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The History of Rockstar Games

The Rockstar Games label was founded in December 1998 by the British video game producers Terry Donovan, Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Jamie King and Gary Foreman. Sam and Dan Houser originally were apart of BMG music division before the enrolled themselves on a gaming interactive division that the company had created. The brothers had no prior experience in the gaming industry however did have major creative talent from there music aspirations. The interactive division went on to publish some minor titles including Firo and Klawd in 1996 and courier crisis in 1997.

The sales of BMGs gaming interactive did not rival their music division. This was until DMA design, who created the Lemming series in 1991 approached the two Houser brothers with the idea of a new game called Race and Chase a simple 2D game that would feature car theft, thugs, police and indecent civilians. It content was by far geared towards a much older audience then most games that had be created before it. there were no specific goals something else that separated it from most games on the market at the time, it was considered to be the first open world game. The brothers agreed to publish the game for DMA, to which it took 30 whole months to develop as coding was more difficult with this new and more complex gaming idea. It was published in 1997 under a new name, Grand Theft Auto. It went on to sell 200 million units which gave BMG interactive the boost it needed.      

Sam and Dan were given the budget and freedom to create when BNG interative was bought by Take Two interactions. The Houser brothers named the new gaming company Rockstar in 1998 after there aspirations to become big in the music industry. This was just the very beginning of the journey for the brother and the company.

The brothers began on the second GTA which sold around 2 million copies when it was released in 1999. The game was very similar to the first one in which it contained fictional gang warfare which could be influence by the player. The Houser brother set out on mission after the release of GTA 2, this mission was to change the stigma around gaming. They wanted to make game that everybody could enjoy not just your average nerdy gamer.

GTA 3 was later released in 2001 and once again had freeform but they now added a plot line giving a dark humor to the game. It was one of the first games to make use of a licensed soundtracks, featuring fake radio stations with real songs playing on them. It was the most adult game created in its time and was one of the most ground breaking games revolutionizing games due to it being considered the first game to be released that had something for everybody to like and enjoy. Despite this the game did come with a downside this was the level of violence that featured with in it. although there were many other violent games on the market this game was singled out by politicians and some even claimed it was the reasoning behind a teens murder.

In the same year GTA 3 was release Rockstar saw potential in the new Max Payne game and so they purchased it outright and started importing it onto consoles. Which means they made two hit games in only two months which sent them shooting to the top. However the company did have some set bakcs with the released State of Emergency which bombed out completely, they did not let this dampen there spirits. This was mainly because they knew GTA was their greatest asset and for that reason bought DMA in 2002 as they knew they were the only ones to be trusted with the making of this game. For the next GTA game Rockstar already knew they wanted to push the game further by adding in professional voice actors and Hollywood script writers.

In 2004 the company released GTA San Andreas the biggest and most violent GTA game so far, it had a top tier cast which included Samuel L Jackson as well as featuring new weapons and vehicles to go with the actors. It was also GTA’s biggest map ever to be coded not to mention the biggest map found in any game. Not surprisingly it went on to be a top selling game in the US and Europe. Sony paid to make GTA PlayStation only so 9 months after the release of the new GTA it went to pc and Xbox. This however allowed for modification and patches to be found and created including a sex scene referred to as ‘hot coffee.’ It came about due to carelessness of Rockstar as they deemed they didn’t have the time or resources to remove it so late in the production when the publishers and carries like Xbox and Sony decided it would be the step that sent the game to far. So therefore they tried to make cover it with code. This scandle sent GTA out of the charts for four years and only gamers who were specifically interested in the game bought and played it.

Since then GTA has returned to the charts with new and improve HD graphics. GTA 4 went to both the Xbox and PlayStation at the same time for release, with Xbox paying to get any downloadable content exclusively before PlayStation or pc. Despite some delays it sold 3.6 million copies by midnight making it the fastest selling game as well as one of the highest rating getting a perfect review.

Below is the structure of Rockstar Games, including their parent company Take Two Interactive and their many subsidiary companies, smaller development studios who work on individual games.