Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser believes a game should be judged on its creative strengths and weaknesses, not how much profit it can make. Pretty easy to say when you release a game that has a 98 average score on Metacritic.
"We're trying to make something that is hopefully very enjoyable and that some people find amazing and incredible and really love, that we can hopefully make the people that invested in us some money back," Houser told Polygon, referring to the relevancy of Grand Theft Auto.
"The rest has always been something we've tried to shy away from, and always our challenges as we perceive them are creative," he added. "We're trying to push video games forward to the best of our limited ability. We're not trying to do anything more or less than that.
"The merits or demerits of games should be about creative strengths and weaknesses, and areas where they need to evolve, or areas where they're already doing amazing stuff, or things that they supposedly can't do, not about how much money they can make. That sort of Hollywood way of looking at things is never really been something that we at Rockstar have engaged in."
I've always believed a game should be judged on the creative merits or demerits, but try to tell that to a publisher that has invested millions of dollars into a poor-selling game. Let's be honest, Dan, I doubt you'd be saying this if Grand Theft Auto 5 was going to be a flop.
Having said this, I'm certain Grand Theft Auto 5 is well-deserving of the praise it's getting.
