For the renegades behind Grand Theft Auto, controversy is all part of the game

This article is from the May/June issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.

If you think the hooker-stabbing, car-jacking gameplay of the Grand Theft Auto series is intense, consider the real-world plight of its creator, Rockstar Games. In recent years, the boutique video game designer has faced a parade of politicians scapegoating its wares, an expensive recall due to sex simulations accessible to hackers in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game code, rumors of workplace harassment, SEC and FTC investigations, a hostile takeover bid from Electronic Arts, and a bevy of critics who decry the flagship franchise as racist and misogynistic. As if that weren't enough, GTA vice president and company cofounder Dan Houser discovered a rodent infestation in the office. "We had to get cats," he says wryly, sitting in the company's massive loft. "They hunted those fuckers dead."

Spitzer used the game for more inspiration than he's willing to let on. That kind of hypocrisy is beyond satireOne problem solved. But how does Houser plan to deal with the others? Rockstar Games—whose motto, "Hostes ad Pulverem Ferire," means "Pound the Enemy to Dust"—has devoted three years, 150 employees, and countless man-hours to creating a game that will silence critics, goad the haters, and guarantee the company's financial security. Grand Theft Auto IV (out April 29) presents a mind-bendingly complex, obsessively detailed world called Liberty City—a fully explorable alternate version of New York City (plus a bit of New Jersey). Inside this massive virtual landscape, gamers can apply for jobs, go on dates, get drunk, and shoot at cops. "We want to make a game that gives players the feeling that they are starring in their own movie," Houser explains. It's a comparison likely to make Hollywood execs sweat. An analyst from investment firm Janco Partners predicts the game's release will dampen ticket sales for Paramount's big-budget release Iron Man, set to debut just three days later.

If Grand Theft Auto IV is a movie, however, it is almost certainly a satire. Mock ads dot the landscape, promoting things like the faux reality show America's Next Top Hooker. A certain recently disgraced New York governor may feel the sting of Rockstar's skewering most painfully. Players will notice that GTA IV character Bryce Dawkins, a political candidate running on the slogan "Choose your future—choose abstinence," bears a more than passing resemblance to Eliot Spitzer, who loudly condemned Rockstar's whore-happy adult content during his '06 campaign, only to be caught misusing his own joystick two years later.

"Spitzer used the game for more inspiration than he's willing to let on," explains Houser, smiling. "That kind of hypocrisy is beyond satire; I couldn't even write it."

The doughy Houser grew up in the suburbs of London with an actress mother and a lawyer father, and graduated from Oxford with a degree in geography. He has demonstrated a sixth sense for controversy in the 10 years since he and his partners first created Rockstar.

Rockstar Games is currently valued at $2 billion, roughly double the net worth of the Yankees"When we started," he recalls, "pretty much all console games were for kids. We wanted to create games that satirized the real world, not some kid's fantasy." Their insistence on marketing to adults changed the industry and made them insanely rich. Since its inception in 1998, the company has grown to 700 employees and spawned nine satellite offices. Rockstar is currently valued at $2 billion, roughly double the net worth of the Yankees.

But success has bred controversy. Months before its release, GTA IV drew its first lawsuit threat—from antiviolence video game activist Jack Thompson, who recognized a bit too much of himself in the character of a hapless lawyer murdered by the protagonist. And several New York politicians recently took up Spitzer's soiled cudgel and publicly condemned the franchise. Such distractions are business as usual for the Rockstar crew. "We've taken a fairly antiestablishment stance," says Houser, leaning back into a plush leather couch. "I don't think we've sold out too bad."

This article is from the May/June issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.