•Dan Houser, a co-founder of Rockstar Spiele who left the studio behind Grand Theft Automatisch 6 in 2020, has discussed how the cover art for Grand Theft Automatisch 3 was overhauled at the last minute following the September 11 attacks. In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, he also touched on the troubled production of Bully, the reaction to Red Dead Redemption’s ending, and why he believes Max Payne 3 underperformed.
The most striking revelation concerns the box art for GTA 3 — an image that has served as the template for every subsequent game in the series, most recently being reused for GTA 6’s cover. According to Houser, the now-iconic artwork was produced very quickly because of the sensitive timing of the game’s launch.
“What’s funny is the cover art that became the iconic GTA cover art; Stephen Bliss did that in about two evenings because the old cover art was probably being too offensive to release after 9/11 because there were burning buildings in it.” So it would’ve been fine if there hadn’t just been 9/11. So that look of the shards, the squares that became very iconic, only appeared because of 9/11.
Dan Houser to IGN
GTA 3 is set in Liberty City, a thinly-veiled parody of New York City — where the attacks took place. In the months and years following the disaster, there was heightened sensitivity around depicting destruction and death publicly, something Rockstar had to weigh carefully as it launched the game.
Houser said additional content also had to be removed during development.
“There were a couple of bits of content that would’ve been fine, but in the exact aftermath of 9/11, were maybe a little bit too much.” So we had to take those out, and the team rallied round and remove those and edit a couple of lines of dialogue and did a quick content stand and thought it was fine. And then the game came out in October of 2001.
Dan Houser to IGN
The co-founder noted that sales built gradually rather than spiking, carrying through Christmas 2001 into early 2002.
Houser reflected on how the game’s imagery has become embedded in broader culture, pointing to YouTube clips featuring the game’s heads-up display and merchandise inspired by its cover art appearing at tourist resorts.
“GTA has become part of the wider cultural fabric… When you go to any big tourist resort, you’ll have a sort of GTA cover art-inspired T-shirt available. So you began to see that creep in 10 years ago.”
Dan Houser to IGN
This is not the first recent appearance from Houser. In July, he joined longtime GTA writer Lazlow Jones to discuss physical video games, responding when asked about Sony’s plans to phase out physical discs.
“I don’t know that I care… but if people want that, companies should provide it. I think the ability to update and fix problems in games have been very useful to the quality of games.”
Dan Houser
Houser is currently working on an open-world action-adventure game through his company Absurd Ventures. It marks the first look at “just a few characters” arriving in what he described as a story-driven action-comedy set within the “Absurdaverse”.
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