Dan Houser's very extended interview about everything "Grand Theft Auto IV" and Rockstar

DH: We don’t tend to even get to that phase. We’re not really interested in them doing it. If and when we wanted to do that kind of stuff… One of the things media struggles with about videogames that I’m very clear on in my mind is that it’s a team thing. One of the things I’ve always found weird about movies is they’re like, “Here’s a movie made by hundreds of people and let’s talk to one of the actors.�?

It’s not me and it’s not Sam and it’s not [“GTA�? producer] Leslie [Benzies], even though we’re all heavily involved. It’s us and another well over 100 other people. I think what makes “GTA�? special is that it's still pretty much the same core people as “GTA 3.�? It’s still the same core people here and in
Scotland all working on it. That’s kind of unique in the games industry…

Our teams got bigger but it’s still the same core producer, art director, animation director, three or four senior designers, senior audio guys. All of the same signature people are still in place.

Me: I’d like to talk a little about your first experience at BMG Interactive [where the Housers worked before moving over to Take-Two] getting involved in “GTA.�? Is this something you saw as having the potential that you’d be working on it in 15 years?

DH: When I started at BMG full time, Sam was working already and a lot of people I work with now. “GTA�? was in development. I started about March of ‘97. “GTA�? came out in the UK at end of that year. So I wasn’t involved much at all in its development. I did a few things like the website.

Of course you wouldn’t think it would go where it’s gone now in some ways. But we were already getting inklings of – there were two things that you could have extrapolated out and said, “This is where it’s going to end up.�? We understood what was cool about it was the idea of freedom. It wasn’t level based. Games at that time were very very, “Here’s a tiny corridor to walk down and a very structured puzzle.�? But here was something much more, “Here’s a world and there’s things to do or not do and you have choice.�? And we found that freedom from the moment the game was at all running very very appealing. We were like, “There could be something really cool here.�?

[Talks about buying DMA, the studio that became Rockstar North…] That was based in Dundee and it sort of fell apart. We rebuilt it with some of the guys in Edinburgh. But very few of the original guys. What a lot of people don’t know is that the team it was built around, the “GTA 3�? team, is the team that made a game we published shortly after we were bought by Take Two, called “Space Station Silicon Valley�? on the Nintendo 64… The key guys on the “GTA 3�? team, we all got working with them and Sam particularly bonded with them because they were the same guys on the team.

Me: When you came over to Take-Two, when and how did Rockstar become an entity?

DH: Take Two bought BMG Interactive off BMG about 10 years ago from the day today. We had just released “GTA 1.�? We had just released a few other things and a soccer game for the World Cup in 1998.

Sam moved over that summer to here. I followed on about 6 months later, about ’98, ‘99. I remember he picked me up in the car and he had had the idea like “We’re going to have our own label.�? Take-Two didn’t have US publishing at time. It just had distribution in the U.S. They had a small European publishing operation. We said, “We’ll do the publishing you guys want and we’ll call that ‘Take Two’ and we’ll do the kind we want and call that ‘Rockstar.’�? I think the people at Take Two were so desperate for people to handle their publishing and respected our energy and commitment and thought maybe there was something in what we were saying: The idea that games could be made that were as culturally relevant as films or anything else. That there was this huge audience of people who play console games in particular and who were very culturally savvy and culturally aware, but who were being fed content when playing games they found slightly demeaning.

Of course, we were always going to be a company that took gameplay more important than graphics… At the same time, all our production values were going to be the best they could be, always try to use the best music, try to make the best dialogue -- try to lovingly craft these things and make this total experience. That was kind of the idea behind it. It came into being late ’98, early ‘99.

Me: You talk about making games culturally relevant. Was there a point in there where you were like, “This technology is here. Now what can we do to make games culturally relevant?" Or were you doing it simultaneously as the technology advanced?

DH: I think we were trying to overreach ourselves before there was even the power there. We couldn’t do that much then. The things we got out for Playstation 1…they were really good. But we had a lot of ideas of stuff we’ve come to do that you couldn’t do because of the lack of power in the machines.

So we were thinking of the ideas before the tech was there. Like we could put more music in. We could make the writing a lot better. When you only had a CD as opposed to DVD, you could put like 10 songs and eight lines of dialogue and that was your entire game. We were lovingly casting all our actors in “GTA 2�? to be DJs on radio stations, but they probably said three things each. The big technological advance was when things moved to DVD, almost more than the power of Playstation 2. It was the storage unit. You could suddenly put on a lot of audio a lot more animation and a lot more content in a world. That then gave us the opportunity of making that content interesting.

