Rockstar's Sam Houser Mouths Off

It's not quite fair to say that Rockstar's Sam Houser is actually mouthing off, per say. Oh, he does his fair share, but here in an exclusive interview with IGNPS2, it's more like talking with the guy down the street who's so crazy, obsessed, perhaps even infected, with the idea of games, that you're compelled, even dizzied by his schtick. When talking with Sam it's more like entering into a high-octane soccer game ("futball," for all you Brits) of words, ideas, and quite a bit of laughter. Houser is a complex, high-energy idea man whose brain doesn't really stop, not as far as I can tell, anyway.

Naturally, we wanted to speak with him about his company's upcoming epic, Grand Theft Auto III, which, alongside Smuggler's Run 2, an action-racing hyrbid with huge landscapes and great physics, and State of Emergency, a game about riots that enables players to see and play with as many as 100 other characters on screen at once, stands to bring Rockstar into the limelight like never before. So what does someone who is passionate about games, and who previously worked in the music business think about games? How does he infuse his ideas about music, culture and gameplay into Grand Theft Auto III?

IGN: I have played the latest build of Grand Theft Auto III, and it's wonderfully huge, open, and seems like an almost endless world. With regard to gameplay, do you feel as if you're entering into new videogame territory with Grand Theft Auto III?

Sam Houser: Yes and no. There aren't that many single things that you can do in the game that you couldn't do in another game in terms of the actions you do -- fighting, shooting, driving vehicles, running, exploring, buying stuff, speaking to NPCs, watching cut scenes and so on. What is unique about the game is the seamless way these are linked, and the fact that you can do them all at the same time -- this is a limitless game world with action game play -- the player has complete freedom to do things in a living 3D world. This is the new territory -- no limits, but very easy to play, with a game plot that unfolds and draws you through the adventure at your own pace. Obviously, it's new, in that there is nothing like it, but it is also very much a development of the earlier games, made possible by the new hardware and the new storage medium -- DVD.

What is so remarkable about the game is just how much freedom the player has, and how easy it is to do a massive variety of activities, and the transition between them. No menu screens, no asset management, beyond how many bullets you've got left, just an incredibly immersive world. What is also unique is the amount of personality Rockstar and DMA have put into the world. It has it's own personality in a way I've never seen before in a game, to the point where it actually becomes part of the gameplay experience.

IGN: Right. Grand Theft Auto III does enable consumers to play any way they like, meaning that they have the choice to complete the missions straight up, or perhaps just fool around, tinkering with civilians. But more to the point, they can be as violent, malicious or as business like as they want. It seems almost stupid to ask this, but why give gamers the choice to act saintly or devilishly?

Sam: Well, Grand Theft Auto was the original crime game when it first appeared in late 1997, and we've always been concerned with putting people at the center of their own criminal universe. Part of the game's appeal has always been freedom -- back then, this freedom came at a price -- top down graphics, which weren't to everyone's taste. But, as far as we are concerned, you can't be tough and be told what to do. The non-linear, living-breathing city aspects of the game are as much at its core as the crime. Fans of the game went nuts because here was a game in which they had choices -- what vehicle to steal, which way to go, what to do, at a time when games were very linear and path-based. All we've really done is taken that into 3D and built a lot more variables and random elements into the world to bring it all to life even more. But, in some ways, the first game plays as a very basic blueprint for Grand Theft Auto III. The vision has remained constant throughout all the releases in the series.

IGN: Gamers will see a totally sophisticated, stylish presentation that's reminiscent of famous movies like The Getaway, The French Connection, and Scarface in Grand Theft Auto III. Why style the game with this kind of movie-like presentation, and what does it provide gamers with that they haven't seen before?

Sam: The game is obviously a homage to gangster movies, and we wanted a presentation to match, I guess. A lot of the games business is inspired by fantasy or gothic imagery. We've always been more concerned with contemporary culture, and we've always been very into movies. DMA's and Rockstar's ambition with the game was to make the first interactive gangster movie. To do this, it needed characters, personality, and very high quality presentation. What it gives the player is a more engaging experience than I've seen before, and one that we think is genuinely original. For want of a better description (and I know how much everyone likes genres), the game is like a cross between a gangster movie and an RPG (Zelda meets Goodfellas?), with the most intense action and driving gameplay. All of these elements are the game, and the presentation is the experience as much as the gameplay, because we are trying to bring a world to life. For the gameplay to have depth, the game needed style and personality; DMA has merged the two so the style is in the way the player holds his gun and listening to the radio carefully enhances the gameplay.

