'Beyond GTA': Bats not guns

Any parent curious about what the creators of Grand Theft Auto are up to these days would enjoy reading a New York Times profile of Dan Houser, 31-year-old co-founder and creative VP of Rockstar Games (who granted a rare interview). The GTA series of games has "sold more than 50 million copies since 2001, generating more than $1 billion in revenue," according to the Times. [Rockstar is about to release the sixth, "GTA: Liberty City Stories" - see "The power of games."] The new project, for Xbox and PlayStation 2, is "The Warriors," also a fighting game. It's not a first-person shooter, but it's violent, as its "Mature" (18+) rating indicates. As in the 1979 cult movie of the same name, "players portray members of a multi-racial street gang in 1970s-era New York City," ABC News reports, "armed with chains and baseball bats." Here's GameSpy.com's review of the Xbox version . Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times looks at the growth of advertising in videogames.