When the latest UK releases of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings pulled in £10m to £12m each at the box office during their first few days, it was headline news. But the latest version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is reckoned to have grossed £24m over the weekend without attracting such huge publicity. The explanation is quite simple: Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a computer game not a film (though the two genres are converging so fast that it will soon be difficult to tell them apart). Computer games are still regarded as a sub-art, not something to be taken too seriously, even though the global takings of the industry have been bigger than Hollywood's for some years. Most of the publicity around the 18-plus rated GTA has been directed at its undoubted violent content, though there was an animated conversation on the Guardian's gamesblog last week about the junk-food habits of the lead character who has to eat to stay alive.
GTA's sales achievement is all the more remarkable because the game plays on only one of the various consoles (PlayStation 2) available. It is as if Lord of the Rings could not be shown in all cinemas. It is likely to repeat its success all over the world. Like another equally impressive though violent game published last week, The Getaway: Black Monday (set in amazingly realistic reproductions of London streets), GTA is a British success story, having been developed by the Edinburgh-based Rockstar. The UK has a thriving development industry, but most of the games publishers (with exceptions such as Eidos, of Lara Croft fame, and SCI) are foreign.
If there is a moral from all this, it is that it is time the highly successful industry matured with the people who buy its products. If gaming were judged like ice dancing, then these two releases would get 10 out of 10 for technical merit but barely seven for artistic impression. If the industry is to fulfil its huge potential, it ought to take more risks with mature games that break out of the role-playing/first-person shooters mould that has proved such a winning formula. In other words, it is time to grow up.
