25 years ago, on October 22, 2001, Grand Theft Auto III was released.
This is the team that made it. (I'm second from the right)
Here's what I remember about making it.
For most of development, GTA3 was in a sorry state. It crashed frequently, the frame rate was terrible and the map was full of holes. Only in the last six months did everything come together.
For the longest time, it looked like the frame rate was going to be 20 fps. Only in the final months did we manage to hit 30.
In 1999, DMA Design, based in Dundee, Scotland, was going through some changes. The company had recently been bought by Take-Two Interactive, and a satellite office had opened in Edinburgh.
Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64 had been finished in 1998, but there was no new project lined up. Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut started working on GTA3. Unprompted.
Meanwhile, the original GTA1 and GTA2 team had started work on GTA2.5, set in Miami. It was called 2.5 because it used the 2.5D (isometric) perspective.
In March 2000, the Dundee office was closed and GTA2.5 was cancelled. Take-Two/Rockstar gave GTA3 the green light.
Everything was written from scratch. Only two people worked on both GTA2 and GTA3, and no code or art from GTA2 was reused.
The way we worked was organic. People would come up with ideas for missions and we'd just try them. If they were fun, they were in. The story was secondary. In fact, the opening plot involving Catalina trying to kill Claude was added well into development.
Leslie Benzies (the producer) plastered a wall in the boardroom with Post-it notes. They were yellow, green and pink, representing missions, contacts and locations.
Missions were moved around all the time, often handed from one contact to another. Only once the voice acting was recorded were these things set in stone.
You sometimes come across locations on the map that are more detailed than you'd expect. Chances are there used to be a mission contact there that got moved elsewhere.
Working on GTA3 was a lot of fun. Every day there was something new going in. A new mission, radio station, car, pedestrian, building or whatever. The game was growing at an incredible rate.
Other than the multiplayer mode we did some work on, I can’t remember a lot of wastage.
Although everybody worked hard, I don't remember many people doing crazy hours. On the rare occasions I was in over the weekend, there were usually only one or two others. Even during crunch time, most people left the office around 9 or 10 in the evening.
I always thought it was better to work eight focused hours than spend your life in the office.
Although we liked the game, it wasn't at all clear that it would be a hit.
GTA3 had a disappointing showing at E3 in May 2001. Most people weren't interested, and those who were thought it was too violent.
It had an OK launch, but sales never tapered off.
Our office was in Leith, Edinburgh. It was a fairly run-down neighbourhood at the time. Just a couple of years before we arrived, J.K. Rowling had been writing the first Harry Potter in that very same neighbourhood.
The thing I remember most is the camaraderie. In a small team, everybody relies on each other and everybody has a lot of input. Most of us were young and had only recently moved to Edinburgh. We went to the pub together.
It felt like a group of friends who happened to be working on a project together.
