How chaotic gang of British ‘geeks’ launched one of most lucrative gaming franchises of all time
By Brad Young, Money feature writer
It took “soul-destroying” hours late into the night for a dozen inexperienced programmers like Keith Hamilton to meet the July deadline.
The DMA Design staff, all “geeks” in their early twenties, were surrounded by a chaotic scene of maps, sound systems and hefty beige computer monitors typical of 1997.
They had done no market research and no focus testing, but from an unremarkable industrial estate in Dundee, Keith and his team were about to launch one of the most successful video game franchises of all time: Grand Theft Auto.
“Disorganised chaos. Looking back on it, it’s amazing how we actually came together and finished a game,” Keith, now 55, remembers. He led the team responsible for coding GTA and GTA II.
“You’d be shocked if you saw it now – but it worked.”
Years of waiting for next game – in series worth billions
The GTA series has sold 430 million copies, with its most recent edition, GTA V, reportedly becoming the third most popular game of all time, beaten only by Minecraft and Tetris.
There were 15 editions released between 1997 and 2013, followed by 12 years of silence.
But now the wait is almost over, with publisher Rockstar promising the launch of GTA VI this autumn. So far, there’s only been one trailer – published 16 months ago.
“It’s getting ridiculous how long it’s been since the last one,” Keith says.
“They really have to get something out, so they will be under a lot of pressure because the value, the importance of GTA to the parent company, Take-Two, is gigantic. It’s billions.”
In fact, the last game in the franchise is the most profitable entertainment release ever – of all time – in any medium.
So its success now goes well beyond the world of video games.
How first game changed the industry
The first GTA marked a turning point for the entire industry by simulating a working city; an open-world game which didn’t stop when the player sat still, but carried on without them.
The game wasn’t fantasy, or science fiction or military – instead it allowed players to play as themselves and do what would be immoral or illegal in real life.
That didn’t go unnoticed.
Former Conservative peer Lord Gordon Campbell asked the Home Office at the time: “Is it true, as reported, that that game includes thefts of cars, joyriding, hit-and-run accidents, and being chased by the police, and that there will be nothing to stop children from buying it?”
The controversy only boosted the game’s reach, Keith remembers, with gamers feeling “a bit subversive in playing it”.
“There’s a whole cultural aspect to it that we never intended.”
GTA III came with ‘biggest technical jump’
These core aspects of the first game have been essential to the franchise’s continued success, Keith thinks.
“In terms of the design, they stuck to it quite closely, really. The basic structure of the game is the same.”
There were, of course, massive upgrades, Keith said.
GTA III would revolutionise the industry once again, removing separate levels from the game and expanding the world into huge, interconnected, 3D cities.
What Keith calls the “biggest technical jump” of the series saw the world loaded from a DVD in real time as the player moved, rather than from computer memory, meaning the size of the cities was only limited by the amount of time developers wanted to spend designing it.
It became the second-best-selling game of 2001 in the UK and stayed in the top three the next year – alongside its best-selling sequel, GTA: Vice City.
Multiplayer GTA V took profits to record-breaking level
GTA: San Andreas was another best-seller in 2004.
But all these prior editions pale in comparison, statistically, when up against GTA V.
It was among the top five best-selling video games in the UK for five years running after it was released in 2013.
But its success goes beyond video games.
GTA 5 was the fastest entertainment release – from any medium – to reach $1bn in retail sales.
“It’s great to see something made in Scotland competing on a world stage. I think that’s a really important thing,” Keith says.
One of the keys to its success was how it introduced multiplayer to the role-playing experience, allowing 30 players to enter an island full of cities and complete heists, fight each other and build custom race tracks.
“That’s a massive difference in GTA 5,” Keith explains. And quite the step up from 1997, when four GTA players could huddle around a dial-up modem for two game modes: race or deathmatch.
It’s online play that has kept fans interested and – crucially – invested in the 12 years of waiting for GTA VI.
Over those years, GTA V has earned Rockstar and Take-Two billions more than that initial $1bn – making it the most profitable entertainment release ever, at least as of 2018.
Goal to ‘push the limits’ with long-awaited GTA VI
Much of GTA VI is still shrouded in mystery.
Friends at publisher Rockstar won’t even spill their secrets to Keith.
Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games, said in December the sequel will “push the limits of what’s possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences”.
In February 2022, Rockstar tweeted: “Our goal is always to significantly move beyond what we’ve previously delivered.”
The game itself will already be finished, Keith says. Staff will be “working all hours” trying to fix increasingly complicated bugs.
“The pressure will be on the development team right now, I don’t envy them that.
“I’m hoping they’re not stuck in that sort of scenario for too long because that becomes soul destroying. You lose your family life and everything.”
What Keith wants from next game
Each day will likely begin with a meeting analysing the results of play tests, where the development team will decide which bugs to fix and which fixes could risk introducing bigger bugs.
“That sort of call will be going on all the time right now. They’ll be desperately playing the game, coming across some bug that’s horrifically difficult to fix,” Keith explains.
He says he wants to see more freedom and a more complex working city in this edition, with more consequences attached to player actions rather than more tasks fed to them.
But one thing remains paramount to GTA’s success, in Keith’s view.
“It’s important not to lose the sense of fun,” he says.
