Oh, Warren

GamePolitics portrays Warren Spector's recent remarks about Rockstar as "breaking the ranks".

Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth. Seriously, you'd have to have your head in the sand not to notice that everyone and their dog likes to kick Rockstar whenever they get the chance. Heck, when GamePolitics first noted it they even left out Warren's comments about the brilliant design used in GTA.

Which really seems odd. That Warren would be so self-contradictory, not that GamePolitics took another chance to bash GTA. Here is an industry demanding that bigger studios worry more about mechanics than flair, worry about creative properties rather than plundering licensed IP, and build more innovative games with the potential for mass appeal.

Rockstar does all that with the GTA series ... but now the industry also wants all of that as long as it isn't too violent. Free-roam good ... hookers bad ... or something like that.

Now I'm a Warren Spector fanboy. Always have been, always will be. But c'mon, Warren. I killed a great number of people in your games. I sniped people from afar, I chopped down entire police squads, I stabbed people in the back and hid the bodies. So why is Rockstar so bad, but you're not? BatJack is trumpeting Warren's comments as proof that the industry knows Rockstar has gone too far .... but let's face it: Thompson would gladly put Warren himself on the stand as a defendant as much as a witness.

Rockstar has made an innovative, genre-bending, best-selling series. While all the industry heads in the world can shake at dismay, the fact is that the consumer public has already judged the content to be not just tolerable, but entertaining. The only people making a case against Rockstar are the ones trying to take some kind of moral high ground ... a ground that the market simply doesn't agree with.