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The Gamechangers tells the story of Rockstar Games, creators of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and how one of their releases nearly brought down the company, thanks, in part, to a sticky-beak lawyer who needed a good slap.
As one early phone-in caller to a radio station puts it, “Grand Theft Auto III changed the face of gaming” and speculated that Vice City would be even better. And it was. Mostly for the ’80s music, in my view, leading me to occasionally finding a decent song on the radio and just pulling the car over to stop and listen to the song without interruption (yes, you can drive while listening to the radio, as in real life, but unlike real life you’ll often crash into another car, overturn the vehicle and end up having to escape before it explodes). Also, I learned how to parallel park with Vice City. It wasn’t part of my driving test back in 1989, so when this game was released I belatedly realised that I could steal two cars, place them at the right distance apart. Then steal a third, and use that to manoeuvre in, learning the angles as I went. Those angles perfectly suited this real life situation.
So Grand Theft Auto is educational!
The movie begins on 29th October 2002, just after the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the second 3D entry in the series, the team, led by Sam Houser (Daniel Radcliffe), planned more enhancements for the follow-up, San Andreas. They discuss having a black lead character in San Andreas, and getting Samuel L Jackson into the game, who did indeed appear. Your character, Carl – or CJ, can get a haircut, buy clothes, tattoos and so on. You could even go to the gym and get buff and decrease body fat etc, but that was the sort of thing you’d do once or twice and then just start getting on with the missions, so it’s not surprising they cut back on this in later games. In GTA V, for example, you can still buy clothes and get tattoos, etc, but not so for all the nitty gritty.
Houser’s problems begin when God-fearing lawyer Jack Thompson (Bill Paxton), who is to videogames what Mary Whitehouse was to television programmes, thinks games are the devil’s work, but as time goes on, even his son tells him he’s over-reacting, saying “Not every kid’s about to pull a Columbine”. This reason for Thompson’s wrath is down to Devin Moore (Thabo Rametsi), a young American lad from Alabama who was arrested, then stole a cop’s gun while at the police station, killed him and another cop as well as a security guard, then took their police car.
Yes, you can do that in the game, and the camera followed Devin in the same way as the game would follow its lead character, but in order to be someone who does that, you have to be a screw loose in the first place. Videogames don’t make people become a killer any more than porn films make people rapists. The former is a game that gives you an adrenaline buzz and does not make you confuse reality with fiction, while porn just makes you feel a bit tired after a while.
Thompson wanted $600m for the families of the bereaved in Alabama, but all but kills their chances of winning the case by blabbing it all to any media outlets who’ll listen, and saying Rockstar have done a “Pearl Harbour 2”. And despite complaining about the game, he’s entranced when playing it. When the case came to court, it was instantly dismissed because the game doesn’t follow a scripted path, so there’s no way that Devin’s actions are related to GTA.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the film including ‘Hot Coffee’…
The other issue to deal with in this drama was the ‘Hot Coffee’ modification where you can have full blown sex and a blowjob from your girlfriend, Denise. However, it was soon pointed out to Houser that to include this would stop 80% of the shops from stocking it, particularly in the US. In the end, they had to take the scene out, but in reality it was still there in the code – it just wasn’t normally accessible. And to remove the code would’ve caused issues elsewhere in a cut-scene where a bit of “how’s your father” was taking place.
Cue a dutch hacker who found the unused animation, causing Jack Thompson to get back on the case. With the Hot Coffee exposure, the game was reclassified ‘Adults Only’ in the US, resulting in every game being removed from stores, and Rockstar being accused of fraud for misrepresenting the game to the ratings board. However, the upshot of all this was that they’ll have to be more rigourous in checking for such things before submitting a game in future. And that’s it.
The stupid thing in life is that doing he business is legal, yet getting out your Uzi and doing other business with that is NOT legal.
Along the way, Sam Houser began to get more and more demanding, and started to become a bit of a dick, blaming everyone else apart from himself. And I liked the way he showed his disdain for role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft, shouting that he wants games to be for adults, not just something where you become “a penguin or a shitty, hairy elf”
He also had a T-shirt listing all the drugs Don Simpson, his favourite film producer, had in his system when he died. Terry Donovan countered the best is James Cameron. Sam discounts Cameron as being just a director, yet he is a producer, too. And Bill Paxton was in Aliens. And Titanic. And True Lies. And, of course, The Terminator!
At the start, it was stated that some events were presented out of sequence to heighten the film’s dramatic effect – artistic licence and so on. Looking up some of the events I was unaware of, after the film, I can see why they’d so that, as life doesn’t play out like a film, but it got across a decent story pretty well, even if the whole 90 minutes did feel a bit linear. In the acting stakes, Radcliffe and Paxton were both okay, but everyone else just phoned in the bare minimum.
The origins of Rockstar’s Table Tennis game are in there. Oh, and at one point, the sound effect of Jack’s son walking along, as he goes to talk to his father, was the exact same sound you hear of a character walking in GTA V!
The Gamechangers is an entertaining film, but not hugely essential – more like an extended TV advert. It’s something you’ll definitely watch if you’re a big fan of the GTA games, as I am. However, like a recent advert starring Mark Weinman (Terry), this film is good… but it’s not Carling.
It’s also worth noting that this drama was not sanctioned by Rockstar. It was put together from the contents of court documents and interviews with various people.
In conclusion, Jack Thompson was permanently disbarred from law, Devin Moore remains on death row, and Hilary Clinton stuck her nose in, banning violent video games from being sold to children, but in the UK they’re sold to over-18s only, and in the US they have a ‘Mature’ rating (aimed at 14-year-olds). So blame shops if they’re selling to younger children. And blame parents if they’re letting children play these games. You could also blame an uncle if he let his nephew play GTA San Andreas…. (oops!)
The Gamechangers can be watched on BBC iPlayer until October 15th.
Score: 7/10
Director: Owen Harris
Producer: Jim Spencer
Screenplay: James Wood
Music: Vince Pope
Cast:
Sam Houser: Daniel Radcliffe
Jack Thompson: Bill Paxton
Jamie King: Joe Dempsie
Jen Kolbe: Shannon Esra
Tom Masters: James Alexander
Dan Houser: Ian Keir Attard
Terry Donovan: Mark Weinman
Michelle Gerilikos: Inge Beckmann
Patricia Thompson: Fiona Ramsay
Pat Vance: Jenna Dover
Devin Moore: Thabo Rametsi
Johnny Thompson: Garion Dowds
JP: Christiaan Schoombie
Bridjet: Alex McGregor
Doug Lowenstein: Nick Boraine
Judge Moore: D David Morin
Judge Dava Tunis: Nicole Sherwin
Police Officer Arnold Strickland: Garth Breytenbach
Steve Strickland: Thorsten Wedekind
Hillary Clinton’s PA: Lex King
Laila: Abena Ayivor
Fayette Journalist: Pierre Malherbe
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman: Stephen Jennings
Californian Geek: Nathan Lynn
Rockstar Woman: Lara Adine Lipschitz
Patrick Wildenborg: Gideon Lombard
LA Gang Leader: Nafis Kariem
DJ Dog: Richard September
Ray Reiser: Dean Fourie
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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