Game Tech: The truth about a grand gamechanger

ONE year ago, I was living in an Asian capital city, and the walls were closing in. So, I turned to Grand Theft Auto V. I turned to a freedom simulator, writes Ronan Jennings

The rolling hills and open highways of San Andreas may not compare to the green fields of home, but they did the trick for a hemmed-in Irish ex-pat. On Tuesday, the BBC will air The Gamechangers, a TV film in which Daniel Radcliffe plays the ‘genius’ developer behind Grand Theft Auto — but Sam Houser is not a genius.

The genius of Grand Theft Auto is not individual, but collective. The genius of Grand Theft Auto lies in the end result itself, a sprawling world created by hundreds of people, an interactive, open-ended model of American real estate. A living, moving, malleable piece of art. A little piece of freedom wrapped up in gigabytes.