Rise and Fall of GTA Series and Rockstar #1 (Development, Plot, Facts) | Documentary

Just recently, Rockstar announced GTA 6. In honor of this, we decided to remember how the great Grand Theft Auto series began and what led to the fact that millions of GTA fans admire and look forward to GTA 6. In our new documentary, we invite you to go to a fascinating journey through time and consider the entire long path of GTA becoming a legendary series of games, starting with the first game in the series, released back in 1997. We will tell you about the history of the creation of each game in the Grand Theft Auto series, as well as how the developers of Rockstar Games surprised and impressed their fans with each new part of GTA. We will reveal all the details of the history of the Grand Theft Auto series.

We will monitor the development of graphics capabilities and gameplay. How did Rockstar go from 8-bit pixelated cities to huge open worlds with ultra-realistic graphics? Let’s find out what new functions and features were added in each subsequent part of GTA, and what innovations influenced the industry and video game development in general.

In our new documentary, we will delve into the plot of each game, with many of the characters and events that took place in the world of Grand Theft Auto. How such legendary characters as CJ, Tommy Vercetti, Niko Bellic, Michael de Santa and others appeared. Find out how the game combines dramatic storylines, dark humor and reality-defying social commentary from the mouths of characters such as CJ, Tommy Vercetti, Niko Bellic, Michael de Santa and others.

You will learn how problems that arose when creating games were overcome and led to fantastic results. We will also look at the influence of the great Grand Theft Auto series on culture, music and cinema.

Together we will go the entire way of Grand Theft Auto. Welcome to the PressX channel! In our video today we will tell the history of the Grand Theft Auto series, as well as where such legendary GTA characters as CJ from San Andreas, Tommy Vercetti from Vice City, Niko Bellic from GTA 4, Michael de Santa from GTA 5 and others came from.

00:00 Intro
01:55 History of DMA
23:27 A new era of DMA
33:20 The Houser brothers
36:20 “Race and Chase” Development
42:39 Music and Radio
56:18 Gameplay
1:01:08 Game release
1:06:40 Rockstar North
1:09:44 Grand Theft Auto London
1:11:36 Grand Theft Auto 2

#GTAHistory #Rockstar #Documentary #pressx

Tags: History of GTA, History of Rockstar, GTA Documentary, Rockstar Documentary, Ups and Downs Rockstar, Ups and Downs GTA, history of gta development, how gta was made, the creation of gta, history of grand theft auto, Rise and Fall of GTA, rise and fall of grand theft auto, gta interesting facts, gta you didn’t know, gta san andreas, gta 6, gta 5, gta vice city, gta london, CJ, Tommy Vercetti, Niko Bellic, atari, DMG design, lemmings, Rockstar North, documentary about games, pressX

Before Grand Theft Auto became this It was like this   Apparently, only newborn gamers do  not know what Grand Theft Auto is.   But once they hear this soundtrack …a gun appears in their little hands,   a bandana is on their head, and they are instantly  ready to fight for Grove Street. Moreover,  

In light of the release of GTA 6, which fans  have been waiting for 10 years! Of course,   the world of the game industry knows much bigger  long-term developments. But if RockStar spends   that much time on their game, it’s worth it. GTA has always kept pace with the culture and  

The world around it, while at the same time  adjusting the world to suit itself. Its history   has big bumps on the road to success. So today  we will begin to explore all the ups and downs  

Of both the GTA series itself and its authors,  as well as touch on the history of their other   projects that influenced the series and the studio  itself. What studio projects have influenced the   GTA series and the gaming industry in general  How did the developers make music a unique  

Source of pleasure for all modern gamers with  the help of GTA Why was America the key to the   franchise’s success What stories are hidden  behind the open world of Grand Theft Auto,   which seems to mirror ours What is this a  game about stealing cars, or something more  

You are watching PressX and today we will  tell you how the Rockstar studio was born.   So grab yourself a treat from Cluckin’ Bell. Don’t  forget to check if your car stereo is subscribed   to our channel. And let’s get started! History of DMA (RockStar’s Grandfather)  

Before diving into the history of Grand Theft  Auto, for a better understanding of the context   in which the first part of GTA was created, who  exactly is behind it and how, we will dig a little   deeper and devote a significant part of this  video to the background of the company Rockstar,  

The Houser brothers and Grand Theft Auto  itself. After all, it will be difficult   to understand without it why exactly this  game has become so popular and successful.   Just like almost any gangsta rapper can’t  do without expensive cars and girls,  

Any game is impossible without the people behind  it. Especially the GTA series, which gave life   to one of the most influential game companies  in the world today – RockStar games. RockStar,   which actually owns the status of the company  that develops the largest games, such as Grand  

Theft Auto, Red dead Redemption, or Max Payne 3,  is difficult to be called the studio responsible   for this line of games. Before the idea of the  RockStar company even appeared, the DMA company   was going to its future Olympus of glory. It  is the de facto father of the GTA series.  

Well, probably everyone knows that. Do you want  an unexpected twist It would seem logical if the   person who laid the foundation of the guidelines  of the company developing the game, which took   place in the United States, was an American. After  all, GTA is the first game in which events take  

Place as if in real places. Perhaps its author  lived in America for at least some time and   saw a world measured in miles, not kilometers But it is not the case. In fact, the game about   stealing cars and chasing through US cities  was created from the very beginning in the most  

Unexpected place on Earth – in a post-industrial  port town on the east coast of Scotland.   The future father of the studio, David Scott  Jones [ˈdeɪvɪd skɑt ʤoʊnz], was born in the   city of Dundee [dʌnˈdiː] in October 1965. A  town that didn’t even smell like America. And  

For many centuries it smelled of fish, dying  textile factories, sofa and car industries,   and everything that could only cause depression.  But amid this industrial gloom, there was one   American watch company, Timex, in Dundee. And  in 1981, the factory signed a large contract  

With Sinclair Research Ltd, which produced the ZX  Spectrum 8-bit home computer – it became the most   popular in Europe. Therefore, now the children  of the small town of Dundee had at least some   opportunity to spend their rainy Scottish weekdays  playing with friends in the computer club.  

The same fate befell David Jones. David was  only 16 years old when the home computer boom   happened. Like every boy of that time, he  went to the local computer club, Kingsway.   But David was not interested in just playing  and exchanging games with his friends, as most  

Children did at that time. He wanted to make games  himself, because interest in most of the trivial   arcades of that period quickly disappeared.  The desire to do something unique and get out   of the unpromising town gathered like-minded  people around David – his future colleagues.  

Russell Kay [keɪ] was the first to join David.  Together with him, they developed an upcoming game   called “Moonshadow”, which eventually turned  into “Zone Trooper”. David’s enthusiasm was   a rarity for Scottish teenagers. Everyone was  surprised that creating games is a completely   accessible reality, and not some mystical secret  that only large companies know. Therefore,  

Mike Daley and Steve Hammond [maɪk ˈdeɪli ænd  stiv ˈhæmənd] became the next enthusiasts in   David’s team. Together they completed  their first game “Zone Trooper” which   was published by Game Busters in 1988. The question was, how did it happen that  

The company that made most of the arcade games  in Britain, bought the game from some unknown   children It’s very simple. In 1985, a science  fiction film about the Second World War called   Zone Troopers was released. It’s not known if  Jones was inspired by this movie when making the  

Game, but some similar elements such as flying  saucers, soldiers and aliens could be found in   both the movie and the game. That’s why Game  Busters without hesitating bought Zone Trooper,   because games based on movies at that time were  something new and modern. And so David and his  

Team received their first paychecks. This small  success gave the four boys more than banal joy   or pride in themselves – they realized that their  future could lie behind the games development!   After Zone Trooper release, with the proceeds  from its sale, David bought himself an Amiga  

1000 – the first multimedia PC. He started  the development of the new game Menace.   The development looked like a typical American  series about teenagers. David wrote software   on the Amiga in his parents’ bedroom, and Mike  came to Russell’s and they worked on a homemade  

Table. Miraculously, after the game framework  was almost ready, David managed to conclude a   contract to publish Menace with the well-known  Amiga publisher Psygnosis. A deal was quickly   concluded, bringing in Tony Smith [smɪθ]  from Amiga to work on the game’s graphics.  

After working with Tony Smith, Dave was impressed  by his work and the collaboration with the Kent   Team, which was a southern Amiga group. It was  from the Kent Team that Dave gathered the rest   of his team, which turned out to be not just  a group of acquaintances, but a full-fledged  

Company that wanted to develop games. Therefore,  David decided to register his first company and   name it ACME. But an American company was  already using the name “ACME”, so David had   to change the name of his company to “DMA”. Legend has it that when Jones was thinking  

Of a new name, he happened to look at Amiga  programming manuals and saw the abbreviation DMA,   which stood for direct access to memory…  although journalists were often told that   the title stands for Doesn’t Mean Anything.  Which of this is true – we will never know.  

