The History of Grand Theft Auto

[Applause] [Music] of all the video games series that have made their mark on the industry few have elicited as many disparate reactions as Grand Theft Auto to some the series is the apex of interactive media the ultimate expression of virtual freedom and the cathartic chaos that this freedom can result in to others it's one of the biggest smoking guns behind all of the misanthropy and violence present in today's youth in addition to being a vile and artless product in its own right if there's one aspect that nearly everyone agrees on its that grand theft auto is among the most successful properties in the history of its medium in the two decades that it's graced consoles handhelds and PCs the open-world series has remained a fixture on most sales charts with its most recent entry Grand Theft Auto 5 having generated more revenue by itself than most franchises managed to over their entire lifetime to most gamers today this thoroughness with which the series currently dominates the industry is as normal as Mario is Italian yet to those that have been paying attention to it since its inception it's still a mighty impressive feat for up until the late 2000s a day didn't seem to go by with a series wasn't embroiled in some sort of scandal created by its most egregious detractors or it's very own developers this is the history of grand theft auto [Music] [Music] to see your men few aspects are as emblematic of Grand Theft Auto as its setting while each of the open world series metropolis has explored different time periods and motifs almost all of them take place in an exaggerated yet earnest rendition of the United States a hollywood-esque interpretation of the land of the free where breakneck car chases and high rolling debauchery permeate every city block however well a great deal of the research and development that goes into creating its vision of America currently takes place within the country's borders this vision first took root well outside of them at a development studio in Dundee Scotland named DMA design founded in 1987 by David Jones an enterprising young coder who aspired to make the slickest games his skills could muster DMA got its start developing side-scrolling shooters and ports of reflection Interactive's shadow of the beast before coming into its own with the release of lemmings in 1991 a puzzle based platformer in which the player guides groups of human like critters through a host of obstacle Laden levels lemmings proved a gigantic hit selling over 15 million copies and establishing DMA as a developer worthy of recognition almost overnight the studio would go on to port their breakout title to seemingly every platform Under the Sun in the decade that would follow as well as release a litany of sequels to it yet it would also continue to develop its share of original concepts including universe a stunt based racing game starring riderless unicycles and a science-fiction themed role-playing game titled higher guns all of these post lemmings projects presented their share of challenges throughout their creation yet in the end none proved as difficult to develop as race and chase originally conceived by dmas chief creatives as a virtual version of cops and robbers race and chase became better known for being a virtual checklist of problem throughout much of its development its engine crashed constantly it's cars handled poorly and perhaps most significantly it simply wasn't fun we're previous car based action games like APB brimmed with speed and a puerile sense of excitement DMAs felt slow and bland its maps which took players through the municipalities of Liberty City Vice City and San Andreas standings for New York Miami and San Francisco respectively we're all impressively detailed with both people and cars alike moseying through their streets in a highly lifelike manner but this level of detail amounted to it feeling more like a driving simulator than a high-octane action game it was around this time that Jones and the rest of DMA design became acquainted with Sam and dan Houser London born rebels with a passion for Def Jam Recordings and the lifestyle is music typifies the Hauser's had both managed in their 20s to score themselves jobs at BMG helping oversee the development and publication of various video games within the company's NASA technologies division BMG interactive both believed that the medium represented an exciting and overlooked part of pop culture and were more than happy to be able to play a part in its proliferation but it wasn't until DMA approached them with a demo of racing chase that they found a project to truly champion while they were as disenchanted with his problems as its own creators they both sense that underneath its ugly exterior DNA's driving title held considerable potential and agreed to help see it to release for months afterward DMA and the Hauser's struggled to try and turn race and chase into a game that all would be proud of exchanging new bills and feedback on how to improve it on a frequent basis yet failing all the while to figure out how to make it fun many within both parties began to fear that if things didn't turn around soon their game would face the chopping block until one day its design took a turn none had planned for [Applause] [Music] in a 2011 interview with Gamasutra gary penn who at the time was serving as das creative director revealed that an unexpected programming error subtly resulted in all of the games police cars becoming increasingly aggressive with them attempting to ram into the player instead of pulling them over everyone almost immediately fell in love with the chaos it resulted in and quickly came to realize that it would be much more