the judge wrote. A $5 billion suit filed on behalf of the families of Columbine victims was pending against companies that included Nintendo of America, Sega of America, Sony Computer Entertainment, AOL Time Warner, and Doom's creators, id Software.

  Thompson looked to another Democrat, vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, dubbed “Mr. Clean” by Entertainment Weekly magazine, to engage a political response. Lieberman's Twenty-First Century Media Accountability Act would standardize ratings in the software and movie industries so that parents could better protect their kids from what Thompson's ally, former army ranger Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, called “murder simulators.” Retailers who sold violent games to kids would face $10,000 in fines.

  Although the Interactive Digital Software Association reported that the majority of game buyers were older than seventeen, the politicians threatened to legislate. “We're trying to do everything we can to keep those games that are not suitable for kids out of the hands of kids,” said Senator Herbert Kohl, the cosponsor of the Media Accountability Act. Presidential candidate Al Gore, in a page-one story in the New York Times, gave the entertainment industry “six months to clean up their act,” he said, or else. “If I'm entrusted with the presidency,” Gore said, “I am going to do something about this.”

  Doug Lowenstein, the game association leader, argued that the industry had long been addressing this concern through its voluntary Entertainment Software Ratings Board, which evaluated and rated game content. “The FTC's own data says that in more than 80 percent of cases, parents are involved in the purchase or rental of games,” he said. “Parents are engaged and that's where responsibility has to lie.”

  Thompson heard it all and seethed. Slowly but surely, he was building a file on medical research about violent games: a Kansas State University scientist who used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of young kids and found that violent images triggered traumatic memories, a cover story in Contemporary Pediatrics on “How Violent Games May Violate Children's Health,” and more. He would not sit around and wait for legislation to protect Johnny or wish for a law to make people love one another. He would play this game the only way he knew how: by fighting to the end. “Others in the decency war are tipping windmills,” he said. “I'm out to destroy them.”

  DUST SWIRLED as Jeeps tore through the desert. Inside the cars, young men in camouflage clutched their 9-millimeter Glock handguns tightly as they aimed out the windows. Bam! Bam! Bam! They fired at their targets into the heat. Yet these weren't soldiers on a mission. They were gamer journalists on a junket. With competition heating up, game publishers were engaged in a meta-war to win the press. All-expense-paid trips like this had become more commonplace and outrageous. Reporters got flown to Disney World, to Alcatraz. Some got to barrel-roll in an F-14.

  Today, Rockstar Games had taken them here to the Arizona desert to promote its upcoming racing title, Smuggler's Run. The game, which challenged players to smuggle cargo in dune buggies and rally cars, was due as a launch title for the PS2 in October. To pump up the reporters, Rockstar devised this adventurous trip, including the reporters' very own drive-by target shooting.

  While work continued on GTA III, the guys at Rockstar were busy mastering their meta-game as bad-boy marketers. It wasn't just for fun; for Rockstar, selling games was all about style. They got their share of associated press, only not in the ways they intended. Word had begun leaking out about another Rockstar title in development called State of Emergency. Sam signed up the title at the 1999 E3 show, when a raffish for Rockstar, Scot named Kirk Ewing gave him a one-sheet write-up and a punk rock pitch. “It's called State of Emergency,” Ewing said, “the citizens are revolting.”

  Ewing figured that'd be enough for Sam. Growing up in the Scottish game industry that emerged out of DMA, Ewing was one of a generation of developers energized by GTA's fuck-it-all attitude and success. Inspired, he and a friend dreamed up a freeform game based on one of his old favorite pastimes, a bar fight. The game had started out as a kind of entertaining physics experiment. Ewing focused on simulating the fluid dynamics of crowd movement, the visceral thrill of autonomous objects hurling around.

  Yet in the long months of development under Sam, the game had grown into something more primal, as Ewing put it, “a massive beat 'em up.” Gamers played an urban dude who was unleashed into a mob where every character had to pummel his way to survival. Sam loved it. “This is it!” he told Ewing. “This is the natural evolution of what's going on. It's going to be massive!”

&n
bsp; Picking up the ball, the guys at Rockstar began hyping State of Emergency to the press as a “social disturbance simulator,” but then a real social disturbance unexpectedly got in the way. One day in May 2001, shortly after receiving a demo of the game, a reporter from the Tacoma News Tribune in Washington called a Rockstar publicist and said, “Hey, I just played State of Emergency, and it looks like the Seattle riots.” He was referring to the uprising that had occurred during the World Trade Organization convention in November 1999, a violent clash from which the city was still reeling. The Rockstar PR guy, not thinking much of the observation, said, “Yeah, it probably does look like that.”