IGN: Can you tell us a little bit of detail behind the characters in the game? I mean, does the lead character even have a name? And what about his compatriots? Who are some of these characters, and how much character do they actually have? Are they different than simple cardboard cut-outs, and if so, how?

Sam: The lead player is the only person who never speaks. He has no personality. Or rather he has your personality, the player has to have freedom to act as they want, not as they think the model they are controlling should want. Everyone else has a character, for the same reason -- you are in their world, and they need to exist. How much personality? Well, we know them and they have motivation, personality and ambitions, and, although the game is non-linear, it also has a plot, which unfolds around you and uses the personality and history of the people you meet. In no particular order, there's Salvatore, the mafia boss and his feckless son Joey. There's his right hand man and killer, Toni, scared of no one but his own mother, there are Kenji and Asuka, the brother and sister Yakuza combination. Maria, the heart broken gangster's moll, and Donald Love, the media baron who has weird interests in the occult. And a whole lot more. After the 15 or so main characters, every pedestrian has a character and personality you can interact with.

IGN: Can you tell us a little about the game's structure? Is it story-based? How do gamers go about fulfilling the story? And are there different endings?

Sam: Yes, it's story based, but it's also pretty non-linear -- the player always has several different options of what to do next, or they can wander about and explore. Don't want to say too much more as discovering a lot of this is part of the pleasure of playing the game.

IGN: Fair enough. All over the world, the Grand Theft Auto series has been a hugely popular one for Take-Two and Rockstar, and yet at the same time, the game weaves great gameplay in with the ability to be quite violent. Despite the rating system that publishers like yourself adhere to, there's going to be a strong response to the game. How do you expect the more conservative videogame industry critics to respond? And what is the appropriate way, if any, to react to it?

Sam: I expect them to react... Hmmm...People need to react because we are taking the industry to a new place with this game, or taking part of it to a new place -- making games for a sophisticated adult audience. The game is very funny, as I think you agree. It is not meant to be taken seriously, nor could it be by someone actually playing it, but of course, people like to comment without playing the game. We just don't believe it is a kid's-only industry anymore and hasn't been for years. The game will have an M rating. We adhere very strictly to the ratings system and take the ESRB guidelines on marketing mature rated product very seriously. What are the alternatives? Censorship? I sincerely hope not. We hope people will see the game for what it is -- an incredible piece of software aimed and marketed at the core of the PS2 audience (which currently has a median age of 24) and presented with humor, like certain kinds of gangster films. There is nothing in the game more or less violent than an episode of the Sopranos, but because it is a videogame, people react differently. Not sure why...

IGN: As the videogame market grows in size and scope, so does the focus on the issues generated from games. In the bigger picture of entertainment, where do you feel the industry is going from here, and where do you feel Rockstar stands in this picture?

Sam: I think we are moving into an arena where videogames can start to rightly claim to be the next mass market form of entertainment. On this game, we used skills and talent from a lot of other industries -- actors, directors, radio producers, etc. -- along with a lot of internal talent to do something that is very advanced, but very easy to appreciate. However, this game is not in any way a formulaic effort -- it could only have been built by the people that built it, so perhaps we are also moving toward an arena of games as art, or at least as a valid form of self-expression. That's what we have always wanted to do -- make games that say something and that have personality.

Working with a developer like DMA this is very easy. As for Rockstar, we believe we are a digital entertainment company. Games are obviously the future of entertainment -- money-wise this is obvious, but experience wise, it is also obvious, at least to us. Games involve you in a way other art forms don't -- from telling (books) to showing (movies) to doing (games) -- they're pure escapism, still, but better escapism. We are still only scratching the surface of what interactive entertainment means, but I think with Grand Theft Auto III, we've at least scratched a little deeper, because it is obviously a piece of entertainment, with all of the things other media can give you -- emotions (or as many emotions as a gangster movie induces -- it isn't a tear jerker), music, action, humor, a compelling storyline with very few barriers to entry in terms of controlling the game, and an amount of freedom unlike any thing you have ever experienced in any medium before. It feels futuristic to me, but it also feels very fun, which is still, thankfully, the main thing.