fun if they made its environments encourage this naturally restrictions were removed objectives were twisted and within a relatively short period of time race and chase was transformed into a radically different experience one in which running over pedestrians or hijacking their cars was valued over abiding by the rules of the road what had previously been a game of cops and robbers was now a game of robbers and [ __ ] a game that everyone agreed deserved a name that better reflected this change Grand Theft Auto there was now just one last issue that needed to be dealt with before the game arrived on store shelves it's marketing despite being set in America Grand Theft Auto was to release in the United Kingdom first and many within BMG were concerned that it was going to have an uphill battle to reach the masses if it wasn't advertised write as much fun as it provided its gameplay wasn't going to be to everyone's tastes and its graphics were going to be a hard sell to players that had become enchanted by three-dimensional experiences like super mario 64 and tomb raider which had blown up in popularity over the course of its development as a result in order to ensure that the game didn't go overlooked upon its release BMG Interactive enlisted the services of Max Clifford a tabloid mogul Clifford had proved himself a mastermind many times prior in manipulating public opinion using outrageous headlines and sensationalism usually with regards to matters involving celebrities or politicians dmg hoped Clifford would be able to use this same chicanery to make grand theft auto find itself on to the tips of everyone's tongues and if anything he exceeded their expectations within a matter of months English lawmakers executive and parents were scrutinizing the game up and down spurned by a carefully scripted media narrative orchestrated by Clifford into believing that his violence would utterly corrupt their nation's youth even though it wasn't out yet seemingly everyone that became ensnared by its bluster and had a platform on which they could speak out found themselves condemning its existence as well as the minds behind it when Grand Theft Auto was finally released on the PC in October of 1997 people who actually got their hands on it found much of this bluster to be more overblown than genuine there was little dispute that the carnage at let one take pardon was gloriously immoral as well as far more depraved than what most other violent video games at the time allowed for yet the longer they cruised through its streets the clearer it became that underlying all of this was a deeply immersive and rewarding action title one that was rivaled by few others in terms of how deeply it allowed players to manipulate his environments grand theft auto's violence was an important part of it but it wasn't its essence its essence was its freedom and while this freedom wasn't quite so strong that it fully distracted players from the repetitive nature of its missions or it's dated graphical style it all but ensured that most who tried out DMAs game had themselves a fun time shortly after grand theft auto's initial release BMG Interactive was purchased by take-two founded in 1993 by Ryan Brant take-two had risen to prominence in the middle of the decade with titles like hell a cyberpunk thriller and Ripper point-and-click adventure games prominent for featuring large casts of Hollywood actors and had been using its cloud in the years following to acquire as many videogame distributors as it could muster its acquisition of BMG interactive proved one of its most lucrative in addition to giving it access to grand theft auto's rights which had subsequently used to publish said title on the Sony Playstation the purchase led to the Hauser's and several other key BMG employees moving to its headquarters in New York and establishing Rockstar Games a publishing label designed to foster more titles of grand theft auto's nature Rockstar Games would go on to use most of its manpower during its first year to slowly build up a portfolio of games and studios that it felt would serve this mission statement well including the Ontario based game Tech Canada which would subsequently be rebranded Rockstar Canada and put to work on an expansion to Grand Theft Auto yet it would also spend a healthy amount of resources aiding DMA design in the development of Grand Theft Auto 2 upon entering production in mid-1998 the latter project had quickly morph into a much more stressful and demanding affair than its predecessor while all involved were excited to be able to take their series to the next level there are new overseers that take - had mandated that they do so in a little over a year gone were the days of spending months tinkering slowly upon the original grand theft auto's design until things accidentally fell into place everyone was now part of our corporate machine and that machine needed to hit its deadlines but before this project would come to fruition DMA would release two games on the Nintendo 64 that while not part of the Grand Theft Auto universe were developed by several employees who would go on to play an integral role in the franchise's development in the future and allowed DMA to test many features and systems that would eventually be folded into it the first was body harvest an action-adventure game in which players battled insectoid aliens across multiple time periods in addition to featuring large biomes populated with houses trees and wandering towns folk that one could freely explore body harvest allowed players to commandeer a host of vehicles on their journey to trounce their otherworldly oppressors the second was Space Station Silicon Valley a 3d platformer in which players controlled