  The next day, Sam and the rest saw the page-one headline: “Video Gamers Can Experience WTO All Over Again—PlayStation 2” from the Tribune. The story said how “the game borrows heavily from, and adds significantly to, the World Trade Organization riots in downtown Seattle in the fall of 1999.” It quoted appalled politicians. “If you want your child to become a violent anarchist, this is a great training game,” said Representative Mary Lou Dickerson sarcastically. The reporter added, “A spokesman for Rockstar, who asked to remain anonymous, admitted last week the game had strong ties to the WTO riots.”

  Back when Max Clifford fed his hamster about GTA to the press, this kind of coverage had been a dream—purposely drummed up to fuel controversy and attention. Yet times had changed, in the United States especially. Extreme content in a video game could dramatically lower sales, because high-profile retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy refused to shelve certain games, especially those with Adults Only ratings.

  Despite Rockstar's best efforts to deflate the WTO rumors, however, the story spread fast around the world, getting picked up by Reuters, among other media outlets, which said, “Thanks to Rockstar Games . . . would-be hooligans can vent their anti-corporate venom by punching out riot cops and looting storefronts from the comfort of their own sofas.” With the next E3 video game expo in Los Angeles days away,

  the guys at Rockstar had bigger concerns: unveiling their outlaw fantasy, GTA III, to the world.

  HIGH ABOVE THE SUNSET STRIP in Los Angeles, the party raged. It was taking place in the presidential suite of the Château Marmont, the ultra-hip hotel off Sunset Boulevard where John Belushi famously overdosed. The usual celebrities weren't inside, though. This was Rockstar's party now, just one of several suites the guys took over during the E3 convention in May 2001 when GTA III would be revealed.

  By day, they played ping-pong out by the pool, as models cut through the turquoise blue water. By night, they brought the bash to the top floor. They were Rockstars, with a fleet of blacked-out Mercedes downstairs waiting to whisk them off to any club. Ewing later recalled “going from that party to a tour of L.A. at 120 miles per hour. I felt like the president.”

  The pressure was on to stand out. Despite selling more than 4.5 million copies of the GTA games, Rockstar had to prove its muster. GTA was still considered a cult franchise, and the guys were angling to go mainstream. Moreover, they even had imitators to contend with, as other crime racing titles such as Driver and Crazy Taxi had watered down the market. Going into the convention, they figured that two acclaimed Japanese games were destined to beat them, no matter how well they showed: Devil May Cry, a demon-fighting game, and the stealthy action title, Metal Gear Solid 2.

  This time, instead of matching tracksuits, they arrived at the show wearing matching Pantone T-shirts with a picture of Don Simpson in T-shirt and jeans on the front, a tiny Rockstar logo, and Simpson's prescription drug bill on the back. They sauntered past giant screens of wizards and warriors, the pro skaters on the full-size ramps promoting the latest Tony Hawk games, past the light sabers and the Pokemons and the portly guys with digital cameras shooting every scantily clad “booth babe,” as the gamers called them, in dominatrix gear.

  The Rockstar booth went for chilled understatement. It looked like a Miami lounge, white curtains and couches and a clipboard-wielding PR lackey keeping out the riff-raff. PlayStation 2 stations had been set up around the lounge, showing State of Emergency, GTA III, and other Take-Two games. Donovan worried about the difficulty of distilling a pitch on GTA to the necessary thirty seconds. “You had to experience the whole thing because it was so personal,” he said.

  Donovan stalked the booth like an NBA center, hyping GTA III as the necessary alternative to the geeky role-playing games such as EverQuest that populated the show. “I think the video game industry was actually crying out for us,” he told a reporter from Wired. “We don't make games about Puff-the-fucking-Magic Dragon.” He insisted that GTA III was meant for a new generation.

  Yet despite all of Rockstar's cockiness, the gamers weren't listening. Sam and the guys watched as players dutifully tried GTA III for a few moments—and walked away. Some people recoiled as they watched the scenes of the main character sniping off pedestrians' heads from rooftops. Gamers had seen blood and gore before, but not in such a realistic setting—and they didn't know what to make of it. “Are you kidding me?” one said in disgust to Pope. Even Phil Harrison of Sony left nonplussed. “It looked like a mess,” he later said.