Menace was released in 1988, and it was  this game that actually made the name of   the DMA led by David Jones. The gameplay was  very simple. It was a horizontal scrolling   shooter where the player controlled an alien  space fighter through six stages on the planet  

Draconia. But this completely simple gameplay  was complemented by very cool design of levels,   enemies and weapon effects. Just look at this The six stages are six bosses that exist as   living defense mechanisms for Draconia. In  the player’s arsenal there was a whole ship  

Filled with various lasers and cannons to  destroy the enemies on its way. And while   progressing through the game stages, the player  could find space debris that could be turned into   upgrades for the ship. For example, such as a  protective shield, or an additional weapon.  

Just so you know, the game sold 15,000  copies and earned David an amazing £20,000   at the time, which he used to buy a car. Gaining production momentum, immediately   after the Menace release, DMA Design began  development of the game Blood Money, which Jones  

Considered a further development of the scrolling  shooter mechanics used in Menace. David received   the green light in the form of an advance from  Liverpool Amiga company Psygnosis, and decided   to open his small office above a toy shop to get  out of the development underground. The entire  

DMA Design team was now based in this office. To  maintain the company’s financial independence,   the team ported Amiga games to various  platforms while Jones developed “Blood Money”.   In Blood Money he wanted to use the full color  gamut of the Amiga, and decided to use a blitter  

(the great-grandfather of the GPU) instead  of hardware scrolling. Blitter allowed him to   quickly draw graphics. Tony Smith, who worked on  the game Menace, created graphics for Blood Money,   which reached a completely new level. This  guaranteed the project a huge number of  

Positive reviews and the title of best designed  and most smoothly animated games on Amiga.   And to show off their animation even more,  DMA decided to create a long intro video in   the game that took up an entire diskette As a result, Blood Money offered the player  

To go through four stages on a space planet,  taking control of different vehicles in each   level a helicopter in the metal world, a submarine  in the water world, a spacesuit in the ice world,   and a fighter aircraft in the fire world. Also,  as in Menace, the player could improve his  

Vehicle with power-ups. Among the improvements  were additional weapons and various upgrades   such as support missiles and neutron bombs. Despite the fact that Blood Money was very   similar to Menace in terms of its gameplay,  this did not prevent it from selling twice  

As much as its ideological forefather. The  commercial success from the sale of 40,000   copies of the game amounted to more than  50 thousand pounds of profit. All the guys,   who at that time just played games in the  computer club, were jealous at Jones’s success.  

But as it always happens, the work had  its difficulties. One of the problems with   the “Blood Money development was the enemies  scaling. Jones wanted the game to have robots   similar to the AT-AT from the Star Wars series He invited Scott Johnson [ˈʤɑnsən], an animator  

With a degree, who had just quit McDonald’s.  But at the beginning of development, the desired   AT-AT did not look as convincing as it did in the  film. Therefore, they were looking for something   to contrast with the robots. This is how they got  the idea to create sprites of enemies that will  

Move under the robots. However, Mike Daley decided  that the 16×16 pixel figures were not small enough   to make the AT-ATs look convincingly large.  Then they started thinking about the sprite’s   animation while maintaining believable movements. The team faced the dilemma. Some argued that it  

Was impossible to achieve good animation,  as in Prince of Persia. By the way,   we can tell you a lot of interesting things  about this game too. So write in the comments   if you want us to make a separate video about  this fabulous series. Returning to animation,  

Mike Daley, on the contrary, believed that  it was possible to achieve the most realistic   animation using an image of only 8×8 pixels.  In an interview many years later, Russell Kay   recalls the process of creating animation It was this approach to small details that  

Gave birth to a new legendary game by DMA Design,  which was released in 1991 – Lemmings. To give   you an idea of how legendary this game is and the  impact it has had on the gaming industry and the   real world, Blizzard studio developer Bob Fitch  [fɪʧ] said that the inspiration for the first  

Warcraft game partially came from Lemmings.  Lemmings were also mentioned by the writer   Terry Pratchett [‘præʧᵊt] in his novel Interesting  Times. Furthermore, Lemmings was one of six games   featured in a series of stamps issued by Royal  Mail in 2020 to pay tribute to one of the pioneers  

Of the UK video game industry. They even made a  sculpture of these cuties near the original DMA   office. And this is only the tip of the iceberg  of Lemmings’ influence on the game industry.   In general, the game did not make any  discoveries. Lemmings are not fiction.  

Lemmings are real creatures like wild  hamsters. They look something like this   There is even a myth that these little  wild hamsters do something during their   migration that neither we nor YouTube  share and condemn in every possible way.  

It’s good that this is just a myth and nothing  more. But who cares and who will be investigating   whether it is true or not. So many years ago, one  of the writers began to use the word “lemming” to  

Describe people who are guided by herd instinct,  like sheep. But at the time of the game creation,   all this knowledge did not exist for DMA.  Company developer Russell Kay recalls   Lemmings was developed for about 9 months,  and it all started with creating the lemming’s  

Appearance. The main question was to decide what  shape and color this strange thing should be. And   since the game was created in the 90s, the  green, white and blue colors of the lemming   image were related to the color palette that  personal computers of that time had. On the  

Amiga you could have any color you wanted, but  on the PC the choice was limited. So it was   either green hair and blue robes, or blue hair  and green robes. The developers simply chose   the option that looked better – green hair and  blue robes. It’s good that they weren’t scaled  

Either… After all, the team had such ideas. Once Russell Kay developed the first prototype of   the mass movement of lemmings, the team decided  that 10 lemmings was not enough to be able to   play. And 20 too. According to Russell Kay, they  wanted to make the lemmings follow the landscape,  

Just as the salamander bullets followed  the landscape. But how could they do it   According to Mike Daley, the next big  challenge was the game’s levels and landscape,   because it was the main component of the  entire gameplay. Everything depended on the  

Developers’ imagination. Inventing levels was a  collective game of who would make the best level,   or the most difficult, or the longest. As a  result, each game level begins with a bunch   of little men walking around. Each lemming  can be assigned a task. And the game goal  

Is to guide the Lemmings from the beginning  of the level to the end of the location with   the help of digging, scratching and crawling. Lemmings are divided into several levels grouped   into four difficulty categories. Each level begins  with one or more hatches that open from above.  

Following each other, the lemmings fall through  the hatch to the level. The levels include various   obstacles that prevent the lemmings from reaching  the exit. These include, for example, large drops,   mine traps, and lava pools. And that’s all! Just  imagine how simple gameplay has conquered millions  

Sold 20,000 copies, and “Blood Money” doubled it  to 40,000. And that was the full life cycle of   the product, not first day sales. It was later  estimated that sales of the original Lemmings   game exceeded 15,000,000 copies worldwide. Very  few games in today’s globalized market trends,  

With all possible marketing techniques, sell even  close to this result. This critical success of   the game led to the developers receiving a huge  number of awards. The UK’s Mega magazine gave   Lemmings the 23rd Best Game of All Time award  for 1994, and Amiga Power magazine gave the  

Game the Second Best Amiga Game of All Time.  Moreover, Lemmings received two victories in   the Game of the Year in Europe nomination. Within 2 years of the game’s release, more   than 2 million copies of Lemmings had been sold,  making the 25-year-old Jones, who had been already  

Married with a young child, rich and famous. The phenomenon of the Lemmings popularity,   like any phenomenon of popularity, is difficult  to explain. Most likely, a huge number of factors   played their role here. Simplicity, but at the  same time high variability of the gameplay,  

Thanks to which people could relax and have  fun. Graphic design that was at the highest   level. Animation that rivaled Prince of Persia  and many famous games of the time. The style,   genre and character of Lemmings were so enjoyable  that it was hard not to buy this DMA project.  

The wild success of the Lemmings in 1991 gave DMA  the opportunity to expand and increase its pace of   work. About 5 to 10 people were involved in the  development of the first Lemmings. But by 1995,   the company already had about 50 people. A  numerous staff allowed to take more contracts  

For porting games to different platforms, and to  develop new ones simultaneously. So DMA decided   to release three new games at once, which they  postponed earlier due to lack of budget and time.   In 1993, the game Walker was released.  It was a creation of Ian Dunlop and  

Neill Glancy [iən ˈdʌnˌlɑp ænd nil ˈɡlænsi], of  course, under David Jones’s supervision. Walker   was very reminiscent of Blood Money. But if in  Blood Money players controlled a spaceship and   killed robots similar to AT-ATs from Star  Wars, here everything was the opposite.  

