Spilling Hot Coffee? Grand Theft Auto As Contested Cultural Product

Aphra Kerr/IGTA book/2006 Spilling Hot Coffee? Grand Theft Auto as contested cultural product Dr. Aphra Kerr National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. [email protected] Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games are highly successful, in terms of sales, and their content is part of an explicit business strategy which aims to exploit the latest technologies and platforms to develop content aimed at adult game players in certain markets. By all accounts this has been a highly successful strategy with the GTA franchise selling more than 30 million units across platforms by 2004, even before Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA SA) was launched in late 2004 (Take Two Interactive 2004). The latter was the top selling console game in the USA and in the top ten in the UK in 2005. At the same time the GTA series are arguably the most maligned of game products in many markets attracting much negative commentary and numerous legal actions in the USA. This chapter argues that the GTA case demonstrates a key tension within the cultural industries between the need to maximise sales globally and the need to conform to, or be seen to conform to, local distribution, social and moral systems. At the same time the story demonstrates that despite the widespread rhetoric of free trade and the dismantling of state sanctioned censorship systems in the USA, most parts of Europe and Australia, the censorship of cultural products continues and is perhaps a less overt, but nonetheless, highly political, socially negotiated and nationally specific process. GTA games are produced by a network of companies in the UK and in the USA. While the games continue to outsell other games in the USA, the UK and Ireland in particular, the content and increasing realism of the most recent games provoke a strong and largely negative discourse from powerful stakeholders like politicians, parents and the media in those same countries. The resulting discourse revolves around different perceptions of risk, particularly to minors, of adult interactive media content and of the openness of game content and technology. Despite the fact that the industry is largely self-regulated 1these perceptions have, in some contexts, forced voluntary regulatory bodies to intervene and censor both the content and the distribution of GTA games. The reaction to the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA: SA) in late 2004 provides a case in point. Regulators in most countries gave the game their most mature age rating, ranging from 18+ in Europe to mature/17 in the USA, and the game achieved a very high level of sales, particularly in the Christmas market. Commentators however reacted negatively to the perceived graphic realism of the 1 This chapter appeared in Garretts, N. (ed) (2006) ‘A Strategy Guide for Studying the Grand Theft Auto Series’ McFarland Press: Jefferson, North Carolina. This paper emerged from a larger project on the production and consumption of digital games now published as ‘The Business and Culture of Digital Games. Gamework/Gameplay’ (2006) by Sage publications. 1 Aphra Kerr/IGTA book/2006 violent content and the dominant media discourse focussed on the potential effect this type of content might have on children if they played the game. By July 2005 the discovery of the hidden ‘Hot Coffee’ sex mini- game in GTA: SA resulted in a revival of the negative discourse this time focussed on the effect of interactive sexual content on minors and the ability of the producers to exploit the digital nature of games to effectively hide content from regulators. Politicians, academics and numerous lobby groups contributed to the debate. In the USA regulators eventually reclassified the game as Adult/18 (effectively removing it from most main street retail outlets) and Australian legislators, having no adult/18 classification, withdrew classification for the game (effectively banning it). In Europe regulators stood by the original rating. What is of interest here is firstly, the attempt and perceived need by the developers to smuggle/hide content from the regulatory bodies; secondly, the varying reactions of stakeholders in different countries to realistic violence and to sexual content in digital games; and finally, the contrast between responses from regulatory bodies in the USA and Australia to those in Europe. One way to approach the conflict surrounding GTA games is to examine it as a struggle for freedom of speech versus new forms of censorship. Another is to view it as a conflict between multinational cultural corporation(s) and local political, cultural and social actors. In fact it is both and in this chapter we will focus on the struggle between multinational cultural corporations in the games industry and local actors in the USA and the UK primarily. The chapter will firstly explore the structure of the digital games industry and secondly, locate the transnational production network and core business strategy behind the GTA games within wider trends. Finally, the paper will look at how this strategy is challenged and