The Origin of Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto is a mammoth francise today with it's latest installment making millions worldwide! So who would have known about how the company making the first game was small and struggling? Who would have known how this game would throw itself into the line of fire and almost irreversibly change the British video game market? You will soon!

DMA Design, a small and struggling development company, were working on the game "Race'n'Chase", a game where the player could either play as a police officer or criminal. The game was set for a release on the MS-DOS, N64, SEGA Saturn, Windows 95 and PS1. However, during development they hit a snag with their game, they realised the game was no fun as the police officer. As the criminal you could do whatever you wanted but as the officer you had to fill in reports and the game became less of an open world experience. They decided to scrap the officer mode and focused on the criminals but they still needed publicity, something DMA just weren't getting. This is when they pulled an immensely risky move...

They turned to publicist Max Clifford who created one the most famous headlines in British Tabloid history "Freddie Starr ate my hamster". Freddie Starr didn't really eat a hamster but for the next few weeks he was a household name and everyone was talking about him. It's no wonder DMA turned to him for support. He was very good at constructing stories to stir up controversy and predict how far it will go. The game, now known as Grand Theft Auto rather than Race'n'Chase, took this to another level. Rather than just making Grand Theft Auto a household name Max took it to a whole new level. The game stirred up so much anti gaming groups to band together that Grand Theft Auto was taken to British Parliament for not only its survival but also the entire concept of violence in video games. So in order to get some more publicity the game was almost pulled from shelves in the UK before it was even released.

That's just one example of video games causing controversy to sell more games, Akklaim were notorius for this with their plans of putting game adverts on head stones. People would be paid to put gaming adverts on their gravestones! Or their plans to tie gaming adverts to birds and have them interrupt Wimbledon for their upcoming Tennis game! But Grand Theft Auto would have had the biggest implications to the game market as we know it today if Max had made even the smallest of miscalculations. It's strange to think of a world without these games today but each and every one of them (almost) is under constant fire from all directions. Groups set up to fight against video games as a whole and even fellow players taking a stand against the industry. Maybe there will be a time when these games can be enjoyed without seeing news stories of how these games have been linked to violent behaviour. We're not there yet and maybe if development companies keep doing this will we ever be away from this? Maybe not but it's still cool to see what companies do to advertise their games!

#grandtheftauto #DMA #rockstarnorth