IGN: In each and every car in the game, players will hear different kinds of music. They can even hear talk shows and commercials. These kinds of elements were, to a certain degree, in GTA1 and GTA2, but now they are better sounding, funnier, and more impressive. Can you go into some of the details about how the music was thought out and created?

Sam: Due to the trust that exists between developer and publisher, DMA and Rockstar, we were able to create an audio experience that is completely unique. Dan Houser and Terry Donovan at Rockstar and Craig Conner and Allan Walker at DMA had a shared vision for how the game was going to sound -- we were going to bring the city to life. Dan and Craig then figured out how to make the music and audio funny and fit in with the game's feel. The radio gives Liberty City a lot of its life, and we have a clear vision of what that was -- a very iconoclastic look at America. Really I could talk for hours about the music, but I'm not sure we really have time...

IGN: Don't take this wrong, because I have enjoyed your games on PS2 so far, but the production values in Grand Theft Auto III are so much higher than anything that Rockstar has done so far in a game. Why is that?

Sam: Three things made this possible -- a mindblowingly talented and very ambitious development team, changes in technology and the people we have working at Rockstar. One of the pleasures of working with DMA is that they have similar cultural references to us -- we like the same things -- the results are an incredibly well integrated game where some assets they created, some we created together and some we created. And it all feels like the same thing -- from the way Alex Horton, the animator, has the player move to the online newspaper, The Liberty Tree, it all feels consistent. That was our goal, and that vision is something that is at the heart of the Grand Theft Auto III experience. Leslie Benzies and myself were militant on ensuring the game had a look, a sound, a story and a feel that worked. This spreads out into the marketing as well. Aaron Garbut, the art director, and his team, has done a remarkable job giving the game a consistent and original look. Craig, Allan and Raymond Usher are without doubt, the best audio team working in videogames anywhere, and have always been very progressive, so we knew their work would be incredible. At the same time, the work of the DMA's programming team led by Obbe Vermieij and Adam Fowler have had a terrible time, because so much has been asked of them -- action movie car physics, easy gun play, multiple camera angles and smooth transitions, and they, along with the whole team at DMA, have worked to make something that is clearly ground-breaking.

The technology and the content are the same thing in this game -- and this was only possible because we have a hand picked development team who have worked with a very clear common goal at all times, and because we were prepared to exploit the use of DVD, better motion capture technology and the power that the PlayStation 2 gives confident developers. We all knew what the game was going to be and what would work and they made it happen. At the same time, due to the close relationship we have with DMA and the production skills we have, and the scope of the project we were really able to go to town using all of our extra skills to give the game the polish that would make it special -- film directors, video producers, writers, radio producers, audio directors and music licensing experts from within the Rockstar team have all worked on this project.

This is the first game we have done, due to its scope, which has heavily involved most of the senior Rockstar staff, myself, Dan, Terry and Jamie King doing what we did before we came into the game industry, so we knew the results were going to be as good as we could manage -- we always like to do as much internally as possible as this is what we think gives us our edge. But all of this was only possible, because, without it ever being formally written down, Rockstar and DMA had a very shared vision in which the game had an identity we could all understand. This comes from the fact that people here have worked on every GTA as have several of the people at DMA, and we knew what we liked and didn't like about previous games. And because we're all British, we all love observing certain American excesses, even those of us who choose to live here.

IGN: What else is there that you would like to say about Grand Theft Auto III that we haven't already covered?

Sam: Try and rob the gun shop. Listen to the talk radio. Meet Salvatore. Talk to the construction workers. Then you'll understand what this game is all about. Massive, stylized, free form, and completely nuts.

Also, check out our new game -- www.pogothemonkey.com that's what it's all about!

IGN: Oh yeah, well, thanks...um...for that last recommendation..., we'll be sure to check it out...

--Interview by Douglass C. Perry