Me: Was turning it 3-D with “GTA 3�? a big important goal? Or was it like, “The technology is here, so why the hell not?�?

DH: The whole point of the acquisition of DMA was a dispute within various teams there of, “Could it even be done in 3D?�? The team that won that dispute became the team that did it.

It’s why we started doing third-person games not first-person. What was amazing about a game was controlling a character in a world. Made you feel like the star of your own movie or TV show. But the problem with a lot of games at that time that were very popular was you didn’t feel like you were controlling a character because you didn’t really have any power over them.

You could move them along a line or around a corridor, but it was so limited. So a lot of stuff everyone now takes as, “Of course you can do that�? -- Nobody had ever done it when we did “GTA 3.�? We made a lot of that stuff up. Things like, “Well we’ve got a city full of characters. Of course they’re all going to speak.�? Nobody had ever done that. At the time it seemed outrageous in that we had several thousand lines of dialogue and 60 speaking parts and the radio. That’s stuff we made up. Now it’s, “Of course you do that.�?

Me: Was the question at the time, “Are gamers going to care about this?�?

DH: No. I remember when we were talking about 60 or 80 different speaking parts, I remember it was such a big production issue, but the thing we never spoke about was, “Are people going to care about it?�? Our attitude always was, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing. If they don’t’ like it…�?

You often can feel like you’re doing things nobody is going to appreciate since the games are full of thousands of arcane details. If you start thinking, “Is this one really important…?�? You have to kill that in your head. You always have to have the attitude of, “If it’s cool, if we’re going to do it, let’s do it as well as we can. Let’s try and make it really fun and have a lot of depth and whatever interesting angle we can find for this character or billboard.�? For whatever small detail it might be, it was always like, “Let’s always try to make them all as lovingly as possible.�?

The production issue was just, “That’s insane, 63 speaking people.�? We had done four or five speaking parts before that.�? It was how you get people into and out of the recording studio. How you organize something like 8,000 at the time sound samples. Of course now we’re up to like 120,000 or 100,000. It’s a different scale now.

Me: It seems like all the Rockstar games are third person. You play a character. As opposed to some games where the idea is that you are the character. Is that purposeful?

DH: We definitely think about that stuff. For us it’s really a visual thing of it just looks nice controlling a character. Obviously, both views are artificial. None of them are like your eyes. But to us the third-person view feels less artificial than the first person. That whole “blinkers on�? just doesn’t feel as much fun for some reason.

Our characters are characters, but we do a lot of work so they are people you can probably relate to. Even though you may not always approve of their choices – They’re not laid out to be heroes, but they’re not people without any moral consequences.

Me: They have some redeeming qualities?

DH: Yes, that’s a better way of putting it. They have plenty of redeeming qualities. They’re people that within that world, that might be how you’d respond to those situations.

They’re not making completely stupid choices every time so you just sit there going, “What the fuck are you doing?�?

Me: As you can do more with these games, it seems like you’re focused on making a world that’s more alive. Is it important to not have the game limited, like by conventions such as artificial walls?

DH: We always hated the artificial walls. Our big thing on the start of Playstation 2 was to get rid of artificial walls. Our first two games then were “Smuggler’s Run�? and “Midnight Club.�? One of which we’re still doing now [“Midnight Club�?], the other we might do one in the future [“Smuggler’s Run�?]. Both were driving games, but they had no walls. The big thing was, like on “Smuggler’s Run�? which was in rural environments, you drive up a hill and it was like, “See that hill over there? You can drive to it.�? “GTA�? was carrying on the same idea as that. That’s what we thought was the big thing on PS2.

When we got to the point of “San Andreas�? we could put pretty much anything we wanted in the game. We were quite bored with what that was at that point. With “GTA 4,�? we really focused on putting things in that either make sense for the location, which is New York, or for the character.

Me: Are there are a lot of things in “GTA IV�? that are qualitatively different? That is, they’re not just “more�? or “better,�? they’re completely different and new?

DH: Oh yea, the whole game. What we wanted was the feeling when you saw “GTA 3�? after “GTA 2.�? The feeling when see “4�? compared to “3,�? hopefully it’s not difficult to see differences.

A really simple one is the physics. The idea that if a guy falls down a wall, we have that running in real time the way he crumbles or compacts. It’s stuff you could only do in pre-rendered CGI before. That’s amazing and we’re the first ones to use that technology.

