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Grand Theft Auto

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books

"Grand Theft Auto" Addiction Need Not Keep You from Winning Pulitzer

Oh, so you can have it both ways! Pulitzer-winning author Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) writes in the Wall Street Journal today of his love affair with the time-sucking video game Grand Theft Auto. He's also willing to admit to the lowbrow fun that it actually is (let's not dress it up with Godfather-referencing praise, people!)
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2:57 PM on Mon Jun 30 2008
By Sheila
1,871 views, 14 comments

creative underclass

GTA's Bitter Voice Actors

Several voice actors from the videogame Grand Theft Auto IV have come forward to politely point out that, while Rockstar Games has sold $600 million worth of copies in three months, they have only individually made tens of thousands of dollars. For example, Michael Hollick, the voice of leading GTA criminal Nico Bellic, made about $100,000 over the course of 15 months worth of work, at about $1,050 per day, with no residuals. More »

6:44 AM on Wed May 21 2008
By Ryan Tate
3,692 views, 38 comments

video games

Two Grand Theft Auto IV Skits That Are Funnier Than SNL's

To review a best-selling American game based on New York City, you obviously need a bunch of foreigners. First a British clip, "How To Have An Opinion About Grand Theft Auto IV," that mocks the standard media reactions to the game: polarization about the influence of violence, sweaty-palmed reviewers saying it's redefined gaming. Then the Australian reviewer Zero Punctuation, who's gotten very popular for his fast-paced cartoon reviews, says that GTA IV is afraid of its own value as a game. More »

8:16 PM on Tue May 20 2008
By Nick Douglas
4,111 views, 26 comments

Latest by valarmorghulis: @UnstableMabel: flawless! @DigitalVersicolor: no worries more »

Grand Theft Auto Dating Advice The latest list up at McSweeney's: "Good Advice From a Grand Theft Auto Dating FAQ." I'd tell you if it was funny or not, but I haven't played the game! [McSweeney's]

3 comments

pic of the day

Your Mission: A Murderous Rampage At Conde Nast

A Grand Theft Auto obsessive has matched up vistas from the hit Rockstar videogame with the real New York City. Here's the Conde Nast skyscraper in Times Square (at left) compared with the equivalent tower in Liberty City's 'Star Junction' (at right). Any GTA fans want to create mayhem in the magazine group's lobby, mow down a few Vogue interns, and send us a videograb of the results? [Matthew Johnston's Flickr page]

11:52 AM on Tue May 13 2008
By Nick Denton
4,439 views, 33 comments

Latest by DorothyMantooth: @Conbon: The ladies can sense that about me. more »

grand theft auto

Moralists Decry Video Game Without Playing It

The Parents Television Council—the shrill right-wing arbiter of entertainment morality last seen reprimanding companies for associating with rappers—is now busy condemning the brilliant, violent, and controversial new video game Grand Theft Auto IV. Unfortunately for the forces of purity, the Council decided to do its condemning primarily by making things up: More »

1:17 PM on Fri May 9 2008
By Hamilton Nolan
2,541 views, 34 comments

Niko Bellic Crushes 'Iron Man' Put aside any admiration for Iron Man's blockbuster opening weekend. The fourth outing of Rockstar's simulation of urban mayhem—Grand Theft Auto—took half a billion dollars in the videogame's first week on sale.

26 comments

gaming

Conan O'Brien's Grand Theft Auto for Yuppies

Do you shop at Whole Foods? Live in gentrified Brooklyn? Read the Sunday Times with no seething sense of rage? Then Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City isn't for you. But fear not, Conan O'Brien and his pals at Late Night have developed a kinder gentler version. Sample clip after the jump. More »

