Unemployment, drugs and concrete. In the 1990s, the Scottish city of Dundee didn't have much to be happy about. Few would have guessed that one of the world's biggest entertainment products would have its beginnings there.
What put the city on the map, however, was "Lemmings", about little characters who wandered along a path towards certain death. The game prompted Brian Baglow to apply to DMA Design.
I applied for a job with a CV full of the most outrageous lies - and they offered me the role of scriptwriter, he says of his start in the industry.
The "Bonnie and Clyde"-inspired story in "GTA VI" revolves around the main characters Lucia and Jason, whose relationship players can choose to develop. Press image.
One of the projects was "Race 'n' Chase". The idea was that you, as a police officer, would drive around the city - seen from above - and stop criminals. The problem was that it was boring.
You drove around very safely, stopped for red lights. It was like being a driving instructor.
It was only after heated discussions - and sometimes arguments - that someone came up with the idea: what if you were the villain instead? Suddenly, the game became fun.
So we continued down that path and changed the name to “Grand Theft Auto” instead, says Baglow.
“Grand Theft of Motor Vehicles”, as the American crime classification goes, became the defining feature of the series: pulling the driver out of the car and pushing the pedal to the metal.
Ten or twelve people in Dundee, including Baglow, laid the foundation for the phenomenon.
Lots of games had explosions and you shot people. But this was one of the first games where it was stated from the beginning that you are a criminal committing crimes.
The so-called “Gen Z,” defined by Newzoo as those born between 1995 and 2009, makes up 42 percent of the “GTA” player base today. For most of them, “GTA VI” will be the first release where they can be part of the game from the start. Press image.
The satire, humor and violence were there from the start. Baglow came up with the idea of rewarding the player for running over an entire train of orange-clad Hare Krishna followers. But controversy was not an end in itself, he believes.
Most of the time when we were working, the game was broken - it didn’t work. So the question we asked ourselves wasn’t: “how do we make this more controversial”.
“It was magic”
In 1997, games were mostly seen as something for children. Before the release, British politicians were quietly tipped off in the hope of making them furious. The PR stunt worked. “GTA” got its black headlines, but also a growing audience. Where games usually ended up in the bargain bin after a few weeks, “GTA” continued to sell month after month.
The game was followed up with the not-so-successful “GTA 2” a year later. DMA was bought by the American company Take-Two, which ran its new studio, Rockstar, from New York. The Dundee office moved to Edinburgh and began sketching out a three-dimensional “GTA”.
It was a very chaotic time, and there was no good plan for it, says Obbe Vermeij, who moved from the Netherlands to start as a programmer.
But the new team became a group of friends.
It was magical, because everyone knew each other, no one had children, so we all went out together.
Seeing the New York-inspired Liberty City from street level was a modern touch. Cut scenes moved the story forward. Optional missions, some of them legal, contributed to the sense of freedom that came to define “GTA”.
“Ridiculous” outrage
Critics took note of the fact that the player could pick up a prostitute in the car and then run her over to get the money back.
There was a moral panic. In Australia, the game was initially banned outright, and opponents drew links to school shootings and terrorism.
The enormous, Miami-inspired "Vice City" depicted in "GTA VI" took eight years to carve out by thousands of developers in offices on four continents. Press image.
We were just trying to make a gangster game. And looking back, I think we were right. Because it's ridiculous that people were so upset about "GTA," says Vermeij.
"GTA III" was quickly followed by the acclaimed "Vice City", set in 1980s Miami, and "San Andreas", set in 1990s California.
"GTA IV" followed in 2008 and follows an immigrant in Liberty City. The New York office had taken over primary responsibility for the story.
We had grown from maybe 15 people in Edinburgh at the start of "GTA III" to around 200 by the end of "GTA IV," says Obbe Vermeij.
You could share an elevator with someone working on the same game without knowing who it was.
The fact that we had given up a lot of control contributed to the fact that I didn't enjoy working on "GTA IV" as much, he says.
“Frankenstein’s Monster”
Filmmaker Joe Rubino had mainly worked in advertising when he stepped into the Rockstar office in New York in 2010. “GTA V” was in its infancy, and the ambitions were big: three main characters, a huge playing area and a massive online mode.
We knew we were doing something special right from the start, he says.
Rockstar has created more different body types, including height and weight, in “GTA VI” than in any of the studio’s previous games, according to developer interviews in . Press image.
“GTA V” was released in September 2013 and sold $1 billion worth of copies in three days.
Thirteen years later, 16 million console players play the game every month, according to the analytics company Newzoo, the vast majority of them probably online.
None of us thought it would do as well as it did. We knew people would have fun with it, but it ended up being like a kind of Frankenstein’s monster - but in a good way, says Rubino.
After the western epic “Red Dead Redemption 2” in 2018, production on “GTA VI” began. This year, the number of developers at Rockstar surpassed 4,000, not counting consultants and subcontractors.
Few studios in the world can have thousands of developers working on the same game for eight years. What makes it possible is “GTA”’s online mode, which, according to a leak, generates more than $1 million every day.
Brian Baglow, Obbe Vermeij and Joe Rubino, three former developers at Rockstar.
Not wanting to compete
“GTA VI” is being described as the biggest entertainment launch in history - so big that other developers are avoiding their own releases in late fall, according to Newzoo.
I think this is the last epic made entirely by humans. We're at the end of that era. I don't think you're going to need 5,000 employees to make a game going forward, Rubino says.
Brian Baglow should be on the lookout for traces of his own pen in "VI."
Yeah, damn it! I'm going to comb through it to see if they're recycling something I wrote almost 30 years ago. I can't take credit for it anymore, of course, but it's exciting to have played a small part in bringing this to life.
The number of developers is based on information from interviewees to TT, as well as estimates. From 2018, the number of developers applies to the entire Rockstar (via Bloomberg). Sales figures from Newzoo, Take-Two documents and Sensor Tower (pre-orders).
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