a microchip capable of taking over the bodies of semi robotic animals where body harvests environments were wide and expansive Silicon Valley's were fairly compact closely resembling Super Mario 64 splay spaces in terms of scope and layout but also much like Mario they were hardly lacking in things to do in a 2013 retrospective on gamasutra boba from I one of Silicon Valley's programmers would recall how the team pushed hard to ensure their platformers world was rife with interactivity and encouraged players to experiment with all of its animals unique mechanics they wanted it to feel like a dynamic living space instead of just a series of puzzles designed to test one's intellect and the end result of their efforts was a game that succeeded to a degree in evoking this [Music] though neither body harvest nor Silicon Valley would go on to sell especially well both would be considerably well-received by critics who by and large found them to be second to Nintendo's first party lineup in terms of quantity unfortunately reviews wouldn't be quite as glowing when grand theft auto's next installments arrived in 1999 the first of these installments was Rockstar Canada's expansion to the original Grand Theft Auto titled London 1969 the expansion provided PlayStation and PC gamers in March with a stylish yet underwhelming romp through the titular British capital its metropolis eager to set itself apart from dmas American fact similes burst with all manner of English iconography and slang as well as a host of references to era appropriate media like James Bond and The Italian Job but underneath this fresh coat of paint it's gameplay remained largely identical to what the series's first outing had featured with most of its missions forcing players to do this same road tearing escapades they perform time and time before and it's graphical style still more two-dimensional than three-dimensional so down even more slowly than it had in 1997 amoeba abdomen cake and Yoda chase Gaia said I'm EXCI doe-eyed after London 1969 Rockstar Canada released London 1961 a second smaller expansion that was only made available as a freeware download on the PC and after London 1961 DMA design stepped back up to the plate with Grand Theft Auto 2 in October most of the same criticisms that pundits had levied at the first games expansions quickly found their way into the discourse surrounding GTA 2 with many once more decrying its gameplay and graphics for being too similar for comfort to what its predecessor had offered but even its most ardent detractors agreed that for as much as the sequel didn't attempt to reinvent the wheel it certainly wasn't lacking in original ideas or improvements where the first Grand Theft Auto had featured a mostly linear campaign took players through proxies of America's most prominent cities GTA to cast players into the heart of a nameless metropolis known simply as anywhere USA and allowed them to freely accept missions from an eccentric collection of gangs each of which would become more hostile towards the player depending on who they supported GTA 2 also introduced side missions into the series allowing players to earn extra cash by being a taxi bus or delivery truck driver if they so desired in addition to revamping the artificial intelligence governing its pedestrians to be far more dynamic than before yet in the end these changes simply weren't enough to make the public fall for Grand Theft Auto 2 as they had for one though it wouldn't go down in history as a massive failure DMA sequel would fail all the same to eclipse its predecessors Heights upsetting the studio's overseers at Rockstar and tripping up the series previously steady momentum exacerbating GTA choose disappointment further was that it came hot on the heels of David Jones's departure from DMA after the release of Grand Theft Auto 1 the studio had gone through a revolving door of different owners dissatisfied with these turns the direction in which the houses were pushing Grand Theft Auto and the lack of time he'd been given to develop a sequel which he would later blame most of his problems on Jones had decided to leave for greener pastures just as two was nearing the end of development making the sequels issues appear more ominous than they might have otherwise seemed once it was released [Music] [Applause] [Music] Jones would continue to remain active within the video game industry in the years that would follow establishing multiple development studios near DMA designs original headquarters and much later on helping conceive the first game in the crackdown series meanwhile DMA would quickly set about course-correcting Grand Theft Auto under the guidance of both the Hauser's and a new team of creatives headed by Andrew simple and Leslie Benzies the latter of whom had previously served as Space Station Silicon Valley's lead programmer it was apparent to all that they had taken the series successfulness for granted with GTA 2 and going forward they were going to need to offer an experience that broke far more boundaries if they wanted it to return to stardom fortunately much of the team had known well before GTA 2's release how it was going to do so by taking the series fully into 3d not only was it a direction that many within and outside the studio had been anticipating for some time but also a direction that some of its competitors were already trying their hand at reflections Interactive's driver for example had allowed players to cruise recklessly through three-dimensional approximations of cities like Miami and San Francisco upon its release in 1999 and its sequel which would go on to release the following year was getting ready to allow players to step out of their cars and explore