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Take-Two boss comments on controversy

Boss urges critics to play the games

Whilst a new interview with Take-Two vice president Dan Houser could not touch upon issues such as GTA or Hot Coffee directly, the article recently printed in the New York Times does nonetheless reveal a great deal on Houser's stance concerning his company's controversy, and the publisher's standpoint as a whole. He told the NYT that it annoys him when Take-Two titles receive criticism from those who've never played the games, "it's very frustrating," he explained. "There's a large amount of the population that lives in relative ignorance and only hears scary stories about what we do."

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Whilst the interview could not mention Hot Coffee or the ongoing scandal surrounding GTA directly, Houser did speak about Rockstar's latest slice of gangster-life, The Warriors. "This is the fighting game for people who didn't like previous fighting games. I find those hard-core fighting games unplayable. You don't want to be limited only to 15-year-old idiot savants with incredibly good hand-eye co-ordination," the VP explained.

"People aren't playing a game because they want to fail, and we need to understand that," Houser noted, adding that the majority of Take-Two's games are so realistic deliberately, because this is the type of games he himself wants to play - no Elves here - inspiration is drawn instead from gangster films, car chases, westerns and more, we're told.

He said the interactive element of games as an entertainment form would eventually make them the most important medium, over-taking films and gaining mainstream acceptance.