As you probably know GTA is a rather controversial franchise. The non-gaming layers of society always look down upon the display and depiction of themes such as violence, crime, and sex in video games, and these are the usual culprits when you have a 50-something conservative politician trying to ban video games because "oh god someone think of the children".
Violence, crime and sex are themes which appear in the GTA franchise. Hell, the first two are the GTA franchise. Back when GTA was just taking its baby steps, and when they still actually wrote "GTA" on the box, the game was already immensely popular and extremely violent. One person, whose name might ring a bell for people who follow the gaming industry and the gaming scene news-wise, tried to get a ban on the franchise. One Jack Thompson, played by Bill Paxton, decided on a sunny morning that he wanted many, many people to be angry at him, so he tried to take the most popular video game of the time out of circulation.
He failed.
The GTA controversy has become an event of legend in the gaming community and is always, always brought up in any discussion of banning video games. BBC decided to make a film-drama about the controversy, with Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame playing Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser. Now, the only problem is, BBC decided to do this without Rockstar's consent, who are now suing.
And yet, the project is still on-going, so much so that BBC released the first trailer, in which we can see a rare bearded Daniel Radcliffe.
This drama goes back to 2002, to tell the story of a three-year period of intense controversy in the history of this iconic game’s development. It happened when two passionate men on either side of a high-stakes cultural divide clashed.
Are you looking forward to The Gamechangers? Lawsuit aside, we sure are!
