The entire Grand Theft Auto franchise is renowned for its intriguing game play, astounding graphics, and the peculiar amount of real-life violence. It is considered an integral part of innovative gaming history and culture. Since the franchise was created in 1997, it has become increasingly difficult not to realize the enormous amount of negative publicity surrounding the game prior to its launch. GTA is a 3rd-person RPG video game that is very much life-like. Throughout the game, players experience extreme violence including killing of police officers, gang-related crimes, robbery, and it seems as though you can virtually get away with anything. This type of intense gameplay is the main influence of scrutiny and criticism. As the franchise has grown now to a 5th version (GTA V), the game has became one of the most technologically innovative and creative edition ever made. As new games are introduced, more scrutiny and controversy arises.

But where does all this negative attention come from and who is the person poking the angry bear? According to many media outlets, PR master Max Clifford, who was hired on by the makers of GTA, is the one responsible for the extraordinary amount of talk. With free publicity and promotion the target, this negative attention is exactly what Clifford was aiming for. Mike Daily, creator of GTA and the one who hired Clifford said; “Max made it all happen. He designed all the outcry, which pretty much guaranteed MPs would get involved.” In other words, Clifford basically hand picked what he was going to release to the press to spark dialogue and has led GTA to the credit for writing the “golden rule” of games PR: always include a scene that pushes the boundaries of taste and decency.

 

With GTA V, Clifford decided to keep most of the game’s content unavailable from the public while periodically releasing game play trailers to various media outlets leading up to its official public release date. The trailer attempts to capture audiences by following the trend of showing the viewer its extreme graphic game play and certain intriguing new features. It seemed as though Clifford had the thought that there is no such thing as “bad publicity” especially considering this tactic caused an uproar of criticism. The controversy wheel began to spin as media outlets displayed the trailers, posters, and radio ads to the public to generate debate and awareness of how gruesome the game was. After being exposed to the footage and negative publicity, video game enthusiasts’ were able to observe the game’s stellar graphics and intriguing characteristics; and later purchasing the game.

This video is one that was released to various media outlets prior to GTA V’s release. As you can see, the content Max Clifford opted to include demonstrates their on what will generate buzz; violence, advanced features, and astounding graphical creativity.

In this example, Max Clifford used the social exchange theory to generate buzz surrounding the launch of GTA V. It was up to Clifford to make a proper prediction of the risks and rewards of publicizing such controversial content while analyzing the costs and benefits of doing so. The cost of generating hype was rather inexpensive and the reward was substantial. Therefore, it is evident that Clifford thought the benefit of free publicity, far outweighed the cost of negative attention. This example is related to PR because it got the media talking about the game and used that as a kind of channel of distribution to raise awareness. Clifford did the PR job of manipulating the press to gain GTA notoriety and publicity; resulting in one of the most talked about video game releases ever.

What Max Clifford did for GTA revolutionized the entire PR industry surround video games. Clifford was virtually able to work worldwide tabloid media like a puppet and create an enormous amount of awareness for GTA. It was a very successful PR tactic used in order to keep the high profile GTA has become accustomed too. In conclusion, this PR strategy could have been very detrimental to the franchise. Fortunately, it contributed to the most successful selling video game ever made netting over $1 Billion in just 3 days.

 

By: Josh Sutton