Rockstar Games doesn't hate women. They just haven't found the right game for a lead female character. For those not keeping track of the ongoing conversation, there's a debate as to whether or not Grand Theft Auto would be an appropriate franchise for a playable female character. With GTA 5's switch to three playable characters, there was some question as to why one of them wasn't a female?
"We didn't really think about it this time," Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser told The Guardian when asked if the studio had thought about having a woman as a playable role.
"That's not to say that we couldn't or we wouldn't," he added. "This character set is just what came to us: it wasn't, "we've got X and Y so we need Z", we weren't trying to do it off a checklist – I don't think that will ever give you something that's believable or engaging.
"In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course," he said. "We just haven't found the right game for it yet, but it's one of the things that we always think about. It didn't feel natural for this game but definitely for the right game in the future – with the right themes, it could be fantastic.
"But for GTA 5, this was the organic thing that came up, these were the characters what would display the themes we wanted to think about," Houser said.
Speaking to the same site a while back, Houser explained that GTA 5's concept of "masculinity" was much of the reason all of the playable characters were male. Having played the game, I definitely have a better understanding of what he meant. Maybe this is just me being blind, but I just can't picture a female doing some of the things that I've seen in this game. That's not to say I'd be totally against doing it as one; it would certainly be interesting. That's for sure!
