It's all about the American Dream. You start at the bottom, put in effort and time, and you make it to the top...no matter who you have to kill. Any stone player can get known and get paid if they take what they want, and survive the day. And see the next guy lining up to take what's yours and make it his. That's what makes this country great.
Gamers live the life Rockstar's built for them, 50 million of them, doing what they want and getting ahead one drive-by, one stolen ride, one felony at a time. It's a funhouse mirror on our sliding culture, envisioned by a Scot and a pair of Brits. Imitators come and go. None come close to Grand Theft Auto's excesses, successes, consequences, and stepping outside the lines. The franchise is big-time. Stocks jump at the mention of its name. So do giant-killers, lawyers, mothers, and politicians – all stepping up to take their shot at a game that turned controversy into fame, and then infamy.
A life of crime ain't easy, baby.
Scotland in the mid-'80s didn't exist on gaming's radar, but that didn't stop full-time student David Jones from taking a half-done, spare time project – side-scrolling shooter Menace, written on his Commodore Amiga – into a PC expo to show it around and get some feedback. He walked out with multiple offers. Jones picked Psygnosis mostly because at two hundred miles away, the Liverpool-based publisher was the closest of the bunch.
There weren't any local developers to hire on with, so Jones founded one to facilitate his "hobby" while finishing up a computer science degree. DMA Design (for Direct Mind Access) delivered Menace in 1987 and won praise for its polished gameplay. After a second successful shooter, Blood Money, hobby shifted to career. DMA started hiring.
A throwaway test animation of tiny men marching to their explosive doom, created by programmer Mike Dailly, soon inspired DMA's first powerhouse franchise. Lemmings was a puzzler with a sadistic streak, selling more units on its first day than Menace and Blood Money ever had combined. Sequels and dozens of ports occupied DMA for years. Jones and company settled into the Lemmings business, only dropping two non-Lemming titles in-between to stay fresh.
Before the pattern fully set in, circumstances nudged Jones to break all his old habits. Sony bought out Psygnosis, his one and only publisher, and Commodore's bankruptcy announcement sunk the Amiga, his primary platform. After completing small but admired Uniracers for the SNES, DMA accepted an invite to join Midway, LucasArts and Rare on Nintendo's content "Dream Team" for the upcoming Ultra 64 console. Jones had a new home. He went to work on an exclusive launch title, Body Harvest, DMA's first 3D effort, and it did things a little differently from those other Nintendo games. You played an armed and armored soldier in a free-roaming mission to save humanity from hungry alien carnivores, able to jump into any vehicle you found. Less fortunate humans, whether they fell to invaders, careless driving or over-aggressive marksmanship, died screaming in a haze of 64-bit blood.
Jones' opinion differed. The aggressively over-the-top gameplay and open-world environments fit like personally tailored brass knuckles. It needed more, not different. Body Harvest fell off Nintendo's schedule (to be picked up years later by Midway), but DMA was already moving on a newer, better project. Programming had an engine that simulated a top-down cityscape, and centering the camera on a moving object gave it a incredible sense of speed. Jones quickly dreamed up a cops-and-robbers chase game around that dynamic, set in a living, breathing city where the player could go anywhere and do anything. Then he got bold: The player wouldn't be the cop.
The core problem remained. If Nintendo objected to occasionally splattering the odd civilian, no way would they ever accept the criminal activities on Jones' mind. He needed a new publisher...somebody willing to piss a few people off.
Sam and Dan Houser were the prep school sons of a London jazz club owner, but their addiction was East Coast rap and America's growing hip-hop movement. Looking to break in, they took jobs at BMG Music, scouting and signing British acts to sub-labels and hunting for ways up the ladder. When a video game division launched in 1993, they jumped to BMG Interactive with big, big plans. If music had a culture, gaming did, too, and the Housers – with zero development experience between them – decided that culture was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Their product would reflect the attitude and sell a lifestyle around it.
Unfortunately, game developers didn't get the memo. BMG releases like Exhumed and Off-World Interceptor Extreme, both for the poorly performing Sega Saturn, didn't exactly live up to the Housers' vision of unimaginable coolness.
Then David Jones pitched them a PC game called Race-n-Chase.
The 2D graphics sucked by late-'90s standards, but the pure scope of the thing chumped every other game on the market. You played a petty thug making a grab for the big time in the criminal underworld, boosting cars at will and bopping through contract murders, aggravated assaults and chained collateral damage for handsome rewards. Almost any car could be stolen, and a Porsche handled differently from a truck. More importantly, the world responded to your choices, especially the bad ones. Creating armed mayhem in the streets led to increased police response as your Wanted level rose, until you were killed or busted...unless you gave them the greasy slip. If you screwed up a little, the game didn't end; you had to deal with the problem you created for yourself. Advancement was all about scoring cash, and you could do that any way you wanted. Deliver a drug shipment on time. Mug a few citizens on the street. Mow down Hare Krishna for a fat bonus, Death Race 2000-style.
All that freedom carried a price. Players could go anywhere in Liberty City, Vice City or San Andreas, on foot or behind the wheel, and do – or not do – anything they wanted in totally unexpected ways. DMA had to plan and execute contingences for emergent gameplay, something none of them had ever seen, much less coded for. Jones originally scheduled an 18-month development cycle. It took 30 to finish.
As far as the Housers were concerned, they'd just discovered the New World. Here was a mature game with a sick sense of humor, something for anybody who'd outgrown plumbers and Pac-Men and pixelated spaceships. They instantly signed Race-n-Chase, and immediately changed its name. Grand Theft Auto roared into town in 1997 on a solid wave of controversy.
British, German and French officials condemned it before a single unit sold. Brazil banned it outright. There were no aliens, elves, dragons, ninja or princesses to soften the blow; GTA spooled out in the real world – or a stylized super-mafia version of it – loaded with 200 missions that encouraged all kinds of antisocial behavior. Losing Johnny Law usually meant dropping a few badges in your way, sometimes with a flamethrower. One mission involved car-bombing a police station. And at any point, a player could simply step out of his stolen vehicle and start blasting away, challenging the authorities to bring ever-increasing levels of force to stop the rampage. In Grand Theft Auto, consequences followed actions. That was half the fun.
Gamers tore in. Non-linear play was old news, but GTA's early sandbox freedoms easily made backdated graphics acceptable, and if every adult in the world hated and feared what GTA represented, so much the better.
Finally, BMG Interactive had their hit. Sam and Dan Houser had their mean streets lifestyle to sell. Critics had their rally point against the evils of video games.
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