Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Y’know, the original one. Before 3D. Before Rockstar. Before the world changed.

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Even as I begin the long process of writing about all of the games I saw and the people I spoke to at GDC, I’ve found a new distraction. The San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam is a live feed of a modded GTA V [official site] that “creates and follows a deer wandering through the fictional state of San Andreas”. The deer “is autonomous and will wander and respond to it’s surroundings, interacting with the existing GTA V artifical intelligence”. Over the weekend, the deer wandered through a gunfight between two gangs, caused a traffic jam during rush hour and evaded the police. This is the best version of GTA V.

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I’ve been reorganising my house lately, which has meant making decisions about what books, DVDs and CDs to keep and which to bin. This is because I’m out of space, but also because I’ve been lugging the same collection from rented accommodation to rented accommodation for years and most of it doesn’t get touched in the months or years between moves.

This also of course means I’m making decisions about a lot of PC games. For example, the first Grand Theft Auto. Should it stay or should it go?

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The BBC have released a teaser trailer for The Gamechangers, their Grand Theft Auto docudrama. It’s got Daniel Radcliffe as co-founder and president of Rockstar Games, Sam Houser, and Bill Paxton as (now disbarred) lawyer, Jack Thompson.

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Our Graham was the one to post about the BBC making a “factual drama” about the Grand Theft Auto series and Jack Thompson’s crusade against video games, perhaps because I could only frame my response as a series of contorted facial expressions. But no, really, they are doing it, and it’ll star Daniel Radcliffe and Bill Paxton. Well, if they don’t get shut down.

Take Two Interactive, the owners of GTA makers Rockstar Games, have filed a lawsuit against the BBC for trademark infringement. See, they’re none too pleased that they haven’t been consulted.

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Grand Theft Auto is many things to many people but I’ve usually found a way to enjoy each new entry as a sedate urban exploration game. I like stopping at red lights and honking my horn at dangerous drivers. I like listening to people talking on their mobile phones and I love that accidents occasionally happen while I’m trundling by. With its brand new first-person perspective option, GTA V may be one of the great immersive sims, packed with emergent moments both mundane and magnificent.>

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The BBC are producing a drama about the making of Grand Theft Auto. Announced as part of the BBC’s Make It Digital campaign, which also donates computers to schools, the project is described as a 90-minute, one-off drama that “will center on the minds behind its creation.” So Dave Jones running about Dundee then, talking about his days at the watch factory. I would watch this show.

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Ever wondered what Los Santos, the setting of Grand Theft Auto V, would look like if you stripped out the game’s textures, replacing them with shades of black and grey?

Wonder no longer, because artist Kim Laughton has done just that. More images below the fold.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

I’ve fallen for Grand Theft Auto IV a dozen times in a dozen different ways. Only the first period of time spent with it was concerned with making headway through the miserable singleplayer missions, and that ended with the bleakness and grind became too great. Every other re-visit since then has been far more fun and uplifting.

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Michael Dailly created Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings in his time at DMA Design, and is now Head of Development at YoYo Games, the company responsible for entry-level game creation tool Game Maker. To help illustrate the power of Game Maker: Studio, the modern version of that tool, he’s doing something cool. As reported by USGamer, he’s re-building the world of Grand Theft Auto 1 in it, in 3D. (more…)