We’ve got this city that feels alive. It has all these activities you could never have gone and done in that amount detail.

On a story level, the obvious one is that we can have some degree of emotion now because we can go in close on the characters and their faces look great. We’ve got this very good technology for animating faces. We can get emotions across. It happens in cut scenes and in the game. That gives it a degree of life that could never happen before.

Then there’s just 100 other things like that -- the lighting, the shadows, the way thing reflect.

What we always try and focus with these games is keeping them tonally consistent. So in the old games the way we wrote them reflected graphics and reflected the physics and reflected the audio. So everything was the same. So obviously when we could make graphics a lot more detailed and animation a lot more detailed and physics that are very stunning and naturalistic, we could write in a more naturalistic way. It moves into all aspects of the game. We use the space and the power to do everything better.

Me: So you wouldn’t want to have a story that’s more sophisticated than the gameplay?

DH: Yea. Our dream with these games is that from the moment someone sees one advert ‘til they finish the game, it feels like one complete integrated experience. Particularly when you’re actually playing – tone is a difficult thing to define in a videogame. But it’s really important I think for why some games work and others feel phony and tacky. Like they’re put together by a bunch of people who didn’t even know each other.

Me: Can you tell me about the process of deciding what “GTA IV�? was going to be? Was this after “San Andreas�? was over or while it was still going on?

DH: A bit of both. The end of “San Andreas�? was so brutal. It was such a massive game at the time and we were so exhausted when that was finished.

In terms of process, it’s very professional, but very unstructured. We’ve all worked together a long time and we’ve got very good people in place so we don’t need to do a lot of formal meetings. Sam and I talk and Sam and Leslie [Benzies] and Aaron [Garbut] – who are 2 of the key guys in Scotland; Leslie who has been the producer since “GTA 3�? and Aaron who’s the art director and who has to build the city. He’s the guy whose decision was on “San Andreas,�? “Hey can we do a whole state?�? The biggest single thing we have to do is build the world.

We just start knocking ideas around and talking about a few things. New York came out as the obvious place because we’d never done it before. In the old games [Liberty City] was just vaguely East Coast-ish. It wasn’t New York and it wasn’t trying to be.

Because we were working in high definition and we knew we’d need a shitload of research, we wanted to be somewhere where we had a foothold. We have a full time research team here off doing things every day, from how one building looks over another or photo shoots of hundreds of different kinds of pedestrians or video in the sky over 12 hours to see if how we make sky move is correct. There’s so much weird research: The ethnic makeup of every neighborhood. The traffic patterns. To try and get a feeling. We’re not trying to be 100% accurate, but we’re trying to capture the essence of the place.

That’s how we chose New York and once we’d chosen that, in terms of the character, we wanted something that felt fresh and new and not something that was obviously derived from this movie. We also felt over the last few years there hadn’t been a great standout gangster movie. Maybe could do something ourselves that would live alongside that stuff. We wanted someone who felt tough but also like an alien. So we began to develop the character of Niko. The idea of this immigrant story began to seem fun and interesting and he was a good character. On the one hand he’s an innocent, on the other hand he’s battle hardened and world weary. A modern “arriving in America" story felt very interesting to us.

And at the same time, the more technical people than me are doing the clever stuff. Everything’s happening in tandem obviously. The key guys on the map building side are looking at the whole city  and saying, “What epitomizes New York?�? Over the course of the next six months they build out a map with roughly all the neighborhoods [in the game]. That takes about six months to take shape and then the act of actually building that takes years.

Me: And what’s your process of writing during all that?

DH: Well, having got one character, I then have a chat with Sam and Leslie and I start thinking about story ideas that I bounce off of them. Eventually, we get a rough story synopsis. It was about six pages long.  It’s a pretty detailed synopsis. Before that, we’ve listed out all key characters purely so the artists can get to work on them. Then we get a synopsis we kind of like. That gets fiddled with of course, but then it goes to the designers and they break that down into mission-size chunks. That gets turned into a massive flow document that is the entire game section by section. We know where you can move around the map. We know when you can unlock everything. So although the thing to you playing the game is non-linear because at any point you might have 15 things you can do, we can track on a huge multi-tiered document where you can be. So we know at that point you can’t see other things. We’re trying to tell a story, design a videogame and take you on a trip around the world all at the same time.

Then after that, we write all the intros, which are the first things we write dialogue-wise to the missions. After that, we write the stuff in the missions; the dialogue for that comes much later on.

Me: Do you write that dialogue yourself?

DH: Me and a couple of other guys.

