In the past, men have dominated the video-game industry. Not only are most game-designers and developers men, but most of the market has been male as well. Yet, times are changing. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has calculated that forty-two percent of gamers are in fact women, also stating that women over the age of 18 is the industry's fastest growing demographic.

This information comes with the inevitable questioning on my part; just how far away from seeing a female protagonist in a Grand Theft Auto game are we?

Rockstar have been experimenting with the idea of strong female characters for a few years now. GTA IV had Michelle, Mallory and Elizabeta, while Red Dead Redemption had Bonnie, Luisa and Abigail. Although these characters never sat in the driver's seat in any kind of way, they were all given major roles as vital cogs in the stories of our leading males, as opposed to acting as the traditional love interests which film and video-games have long-since exhausted.

Even with a long way to come, the role of women in Rockstar's more recent blockbusters is expanding and guessing that we'll (eventually) be playing as a woman is a pretty safe guess to make. How soon this will be is not clear right now as even I have major doubts it will happen in V. Even with the Ned Luke lookalike all but confirmed to be our playable character, a few fans and industry figures alike have warmed to the notion of playing as a female and have expressed a desire for it to finally happen.



The industry calling for female leads doesn't strike me as a particularly odd thing though. More and more females are being worked into games as the lead -- though more often than not only in games with some form of create-a-character type set-up. Mass Effect springs to mind, where I far preferred playing through with a female Sheppard, if only because of Jennifer Hale's outstanding voice-work, which was leaps and bounds better than her male counterparts.

Then there's the Saints Row series, the only franchise to break-away from the inevitable "GTA clone" label that the industry dumps on any games with guns, cars and freedom. Like many other modern games, players get the choice of which sex to play as, though either way, what you get is mostly an androgynous experience. The male and female characters are quite indistinguishable due to the same clothing/hair options, and the fact that the player, if they wish, can have their female character voiced by a male actor and vice versa.

The create-a-character model can give players aesthetically unique experiences, making the player feel like it is their character and their's alone. With that being said though, it generally destroys any notion of a character driven narrative, a notion which Rockstar have been expanding with every title for over a decade.

A true feminist would have you believe that playing as a female should have no affect on gameplay and I would tend to agree. In terms of story this is definitely true; nothing will change, in fact, a strong portrayal of a female lead could do leaps and bounds for some of the games more subtle themes. As long as the character is not just a female to be a female, other gameplay will also go unchanged. Gamers would probably have to give up on being serviced by prostitutes and going to "titty-bars" with Roman and Brucie though -- in other words, no big loss.

I was raised primarily by my mother and I've always been told that women can do exactly what men can, so why should this be different in video-games? It really is quite an amazing thought, if only for the step-forward it would bring for the series. Lara, Samus and Chell should look out, a strong-female GTA protagonist could be joining their ranks sooner rather than later.



As always, we at GTAGaming love to hear your thoughts and demand you share them with us. Whether you love or hate the idea of playing as a female, make sure you comment til your heart's content and your opinion is heard.

Today's Friday Flashback is "Them Bones" by Alice in Chains, a song from their breakthrough second album "Dirt". Possibly one of the bands most famous songs, this guitar heavy track was originally released in 1992, the brief track may be short but it gets straight to the point enough to mark itself as one of the iconic tracks of the grunge era. The song fit in with the entire atmosphere set in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas when it appeared on the playlist for Radio: X.

The Mobile version of Grand Theft Auto III has recieved another update today, this time bringing it to Version 1.3, Rockstar have detailed the changes below, to get the latest version just redownload the game from the Android Marketplace on your device.

Having recently merged with RAGE Team (those responsible for Vice City RAGE), former Rockstar Modding Studio members have now released a new trailer for their very popular modification Grand Theft Auto IV: San Andreas. The mod is still being worked on and a new update is due out within a few months which includes many improvements in the Las Venturas area as well as a load of collision fixes!


Be sure to check out the modifications forum topic over on GTAForums for more information.

Could Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City be coming to the PlayStation 3? The ESRB seems to think so, the rating board have recently added entries for the two games to be published by "Sony Computer Entertainment America".



In the past, games that have been listed for the PlayStation 3 and that have been re-published by Sony have always ended up on the PSN under the PS2 Classics label, so there is a high chance that sadly these will not be HD re-releases but mere straight PS2 downloads with no improvements.

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Community modder Casull16 took on the daunting task of updating the textures for every single pedestrian in GTA IV. That's right... all 335 pedestrians, coming in at over 8,000 textures and 712Mb. The mod page shows a comparison between the original and updated textures, which also shows the infinite patience that the author must have.


Download it now at GTA4-Mods.com

SOPA and PIPA are two bills that are currently going through United States congress. If they pass, the internet as we know it would change forever, and the freedom, and possibly existence of fansites, such as GTAGaming and their forum communities, would be threatened.

Learn more about these bills, and what you can do to help prevent them from being passed.

