T w e n t y S i d e d

So what DID happen inside of Rockstar studios during the development of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? In an earlier post I talked about why the Hot Coffee minigame ended up on the final disc. But what made them abandon it in the first place? They put some development (and thus money) time into it, and even successful game studios like Rockstar are going to be reluctant to throw away money. What happened?

Some possible explanations:

1. They realized they were going too far. Maybe the feature sounded amusing on paper, but once they saw the animated characters going at it they realized it was a lot more risqué than they had imagined.

2. Maybe they were trying to be sexy. Perhaps they thought adding this would spice the game up, but once they saw the animated characters going at it they realized how stupid it looked, and that this was about as titillating as playing with naked Barbie and Ken dolls.

3. Maybe it just wasn’t fun, or didn’t add much to the overall game. The weightlifting minigame is a lot like this. Carl picks up some weights in the gym, and then you tap two keys in alteration as quickly as you can to make him pump iron. The faster you tap, the faster he will lift weights and bulk up. It’s not very interesting. Adding another minigame that used this same system was only going to make matters worse.

4. Perhaps they did this out of business concerns. Going from Rated M to Rated A is a major step that gets you kicked out of Target and Wal-Mart, which is a big chunk of sales. This ended up happeneing anyway, though.

5. It might have been due to scheduling concerns. If they were worried about making their projected shipping date, then the embarasing and dull pornographic button-mashing minigame was no doubt high on the list of features to cut.

Of course, there is no way to know for sure, but these are my guesses.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.