Me: Are there specific cultural influences in this game? Film influences? Obviously they were there in the last few games pretty explicitly.

DH: For “Vice City�? and “San Andreas�? we did. For those, we wanted ‘80s Miami and early ‘90s LA. Those were clear ideas giving us a good range of culture, music, characters, all that kinda stuff. Those were the eras when we were growing up so it seemed to make sense.

Now that seems like a kind of obvious thing to do. Again, at the time, not so much with “San Andreas, but with “Vice City�? it was like, “What the hell are you doing? Who would do a videogame set in the ‘80s? That’s ridiculous. Who likes 80s music?" Of course, that helped bring up the revival of 80s music. It wasn’t the cause, but it contributed.

We definitely were looking at that kind stuff for those games. This time, we were consciously not doing that. We were consciously trying to go, well, if videogames are going to develop into the next stage, then the thing isn’t to try and do a loving tribute or reference other stuff. It’s to reference the actual place itself. And then we realized, why would anyone making a TV show in New York know it better than us now that we lived here 10 years, and other people [at Rockstar] their entire lives?

We go and do a bunch of research on top of it. But surely if we're going to be in a position to make a game about anywhere and show that games can culturally represent a place as well as anything else and in some ways better, at least in terms of how they represent place – they may have their creative weaknesses, but in terms of representing place they’re amazing because we actually build the place. If we can’t do that now about New York, then when the fuck could we do it?

Me: Did you ever consider re-building New York block by block as some other games have done? Instead of just capturing the “spirit�? of the place?

DH: Not really. Having seen other games do that, they get so bogged down in fidelity they actually don’t end up with the spirit of place. It seemed like the detail we wanted  was never possible to get in something as big as NYC. And in a game we felt it just wouldn’t be fun. It would be too big. Traveling in a game is meant to recreate the sensation of traveling. Like when you watch a movie they don’t show plane travel in real time.

Me: This game is actually smaller in area than “San Andreas,�? right?

DH: Yes, but not the city. It’s the biggest city we ever built, but not the biggest area. If the difference from “GTA 2�? to “3�? was 3D, then this time it was from low-def to hi-def. What that meant was detail. Everything has to be insanely detailed. The graphics, animation, behavior, dialogue, artificial intelligence. So we thought that kind of scale was handleable.

Me: Did you want to do multi-player from the beginning? How do you feel multi-player fits into the “spirit�? of the game?

DH: We wanted to do multi-player for a while, but it just really wasn’t possible technically and to still keep the world running. You could get the map or some level up there on the PS2, but there’d be no A.I., there’d be no police, there’d be nothing that makes it feel like “GTA.�? That was the technical limitation that’s easy to understand.

From a design and vibe standpoint -- what you’re talking about, which is more interesting -- multi-player does certain things really well compared to single player and certain things not so well. For our first effort we’re not going to try and completely transform what multi-player is. We’re just trying to make the best multi-player experience we can.

What multi-player can do is recreate moments. I suppose our goal is to recreate the total gangster experience. It’s an interactive gangster movie. Multi-player can’t give you that narrative experience like single player can, but it can give you these amazing moments -- things like a car chase. So we built modes that can back that up. Like you pick up the boss and drive him across town while the cops are trying to bust you. That feels very cinematic while you’re doing it. It still feels like “GTA.�? We didn’t want that thing like, “It’s a ‘GTA’ skin but all chaos.�?

Me: When you think about what your next game will be, doing the PSP chapters, and so on, do you just think about it totally creatively? “Do we have a good idea and are we ready to go?�? Or do you think you have to manage this franchise, keep gamers aware of it, and set a pattern of some kind in release?

DH: Ummm, no we’re pretty good about that. We always regarded the success of “GTA�? as having bought us the freedom to do what we want creatively and a responsibility to not milk it.

With all the games we made, including the two PSP ones, they were great for their platforms they were put on. When we put the PSP ones on PS2, we charged $20 for tons and tons of content and we were very clear that they weren’t meant to be a true sequel, it was like a story extension. If you understood that, there was no way you could be annoyed by it. For that it was thinking, the PSP was and is coming back to being a very interesting format. You were suddenly able to put a proper 3-D handheld game on a handheld; that was amazing.

We’re very conscious of not trying to milk it and not do lunch boxes and sticker cards or movies -- things that aren’t appropriate. We always look at doing anything if it can keep the spirit of what the game is and if it’s done by the right people so it keeps the ethos.