The player controlled a two-legged AT-ST robot… …to progress through four stages of the game, each   consisting of two levels Berlin 1944, Los Angeles  2019, the modern Middle East, and Earth 2420   during the Great War… The game featured virtually  no new gameplay, just a modified functionality of  

Some and the same techniques as in Blood Money.  The player also moved through the game locations,   but not by flying, but by moving on the ground. A  similar system of combat with enemies. By the way,  

Now there were twice as many of them as there  had been in Blood Money. And the system of   final bosses generally remained unchanged. Walker received positive reviews from critics   upon release. Reviewers especially praised the  game’s graphics and sound design. Journalist  

James Price [praɪs] of Amiga Force called  it one of the most exciting shooters ever,   while Paul Roundell [[ROWN] + [DUHL]] of Amiga  Computing wrote that the developers managed to   combine the best elements of several games. In the same 1993, Graham Stafford and Scott   Johnston [ɡræm ˈstæfərd ænd skɑt  ˈʤɑnstən] developed a new game,  

Called Hired Guns. It was something new for  DMA. Hired Guns was the first first-person RPG   to feature the distinctive visual signature  of the developers’ 2D scrolling shooters.   The game used a system of four simultaneous  perspectives of the world from the first  

Person. Each character could be controlled  individually and occupied its own square,   unlike for example Dungeon Master from 1987 by FTL  Games, where the whole party occupied one square.   Each character could follow another character,  or walk independently. But the group was always  

Led by only one player. The gameplay was advanced  for its time, as it allowed up to four players to   play simultaneously using a mouse and keyboard.  Or a modified Sega Mega Drive joystick with a   parallel port adapter that allowed four  joysticks to be used simultaneously.  

The game was not particularly successful, but  was received positively. In 1996, GamesMaster,   a British television program, ranked  “Hired Guns” 62nd in its list of the   100 Greatest Games of All Time. However, the  most interesting thing is that the very idea  

Of a game with several game characters was  remembered by the developers, and, as we know,   it would still play its role in the future. The last among the novelties of 1993 from   DMA was Lemmings 2. Hopes that Lemmings  2 would sell as well as the first part  

Quickly dissolved. Development under great  pressure of responsibility, due to the success   of the first part, made DMA jump over its head. But as always, such things do not end well. Now,   in the new game, in order to lead the Lemmings to  the exit, the player was given not eight skills,  

Which were in the first part, but 43! You ask why  Well, the skills differed in their purpose – some   allowed you to overcome obstacles and hazards,  some focused on creating bridges and transitions,   and some allowed you to break through barriers.  Thus, it made it possible to increase the number  

Of levels, add even more puzzles and playing  time to the game. But nothing else. Where   did the former monster of creativity go DMA  that has marched forward like a Juggernaut   There was a clear explanation for this.  DMA suffered from the typical problems of  

Career growth. As soon as the company’s  staff exceeded the first 10 employees,   who knew each other almost from kindergarten,  work processes and relationships became dependent   on the human factor. Responsibility for all  development processes lay not only on Jones,  

But also on all other 50-70 members of the staff.  Young and inexperienced people often did not help,   but on the contrary hindered the completion  of work by deadlines. And more and more often,   the ordinary human factor spoiled the once  harmonious teamwork. So, the time has come  

For serious changes at DMA Design. A new era of DMA (DMA+Nintendo)   DMA Design didn’t have much time to  complain about its failures. After all,   at that time it was already a large game studio  in Britain. And the indicators it had were simply  

Stunning… Especially considering that the  developers started from the bottom. Therefore,   while working on Lemmings 2, David Jones,  using the authority earned on his cult games,   decided to sign a contract with Nintendo. And  he met not just anyone, but a real legend of  

Game development – Shigeru Miyamoto [ʃɪˈɡeɪru  mijɑˈmoʊtoʊ], who even came to DMA’s office.   The Japanese game designer is called the father of  modern video games, because it was he who created   the world-famous Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend  of Zelda, produced many other series of Nintendo  

Games, and it goes without saying that he has  led the company to the success it has today.   The fact is that in 1995, Shigeru Miyamoto  decided to create a real team of successful   developers under the code name Dream Team.  Popular at that time, Rare, Acclaim, Midway  

Games and LucasArts were included. They were all  gathered to promote the new Nintendo 64 console.   The company’s new product, the Nintendo 64,  was supposed to hit the shelves in Japan at a   price of $250 as early as next year. Nintendo has  developed an innovative controller for its 64-bit  

Gaming system. It introduced the possibility  of controlling the game in two ways one was the   control using the usual D-Pad cross, the other –  using an analog stick. There were nine buttons on   the controller, and there was also a special port  on the back of the device for memory cards and  

Other additional modules. This joystick actually  looked a little strange. Were they coping…   The only problem with the Nintendo 64 that  caused Nintendo to have arguments with many   important independent developers was the game  cartridges. For game publishers and developers,  

Regular CDs were more suitable. The cost of their  production was small – they could be produced in   large quantities, unlike expensive, and therefore  risky, game cartridges. While it was not clear   how the new console would be perceived by users.  However, the pre-sale production of game modules  

Already required quite significant costs. All  competing consoles, namely Sony’s PlayStation and   Sega’s Saturn, used CD-ROM as their media. In this regard, many major companies,   including such long-time Nintendo partners as  Square, Enix and Namco, refused to support the   Nintendo 64 and announced their next projects  for the new favorite – the PlayStation console.  

Due to the fright of all major developers, the  novelty from the Nintendo company was initially   deprived of the attention of buyers and gamers.  But the Japanese company was able to achieve   success for the Nintendo 64, and as a result was  second only to the PlayStation in terms of sales.  

Thanks in large part to its marketing efforts and  staff, including the talented Shigeru Miyamoto.   But let’s go back a little. The essence of  the contract between DMA and Nintendo was   extremely simple. The British studio makes  the game exclusive to the console release,  

And Nintendo includes it in the launch line  with the Nintendo 64. So now DMA had more   opportunities and money to release new games. One of the first games under the financial and   publishing supervision of Nintendo, from DMA, was  “Uniracers”. It was developed by Mike Daley – one  

Of those who created the first Lemmings. The  gameplay of “Uniracers” was very simple. It   involved racing on unicycles (one-wheeled  bicycles) on a two-dimensional track. Great   attention was paid to performing tricks.  Performing stunts on racing or ring tracks   made the unicycle go faster and earned extra  points. At first glance, the multiplayer game  

Was interesting. It would sell like crazy. But! Unexpectedly, shortly after the game’s release,   Pixar sued DMA Design for allegedly  plagiarizing the unicycle design and   concept from their 1987 short film Red’s Dream By the way, this is not a joke at all – at the  

Beginning of their career, Pixar really released  such terrible cartoons… Let’s return to the   topic. DMA Design lost the lawsuit, and as a  result, Nintendo was forced to stop production of   further Uniracers cartridges. According to Daily  Mail, the deal was that Nintendo would no longer  

Make unicycles in their games, so only the initial  “Uniracers” run of 300,000 copies was sold.   Of course, that situation wasn’t a big failure  for DMA, and even more so for Nintendo. The   atmosphere in the company shook just a little.  Shook in the sense that it created another  

Wave of personnel reshuffles, the dismissal of  development groups and the recruitment of new   ones. This is a normal process for any large  company – usually these personnel changes are   practically invisible behind the studios’ walls.  And for DMA, which at the time of 1995 employed  

About 100 people, it wasn’t very noticeable. Perhaps you are wondering when the story of   GTA and the great Rockstar will begin,  because it is indicated in the title of   the video Don’t you worry! We’re almost there. In the wake of 3d in games, Nintendo commissioned  

A new game from DMA called “Body Harvest”  under their contract for exclusive games   for the Nintendo 64. Speaking of which, it’s  worth mentioning that many studios in the UK   lost out. Transition from personal computers  to consoles, from two-dimensional graphics to  

Three-dimensional made studios attract new people  who knew at least something about it. Besides,   they had to buy new equipment, learn new  approaches to creating games, and so on. According   to DMA sound engineer Colin Anderson [ˈændərsən] In DMA, there were opportunities to solve any  

Difficult issues, but the company had to  fully invest in this work. At that time,   DMA had about a hundred people working on porting  their projects to other media. And although DMA   gained its respect thanks to the first Lemmings,  they achieved success thanks to a brainstorming  

Session in which all employees of the studio,  which at that time numbered only 10 people,   participated. When the studio became much larger  and began to work on many different games,   it became almost impossible to transfer the  experience of brainstorming to a large team.  

Small open world where the player took on  the role of genetically modified soldier   Adam Drake [dreɪk]. He had to investigate and  destroy the alien forces that returned every   25 years to harvest Earth’s human population for  organic material. Armed with a time travel device,  

Drake had to go back in time and  fight in five Earth locations   spanning 100 years of historical events. In each level in “Body Harvest”, the player had   to stop the aliens from killing everyone in the  area marked on the map. The player could freely  

Move around the map and come across cities where  the aliens teleport to attack the city and kill   the civilians. The aliens moved and could attack  the player on the ground, in the air or sea.   Basically, the gameplay consisted of completing  a series of missions. Most of them were very  

Simple. For example, to reach a certain area.  Some could be more difficult and they required   careful thought and player skill. After the  player completed a mission, they were prompted   to check the map to see what mission was next. The use of vehicles was a key aspect of this game.  

