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  SPIEGEL ONLINE Interview With Dan Houser: 'Grand Theft Auto Is a Version of Gangster Fiction'

SPIEGEL ONLINE Interview With Dan Houser 'Grand Theft Auto Is a Version of Gangster Fiction'

Part 2: 'Is a Gangster Film Male or Female?'

Houser: There are some games that have taken some of the design ideas of GTA and tried to do something on their own. That's great, but there's also people that tried to copy straight. I feel kind of sad for them. They don't realize what makes GTA good. And that's a spirit and a personality which most games don't have. Whatever success Rockstar has had and "GTA" has had: It buys us the freedom to do what we want to do. We always wanted to do the games we would like to play ourselves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You, as an adult? Because GTA has done well in the adult video game market.

Houser: When we set out, there was music and movies and there were video games targeted at kids, not us. We wanted to change that. That's why we don't do any testing on target groups. That tells you what's top of the charts. We want to do the things you never thought about.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Like giving a video game company a name that sounds more like a music label...

Houser: We always wanted to be more like a good quality record label. If you bought one Rockstar game and you liked it, you could buy another one and you might like it -- even if it was a genre you might not normally like. We want people to think, "Well, Rockstar made it, they do interesting stuff, so we might give it a go."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the brand would become a kind of banner for certain consumers?

Houser: Look at "Bully." Who wants to play a game about a kid? If we can get our hearts and souls into the subject matter, we can make a good game about anything. Just because other people are not very imaginative doesn't mean you can't do it. When we started you had fantasy or space games. We added gangster to that.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So you wouldn't do a space or fantasy game?

Houser: In the old days we would have said no. But anything is interesting if you have the right angle. What we won't do is going into genres that are really well served by others, like military games.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You made the first major game with an African-American as a main character. Was that difficult in a white male-dominated industry?

Houser: On the one hand, it was a no-brainer. But it caused people to be upset, because they didn't want to play a black guy, which we found appalling. The good thing is: We did it again in "GTA Vice City Stories" and nobody even mentioned it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would you ever do a game with a woman as the main character?

Houser: Probably not in "GTA." We've done a lot of research on that. What held us back was that it felt a bit phony. We didn't find high-level criminals who were women. In any game that felt it could have a womanly character, we would do it. The danger is that you could end up with something like "Charlie's Angels."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So "GTA" is for guys.

Houser: Women do play our games; I know a bunch of them. But yes, the games are more male, because we do stuff for ourselves and we are predominately male. But is a gangster film male or female? We're doing Westerns, school boys, gangsters. They are more male, because that's what we are.

Interview conducted by Carsten Görig.