Me: There has obviously been a lot of drama at your parent company [Take-Two Interactive] over the years. Do you feel largely cut off from it? Does it ever get annoying or interfere with what you’re doing?

DH: There’s been so much drama over so many years and we’re still here. I guess we’re reasonably immune to it. Sometimes it gets irritating and sometimes you feel bad for the people involved because things get out of control.

There have been so many CEOs since I worked here; some were fantastic and some not so. But it never stopped us and I don’t think it’s going to. I’m so used to it I can’t imagine any other environment. If I freaked out every time this is going on, we wouldn’t be coming up on 10 years. There must have been 20 dramas in that time. It’s what I associate with being in America: corporate drama.

The one thing that whoever is in charge of Take-Two has been cool about is understanding that we do a good job of running Rockstar.

Me: Was it tough to tell Strauss [Zelnick] and the other folks at Take-Two that the game was being delayed last summer?

DH: In terms of telling your parents that you crashed their car? No, not like that. But we take that stuff seriously. We’ve never done that before so it was a very serious decision to us. On the one hand we take the product very seriously and we are trying to be artistic. On the other hand, we come from a hard core production background and we’re all producers by nature, so we’re like, “Hit the fucking date!�?

For everyone it was a difficult decision, but it was easy because there was no choice. When you think about it, there is certain personal pride involved, but I’d much rather be sitting before you now, you having seen that game beautifully polished and ready, than have you sitting in front of that game when it wasn’t ready and the hardware simply couldn’t support it.

In a year’s time, the game will have hopefully sold a lot. It will seem irrelevant. This franchise is so big that it doesn’t need a Christmas release to do well. It would be great for the videogame industry to move out… Christmas has always been big and it’s always going to be, but it’s gotten SO focused in videogames. I think for the next stage of its maturity as a business it needs to move out  anyway. It’s interesting to see what’s hopefully going to be the biggest release this year not going at Christmas.

Me: You guys do all your marketing and PR in-house. That’s not like any other videogame publisher I can think of.

DH: It always has been. No ads have been cut out-of-house. We use a media buyer. Apart from that, we’ve always believed in doing that stuff ourselves. That was something we took from the movie companies. Our belief is this is a cultural product and we understand how to present it better than an advertising agency ever could.

Me: Compared to other game ads, yours are a lot less, “This game has 16 person multi-player!�? It’s more like you have a spirit or idea you’re trying to get across. What do you feel like you’re trying to get across?

DH: Just ethos. Every advert you see, every poster you see, every logo should tell you, “This is what the game is.�? It should scream the attitude of the game. What the game is we’re always trying to say to people is a complete experience. You can’t go, “Well that’s the part about stealing a car.�? No, it’s this character in this world. You like the whole thing or hate the whole thing. It’s not sub-dividable. The marketing should reflect that.

Me: It seems like compared to other games, there’s also a lot of details that you are not telling players about. They’re not going to know it until they play the game.

DH: We’ve always tried to do that. There’s big danger that’s more prevalent now than at any time in the history of this kinda stuff,  because there’s so many channels and so much interest in any launch of a big movie or big videogame, where people see it and see it and see it and by the time they actually go to see it or play it or read it, they’re bored of it. They know what’s going to happen.

So we always try to keep a lid on a bunch stuff so you hopefully know enough that you’re excited to buy it, but you’re still super excited. There has to be a magical quality to actually playing the game. We’re not trying to run the best marketing campaign, we’re trying to sell the most videogames. We’re trying to get enough people excited and our main method of doing that has always been, “If the game is of high quality, it will sell.�?

Me: Do you consciously think about making the game more accessible to people who don’t play a lot of videogames? Do you think about doing difficult levels?

DH: No, we don’t like [difficulty levels]. There are a few things hidden away if you keep failing to make it a bit easier. But no one knows that’s going on. That’s stuff we put in there so people keep playing and don’t run into a brick wall

We don’t do a lot of focus groups. The only focus groups we do is once the game is made, we have a lot of people come through and we watch how they’re playing it. We see if there’s a mission they keep failing. The dream is that the average mission, people pass it the second or third time they play. When you get one where everyone takes seven or eight or nine times, you know you have to turn down the A.I. a little bit, take out a few of the bad guys, maybe take a section out. We do a lot of that stuff to really tune the hell out of it.

Me: When did you decide to do the episodic content? How do you see it fitting into “GTA IV?�?

DH: I think it’s an experiment. The idea of a world that you can drop bits into it, that’s interesting. But we’ll see how it goes. At the moment, there’s not much going on with it. We’re finishing off the last bits of this one and the only way we can really do this is by really focusing on it.