After you've completed every available mission in Grand Theft Auto IV (two or three times), what's left besides wreaking havoc throughout the city? Honestly, not a whole lot, but that's why the GTA community never stops modding. If you're running GTA IV on the latest patch (v1.0.7.0), there's a script mod available that can add a whole new dimension to the game: LCPD First Response.




This mod, featured in the February 2012 issue of PCGamer, is available for download now at GTA4-Mods.com.

For more information about the project, check out LCPDFR.com.

Given Rockstar's recent love-affair of delivering A-class titles in the April-May period, many fanboys were predicting GTA V to be hitting the shelves in one of those months. This speculation came mostly out of the fact that Rockstar had no games announced for a release in that window. This, however, is no longer true.

Rockstar bumped back the release of Max Payne 3, another extremely popular franchise, from it's original March release to a new May one. Max Payne 3 is now scheduled to release on Xbox 360 and PS3 on May 15th, with a PC version also coming later that month.
Whether this has affected GTA V at all is quite doubtful, though it certainly silences all of the hopeful speculation that the game may be in our hands early. When GTA V's release date is official, you'll hear it from us first.

Before GTA IV’s first trailer broke the internet and the game itself was still just a speck on the horizon, Dan Houser boasted the game-world would feel like a “living, breathing city.” When it was released, this statement certainly rang true. Liberty City was wall-to-wall covered in realism; from the gritty back alleys full of trash-cans and sleeping vagrants, to pedestrians milling about carrying shopping bags and having cell-phone conversations. The architecture and city-mapping so closely resembled real-life New York that critics labelled Liberty City as the true main-character of the game. Gamers could actually believe that people and characters existed inside this world.

“A living, breathing city.” Rockstar sure do love their buzzwords.

Looking forward, we can see GTA V as that speck on the horizon where we once saw IV. Though, Rockstar are boasting something entirely different with this outing. Rockstar’s official press-release is promising more than just the most ambitious game they have ever created. They are promising a “bold new direction.”
Generally, for better or worse, people fear change. In the gaming industry, repetition of franchises is what reels in the big bucks and innovation can be somewhat of a daring move. A franchise like Grand Theft Auto could easily keep moving to new locales and creating new protagonists, but how long would it take for the franchise to become drab and complacent for all the wrong reasons? A bold new direction not only implies a risk but also a drastic reimagining of the series.

What could this new direction be? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Let's break down a few of our options.



Multiple Protagonists

IV took a dark approach to the American Dream, while V will move the series’ focus towards America’s harsh economical climate and the recession. The trailer’s voice-over informs that our main character starts the game with quite a bit of money. Having multiple protagonists could allow us to see the flip side to that coin; imagine a character that has to steal and kill to scrape together a living, while contrasted against a more prosperous protagonist.

Rumors of multiple protagonists in V have been circulating the web since before the game was announced. It’s something Rockstar have already explored in other games, perhaps most recognizably in GTA IV; with the addition of the two episodic content releases, we got the stories of Luis and Johnny play out simultaneously to the original game. It worked well as the stories weren’t weaved intrinsically together - they essentially acted as three separate story arcs played out in one locale. Exploring the suburbs of Alderney on a bike in The Lost and Damned was a different beast when compared to the socialite degeneracy of The Ballad of Gay Tony or the ghetto of Hove Beach.

If V’s first trailer told us anything it was that the multiple protagonist rumor may be a little closer to fact than we all had cared to realize. We were treated multiple shots of three separate people, all of which looked like they could have been the game’s leading man. Other than the older gentlemen we saw two separate black characters both in heated pursuits with the law. This could mean that pedestrians can now get into hot-and-heavy police chases like our leading characters always could. It could mean something else entirely.



Decisions, Decisions

One of the lesser spoken of features of IV was the ability of decision making within certain missions. Sometimes these were small and seemingly irrelevant, other times they would spark major story moments or give the player something they couldn’t get otherwise. Decisions like the memorable Deal or Revenge finale altered Niko’s journey through Liberty City. As players, we could choose whether we wanted Niko to have humanity or if we wanted him to be a cold-hearted killer. Decision making abilities put certain moments in the hands of the player and added an extra dynamic to the sandbox world which Rockstar had created.

Let’s use our imaginations for a moment. What if Rockstar brought decision making to GTA V on a grander scale? These days we are seeing countless titles which change and adapt based on player decisions. A game like Heavy Rain is based around decision making, while the Mass Effect series brags that every choice the player makes will have a direct impact on the story and the game-world. So why not Grand Theft Auto? A new-approach to mission structure and choosing your own allegiances could give complete control to the player. Perhaps it could be detrimental to the story, though on the other hand it could create an entirely new experience – something the likes of which we have never seen before in a GTA game.

I'm not going to pretend like I have experience in Game Design. The truth is I know as much about GTA V as the rest of you so be sure to share your ideas on the GTA V's new direction in our comments section.

One of the best parts of the waiting game is imagining and speculating on the possibilities of the road ahead.

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