Vehicles provided significant protection against  alien attacks and allowed the player to move at   much faster speed. Adam Drake could fire most  weapons from inside the vehicle, although many   vehicles were equipped with their own powerful  weapons. Doesn’t that remind you of anything  

Basically, Body Harvest can be considered  the first sprout of GTA. Especially since   Nintendo was critical of the topic of violence  in games and eventually abandoned Body Harvest,   forcing DMA to find a new publisher for the  game. The game was eventually published by  

Midway Games and Gremlin Interactive in 1998.  Remember these dates and these companies,   because they will appear in our story later. The history of the development of the relationship   between Nintendo and DMA is a topic for a separate  video. Let’s put it this way – they continued to  

Cooperate. But simultaneously with the beginning  of Body Harvest development, on April 4, 1995,   DMA signed an agreement with the American company  BMG Interactive to publish Rаce and Chase, Tactics   and Clan Wars. It was a big deal – a contract  worth a couple of million pounds. The staff of DMA  

Increased to 130-140 employees, and they opened  another office in the same place in Scotland.   In the winter of the same year, the publisher  BMG Interactive granted DMA Design permission   to develop the project Race & Chase for the Sega  Saturn and Nintendo 64 platforms. Therefore,  

The next two years of the company’s work became  decisive in the history of DMA Design and the   entire game industry. Who are BMG Interactive  and why have they become so important to   DMA and to all of us The Houser brothers  

BMG Interactive is a company closely  associated with the names of Sam and   Dan Housers [sæm ænd dæn ˈhaʊzərz]. It was  these two brothers who created RockStar. The   Housers are involved in all the games that  came out of this company, but more on that  

Later. Since the new era of DMA, after signing  a contract with BMG, the brothers have been   quite close to DMA. How did it even happen Sam Houser and Dan Houser are the sons of   an actress and a wealthy London lawyer. They  were strange guys. The younger brother, Dan,  

Spent all his free time immersed in fantasy  literature. Dan Houser was an avid reader,   and it was not surprising that he would write the  screenplay for almost every part of Grand Theft   Auto in the future, and then Bully from Red Dead  Redemption. However, in his youth, he wasn’t much  

Interested in video games. But Dan could not avoid  the virtual world as the older brother, Sam, kept   pushing the controller into his hands. And if Dan  refused to play, he was seriously punched by Sam.   The brothers grew up and entered a prestigious  private institution, where they played croquet,  

Went to theaters and listened to orchestra  performances. But it didn’t affect them like the   modern culture around them. They changed not only  their interests, but also their tastes. Sam began   to admire music artists from the American label  Def Jam Recording (among them were Public Enemy,  

LL Cool J, Method Man and others) and even dressed  like a New York musician. The older brother fell   in love with American culture, even though he had  never been to America. One sunny day in London,   Sam’s father took Sam to lunch with Heinz Hahn  [haɪnz hɑn], his friend and part-time marketing  

Director at BMG, Bertelsmann’s [ˈbɜrtəlzmənz]  music and entertainment division, which combined   the operations of such major music labels as  RCA Records, RCA and Ariola Records. At this,   as it turned out, unofficial interview, Sam got  his first job in his life and immediately at BMG!  

In his spare time during studies at the  university, Sam produced some labels. And in 1992,   he dived into the World Wide Web, where he noticed  prospects in the publication of music albums on   the Internet. Long before all kinds of iTunes and  Spotify. Thus, BMG blew up the sales charts and  

The company created a branch of BMG Interactive. The company management saw the future not only   in the music industry development, but also in  video games. The market of video games brought   huge money, and family projects like SimCity 2000,  Super Mario Bros. and All-Stars were sold off the  

Shelves of stores all over the world. Therefore,  Sam came close to the video game industry.   After working for several years at BMG, Sam  was invited to join a new interactive project   with DMA. Which at this time was preparing Rаce  and Chase, Tactics and Clan Wars. Apparently,  

It was around this time that Dan Houser, who was  two years younger, also became eager to take part   in the project. This was the beginning of the  future Rаce and Chase development, which in   the future would turn into the well-known GTA.  We will return to the Housers and to RockStar,  

But in order to somehow preserve the chronology  of events, we’ll start from 1995. From the   beginning of Race and Chase development. “Race and Chase” (GTA) Development   DMA began development of “Race and Chase” on  April 4, 1995. The studio developed a design  

Document for the upcoming Race and Chase,  which even then stated The goal of creating   Race & Chase is to get a fun, exciting multiplayer  game about car chases and crashes at the output.   The first and key question in the Rаce and Chase  development, which arose before DMA and David  

Jones himself, was in what space to make this game  The 2D space was very familiar to DMA, and most of   the successful projects were made in it. And on  the other hand, it was 1995 outside! And it meant  

That Wipeout from Psygnosis was already released  – it was one of the first futuristic 3D racing   video games. In it, players piloted anti-gravity  ships and participated in various types of races.   And the developers included a large number of  music tracks and unexpectedly exciting gameplay.  

Moreover, in 1996, Tomb Raider was released,  which simply captured the industry of 3D games.   Therefore, a logical question arose for DMA to  keep up with the 3D world, already having a bad   experience with Body Harvest, or to do something  that they know and can do After considering  

Everything, DMA decided to combine two things in  the game. This was probably DMA’s best decision,   as it gave the company a real opportunity  to compete with other games on the market.   In “Race and Chase”, David Jones saw the  possibility of creating the most realistic  

City in the game. He was fascinated by how alive  and dynamic it could be. Jones asked his team to   come up with ideas to make it happen. One of  the developers built a city that was visible  

From above in 2D space, and another took the same  map and made cars race through the streets. All   combined with the movement of the cars and the  camera created a sense of real speed and height.   And it was this decision that became the gun  that would fire at the most necessary moment.  

For the first few months of development,  the game was called “Race and Chase”,   but not for long. According to the story, the  player was supposed to be a policeman trying   to restore order in the city. However, after  the game prototype was completed, it became  

Clear that if the player, being a police officer,  drives through the park, knocking down objects,   people, picnics, then the player should be  punished, not the one he is chasing. Therefore,   DMA decided to radically change the gameplay.  The developers offered the player to become the  

One who breaks the law, commits accidents,  robs people, shoots and runs away from the   cops. It was at this moment that the developers  decided to change the name of the game. Then   Grand Theft Auto appeared for the first time. So we got to the name, but not yet to the game  

Itself, because DMA still had a lot of problems.  First of all, none of the team that was supposed   to develop GTA had any previous experience  in creating games. It was a brand new team,   under David Jones’s surervision, of course, but  still. Why take such risks This was the same  

Problem as the development of previous  DMA games – staff turnover, due to the   expectation that new people would do better.  The company took a risk because few on the team,   except for David, believed that the GTA idea  would succeed, due to the amount of violence.  

So, the criminal played by the user could  get paid for hitting a pedestrian. Missions   in the development process changed and began to  involve the main character in stealing cars on   the streets and completing tasks for criminals.  The change was radical, because until that time  

In the history of electronic games, the player  played most of the time as a hero. The change was   well received and approved by BMG, especially the  responsible executive Sam Houser, who considered   the product to be something cartoony and absurd. The development team started adding more details  

To the city, such as trees and sound effects.  Sam Houser saw the game as a fictional world   and wanted to place a strong emphasis on  player’s freedom. To fulfill this desire,   the development team created three separate  cities in which the events of the game were  

To take place. All of them were based on real  cities. David Jones chose the ones he thought   would have the biggest impact on players Miami  was transformed into Vice City in the game,   San Francisco became San Andreas, and finally,  New York became Liberty City in the game.  

As a result, the desired freedom given  to the player created a problem when GTA   entered the test groups. A lot of people  weren’t interested in doing the missions,   thinking it was more fun to just kill people  and steal cars around town. Until then,  

Missions in GTA were issued to players through  certain phone booths, but after some discussion,   the developers made all public phones issue  missions. In this way, they eliminated the need   for players to go to a certain location just to  start a mission. Despite this, Jones was skeptical  

Of an open and free world – players always  needed some kind of goal. To solve the problem,   he made it so that the player needed to accumulate  as many points as possible to pass the level.   Throughout the development process, Jones  and the DMA team prioritized gameplay over  

Graphics…which was the opposite of the market  trend. They focused on using the limited computing   power of computers at the time to improve the  game’s physics, city events, and the artificial   intelligence of pedestrians and enemies. Inset quote The initial management model  

Did not work. And then a guy named Pat  Kerr [pæt kɜr] came along and said, look,   here’s a working option. Pat Kerr was also the  lead programmer for Wild Metal Country. In the   beginning it was a rectangle. And Pat was just  messing with the physics of the controls, and he  

Got a crazy little car that drove, turned, entered  snowdrifts, like in Hollywood action movies. I saw   this drift and said that it was beautiful. It had  to be implemented in the game.” (David Jones)   In addition to the cool controls in the game,  there were other cool things. The developers  

Made the police chase the main character  aggressively! Police cars, like crazy,   tried to knock down the player. Actually, it’s  a bug. The police should not have done what   they did. It’s just that the routes of their  cars were built crookedly – because of this,  

There is a feeling that a police car is  attacking the player and trying to run him over.   It seems that the entire development of GTA is a  collection of coincidences and unexpected ideas.   Take at least the music in the game, which  has become one of the decisive things in the  

Entire GTA series. And by the way, it was also  done spontaneously by people who appeared out   of nowhere on time. MUSIC and Radio   At the beginning of development, in the GTA design  document, it was said that only 1 MB of RAM would  

