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SPIEGEL ONLINE Interview With Dan Houser

'Grand Theft Auto Is a Version of Gangster Fiction'

Dan Houser, the British-born developer of "Grand Theft Auto," talks to SPIEGEL ONLINE about regulatory bodies, American culture, and the art and hazard of producing the world's most popular video game.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Houser, "GTA" is one of the most successful series of video games, but also one of the most controversial. Do you aim to provoke?

Dan Houser: We are a company that would get attacked for this and that. This government body wanted to tell us off, that government body wanted to tell us off. All this kind of ludicrousness that shouldn't be surrounding the act of making video games has made the last three years more colorful than perhaps they should have been. For me "GTA" is a video game version of gangster fiction. There used to be books and movies and now we're trying to reinterpret that genre. Another thing, it's always trying to be a satirical look at American news culture.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Australia and New Zealand insist on a censored version of the new game. Do you change the game because of attacks against its content?

Houser: We don't. We get them cut out sometimes by regulatory bodies, like in Germany. We do what we do.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Don't you think games should change to avoid this kind of controversy?

Houser: If you fight for what you believe in, you survive, you'll do well. By self-censoring, you can destroy yourself. The self-censorship of the comic book industry in the '50s is a good example. They went through 35 years of pain and didn't really come back as an art form till the late '80s -- when they did "Watchmen," "Dark Knight" and that stuff. Now they are making adult comic books and porno comic books and kids' comic books and all that stuff in between. And that's cool.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You say "GTA" is about American culture. Where does that come from?

Houser: Back in the mid-'90s you could buy VHS cassettes of police chases in America and some of them were filmed with helicopters. That's where the original top-down perspective in the first two "GTA" games came from. We show the America from the news and TV shows and the movies, not the real America.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you really think many gamers get that joke?

Houser: They definitely do. The problem in America is not that the people are stupid. The problem is that the media thinks they are stupid. The media is either created for morons or is insanely highbrow like the New York Times or The New Yorker.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would it be easier for game companies if more people reading the New York Times would be playing?

Houser: A lot of people who play read those papers. The weird thing about people who don't play games is they can't accept that it's an OK thing to do. I would never say don't read books, play games. Do both! Games are part of the culture and there's some amazing stuff there, and some absolute crap -- as in all other forms of media.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How relevant are video games really?

Houser: With "GTA San Andreas" we sold 22 million. That's a huge audience, think about a pop record that would have the same numbers. That would be a huge one.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are games an art form?

Houser: Who cares? We can do what we want. I think games have lots of artistic quality, but beyond that it's just vanity. We just have to be able to be a fluent storytelling medium.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are games the new movies?

Houser: There's so many things you can't do in movies. Go on an adventure with some guy and hang out with him afterwards. And by hanging out with this guy, he tells you his life story. We are not at war with movies, we just say that games are interesting by themselves and there is a place at the entertainment table. A book tells you something, a movie shows you something and a video game lets you do something. It's amazing to be in this fake digital world and hang out.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The whole industry seems to look at "GTA" for inspiration. Do you feel this pressure?