Dan Houser shared some interesting insight into how the video game industry operates today.
In an interview with Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, Dan was asked where he thought the video game industry was heading. He said this:
With all things, it can either go somewhere really interesting, or somewhere that gets overly focused on making money.
I think there’s always that danger in any commercial art form that they get distracted by money, but there’s still a big ceiling – creatively – to create these kinds of living narrative experiences. And I think that’s what we’re always trying to do.
I think they’ll both win. I think there’ll be two parts, we’ve already seen that in spaces in the gaming industry where they both kind of win.
Is Rockstar An Example Of Making Money, Or Going Somewhere Really Interesting?
Dan was talking about his experience working at Rockstar in this interview. And we can see where the company went into a direction where it focused on making money, and also in pushing the creative envelope.
Contrary to what a lot of fans now assume, the Grand Theft Auto games were not a guaranteed success from the start. While they saw some success with their top-down 2D Grand Theft Auto games on the PlayStation, the business was in flux when they were going into the PlayStation 2.
As Dan has now disclosed in multiple interviews, Rockstar was not making money when they were making Grand Theft Auto III. In fact, they couldn’t really afford the motion capture they did for the game, and had to rent out a studio by the hour.
After Grand Theft Auto III’s success, it is easier to see that Rockstar and Take-Two were making their games with a clear financial incentive. But at this point, they were also pushing the envelope on what was acceptable in video games.
One could see the tension there, as they always faced the threats of being banned in different countries and regions. On top of that, US politicians and notorious activist Jack Thompson were targeting them.
Take-Two took the same kinds of risks that film and print companies did when they released controversial work.
Whether it involves sex, violence, drug use, or others, the dilemma is the same: the more controversial you get, the more money you can make, until you get shut down.
Take-Two and Rockstar made choices and held convictions that allowed them to keep making games instead of getting shut down. In fact, they moved the industry forward to the point that Sony and Microsoft regularly release games for adults – and even Nintendo has returned to doing that sort of thing too.
That’s as big an impact on the industry as you can hope to achieve.
