This week Rockstar Games announced it would release the trailer for the much-anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI in December. From humble beginnings, GTA has become arguably the most valuable media franchise on the planet. This is the story of how Scotland brought the video game dynasty to the world.
The foundation for what would become the most famous video game franchise in the world was laid on Old Glamis Road in the unlikely setting of the Kingsway Technical College, at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club. It was there in 1984 that the original members of DMA Design, a small Dundee tech startup, Dave Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly, all teenagers, met and quickly became friends.
Mr Jones had used the money he’d been given as a redundancy package after being laid off from his job as an electrical engineer at Timex to invest in an Amiga 1000, by far the most advanced system any of the four could boast, and impressed the others by running games like Defender of the Crown, which appeared impossibly futuristic to the trio.
All four of the group were interested in creating games as well as playing them, with Kay and Jones developing Moonshadow, a sci-fi shooter which would later be released as Zone Trooper, Dailly working with Hammond on Freek Out and Jones and Dailly collaborating on The Game With No Name, which featured a rotating eye which could shoot missiles in eight directions.
The club where the founders met is immortalised in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as the military fuel depot K.A.C.C.
By early 1987 Jones was at the Dundee College of Technology – now Abertay University – and keen to find a commercial release for a game called Draconia he’d been working on with fellow student Tony Smith. Working out of his parent’s bedroom, he worked on the shooter in his spare time under the developer name Acme.
Having rejected an offer from Hewson Consultants, he decided to set up his own company – the Timex money once again coming in handy – and with Acme already taken DMA Design was born. The moniker was inspired by ‘direct memory access’, though the entrepreneur would later tell journalists it stood for Doesn’t Mean Anything. Draconia was released as Menace in 1988, selling 20,000 copies with a profit of £1 on each one which was enough to fund further games and the purchase of a Vauxhall Astra.
In 1989 Dailly became DMA’s first official employee – with Hammond the second on a part-time basis as he split his time between college and video game design - and two years later the studio had its first bona fide hit. Made by Kay, Dailly and Jones – Hammond’s levels were deemed ‘too easy’ – Lemmings involved guiding anthropomorphised versions of the titular creatures through various perilous landscapes, while they find various ways of trying to do away with themselves. An instant hit on the Amiga – it sold 55,000 copies on day of release – the game was ported to other consoles – Hammond having a huge role in this process – and went on to sell more than 20 million copies.
Read More: Why Scotland’s bizarre silence on our genius at video games does not compute
A crucial aspect of the game – and one which would carry over to Grand Theft Auto and similar behemoths by Rockstar – was that there was no one way to complete a level, with players encouraged to use their own ingenuity to find a way to advance to the next.
In that spirit, DMA began designing a game called Race and Chase in which players could decide whether they wanted to play as police officers or criminals. Development began in 1995, by which point DMA was employing 40 people at Dundee’s technology.
Inspired by a game called Clockwork Knight on the Sega Saturn, Dailly designed a game engine based on blocks which were “glued together” which, viewed from the top down, could mimic the layout of an American city neighbourhood.
It quickly emerged, as Dailly told The Guardian in 2013, that “no-one wanted to play as the cops” so Race and Chase was overhauled. Players would start out as a petty criminal and aim to cause as much death and destruction as possible, accumulate wealth and make shady business trades to become a criminal kingpin. Grand Theft Auto was born.
Much as Tommy Vercetti – the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - doesn’t become kingpin of Rockstar’s Miami analogue overnight, development of the first instalment in the series was not easy.
Keen to recreate – and satirise – their favourite mob movies, the writers would dream up complex, intricate scenarios which the coders, limited by the technology of the time, would dismiss as “f*****g mental”. Early demos would crash at the drop of a hat, consoles struggled with the amount of memory required and numerous deadlines were missed. Creative director Gary Penn has said repeatedly that the project was on the verge of being scrapped on a seemingly weekly basis.
When Grand Theft Auto was eventually released in November 1997 it received a lukewarm reception from critics, who lamented the “shoddy” graphics and aspects of the game engine which didn’t work properly. With the public though it was a hit, selling a million copies in its first year – with a little help from the media outrage machine.
Max Clifford, the PR guru hired to promote the game, who was later disgraced and uncovered as a sex pest, pledged to “feed these stories into the ear of a lord somewhere, that there’s this game developed in Scotland which is utterly despicable”, recounts David Kushner in Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto.
Lord Campbell of Croy, the former Scottish secretary, duly raised the issue in the House and the outrage followed. The Daily Mail called it a “criminal computer game that glorifies hit-and-run thugs”, the Scottish Motor Trade Association branded it “deplorable”, while a group called Family and Youth Concern warned it would “make children think it is OK to rob cars and kill”. It was banned altogether in Brazil.
The headlines, of course, did nothing more than pique the curiosity of teenagers and young adults across the UK and the world and Grand Theft Auto soon became a must-have game, despite its flaws.
Following the release of the game DMA was bought over by Gremlin Studios, which was in turn taken over by French developer Infogrames. Grand Theft Auto 2 introduced several new features – as well as improvements to the game engine – but drew criticism for having largely the same graphics as the first. It was, however, even more of a commercial success than its predecessor and a key reason for yet another takeover.
Shortly after the release of GTA2, Take Two Interactive announced the $11m acquisition of DMA Design, which was folded into its subsidiary Rockstar as Rockstar North. With big budget backing, Grand Theft Auto III was developed between Dundee and New York and brought a fully 3D world to the series for the first time. Its open world style finally allowed developers to indulge their crime flick fantasies. It was an instant revolution, and today is frequently cited as one of the best and most important video games ever made.
GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas followed in short order, with the latter becoming the biggest-selling video game of all time. Rockstar North continued to court controversy, with 2003’s Manhunt banned in several countries and even linked to the murder of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah by his 17-year-old friend Warren Leblanc, though this was later dismissed by the courts.
Today Grand Theft Auto is touted as the biggest entertainment product on the planet. The last edition has sold close to 200million copies to date, taking over $8bn in revenue, while Rockstar North has been involved in some of the most highly-regarded prestige games ever made.
L.A Noire, a detective adventure set in 1940s Los Angeles, expanded the studio’s filmic palette beyond gangster films, with Rockstar also exploring the Western genre in the sprawling, epic Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, both of which are frequently cited as examples of the video game as art and a medium for genuine, impactful storytelling.
As for Grand Theft Auto VI, not much is known of it save for what emerged in a 2022 leak of some very rough footage. It will be set partially in a reworked Vice City, will feature the series’ first ever playable female character and looks set for release some time in late 2024 or early 2025.
The finished product is sure to be a long way from the 2D world of the original, but the series has never lost its Scottish influence. In GTAIV the world’s stock market is named the BAWSAQ, while in GTAIII the city’s airport features a statue with a cone on its head and Leith as a destination on the departure board.
A fictional Scottish metal band, Love Fist, features in Vice City with one member wearing an Argentina shirt in homage to Dundee star Claudio Caniggia, San Andreas has racehorses with names such as ‘Neigh Bother’ and ‘Dundee Ned’.
The most recent edition packed in more Scottish references than ever before. As well as the BAWSAQ there’s a ship called Dignity moored in the harbour, a tyre firm named Saul Tires, an ice cream parlour called The Sundae Post and a Greek restaurant called Gyro Day.
Perhaps the best of all though remains that fuel depot in San Andreas, calling back to those early days at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club.
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