"He designed all the outcry, which pretty much guaranteed MPs would get involved... He'd do anything to keep the profile high." - Mike Dailly, co-creator of the original Grand Theft Auto, reveals how infamous British publicist Max Clifford (pictured) manipulated the press to gain GTA its notoriety and, in turn, publicity.
"Max Clifford made it all happen," he told The Sunday Times, as reported by GI.biz. "He told us how he would play it, who he would target, what those people targeted would say."
David Jones, the other mind behind the 1997 release that sparked one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, added of Clifford, "every word he said came true".
"We knew why every decision was made, and we were never, ever influenced by 'let's do something to create a bit of controversy,'" he continued. "We always did everything from the perspective of what's going to be the most fun. It just naturally kept pushing us down the darker direction."
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I concur with Lyon: Genius!
"Hot Coffee is a normally inaccessible minigame in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, developed by Rockstar North. Public awareness of the existence of the minigame arrived with the release of the Hot Coffee mod, created for the version released in 2005 for Microsoft Windows. This mod enables access to the minigame."
I'm glad this is finally officially revealed. It's tiresome how this is so often cited as an instance of big bad censorship happening in the games world, when it is anything but. Nobody would have done anything about GTA's sexual content if it had not been handled this way, with the intent of creating false controversy.