their surroundings on foot thus not wanting to see the rest of the industry pass it by rockstar forged a partnership with Sony to have what would become Grand Theft Auto 3 released exclusively on the PlayStation 2 and DMA said about bringing it into existence the original grand theft auto's Liberty City was matured into a fully polygonal environment lessons learned from body harvest and Silicon Valley on how to make fully polygonal environments engaging were applied to every single one of its streets and the amount of choice players would have when taking on these streets was carefully balanced in order to ensure that they would also be able to tell a compelling coherent story in a retrospective interview with GameSpot in 2011 dan Houser would explain how coming off of Grand Theft Auto 2 the team felt that they had given players too much leeway in terms of letting the to find their relationships with anywhere USA's criminal organizations and made a game that was by consequence to lacking in story as a result not wanting three to suffer in the same way they made a point of making sure its freedom always supported and worked in tandem with their narrative ambitions instead of opposing them reconciling all of this forced DMA staff to perform numerous technological feats that had never been attempted before as well as solve complex design problems that would make any other developers swoon in the span of just two years nevertheless once GTA threes release states started getting close everyone involved in its production found themselves beset by a mixture of emotions both Rockstar and DM a believed that they had a truly great game on their hands if not one of the greatest the medium had ever seen but when they showed off their work at the 2001 Electronic Entertainment Expo most of the show's attendees were more interested in state of emergency and over-the-top beat him up that Rockstar was also publishing though not as personally invested in fear began to take hold that gta3 was fated to flop and this fear only became further concentrated after the September 11th terrorist attacks devastated their digital metropolis as real-life counterpart prompting them to tone down the gratuitousness of some of the violence players can engage in and remove buildings that resembled the World Trade Center when Grand Theft Auto 3 finally released in 2001 this fear was quickly proven to have been misplaced within a matter of weeks three managed to climb to the top of both sales charts and hearts alike becoming the best-selling game to grace the PlayStation 2 since the consoles launched fans both new and old couldn't get enough of how much more freedom the three cause additional dimension brought to the series as well as how often in acting on this freedom felt as great as one hoped it to be whether one was jacking into cars with reckless abandon and driving them off the road engaging in elaborate firefights using a variety of different armaments or sitting back and listening to the game's frequently comical radio stations there seemed no aspect to three that didn't feel look and sound great all at once that it also told us solid and fairly well paced story on top of all this was icing on the cake the open world genre was born and people all over the globe couldn't stop raving about it though not all of this rating was positive this is the nation's top selling video game the object like with GTA 1 and 2 before it many both within and outside the industry expressed mixed feelings about the level of violence players could engage in within three sandbox concerned once more about what effect the games might have on developing minds yet none would go on to rally against it as passionately as Jack Thompson a Florida attorney and activist Thompson had spent the previous decade railing against all manner of media that he felt glorified violence or sex before setting his sights almost exclusively on the video game industry to him no other industry presented more of a threat to the well-being of American society and no series within this industry was more indicative of this threat than Grand Theft Auto while Thompson would only walk on to the stage after the initial salvo of criticisms against three ran their course he would proceed to become one of its most persistent denna craters using any platform he was given to espouse why he believed it was noxious and using incidents of gun related violence or the perpetrator in question admitted to playing or even being inspired by Grand Theft Auto to justify his beliefs no sooner had the dust settled around three Solis and DMA design was rebranded Rockstar North and its staff were put to work on a follow up much in the same way that many had anticipated that the series third entry would embrace 3d well before Grand Theft Auto 2 was completed Sam Houser had already set his mind on where he wanted to take three successor well before it was given the greenlight 1980s Miami in addition to already being featured in the first grand theft auto in the form of Vice City Miami's beaches and palm trees would visually be an apt palate cleanser coming off of theories concrete jungle and thanks to media like Scarface and Miami Vice there was no shortage of reference material on how to turn it into a crime riddled Wonderland if set during the decade in question as development on what quickly became titled grand theft auto vice city entered into full swing many more aspects of gta3 were deemed in need of an overhaul its streets needed to be filled with a livelier more eccentric populace its cinematics needed to be far more polished and film like its lighting system needed to be able to illuminate its neon soaked streets with a far more expressive palette and