10:53 AM on Sat May 3 2008
By ian spiegelman
8,022 views, 16 comments

videogames

The Media Universe Of Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto IV is not so much the apotheosis of modern console entertainment as the first post-modern video game. While it provides the usual bloody entertainment, the latest installment of Rockstar's hit title is also a fully-imagined alternate world—complete with a witty satire of 21st century media. Serbian hardman Niko Bellic, the game's central character, can browse a self-mocking version of photo sharing site Flickr ("perfect for hopeless losers who like to spend days categorizing, alphabetizing and organizing their online galleries") and scour the missed connections on Liberty City's craplist.net ("sorry for checking out your 13-year-old daughter"). Most absurd of all are the mock cable shows—though they contend with their real-world equivalents. The newscasters of Weasel News are even more rabid than Bill O'Reilly and his colleagues at Fox News. If you have a friend with a Playstation, get them to show you I'm Rich, a celebrity show which in this episode profiles a cocaine heiress called Chloe Parker and as absurd as Paris Hilton. A campy British narrator—resembling that of the Daily Show's John Oliver—provides the voiceover.
Chloe Parker went from tycoon tot to tycoon twat... She's got it all. Daddy, money, and one of those tiny little dogs that rich people keep in their vagina... Her penthouse in Algonquin's exclusive Little Barkings district is a palace in the sky complete with a motor drawbridge, torture dungeon, and servants with scurvy. This is real estate we can only watch on television and masturbate over. (After the jump, the clip, and two screenshots from Liberty City's self-mocking version of the web; and here's blow-by-blow coverage of Grand Theft Auto's new release from Kotaku.)
More »

12:34 PM on Thu May 1 2008
By Nick Denton
17,845 views, 42 comments

Latest by pheagan: @Fugees-and-Funyuns: Listen. Prostitution, fine. Driving over prostitutes with your car just like you can all the other people, fine. Raping them (there is a cheat, my cousin showed me) is possible, if you don't know your cheats don't blame me. more »

things we actually like

The Beating Heart Of Lady Liberty

In the harbor of Grand Theft Auto's Liberty City, there's a statue. It differs from the Statue of Liberty in New York in two respects: the landmark's name is the Statue of Happiness; and it contains at its heart... a beating heart, chained to the exterior walls. The makers of Rockstar's hit game are twisted—and brilliant. (More pictures at Games Radar.)

10:42 AM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Nick Denton
4,827 views, 40 comments

Latest by hellodarling!: @Phyllis Nefler: @Pope John Peeps II: Hear, hear! I, for one, can't wait to get my copy today and play for hours/days/weeks/until they find my corpse clutching the controller. more »

grand theft auto

Liberty City's Architectural Inspiration

Restaurants and bars in Liberty City are like other landmarks based on places in New York, the real-world city on which the universe of the latest Grand Theft Auto game is based. The names, locations and designs are all slightly off, like a riddle made for trivia-night nerds. Ed Levine has risen to the challenge. Liberty City's rowdy Steinway (here's the video) is pretty clearly based on Astoria's Bohemian Beer Garden. But Levine, a food blogger, has identified possible models for half a dozen virtual eateries and drinking holes—even this bland and Starbucks-like coffee shop which he places in a gamer's version of Midtown's Rockefeller Center. [Serious Eats via Kottke]

10:13 AM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Nick Denton
9,338 views, 22 comments

Latest by n/a: @Nick Denton: At the very least I hope you're watching somebody else play through parts of GTA. Even driving around the city looking for landmarks is an impressive experience. more »

things we're not sure we like

These Two Viral Clips Make Me Very Confused About Stomp

I wish Stomp disappeared a few years ago so we could be ironically nostalgic about it by now, like the Spice Girls, Ninja Turtles, and Taft. But instead it's still around so everyone knows it kinda sucks but everyone also likes it as a guilty pleasure (right guys? right?). Because then I could just link to the Stomp-like animation "Play" by Cookie Dough Records. But because I need to cut that with some irony, here's Grand Theft Auto IV's version of Stomp, "Banging Trash Can Lids For An Hour." The animated ad is embedded below. More »

3:10 PM on Tue Apr 29 2008
By Nick Douglas
617 views, Comment

Gameplay If you're taking the day off to explore Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto's revamped version of New York, keep us in mind. We're looking for Gawker-worthy gameplay from the videogame—Niko beating up an annoying hipster would work for instance, or a clip from I'm Rich, the celebrity gossip show-in-show. Send to tips@gawker.com.

