Jeremy Pope, former employee for Rockstar Games, told Gameindustry that he didn't feel comfortabe letting people know about his involvement with the developer's Grand Theft Auto games.
Pope, who managed production and development on key titles like Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and Max Payne, says that him being uncomfortable with explaining what he worked on lead to him changing his career direction.
"I would always kind of defend the games we were making and I was pretty proud of being involved, but then when I would visit my grandmother in highly religious Alabama and have to explain what I do for a living, I didn't feel so great about explaining to them that I was a part of 'that game' they've been hearing about," Pope explains. "I think that's what sort of planted the seeds of me wanting to work on different types of games."
Pope said that though he'll never work on ultra-violent video games again he still thinks games like Max Payne and Grand Theft Auto are masterpieces.
"I definitely want to make a point of saying that I actually love Rockstar's games and I think that it's unfortunate that their games were specifically called out and targeted by the media, because their games - and we all know this - are really masterworks," says Pope. "Grand Theft Auto pushed the boundaries in almost every possible way."
This isn't the first time a developer has left a company over violent video games. Warren Spector left Eidos Interactive in 2004 because he feels the company went too far.
"We've gone too far. The slow-motion blood spurts, the impalement by deadly assassins, the knives, shoulders, elbows to the throat," explained Spector at the time, who recently called out the next Wolfenstein game for being too much of the same thing.
Violent video games have been a huge topic due to its alleged effects on children. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that he wouldn't mind taxing violent video games and movies. Earlier this month, a study(that was later challenged) concluded that long term exposure to violent video games can desensitize teens.
