"There was a sense that in some way movies were a higher art form and video games could aspire to be like them," says Dan Houser, vice president of creative at Rockstar and lead writer on GTA IV.
But that doesn't upset Houser who believes that this gives games designers more room for innovation and experimentation. "It's really fun at the moment because we're not in any Academy and the medium's not codified. There's no accepted way of doing anything so that give us enormous pleasure because we can make it up as we go along."
"Movies and TV and books have become so structured in the way they have to approach things. Not working in that environment gives us enormous freedom," he explained. "I'd rather keep the freedom and not have the respect."
But of course this won't last forever. "I think the medium is still very young," said Houser, "It's not a baby, but it's still probably an infant. So everything is growing and evolving as we go along and we're still figuring out how to do stuff."
