Rockstar Games

Rockstar Games is a multinational video game developer and publisher known for multi-million-selling games such as Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead, Midnight Club, Bully, The Warriors, Manhunt and Max Payne, as well as the use of open world, free roaming settings in their games.

Based in New York City, it is owned by Take-Two Interactive following its purchase of British video game publisher BMG Interactive. While some of the studios Take-Two Interactive has acquired have been merged into the Rockstar brand, several other recent ones have retained their previous identities and have become part of the company's 2K Games division.

History

The Rockstar Games label was founded in 1998 by the British video game producers Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King and Gary Foreman. Donovan left the company in January 2007, following a four-month leave of absence.

The main headquarters of Rockstar Games (commonly referred to as Rockstar NYC) is located on Broadway in the NoHo neighborhood of New York City, part of the Take-Two Interactive offices. It is home to the marketing, public relations and product development departments.

Social club

A social club may refer to a group of people or the place where they meet, generally formed around a common interest, occupation or activity (e.g. hunting, fishing, science, politics, or charity work). This article covers only three distinct types of social clubs, the historic gentlemen's clubs, the modern activities clubs, and an introduction to fraternities and sororities. This article does not cover a variety of other types of clubs having some social characteristics, for example specific single-activity based clubs, military officers' clubs, university clubs and country clubs.

History

Working men's clubs developed in Britain during Victorian times as institutes where working class men could attend lectures and take part in recreational pursuits. The Reverend Henry Solly founded the Working Men's Club and Institute Union (CIU) for this purpose in 1862. Many middle class social reformers founded these clubs during the temperance movement as a place to relax without alcohol, but in time this changed. They became a combination of public houses (pubs), music-halls, and clubs, becoming places to be entertained, to drink socially, and to play bar games. Their mainly working-class patronage is not seen as fashionable among some sections of society today, and they have come under increasing pressure regarding attitudes to membership rights for women and ethnic minorities. The CIU was heavily involved in resisting the smoking ban in private clubs; it remains to be seen how many survive the change of law.

Rockstar Games Social Club

Rockstar Games Social Club (RGSC) is a digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service provided by Rockstar Games for use with their latest generation of games. Rockstar Games Social Club was first announced on 27 March 2008, with pre-registration beginning on 14 April 2008. However, that date was moved to 17 April 2008. The name is a reference to organized crime, which commonly uses the term "social club" to describe a meeting place or hideout. The service received a major update in 2012, prior to the release of Max Payne 3, with the addition of social networking features and a "crews" system that allows players to form groups and combine their achievements to unlock bonus features.

Games

Features

Rockstar Games Social Club provides certain different features based on the type of game. The following is a list of features, as written on the website.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Note: Some features are effectively unavailable since the GameSpy server shutdown in July 2014.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V is an open world, action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on 17 September 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, on 18 November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on 14 April 2015 for Microsoft Windows. The game is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008's Grand Theft Auto IV. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas, based on Southern California, the single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The open world design lets players freely roam San Andreas's open countryside and fictional city of Los Santos, based on Los Angeles.

The game is played from either a first-person or third-person view and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Players control the three lead protagonists throughout single-player and switch between them both during and outside of missions. The story is centred on the heist sequences, and many missions involve shooting and driving gameplay. A "wanted" system governs the aggression of law enforcement response to players who commit crimes. Grand Theft Auto Online, the online multiplayer mode, lets up to 30 players explore the open world and engage in cooperative or competitive game matches.

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms as applied to populations of humans and other animals. It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

Etymology

The word "Social" derives from the Latin word socii ("allies"). It is particularly derived from the Italian Socii states, historical allies of the Roman Republic (although they rebelled against Rome in the Social War of 91-88 BC).

Definition

In the absence of agreement about its meaning, the term "social" is used in many different senses and regarded as a fuzzy concept, referring among other things to:

Attitudes, orientations, or behaviors which take the interests, intentions, or needs of other people into account (in contrast to anti-social behaviour) has played some role in defining the idea or the principle. For instance terms like social realism, social justice, social constructivism, social psychology, social anarchism and social capital imply that there is some social process involved or considered, a process that is not there in regular, "non-social" realism, justice, constructivism, psychology, anarchism, or capital.