Be allocated for sound, due to the fact that  the game was planned to be released not on CDs,   but on floppy disks. There was no way DMAs  could use CD audio. However, one fine day,   Dave Jones came to the DMA office and said that  the cartridge version was canceled – there would  

Only be a CD. Nintendo scrapped the Nintendo 64  version of GTA because of the brutality, but this   is the best thing that could have happened to  the project. Now it was possible not to puzzle   over how to fit the entire game on a cartridge. Suddenly, DMA Design faced another problem. The  

Game was 2D, although it had some sort of Top  Down 3D, and the game design looked good while   moving. But now the studio was planning to release  a 2D game on CD, and no matter how high resolution  

The textures were, there was no way the game  would fill the entire CD. Did the developers   think about how to fill the free disk space Back when people first bought games on CD,   they expected their developers to use disc  technology to fit as much content, gameplay,  

And new game solutions as possible. While DMAs  could accommodate approximately 8,125 thousand   GTAs on a disk. It was decidedly unclear how  to fill up the free space. Until suddenly the   young composer Colin Anderson had a solution. Colin Anderson was just one of those random  

People who changed the course of DMA history.  But before Colin did that, he just played music   and loved video games. And he wanted to somehow  combine these two facts. The man sent resumes to   all game companies, and received a response from  DMA Design, who developed GTA. So Colin became the  

Composer of the future game, but it was too  early to rejoice, because this position was   thankless. People of that time probably still  thought that writing music for games was to   combine the sound of keys sticking together to  make a funny blip-blop. In those days, people  

Did not take writing music for games seriously. Inset quote You talk to other musicians and they   ask What do you do I am a musician. They ask “What  exactly do you do “Ah… Music for video games!” And  

They are like this “…But you said that you  are a musician. Yes, I am a musician! No, it’s   not music… It’s not music. (Colin Anderson) And so Colin Anderson, having become a sound   engineer for DMA and a composer for GTA, came  to David Jones and offered to simply fill the  

Disc with CD-quality music. With the idea  that if people don’t really like the game,   then at least they will be able to listen to  quality music. At that time, CDs with music were   quite expensive (especially new ones). Examples  of such a decision were before their eyes. Quake,  

Already out in 1996, had a heavy but beautiful  soundtrack by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.   Besides being a cool musician, Trent  was named one of Time magazine’s Most   Influential People of the Year a year later. Moreover, the previously mentioned Wipeout  

Also had a soundtrack that was a pleasure  to play. Therefore, with such examples,   Colin was still able to convince the management  to fill the disc with quality music. All that   remained was to find it somewhere… Of course,  DMA Design had neither its own recording studio  

Nor a large group of musicians. There was  also no program for writing CD-quality music,   Pro Tools System, which would have cost the studio  a penny. All that was left for them was to simply   take ready-made licensed music. But it was even  more difficult than finding money for Pro Tools.  

The music industry at the time did not take video  games seriously and was not positive about them.   Especially DMA Design, which had some weight  only on the territory of England – for the rest   of the big world, it was still nobody. Even the  success of the Lemmings did not help. Therefore,  

It was almost impossible for DMA to obtain  licensed music. According to Colin Anderson   Inset quote Back then, if you went to record  companies and said, ‘Would you like to license   us the music for our games’ – they laughed and  said Why should we do this at all We make so  

Much money selling CDs, thank you so much!” This  was before the transition in the music industry.   They were not interested. (Colin Anderson) There was another surprise. As you know, DMA   Design was under the wing of BMG Entertainment,  a huge multimedia conglomerate that owned,  

Among others, Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music,  Universal Music Group and PolyGram. Well, you see,   almost the entire music industry was in the hands  of BMG at that time. So why couldn’t BMG negotiate   with the labels to give GTA the music Considering  that Sam Houser was the head of development and  

Had something to do with the game but couldn’t  fix the situation – this really seems strange.   And the fact is that negotiating for licensed  music was really, really, really expensive. And   Sam was not the director of the entire company.  BMG were not at all interested in giving DMA  

Their music tracks for GTA. So, quite quickly  it became obvious to the developers that they   would have to write the music themselves. But as you know, very often the problems   that befall game developers make their  projects even better… or, on the contrary,  

They bury them. It was the same with the Prince  of Persia series. And the same thing happened   with the DMA team. After all, the issue of  music in GTA marked the beginning of the   greatest history of music in video games. The history of music in the GTA began with  

The fact that there was no studio in the audio  department of the DMA. They did not have the   necessary software, there were no musicians, and  half of the team, who had nothing to do with the  

Audio department, did not understand why the game  needed music the size of a CD! Luck was on Colin   Anderson’s side, so he managed to convince the  team that this game just needed a good soundtrack!   a room that Anderson called the mop room, which  was essentially a handout from the management  

In the spirit of do what you want, just don’t  disturb. Colin Anderson received this message   with enthusiasm after hearing only the first part  of the phrase. Everything was possible in the mop   room. Then Colin started looking for a team for  this thing and hired Craig Conner [kreɪɡ ˈkɑnər],  

Who, before that, was just playing in various  young Scottish bands, DJ-ing and producing music.   Anderson tasked Conner with writing some music  sketches that would serve as a reference for the   rest of the music in the game, and left him for  a few days. When Anderson returned, Conner played  

Him a few tracks – it was an absolute musical  mess. The newcomer turned on rock, pop and techno   for Anderson. Each new track was in a new style.  At that time, no one was writing multi-genre   music for games, so it was very strange. However, Anderson liked the tracks he heard  

So much that he was afraid that good musical  material would simply be lost. Therefore,   he began to try them on for other games.  Unfortunately, the musical compositions   did not fit anywhere. Therefore, at one  dinner with Craig, Colin Anderson joked  

It was a joke for the sake of a joke, which Colin  immediately forgot about, but he couldn’t forget   the look on Craig Conner’s face. After that  phrase, his eyes lit up – he knew that this   could work. Yes, one randomly thrown phrase would  completely define the musical future of GTA. The  

New plan was to make several dozen tracks that  would be played in-game on the radio. Moreover,   the developers wanted to convince the  players that those were real tracks,   which were recorded by real, just little-known  musicians. But a small team had to do all this  

In a short time before the game was released. Colin had to choose songs that would be cool   to hear on the radio in the GTA world. Without  thinking for a long time, the developers decide   to include all existing genres in the game.  From jazz fusion to opera. The tastes of the  

Team differed and each team member wanted to hear  something different, but time was pressing, and   the number of musicians was still quite limited. Therefore, the developers took on the task.   Colin loved funk, so he worked on a funk  radio station himself. Craig had a guitar,  

So he was doing pop rock. And the team had to come  up with the rest on the fly. There was almost no   time – everyone worked separately so as not to  disturb each other and finish everything on time.  

The main thing was to make the tracks sound real… …like songs that people could actually hear on the   radio. They wanted to give players the music of  Public Enemy, Twisted Sister and Enigma… And in   general, everything that was popular at that  time was heard on real radio stations in the  

USA. In an interview, Colin Anderson recalls Inset quote “I remember us writing to a guy   who worked at BMG Interactive, the publisher  we were working with at the time. I remember   asking them if they could send us some tapes  of US radio songs so we could hear the jingles,  

The DJs. So it was difficult to get access to such  things. That meant all the references we had were   movies and stuff like that.” (Colin Anderson) GTA was supposed to be the first game in the   history of the gaming industry to have  its own radio. And being a pioneer in any  

Business is a very difficult job. As a result,  the soundtrack was made from the world by string.   The team recorded the song Four Letter Love,  which imitated the style of AC-DC. The track   “Just Do It” was a kind of cover of any Prodigy  song. The team made extensive use of sampling,  

Which in those days also set the format for  writing songs. Some samples were requested   from the performers themselves. They refused,  and the audio department of DMA Design either   manually re-recorded the sounds as close as  possible to the original, or just pirated them.  

The developers got as many as seven radio  stations, which played 19 unique tracks written   specifically for GTA! The most important station  was N-CT FM, which played hip-hop and gangsta   rap. It probably doesn’t make sense to remind  you how important rap is to the setting of GTA,  

Where players try on the gangster’s role. But  this radio station was even more important   because it played the main theme of the game. The story behind the main track is also one of   those where the appearance of one person in the  team actually changed the history of GTA. Expert  

Academic and Industry Professional Jonathan  Wilson [ˈwɪlsən] was invited by DMA Design to   write the opening soundtrack of the game.  Not exactly a good title for an authentic   gangsta rapper. So in fact, Jonathan Wilson  quickly became Robert De Negro at that moment.  

He was the only black guy for miles around.  Because the DMA office was still in Dundee.   Even with contracts with Nintendo and BMG, it  did not give the company the opportunity to   move to a more convenient location. And you  could count all the black people living in  

Dundee on the fingers of one hand. Of course,  with his respectable status, Jonathan Wilson   did not want to participate in something dubious  (he did not play computer games), so he took a   pseudonym – Robert De Negro – and asked for  a bottle of beer for his participation.  

