The Gamechangers (2015)

Rockstar Games has always lived up to its name, doing things others didn’t. From the first non-3D Grand Theft Auto game on they were a source of controversy. The extreme violence which could be executed shocked and the first game wasn’t even allowed to be sold in Brazil. The franchise was popular, but it was its first step into 3D with Grand Theft Auto 3 which really brought the series to a bigger audience. I can still remember when I first played the game at a colleague’s house. It was the reason for me to go out and buy a Playstation 2. The game wasn’t interesting because of its violence, but because it managed to realise a convincing, living world where you could do missions, but also decide to just drive around and listen to the often hilarious radio stations or simply cause mayhem and see how long you could survive.

The Gamechangers, a made for TV movie from the BBC, tells the story of Sam Houser (Daniel Radcliffe) and the people around him who work at Rockstar during the period that Grand Theft Auto Vice City was just realised and the studio started making San Andreas and creating the new RAGE game-engine for the next generation of consoles.

The Gamechangers kind of feels like The Social Network. Sam Houser is the person here who has a specific idea, wanting to do the same in games what others do in movies. Because you control the character he wants to create something which becomes more personal. That idea is really important to him and he tries to realise that the best he can, even if that means controversy. He wants to do add a sex scene to San Andreas, something he sees everyone thinks is normal in movies, but his lawyers and colleagues make it clear to him that it could lead to problems.

The other side of the story focuses on lawyer Jack Thompson, played by Bill Paxton, who sees the Grand Theft Auto games as murder simulators, which brainwash the youth and makes them emotionless about violence. When teenager Devin Moore, who played a lot of Grand Theft Auto Vice City, is arrested for stealing a car and next grabbing a gun from a police officer and shooting him and two of his colleagues and stealing a police car, Thompson sees an opportunity to sue Rockstar.

Even though this is a TV-movie, it generally looks pretty good and has a couple of nice touches. In the opening shots Houser is riding his bicycle to the office and some cars and buildings are shown as wireframes (used for creating objects in games). The scene in which Devin Moore starts shooting at the police station it almost feels like a Grand Theft Auto game because of the way it has been filmed. It follows him through the police station and even follows the cop car he steals. Daniel Radcliffe plays Houser as someone with a huge drive and vision who is sometimes frustrated by the world around him, especially when his studio is sued because of the Hot Coffee code and he is forced to defend himself. When the real events were going on Jack Thompson was often depicted as a caricature, a lawyer with strange ideas and made many gamers laugh. But Bill Paxton gives the character as a person who is fighting for his ideals and you understand his motivation to do what he does.

Not everything about this movie is perfect though. Some moments (the last shot for example) look cheap and there are moments which don’t seem to be based on facts (like when the Houser brothers go into a bad neighbourhood to do research where different clothing). At the beginning of the movie it does state that the movie has been made without involvement of Rockstar and some events were differently timed. Like every movie based on real events some of them have been dramatised. The end result however is an interesting film which tries to give the viewer an idea about what was going on behind the scenes at a studio which is responsible for one of the most popular game franchises in the world.