Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Grand Theft Auto 1, and not everyone was convinced the series had a future in 1997. GTA was chosen as the “expensive” project. From developers at DMA Design (the studio now known as Rockstar North). Currently, GTA Online alone (opens in a new tab) makes $500 million a year. I think hindsight is 20/20.
A former DMA developer who joined the company months before GTA 1 was released. Apparently, the mood in the studio was pretty bleak, at least as far as GTA is concerned. “Midway through development, the game was not clear in which direction it was going. It was also so buggy that I couldn’t play it for more than a few minutes without crashing,” said McDonald. Players might suggest that not much has changed – and “basically there wasn’t much faith in [GTA.1]” periods.
McDonald said that by the time he joined, the mood in the office had really started to pick up as GTA was almost finished and the team was “really really happy that it did.”
To be fair to DMA, the developer wasn’t trying to dump their GTA in the history trash. Instead, they were eager to start GTA 2 from scratch and avoid the pitfalls and frustrations that made developing the first game such a daunting swamp. It’s no exaggeration to say that no one believed you when you said you would become a gravity-bending, light-bending giant.