Five months before the release of Grand Theft Auto 3, Rockstar Games COO Terry Donovan was at the Electronic Entertainment Expo putting the final touches on a marketing campaign as calculated and aggressive as any Hollywood blitz. For two years, his publicity team had been feeding rumors about the title to sympathetic Web sites and carefully parceling out screenshots to enthusiastic gaming magazines. He was even planning a junket to a Nevada firing range where dozens of videogame reviewers would learn to shoot guns out of moving vehicles. Inside his E3 booth, Donovan stayed relentlessly on-message about what separates his company from its rivals. "Fuck the potions and magic spells," he told anyone who would listen - teenage and twentysomething men want games as hip as their movies and music. "These are the same guys who like Goodfellas," he argued, setting up the tagline he'd repeat for the next few months: "If The Sopranos was a videogame, Grand Theft Auto 3 would be it!" The market for games, he insisted, was evolving. "If you've got 30 million households with PlayStations, you aren't just dealing with kids anymore - you aren't just dealing with people who don't smoke weed."
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