15 comments

grand theft auto

GTA In The New Hooker Era

When Rockstar Games in 2005 shipped an installment of its Grand Theft Auto videogame series with an embedded, but hidden, sex scene, an international controversy ensued, with Wal Mart, Target and other retailers pulling the game from shelves and the nation of Australia outright banning it. Since then there have been several hooker scandals, including those involving Congressmen David Vitter and Duke Cunningham and of course former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Two seasons of the stripper-suffused series Sopranos came and went on HBO. The Times decided we were fast becoming a nation of whores. And now the new GTA is out, and the sex scenes, mostly involving prostitutes and strippers, go graphically and erotically far beyond the 2005 game, and aren't even hidden. (Video after the jump.) More »

3:25 AM on Tue Apr 29 2008
By Ryan Tate
41,563 views, 34 comments

Latest by robinandtami: @BalknChain: They come with an AO (adult only) rating, but none of the consoles allow them in America. In Asian countries where people are much less repressed and not so obsessed with controlling what other adults are allowed to do, more »

Times Hearts GTA IV "A... thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun. It... sets a new standard for what is possible in interactive arts... I will happily spend untold hours cruising Liberty City’s bridges and byways, hitting the clubs, grooving to the radio and running from the cops. Even when the real New York City is right outside." [Times]

Comment

video game week

GTA Ad Perfectly Captures New York Nightlife, Daylife

This fictional ad for the "Steinway Beer Garden" in "Dukes" is maybe supposed to be the Bohemian Hall Beer Garden in Astoria. Oh, and it's from the forthcoming Grand Theft Auto IV. Warm Beer and Misogyny! What New York—and video games—are all about.

5:29 PM on Fri Apr 25 2008
By Pareene
3,686 views, 12 comments

video

A Drunken Sidewalk Scuffle In Virtual New York

A gamer with an early copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, the videogame set in a hyper-realistic version of New York City, has already tried out the one new feature we were most intrigued by. Niko Bellic, the hot Serbian immigrant at the center of Rockstar's videogame, can now stumble around intoxicated, and make drunken booty calls. View a clip by clicking the thumb; the longer gameplay is at Gametrailers.com. And here, if you missed them, are screenshots of Liberty City, the alternate New York City in which the fifth borough is not Staten Island but an industrial wasteland loosely based on New Jersey.

12:36 PM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Nick Denton
4,250 views, 37 comments

Latest by jrhys: OMG I recognize buildings in my hood. Too TOO freaky. more »

sneak peek

Grand Theft Auto's Warped View of New York City

The Liberty City of Rockstar's crime-celebrating Playstation game, Grand Theft Auto, was always based on New York. In the videogame's fourth outing next week, the city is much more fully realized—but intriguingly off-kilter. For example, Liberty City (like the metropolis upon which it is modelled) has five boroughs. Broker is the equivalent of Brooklyn, Queens is Dukes, the Bronx is Bohan and Manhattan is Algonquin. And the fifth? Staten Island was too dull, so the makers of Grand Theft Auto have annexed New Jersey, renamed Alderney. (Both Jersey and Alderney are islands in the English Channel.) As you can see from these screenshots from the game below, Liberty City is recognizable, but altered, disturbingly. Of course, the screenshots we want are from the live gameplay. The central character of Grand Theft Auto, a tough immigrant called Niko Bellic, has in this latest version of the game the ability to perform new actions, such as calling women for dates. He can also become intoxicated, causing him "to stumble and the camera to blur and bounce about". Any GTA fans: please send video of a drunk Niko on the equivalent of the Lower East Side. After the jump, spot the differences between the real New York, and Grand Theft Auto's vision of the city. More »

10:01 AM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Nick Denton
24,805 views, 67 comments

Latest by Sabre_Justice: Okay, no more long name.: @sassypants: You've been able to steal boats since GTA III. Jetskis? I wouldn't be surprised. more »