Come April the 30 [the day after "GTA IV" comes out], then we’ll look at [September release] “Midnight Club[:Los Angeles]�? and the episodes and everything else. For the moment we’re all like, “GTA 4! GTA 4! GTA 4!�? If you want to launch a big big media product, it has to be all consuming.

But yea, it’s interesting. Maybe it’s changing  and maybe it’s not ready. You don’t really know what’s happening with that stuff and at the time we’ll see what’s going on.

Me: Obviously you want the products you make to be taken seriously. It seems like on the one hand they’re very culturally relevant because a lot of people play them, especially so many younger people and they talk about it and it means something to them. On the other hand, a lot of discussion in the places where culture is usually discussed is about the controversy. Is that something you find frustrating? Is it OK because the people that it matters to are talking about it with each other?

DH: I dunno. I don’t know what honest answer is to that question. Because it’s a bit of both. The reality is that on one hand, it would be extremely vain to care about that stuff. Who cares? The games are as good as we can make them. They seem like a good cultural artifact of us. People seem to love them. So that’s cool. We’ve achieved what we want to achieve.

At another level, it’s irritating because some of those discussions – it’s just like, “Why are we having this conversation? It’s insane.�? We get dragged into these stupid conversations about,“Are you brainwashing children?�? or whatever rubbish it is that month. It’s like, “How can we as adults be having this conversation when we both know that you’re talking crap?�? It’s just not even complicated.

If this was a movie or TV show and was the best in its field, you’d give it loads of awards and put those awards shows on television. I genuinely don’t aspire to that, but I do aspire to not being called an asshole for doing the same thing in a videogame. So what you’re really saying is, “It’s not the content, it’s the medium.�? You’ve proven that by your actions in other areas. So what is it about the medium you don’t like? Because maybe we should challenge those ideas. It’s not what you think it is to a lot of people. To us, it’s way of experimenting with non-linear interactive storylines.

Me: Do you ever think maybe you should be more outspoken and make those arguments to help people understand?

DH: Not really. We try to keep a reasonably low profile. The reason isn’t because we’re weird or reclusive. But we really like the fact that, while we have to do certain amounts of promotion so people vaguely understand this particular game, the fact that we’re not out there doing loads of TV interviews or other silly things just makes people focus when they’re playing the game on the game.

I’ve found it very difficult as fan of movies when you suddenly knew so much about these stars’ lives that the best films you see now are always foreign where you don’t know the actors. Because they’re the only ones that can transport you. It’s like they used to make stars to sell movies, but now make movies to sell stars to sell gossip magazines. It’s all gotten quite weird.

We’re not into a heavy, overbearing authorial presence. If you don’t like it, thank God there’s a Constitution. You probably can’t ban it that quickly. That’s putting detractors ahead of our consumers. While they might find it interesting in the short term to read whatever crap I have to say, in the long term the less they know about us, the more they are able to lose themselves in the world.

Me: So do you feel “GTA IV�? flat out has more original storytelling than people have seen in your games before?

DH: Definitely. Partially, as we talked about before, it’s because we have the power. We sort of went a little more in that direction with “Bully.�? It’s more derived from books than from anything else.

We felt that because we could make the characters look good, move well, sound good, we could slow down the dialogue a bit. If we make the dialogue more naturalistic, but still interesting and bearable to watch, then we could tell our own story. We don’t need to signpost things so much. We could use our own kinds of characters. At the start, we set out to do something that felt fresh. We don’t want to just do another mob story, for example. If you’re going to base it in New York, the obvious thing is to do a mob guy. That’s so boring.  We’ve done it a lot. Movies and TV shows have done it a lot.

Me: And there was EA’s “Godfather�? game that was really inspired by “GTA.�?

DH: Well, we don’t look at other games. We regard our competition in the world of characterization and storytelling and cultural relevance as being alongside movies rather than some of the other games. Because we take that detail stuff more seriously than they do.

Me: One thing critics of the sex and violence in your games don’t seem to recognize is the humor.

DH: No, but hopefully the fans do.

Me: Is that just as present in “GTA IV�? as it has been in the past?

DH: It’s like, "The story’s kind of serious, but the world is kind of ridiculous" is the tone we wanted. Niko has got his own problems that he takes seriously. He tries to help other people, but he sometimes finds their issues ridiculous. That’s the tone we wanted. On the one hand, we did want to be more serious, but on the other we don’t want it to be stone faced and without humor.