October 19: Earthquakes, Car Jacking, Random Shootings, Ice Cream Vans

Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto series will no doubt break sales records and cause outrage in October this year when another instalment, set in San Andreas and featuring an interesting earthquake game mechanic. The Edinburgh-based developer is owned by Take Two Interactive of New York, and with joint sales of 23 million copies for the previous two titles, you’ll no doubt be thoroughly sick of seeing this one by the time Christmas comes.

If you live in the US, the publication date is the 19th October; if you live in Europe it’s the 22nd – either way you might want to stay out of Game until the mobs subside. Expect the usual tabloids to run the same articles on video game violence in the hope of selling more newspapers.

Rockstar North – Sex, Violence, Deep-fried Mars Bars

Google: Ban+this+sick+game

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?