negotiated by local institutions, discourses and politics. Understanding the digital games industry With a few notable exceptions, very few academic texts have been written examining the structure and dynamics of the digital games industry and most tend to focus on the industry in one country or on a particular company (Sheff 1993; Williams 2002; Alvisi, Narduzzo et al. 2003; Aoyama and Izushi 2003). Similarly the latest publications in game studies omit any investigation of the structures and dynamics of the digital games industry (Raessens and Goldstein 2005). Notable exceptions to this are the books by Kline, S. et al. (2003) and Kerr (2006).This neglect is somewhat surprising given that the digital games industry operates internationally, is estimated to be worth approximately $20 billion globally and both rates of growth and revenues compare favourably to more established media industries in many markets (ESA 2004; OECD 2004). Digital games have rapidly corporatised and professionalized from the early 1970s to the present. If one was to take Raymond Williams’ (1981) four modes of cultural production it is clear that the industry has moved away from, to the most part, artisinal production, and towards corporate professional production 2 Aphra Kerr/IGTA book/2006 whereby the source of game ideas lies either with a development company or with a publisher.2 The vast majority of games are now developed by what are called in-house studios or ‘first party’ development companies, fully owned by publishers. Much development is also done by second party development companies who are hired to work on a game concept developed by a publisher. Few of the top selling games are developed by and originate with an independent development studio. Indeed the trend over the past five years has been towards greater consolidation between publishers and between publishers and developers. In addition many publishers now own their own distribution companies (Kerr and Flynn 2003). Indeed in order to understand the digital games industry one must understand the powerful role that the publishers play in terms of commissioning, producing, marketing and distributing digital games (Cornford, 2000). Another key aspect of the digital games industry is that it is made up of at least four different segments or sub-sectors. The conventional approach divides the industry into three segments based on the major technical platforms on which games are played: console, handhelds and PC (Williams 2002). Each of these segments has their own dynamics and while companies may operate across segments most developers decide to specialise in one or two. Top games are often released exclusively on certain platforms and only later are they ‘ported’ or translated onto other platforms. This segmentation is applied widely in industry reports and using this approach it is clear that in terms of sales, console game currently significantly outsell games sold for other platforms and constitute anywhere from 57 to 78 percent of total global software sales (DataMonitor 2002; Deutsche Bank 2002; Spectrum Strategy Consultants 2002). At present the main consoles are Sony’s PlayStation 2 (PS2), Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Gamecube (GC). Some reports group games for handhelds such as the GameBoy Advance (GBA) and Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) with the other console platforms. Interestingly, not all markets demonstrate the same affinity with console games. While console games dominate in Japan, with almost 94 percent of total sales, this falls to 80 percent in the USA and 55 percent in Europe (Spectrum Strategy Consultants 2002:10; ESA 2003). Europe is by far the largest market for sales of PC games, at 47 percent, followed by the USA at 35 percent (Spectrum 2002:11). Sales of games on other platforms form only a small proportion of total revenues currently. However, one UK report estimates that the mobile games market in Europe, the USA and Japan was worth £73m in 2001, with Japan constituting over 50 percent of this total (2002:15). They predicted that the mobile games market would double in value by 2005. Other sources claim that online gaming will increase dramatically as broadband becomes more widely available, and point to the growth of online games in South Korea where online games constitute over 60 percent of the total domestic game market (KGDI 2004). 2 Raymond Williams (1981) identified four modes of cultural production based on the relationship and distance between the artist and their clients and the origin of the creative idea. These were artisanal, post- artisanal, market professional and corporate professional. 3 Aphra Kerr/IGTA book/2006 While there is a strong complementary relationship between hardware and software in the games industry the diversity of relationships between developers and the market, the development of new platforms like interactive television and mobile phones and the development of new genres of games like Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) pose quite a challenge to the conventional division of the industry.

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