Grand Theft Auto V (GTA), the latest iteration of the long-running franchise, broke a total of six Guinness World Records upon its release, earning ‘$800 million’ in its first 24 hours of sales. Forbes compared the game’s economic success with that of Hollywood, concluding that GTA V ‘beat the three biggest film launches of all time by 16 days’, making it the most successful entertainment property in history. Despite its huge global success, GTA as a product had a relatively humble, and somewhat rocky, beginning in Dundee where it was first conceived by the then small British company DMA Design Ltd. in 1997.
Grand Theft Auto, 1997
However, it wasn’t until DMA-Design became Rockstar in the early 2000s that brothers Sam and Dan Houser took up the mantle, ushering in its era as a global gaming-sensation. The games ‘open world’ design, allowing players to explore seemingly endless city landscapes, was regarded as a revolutionary move within the industry that has since given rise to a series of ‘grand theft auto clones’ following the same format. Both DMA-Design and Rockstar are now subsidiaries of the conglomerate Take-Two Interactive, a hallmark of many creative industries (Hesmondhough, 2005:10).
The game’s conception was supposedly a humorous critique of American culture with the look and feel of different cities within the game, San Andrea, Liberty City and Vice City, based on San Francisco, New York and Miami respectively, with the latter drawing inspiration from 80’s American films Scar Face and Miami Vice. However, controversies regarding the game’s content resulted in fierce backlash from politicians such as Hilary Clinton, to vocal anti-GTA campaigner Jack Thompson, an American lawyer whose ongoing crusade against the Houser brothers was recently adapted into a BBC drama.
Despite Rockstar’s uneasy relationship with politicians and press, it’s frequently cited within creative-economy policy as an exemplar of British ingenuity, gaming prowess and heralded as an international financial success story. Arts Council England argues for the need to encourage the ‘next generation of Grand Theft Auto creators’ with the ‘Digital Britain’ report announcing tax-breaks promoting sales of games considered ‘culturally British’ (2009:18). This support only seems to be increasing, with a 2016 report identifying gaming as a sector whose growth should be promoted given its current GVA of £1.7bn.
In many ways GTA V transcends ‘product’ boundaries. Its use as an ISIS recruitment tool is a more sinister side to its success that’s not only testament to its cultural weight, but also to the blurred lines between creative industries and other sectors with growing recognition of ‘multiple geographies of cultural production’ (Norcliffe,2003:260). Contention of what the creative industries is considered to be also changes, particularly since the 1950s when ‘cultural policies conceived of culture narrowly as the ‘pre-electronic arts’ (Kong, 2000:386). Given GTA’s success and the industry’s contribution of £1 billion to UK GDP, there is a definite need to stop regarding video-games ‘as lower forms of art’ (Curtis,2013), but whether gaming could ever be considered a new frontier of high culture remains to be seen.
References
Curtis, S. (2013), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/10316267/GTA-5-a-Great-British-export.html, accessed 03/02/2016
DeVane, B., Squire, K.D. (2008) The meaning of Race and Violence in Grand Theft Auto, Games and Culture, 3(3-4): 264-285
Hesmondhough, D., Pratt, A.C. (2005) Cultural industries and cultural policy, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11(1): 1-14
Norcliffe, G., Rendance, O. (2003) New Geographies of Comic Book Production in North America: The New Artisan, Distancing and the periodic Social Economy, Economic Geography, 79(3): 241-263
Kong, L. (2000) Culture, economy, policy: trends and developments, Geoform, 31pp. 385-390
Scott, A.J. (2000). The Cultural Economy of Cities: Essays on the Geography of Image-Producing Industries. California: Sage Publications
Further Reading
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35337837
www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/09/20/grand-theft-auto-v-crosses-1b-in-sales
www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/12/uk-video-game-industry-gets4m-funding-boost.
http://blog.artscouncil.org.uk/blog/arts-council-england-blog/blueprint-creative-industries
geogblogging 