Craig Conner ended up coming up with beats and  lyrics, and Wilson recorded vocals on nights when   the DMA office was empty. This is how the very  first track ever recorded for Grand Theft Auto   was created. And it was this track, according to  Colin Anderson, being written at an early stage of  

The game’s development, that set the tone for how  the entire GTA series would look in the future.   Almost all stations had their own characteristics.  Eurobeat was playing on “Brooklyn Underground FM”,   and this was a special cultural provocation.  The rave scene of the 90s was all concentrated  

In Europe, while the game events unfolded in a  fictional America, and the target audience of the   game was also primarily in the USA. The radio  station demonstrated the developers’ personal   love for European music, thus their musical  taste was exported abroad. But the rest of  

The radio stations had to sound exactly American. So for Americans in high boots, DMA made a station   called The Fergus Buckner [fɜrɡəs ˈbʌknər] Show FM  that played country all the time… To be precise,   country is one song performed by Sideways Hank  O’Malley [hæŋk oʊˈmæli] (and The Alabama Bottle  

Boys) that is all time ticks on the replay,  and when it ends, the host of the show,   Fergus Buckner, declares that he likes it  so much that he’s going to play it again   “The Fergus Buckner Show FM”, by the way, is  the shortest station in GTA 1. And it appeared  

Completely by accident. At one DMA meeting,  one of the employees mumbled that you can put   country music in old cars that will drive around  town. After all, a radio station was offered for   each type of car. And as a result, one respected  manager from BMG Interactive learned about country  

Radio, who just came to the developers the next  day and said I heard there will be country Cool,   Rainbow Music in about the same building as the  DMA Design office. And for the small town of   Dundee, this store acted as a kind of social  network for musicians. For DMA developers,  

It was a kind of hub in which the company’s  audio department periodically found one artist or   another to play. It was in Rainbow Music that they  found someone who could play the banjo. He turned   out to be the shopkeeper himself. So in this  artisanal way, DMA was able to create most of the  

Unique tracks for the radio stations in the game. Funk was playing on Radio 76 FM. On Head Radio   techno and modern rock. It’s  Unleashed FM featured trance,   hard rock and alternative rock from Swedish rock  vocalist Paul Mackie [ˈmæki], who would later  

Appear in the GTA series as the vocalist of Love  Fist. But we will talk about this later. Well,   house and dance music was playing on Fix FM.  Fix FM was directly managed by Craig Conner and   Colin Anderson, with literally no outside help. The music was finished and combined with the rest  

Of the development work, so now we can see what  the final version of the game turned out to be.   It’s time to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere  and gameplay of the almost ready-to-release GTA.   Gameplay The initial   menu of Grand Theft Auto offered players eight  character options for the main character Bubba,  

Divine, Katie, Kivlov, Mikki, Travis, Troy  and Ulrika. However, this did not affect   the gameplay or the game story in any way. In addition to the main character, other important   characters are the big BOSSES with whom the  player interacts throughout the game. Robert Bubby  

Seragliano is the gangster boss of the Vercotti  family and a man obsessed with revenge for his   father’s death. Uncle Fu is the leader of an Asian  gang, who according to legend is 130 years old. El  

Burro is the leader of a Latin American gang that  is in conflict with the Fu gang. Samuel Deever   [ˈdivər] is a corrupt Vice City police officer  who is suspected of several crimes. And the last  

One is brother Marcus – the leader of the Rastas  gang and the biggest drug dealer in Vice City.   The main character begins his career in Liberty  City, working for the gang of Robert Bubby   Seragliano. After performing a series of favors,  he receives a warning from a rival gang that his  

Actions are causing great harm to their boss,  Sonetti. The main character continues to work   for Seragliano and kills Sonetti. After some  extra work, Bubby calls to congratulate him,   but warns him that the police are surrounding  the gang and it would be nice if they left town.  

So our character will move from city to city,  working for various gangsters and earning money.   Four types of weapons are available  to the player a pistol, a machine gun,   a flamethrower and a grenade launcher. Whenever  the player performs his typical thug activities  

Like killing or stealing, the main character  earns points which are displayed in the upper   right corner of the screen. However, successful  banditry increases your wanted level – the   same legendary stars. The more stars, the more  aggressively the police will pursue the player.  

Another way to get local currency is to complete  main missions. And although the game does not   force the player to complete missions, they  are necessary to open new cities. In general,   GTA is one of the first real gaming sandboxes, in  the sense that there are a lot of possibilities,  

But none of them are imposed on the  player. You could waste time walking,   swinging your fists, taking cars from people,  driving around the city, ramming other cars,   jumping from an unfinished bridge, riding subway  trains, shooting various weapons, punching people,  

Fighting with the police… In a word, having  fun on the streets, creating chaos and disorder.   You could also explore the city peacefully if  you really wanted to. And it was even possible   to meet a column of monks, when knocking  them down, the player received a kind of  

Achievement – GOURANGA! Basically, this is a  peculiar joke of the developers. For the Scots,   ramming the crowd of Krishnaites in those days  was an impossible dream, which turned out to   be possible to realize in the virtual world.  After all, it was a real sect that hung posters  

With the word GOURANGA around the city. Now about the main thing. Cars! The car   park in the cities was diverse – each had its own  taxis, police cars and other official and public   transport. Depending on the car you were driving  in, the radio played its own music. The drivers in  

The cars on the street were carefree robots,  given that they wanted to spit on everything   around them, especially when the shooting and  explosions started. However, the place of events   in GTA was nothing more than scenery for the  player’s entertainment. Dull and identical people  

Walked along the sidewalks. Some of them were  only capable of running away screaming in panic.   By the way, does this attitude towards  violence from DMA remind you of anything   It’s hard to see, but it’s possible. The same  DMA philosophy was used in Lemmings. For some,  

This is an unexpected turn, but this  is what the developers themselves say   But for all his criminal actions, the player did  not go unpunished. The police in GTA is one of the   key gameplay components, limiting the player in  his actions. To attract the police’s attention,  

It is enough to commit several crimes  killing a pedestrian, crashing other cars,   shooting on the street, or stealing a  vehicle. And for each such action, the   player’s level wanted by the police increases. The search indicator is actually the well-known  

Stars that appear in the right corner  of the screen. In the first part of GTA,   the highest wanted level was the fourth, at  which the police could block roads and use   machine guns against the player. If the player  fails to escape from the chase and is arrested,  

He ends up near the police station. And if the  player did not take the Prison Key bonus before,   then after the arrest he won’t have any weapons  and armor, and his points will be halved.   As of mid-1996, the game development was  almost complete. Finally, was it release  

Day Not at all. After all, in order for  GTA to become the phenomenon in the world   of computer games that it would later become,  the developers had to do some more work.   Game release Before finalizing the game,  

BMG were still concerned about the poor  quality of the graphics compared to other   games released in the same year. But this was not  the main problem. Many at the company predicted   that users might not pick up on the subtle  British humor that prevailed in the game.  

Possible hate from the audience  could have a bad effect on sales,   the company’s reputation and generally destroy the  future of DMA Design. Therefore, the BMG company,   knowing what awaited them, decided to hire a  PR man – Max Clifford [ˈklɪfərd] – to promote  

The game. Clifford had experience manipulating  the tabloids and creating scandals for publicity   at the behest of clients, often clashing with  conservative members of society. After all,   it was very convenient. The beginning of 1997.  People longed for something new and liberal,   and nobody wanted to listen to the  conservative grandfathers. But it  

Was conservative grandfathers who always  sat in power, or were great directors,   or simply had weight in the audience. Gary Dale [deɪl], the president of BMG,   set a major condition for Clifford to make sure  that BMG could properly serve the type of content  

Such as GTA to users. Nevertheless, violence there  was an integral part of the game, and this fact   was difficult to hide. Clifford’s strategy was  to make a big scandal in the media and in the   British government about the GTA release. Inset quote The plan was to create free  

Advertising that would ultimately encourage  young people to buy the product. We needed to   get the right people to believe that it was their  mission in life to denounce and express their   outrageous stance against GTA (Max Clifford) The idea was well received by the Houser brothers,  

But David Jones and DMA were very leery of  promoting Grand Theft Auto solely on the   basis of conflict. What if the game was banned  However, no one could stop the black PR machine.   Clifford had his contacts in the government,  with the help of which he spreaded information  

About the GTA. Some time later, on 20 May 1997,  five months before Grand Theft Auto was released,   Lord Gordon Campbell [ˈkæmbəl], Baron  Campbell of Croy, visited the House   of Lords of the United Kingdom to speak about  the violence in the game and what he believed,  

This computer game was a danger to the country’s  children and youth. The debate gripped the House,   with many Lords arguing that the game could not be  sold in the UK. Just imagine how far it went…   Well, it didn’t get to Elizabeth, although who  knows… The main thing is that it was decided  

That the British Board of Film Classification  – the government body responsible for the   classification of entertainment in the  United Kingdom – would evaluate Grand   Theft Auto and decide whether it could be sold. The debates in the House of Lords attracted the  

Attention of the media. The Daily Mail called it  a crime game that encourages you to be a thief   and listed the illegal actions the player could  perform. Other newspapers came out with similar   headlines and articles highlighting the bad  influence of Grand Theft Auto on youth. BMG were  

Satisfied with the consequences and results,  and gradually even DMA, who at the time were   simultaneously refining the controls and graphics  in the game, began to feel satisfaction.   To add to the controversy, Clifford bought airtime  on local radio and included excerpts from House of  

Lords debates on GTA. Clifford distributed fake  fines with the game’s logo in the city’s parking   lots, glued posters with a list of criminal  actions that the player could perform in GTA.   The British Council hired a psychologist from  the University of Nottingham [ˈnɑtɪŋˌhæm] to  

Study the game. His final verdict came shortly  before the game’s release date. The statement   said The violence of Grand Theft Auto  is ‘unprecedented’, but its sale is   not prohibited and it is classified as a product  recommended for people over the age of eighteen.  

