Rockstar North's 2013 best-selling open world action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto V, published by Rockstar Games, deals with a trio of criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a corrupt government agency. The game's use of three lead protagonists is a break from series tradition. Three days after its release, Grand Theft Auto V had earned more than US $1 billion in sales, making it the fastest selling video game in history. Additionally, Grand Theft Auto V was voted Game of the Year from several gaming publications. The game's characters were created by writers Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries. The use of multiple lead protagonists, as well as the cast in general, has received generally positive reviews from gaming magazines and websites.
The three main playable characters in Grand Theft Auto V are Michael De Santa, a retired former bank robber who lives with his dysfunctional family on the proceeds of his former life; Franklin Clinton, a gang member who makes a living as a repo man for an unscrupulous Armenian car dealership; and Trevor Philips, Michael's former partner in crime, who lives alone in a trailer in the desert, where his reckless and psychotic behaviours are fuelled by drug addiction. The three acquaintances are drawn into Los Santos' criminal underworld "in the pursuit of the almighty American dollar". According to Houser, each of the protagonists is unlike any primary character that has appeared in a Grand Theft Auto title to date: Michael represents a protagonist who "won" in life, and is now trying to adjust to a normal one after his story has come to an end; Trevor is a supporting character recast as a central protagonist; and Franklin is someone who has had no real exposure to a life of crime until the events of the game, and his attempts to avoid such a life end up thrusting him into the middle of it.