  There was one Rockstar game getting plenty of attention, however: State of Emergency. Crowds formed around the demo, as they maneuvered the stocky little fat guy in the wife-beater undershirt and the baggy shorts. Gamers hooted and hollered as the guy threw chairs at passersby, while buildings burst into flames from the riot. Maybe the press from the WTO connection had paid off, after all. Pope heard one of State of Emergency's developers snipe, “No one cares about your game. Everyone's talking about our game.”

  As Pope noticed by the dour expression on Sam's face, the boss man seemed furious. State of Emergency was Sam's game but not his baby. The response only made him more convinced about ensuring GTA III's success. He would work harder than ever before, and he expected everyone on his team to do the same. Pushing boundaries would take all of their energy, together. Their fight was inherently sympathetic, they thought, because they had the cause of every gamer at stake. “Well,” Sam said, “we'd better put the fucking hammer down now.”

  GTA III did manage to pique the interest of one very important player at E3, Doug Lowenstein, who came by for a look. Still reeling from the Columbine fallout, the game association president worried about any products that would add more fuel to the fire. The second he saw cars getting jacked in GTA III, he knew he was in for a fight. “This is going to be a problem, this is going to be controversial, this is going to trigger negative attacks on the industry,” he thought. “Oh shit.”

  “OKAY,” 8-Ball said, “let's do this thing!”

  It was another overcast day in Liberty City, and Sam was playing GTA III. He had maneuvered his character to see 8-Ball, an African American bomb expert and buddy inside GTA III. Despite his neatly shaved head and natty blue-and-white jacket, 8-Ball didn't look so good. His hands were wrapped in bandages, the result of a fiery ambush by the Colombian Cartel, but now he was coming to Sam's aid.

  Sam was running through a mission called Bomb Da Base. The goal, as laid out in a cinematic cut-scene from Salvatore Leone, was to take out the cartel's center of operation: a boat on the docks being used to churn out a drug called SPANK. “I'm asking you to destroy that SPANK factory as a personal favor to me, Salvatore Leone,” the Don explained from a leather chair in his well-appointed home.

  Sam had just sped through the streets, taking out a few peds along the way, past the hookers and the ammo shops, just to get to his accomplice who had the fire power he needed. “I can set this baby to detonate,” 8-Ball said, “but I still can't use a piece with these hands.” 8-Ball waved a gun ineffectually in the air. “Here, this rifle should help you pop some heads!”

  Ever since playing a game called Star Fox 64 on the Nintendo 64, a shooter that had him fighting to protect his wingmen, Sam had dreamed of creating in games the kind of sympathetic characters one finds in movies and novels. Such emotions had been largely elusive in t
he industry.

  Yet as he stood on the rooftop later, watching 8-Ball detonate the bombs on the SPANK factory after he clipped the cartel, Sam felt ecstatic. The ship exploded into flames, as 8-Ball fled in safety. A cool wave of relief washed over Sam, knowing his friend was okay. The emotion was real. GTA III had successfully brought the feeling to life.

  But reality was about to get in the way. At 2 a.m. on September 11, the GTA fan site Gouranga.com posted a chat transcript between fans and Dan Houser. “Q: Will we be able to hijack things besides cars?” one gamer asked. “A: Boats . . . tanks . . . ambulances, taxis, buses, ice cream vans,” Dan replied. ”Just not the big stuff—choppers . . . jumbo jets and oil tankers, you are a criminal, not an airline pilot.”

  Seven hours later, Sam stood at his apartment window, watching an awful black cloud of smoke choke downtown where two planes had just flown into the World Trade Center. Amid the fear and disgust, he couldn't help feeling as if he were in a movie. “It was the most real action-movie thing I'd ever seen because it fucking well was real,” he later recalled.

  With Rockstar's offices only a mile away from the site, the company reeled. “Everyone had someone who had an uncle or brother” who was impacted by the attack. Eibeler later recalled, “and for a young company it was devastating.” When Pope walked into the office for the first time soon afterward, he had to flash his ID—strangers wouldn't be allowed into Rockstar anymore. As he made his way through the loft to the back, he wondered who the closely shorn guy was sitting at Sam's desk—until he realized it was Sam. Sam told Pope he had shaved his long hair clean because he didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. “Those fucking terrorists,” Sam muttered. “I don't want to look anything like those terrorists!”