It was a victory for the developers. BMG were  very pleased with the rating and results of the   campaign. According to Clifford’s estimates,  they reached about thirteen million people   through the controversy alone. Even though  GTA was age-restricted worldwide, the game   still caused similar banning controversies  in Germany and France, and Brazil banned the  

Sale of GTA in the country altogether. The game debuted in the UK and Europe   on November 28, 1997. BMG planned to  launch Grand Theft Auto in Great Britain,   then move to the United States, and there to  enter all other possible markets. Fittingly,  

The cover of Grand Theft Auto was a photo of  a 1980s Plymouth Gran Fury police car speeding   through the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56th  Street, with Trump Tower in the background.   Apparently, this is how BMG and DMA were  anticipating the conquest of America.  

Despite all the machinations and resonance,  Grand Theft Auto was not in great demand among   buyers. Sales were modest, but remained steady at  around 10,000 copies per week. To a large extent,   what BMG had hoped for happened. A bad reputation  is also a reputation. The main thing was that  

They talked about the game! People might not have  played GTA, but then everyone, regardless of age,   knew the acronym of these three letters. And it  was this that measured success, not the moderate   evaluations of gaming publications and critics. In the UK, GTA grossed around £25 million in sales  

In its first year, far exceeding the game’s  total budget, which consisted mostly of the   salaried development team. The game ended  up selling over a million copies worldwide,   bringing in millions in revenue for BMG.  This money was enough to order a sequel.  

And while DMA employees are pouring glasses of  champagne and celebrating the success of GTA,   before we continue this story, we would like to  remind you that you can thank us by liking this   video and writing a comment. Which part of  GTA do you like the most Your activity will  

Help the development of the channel and speed  up the release of new videos, so if you like   what we are doing – let us know about it in the  comments, thank us with a like, and we continue!   Rockstar North Apparently, the DMA studio would  

Have liked to celebrate the new game release for a  long time, but they did not manage to do this. No,   they did not rush to make the next parts  of GTA. Just in 1997 began one of the most  

Important processes in the history of DMA, the  BMG company, the development team and GTA itself.   Remember when Nintendo refused to release  Body Harvest because of the violence So then,   in 1997, Dave Jones sold the DMA Design  studio to Gremlin Interactive for £4.2  

Million. DMA was acquired by British publisher  Gremlin Interactive, and David Jones became   creative director of both companies. Gremlin  Interactive released two DMA projects – Body   Harvest and the PC version Wild Metal Country – a  tank arcade with very realistic physics. However,   later, in 1999, Gremlin Interactive bought  the French video game holding Infogrames  

(now Atari SA) paying 24 million pounds. However, focused on family games, Infogrames   was worried about the negative reaction to Grand  Theft Auto, so it quickly decided to get rid of   the studio. The fate of DMA hung in the air. Simultaneously, in March 1998, Take-Two acquired  

All the assets of BMG Interactive for 1.85  million shares (16% of Take-Two’s total shares),   worth approximately US$14.2 million. At that  time, DMA Design and BMG Entertainment had   already released Grand Theft Auto a year earlier.  And although it showed good financial results,  

It did not have a critical success in Europe. Therefore, seeing an opportunity to attract   attention to the game, the founder of Take-Two,  Ryan Brant [brænt], initiated the acquisition   of BMG in order to acquire the property of Grand  Theft Auto and at the same time contacted Sam and  

Dan Houser of BMG with an offer of cooperation. In  six months, the Houser brothers and two British,   Jamie King and Terry Donovan [ˈʤeɪmi kɪŋ ænd  ˈtɛri ˈdɑnəvən], create a subsidiary company,   Rockstar Games. Sam Houser became president of  Rockstar, and his brother became vice president  

Of the company. But to create the next GTA  series, a development studio was needed, right   And the corporation bought the DMA Design studio  from Atari (formerly Infogrames). At first,   the development company was called simply  Rockstar Studios, and then it received the  

Familiar name Rockstar North. After that,  DMA really ceased to exist in the form it   was in. After all, when the studio moved from  its native Dundee to the capital of Scotland,   Edinburgh [ˈɛdənbəroʊ], where it has been located  to this day, many people from the company had a  

Desire to leave it for one reason or another. Moreover, Take-Two Interactive began to buy a   large number of game studios, and rename them  after Rockstar, for example Rockstar Toronto,   Rockstar San Diego and others… But about  that another time. Our focus will now be  

On Rockstar North. After all, it was them who  developed all subsequent GTA games. That’s how,   in such a complicated and intricate way, a  legend of the world game industry was born.   Grand Theft Auto London (1999) The development team, which was now much larger,  

Began the development of the second part of GTA.  But first, two full-fledged additions to the first   part were released. Namely GTA London 1961 and  GTA London 1969 from Rockstar Toronto. Actually,   they were developed by new team members. But  there’s not much to tell about these additions,  

Because they were almost identical to the  original first part of the game … and they   were sold at the price of the original and  launched only if it was available. The only   interesting thing is that the map of the game was  created on the basis of London. The real London.  

Besides that, the expansion offered  players 32 completely new missions,   as well as a total of 30 new cars from the  relevant time period, including authentic red   buses. The gameplay was similar to the original  Grand Theft Auto, because the developers used the  

Same game engine. And missions, screensavers  and game sessions were presented in the same   form as in the first part of the game. If you look closer at the additions,   you can see that the setting gave the  developers the opportunity to add many  

References to the culture of the 60s in the game.  In particular, the appearance of the character,   reminiscent of James Bond, the use of music by  bands from the corresponding 60s, and slang with   a characteristic accent of the characters. The fact that everything remained unchanged  

From the original was both the main advantage  and disadvantage in GTA London. Therefore,   the additions were accepted by users  completely calmly. The Rockstar studio   also understood that and did not build  high expectations from these projects,   but instead they were actively working on a  full-fledged continuation of the series – GTA 2.  

Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) A little later, in the same 1999 year, something   really interesting happened. The studio released  Grand Theft Auto 2, which was ahead of its time   and even Cyberpunk 2077. Just look at this What is it Did the game have only one main  

Character instead of 8 versions of the same  pixelated one Just by downloading the game,   the player saw this dynamic cinematic splash  screen. In fact, for the promotion of the game   in New York, a full-fledged 8-minute short  video, from which they created the intro.  

Well… It seems that there was no main  character in the game. And who did people   play for then Well, jokes aside. At the  very beginning of the game, the player   finds himself in almost the same world of the  first GTA. Events develop in the near future,  

Characterized by the phrase three weeks later.  And here it is interesting to understand why,   almost 2 years after the release of the original  game, the developers are releasing the official   continuation of the series, so to speak, without  a fuss. At the same time, the new game looks like  

The old one, with minimal visual differences. Let’s start with why the second part of the game   came out two years later and was not as loud  as the first one. For the middle and late 90s,   such a time limit of game development was  considered quite long. Especially since  

Rockstar North did not make a completely new  game, but continued their work on the basis   of the first part. The team faced a big  question what should the sequel be about   Considering that before that there were  two additions from RockStar Canada,  

And they were received without much enthusiasm.  Then what What could interest the player if the   present is too cruel, and the past is not to their  liking. Of course, the answer was obvious – the   future. Somewhere, the idea was born to make  a game on the theme 5 minutes in the future,  

In the style of retro-futurism. True, this  futurism is a little different from the   introductory video we have seen at the beginning  of GTA 2. But we’ll consider this further.   The difficult part of the development,  according to Colin Anderson,  

Was to create a visual design for the idea of  5 minutes in the future – it was a real test   Stephen Banks, William Mills and Billy Thomson  [ˈstivən bæŋks, ˈwɪljəm mɪlz ænd ˈbɪli ˈtɑmsən]  

Should be thanked for the design in the game –  the concept art of the cars and weapons at the   development stage alone looked impressive. We  wish there was such a game with HD models now.   Of course, the process of inventing the conditions  for the existence of the GTA futuristic world took  

A lot of time. But there was another problem –  the fatigue and burnout of people who worked on   the first part. After its release, marketers  from Take-Two demanded from Rockstar North,   the release of the next GTA in a year. That is,  only a year to come up with what the continuation  

Of the series will be, and to do everything. From  Rockstar North’s side, this seemed crazy, but from   the marketers’ side, everything was obvious. The  first GTA was quite hyped, and hype is a matter   of time. Therefore, in order to leave at the  expense of the past advertising campaign, it was  

Necessary to quickly release something new. Due to this conflict of opportunities and   interests, the game release was delayed  for obvious reasons. The last 6-9 months   of development were a complete nightmare for  the team. Nevertheless, on October 22, 1999,  

The game was finally released. And surprisingly,  there was not a single news report on television   about the cruelty and immorality of GTA, which  violated all possible laws of humanity.   It’s easy to guess why. First, DMA and Take-Two  refused the services of the famous Max Clifford.  

