There’s arguably no more recognisable style of cover art than that of the Grand Theft Auto series. The panelled collection of images featuring characters and locations from each open world that has adorned each game box from 2001’s GTA 3 to the upcoming GTA 6 is etched into each of our minds. It all nearly looked completely different, though.
We spoke to Dan Houser, former VP at Rockstar and writer of almost all of the studio’s games from 1999 until 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2, as part of our IGN30 Icons Series. When reminiscing about the developer’s most famous series, Grand Theft Auto, Houser shared how it felt to see elements of his creation permeate into the real world.
“GTA has become part of the wider cultural fabric,” he said. “I mean, you sort of saw that on YouTube clips and whatever else that would have the HUD on it, and people using the logo and things like that. When you go to any big tourist resort, you'll have a sort of GTA cover art-inspired T-shirt available. So you began to see that creep in 10 years ago, so I suppose.”
The bold, colourful style of that cover art came out of tragedy, though, as Houser revealed that the original look for GTA 3’s box had to be changed at the last minute due to the New York terror attack on September 11, 2011.
“What's funny is the cover art that became the iconic GTA cover art; Stephen Bliss did that in about two evenings because the old cover art was probably being too offensive to release after 9/11 because they were burning buildings in it,” Houser revealed. “So it would've been fine if there hadn't just been 9/11. So that look of the shards, the squares that became very iconic, only appeared because of 9/11.”
These changes, as well as some involving the actual content of the game, meant a slight delay for GTA 3 from its originally planned release date of October 3, 2001 to October 22. Though only a few weeks, it piled on the pressure for Rockstar and Houser, who were by no means sure it would become the landmark success it eventually did.
“So I remember in early 2001, Take-Two was on the point of economic failure at the time,” Houser recalled. “We were struggling to get the game done, but we thought the game was going to be amazing and took it to E3 on the show floor and nobody cared about it. So that was dispiriting up to a point. And then the game came out six, seven months later. And that was just after 9/11.”
GTA 3, of course, takes place in Liberty City, a fictionalised version of New York City, so you can see why a change in approach was needed. “There were a couple of bits of content that would've been fine, but in the exact aftermath of 9/11, were maybe a little bit too much,” Houser explained. “So we had to take those out, and the team will rally round and remove those and edit a couple of lines of dialogue and did a quick content stand and thought it was fine. And then the game came out in October of 2001. It kind of was a gradual all the way through till Christmas 2001 into early 2002, and it just didn't stop selling. It's not like any single week was that massive. It was that every week it just rumbled on.”
Some of these tweaks were detailed by Houser in a 2011 interview with Edge magazine. "As far as I recall, we changed the colour of the cop cars so they weren't identical to NYPD, we altered the flight path of a plane so that it didn't look like it was flying into or behind a skyscraper, and we removed one mission as it made a reference to terrorists,” he said at the time.
The first 3D Grand Theft Auto wasn’t the only piece of media that had to make alterations in the wake of the terror attacks. Other video games, such as EA’s Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, had to redesign its packaging, and Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty had sections involving the destruction of parts of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty removed.
Other cases include the trailer for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man having to be recut to remove a helicopter being caught in a giant web between the World Trade Center towers. Men in Black 2 underwent huge reshoots for similar reasons, and planned sequels to both True Lies and Forrest Gump were cancelled.
25 years on, the same template for GTA game covers is still being used. You can check out all of the details we picked out from GTA 6’s art reveal here. For more on GTA 6, you can read our full interview with Rockstar co-studio head Rob Nelson, how the game will tackle the current political climate, and why Dan Houser says he won’t be playing it.