Instead, they built an advertising campaign  based on a short film called “GTA 2 – The   Movie”. British actor Scott Maslen [skɑt ˈmæsələn]  played the lead role in it. By the way, the script   for the film was written by Dan Houser himself.  Maybe that’s why the short film was so far from  

The game itself The Housers have generally  had little involvement in the development,   although in the future Sam would be the executive  producer of the GTA series, and Dan would be a   producer and one of the scriptwriters  for almost all of Rockstar’s games.  

Returning to the topic of why the film  that advertised GTA differed from the game   itself – this question has long since passed  into the category of rhetoric. What is more   interesting is that on the cover of GTA 2, the art  that accompanied the game showed the city, people  

And environment as completely ordinary. There was  no hint of the game’s futurism, retro-futurism,   or any deviation from the look of the first game  on the packaging. And how should we react to it   Whether the number of main characters in the game  has changed is a controversial issue. After all,  

The character that the players see in the game  intro is called Claude Speed [klɔd spid]. He   runs several crime syndicates in the city,  but is soon killed. Events in GTA2 itself   generally take place in the future. Therefore,  the opening video is rather a kind of mood video,  

Created with the aim of introducing players to the  mood and atmosphere of the game. Anyway, now the   player doesn’t have the opportunity to choose  a character, as in the first part. But there   is an opportunity to write your own name in the  history of GTA, and play for the same character.  

So what new have we got In general, the GTA  concept has not changed until the second part.   The player also finds himself in a huge open city,  where he is offered either to entertain himself,   or to do tasks and errands from local gangs,  for which he can receive a reward. The most  

Noticeable change was the GTA setting. It was  generally the last time in the history of GTA   when the developers created a game that did not  correspond to the time in which it was located.   The game events take place in one big city called  “Anywhere City”. From the name to the design,  

The city looks like some sort of Cyberpunk,  only retro-futuristic. Anywhere City is divided   into three areas – Downtown, Residential and  Industrial, which players will switch between   as they progress through the game… Pretty much  the same as in the first part between the cities.  

The city is inhabited by bandits similar  to those in the original game. By the way,   the Krishnaites, whom the players successfully  distributed in the first part and received   the GOURANGA achievement, have become a  full-fledged element of the bandit ecosystem.  

And the main innovation that came with gangs  is the reputation system. By completing various   missions and assignments for certain fractions,  you improve your relationship with them and   quarrel with their enemies. And you also open  access to more complex tasks, which, of course,  

Pay more. Because the main goal remains the same  – just to earn as much money as possible. There   were a total of seven criminal groups in the game.  With characteristic weapons, a certain habitat,   appearance, nature of tasks and unique cars. By the way, cars. Basically, it is worth thanking  

RockStar – the game has become much more pleasant  to look at and feel. Square chopped pixels gave   way to smooth and pleasing eye sprites. The  cars’ physics has become more sensitive,   and the character’s movement is smoother.  In general, while maintaining the general  

Hardcore spirit, with the ability to die  almost with one shot on the character,   the game process has become much more  fun. Other factors contributed to this,   for example, the general revitalization of NPC  artificial intelligence. People in Anywhere City,  

Unlike their ancestors from GTA 1, know not only  how to stupidly panic when someone opens fire.   Someone is in a hurry somewhere, someone takes  wallets, some can even steal cars. Simple robbers   also appear here, and gang members are not shy  to sometimes attack police officers. And this  

Is nothing compared with what is to come. In fact, it looks like Rockstar have done   extensive work on the psyche of all  the inhabitants of “Anywhere City”   We are getting acquainted with the futuristic  world of Anywhere City for the first time,  

So maybe this is its usual state, or maybe  DMA decided to really have fun and thus create   something unusual. The average temperature of  absurdity in GTA 2 is quite high. For example,   sometimes people on the streets without the  player’s help start acting out some scenes,  

Fight, shout, get in and out of cars. But  that’s half the trouble. At the same time,   all kinds of former regulars of the local  mental hospital and mad scientists roam the   city. And in addition, mafia bosses regularly  give the player strange tasks such as blow up  

A radio station that drives people crazy or,  conversely, destroy the cure for insanity.   In contrast to this mass psychosis and insanity,  the DMA improved the law and order system. Two   more were added to the maximum four levels  of wanted. There were also special forces,  

Armed better than ordinary policemen. And in the  worst scenario, the National Guard with tanks and   other equipment was sent after the riotous player.  The player’s arsenal had also been replenished!   Shooting someone was now possible with the help of  new double pistols, grenades, molotov cocktails,  

As well as a futuristic electric cannon. And all  this in addition to already existing weapons.   And the main thing was music. It was now possible  to arrange Armageddon under new music. Considering   the fact that the same people were responsible  for the game music design as last time, that is,  

Colin Anderson, Craig Conner and others, the  radio in GTA 2 became a platform for all the   ideas that were not implemented in the first part.  The number of radio stations has increased to 11.   Drum and Bass, Acid Techno and Christian Pop have  appeared in the game. A certain DJ of increased  

Inadequacy was constantly playing on the radio.  By the way, it was in the second part of GTA,   for the first time in the series, that advertising  breaks and jingles appeared on the radio. And the   radio stations themselves became not just  a sound accompaniment in the background,  

But received a full reflection in  the game, like buildings on the map.   As a result, thanks to a fairly accurate  understanding of what prevented people from   loving the first GTA, the sequel received an  even warmer reception than the original! GTA 2  

Received several ports on popular platforms, the  versions of the game differed. The main one was   the PC version, with a full set of features and  high-quality graphics. The Playstation version has   reduced graphics quality and lack of some gameplay  features. For example, the console did not support  

Night in “Anywhere City”, while in the PC version,  the player could play in night game time and day   time. GTA 2 was also ported to the Game Boy Color,  which could only be distinguished from the GTA1   port upon very close inspection. The Playstation  and Game Boy Color versions of the game are  

Rated T (Teen) by the ESRB. That is, these two  versions were available for teenagers aged 13   and over. Which makes these two GTA 2 ports the  only ones with such a rating in GTA history.   At the time of release, GTA 2 had a relatively  modest circulation of about 250,000 copies, but  

It soon earned the title of one of the best games  on the PS1! Of course, no one will compare it with   Resident Evil, about which you can find a separate  video on our channel. The main thing is that  

Almost no one tried to criticize the second part  of GTA for cruelty and violence. Maybe because the   game was not particularly cruel. The game graphics  were generally notable for their softness.   Already years later, among players and fans of the  series, the second part of GTA acquired the status  

Of one of the most controversial parts of GTA. But that was a completely different story,   to which we’d return very soon. Summing up, at the end of the 20th century,   GTA became a subject of discussion and a driving  force of change in the world of computer games.  

Thanks to Grand Theft Auto, game producers and  developers began to pay much more attention to   music in the game. GTA was the first game that  featured its own full-fledged radio, which   later even featured advertisements for fictional  local brands. Writing an original soundtrack for  

Computer games has not just become the norm.  It started to gain popularity among famous   music artists and nowadays making music for video  games is considered as cool as it is for movies.   Developers from DMA Design gave players complete  freedom of action for the first time and showed  

That the player can be anyone! It was in GTA  that the player first came as a protagonist,   a criminal who had to break the  existing laws in real life. After all,   the player had to fight with the thieves in  order to lead them (The principle from zero  

To hero will be fixed in the basis of the series  forever). But the fact remains that a negative   character was at the center of the story… And  almost every child wanted to become him. GTA   showed all modern game designers that games are  just games, and that there is a gray morality.  

Already in 1999, Grand Theft Auto was a  full-fledged portal to the real world…   Where real DJs and game developers played on  an almost real radio, who sometimes broke the   fourth wall between the player and the game,  commenting on the events on the screen. Where  

In an almost real city it was possible to break  very real rules and laws. And most importantly,   it was absolutely safe to spend some time in the  shoes of a real criminal. After the GTA release,   many game studios tried to make a game with  similar freedom of action. Therefore, it is not  

Surprising that Grand Theft Auto has become a real  phenomenon. Millions of fans around the world are   still dreaming about the new part of the game. The 2D era of GTA has come to an end, but in   the history of the development of the Rockstar  company and the series itself, it was only the  

Beginning – the road to an unparalleled 3D future.  We’ll talk about the ups and downs of the GTA   series and the Rockstar studio in the next part of  the video. And while we are preparing the sequel,   you can watch our other video, which has now  appeared on your screen. Thank you for watching  

This video to the end. Do not forget to support  us by subscribing to the channel and clicking   the bell so as not to miss the release of new  videos. We are already working on something   very interesting for you, but that’s all  for today. It was PressX. Till next time!