perhaps most importantly of all its protagonist needed a voice previously all of the Grand Theft Auto series other protagonists had been silent serving as receptacles upon which the player could imprint whatever personality they so wanted but after watching players take earnestly to 3-story the Hauser's realized that next step in their narrative ambitions would be achieved by making the series protagonists start speaking whether had once been silenced there would now be the hot-tempered outbursts of protagonist tommy vercetti voiced by Ray Liotta of Goodfellas Fame oh we could try bribery bribery school bribery I'll show you how to make them scared all of these changes together represented a significant overhaul of everything that Rockstar had managed to accomplish with three and yet without so much as breaking a sweat the studio managed to implement them all in just under a year and released grand theft auto vice city in October of 2002 to an even greater reception and it spread sir players couldn't believe how much deeper and more polished of an experience it was compared to GTA 3 nor could they get enough of all the ways that is stylish ly rooted itself in its era of choice from its soundtrack which featured an immaculate collection of 80s box to its much wider selection of boats and aerial vehicles which turned exploring the game's environment into a much more varied and glitzy affair vice city turned the hedonism of the 80s into an art form and many players favorite game in the series despite all of this the game would also be no less of a stranger to controversy than GTA 3 with dozens of disgruntled voices once again coming out of the woodwork to blame society's ills on it following its release this time around many of these voices would take particular issue with a line of dialogue in a game that when grossly taken out of context seemed to encourage violence and racism against Haitian Americans while Rockstar felt the accusation to be unwarranted it also had no interest in escalating the situation any further and eventually replaced the line with a less inciting one though not before numerous protesters took to the streets to express their discontent Lonnie sama not Senhora da Matta kuruma daruka you know Sununu moodle Wacka Wacka guys an indica rio cahuachi on again as 2003 rolled around grand theft auto's presence could be felt all over the videogame industry new series like the getaway and true crime were rushing to try and emulate rockstars robbers and cops sandbox with their own unique twists while older properties like jak and daxter were packing their worlds with as many aspects of its design as they could muster grand theft auto itself however was missing in action after knocking it out of the park twice in a row with GTA 3 and vice city rockstars staff knew that whatever they did next would need to significantly up the ante if they wanted to go three for three it was important that they remained on the bleeding edge and got their games out the door as quickly as they could but if they wanted to craft an experience that would live up to the increasingly lofty standards they kept setting for themselves they were going to need a little extra time for this reason Rockstar decided to give itself an additional year of development in order to ensure its next title would dwarf its previous outings instead of being confined to a single metropolis players would be able to explore a three city state made up of Los Santos San Fierro and Las Venturas standings for Los Angeles San Francisco and Las Vegas respectively shops gyms and restaurants would allow players to granularly improve their abilities as well as customise their appearance and its plot in addition to serving up the series usual criminal hijinks would break boundaries by casting players as an african-american protagonist named Carl CJ Johnson as well as probe more deeply into America's racial tensions than any of its prior outing set attempted at the same time Rockstar also decided to use San Andreas as development to pull back on certain aspects of its prior titles that it felt would no longer be a good fit for the series for example where GTA 3 and vice city had prominently featured the voice talents of actors like Michael Madsen and Ray Liotta it was decided that San Andreas would Merilee use lesser-known actors and keep its number of a-list stars to a minimum at the time rock star felt that with all of the clouded had amassed it would be more interesting going forward if it attempted to discover and elevate new talented voices instead of relying on celebrities to boost their esteem however with each subsequent entry in the series its desire to keep the profile of its games cast low would also come to reflect its visionary shifting ambitions speaking to GameSpot in 2011 dan Houser would explain how during the development of the series earlier titles they were aspiring to create something akin to a movie or TV show one could control which in turn made the appearance of actors famous for their movie or TV roles make sense but after San Andreas they felt that the series should try and angle itself to be something less easily grasped making the presence of celebrities feel out of place whether one noticed it or not this comparative lack of celebrity voice talent hardly proved a deal-breaker upon its release in October of 2004 grand theft auto san andreas demolished expectations selling even more strongly than either its predecessors and earning itself a mountain of praise from critics for all of its new changes and features though not everyone was happy with them some felt that the hugeness of its world was to its detriment and made getting from point A to point B an exercise in tedium others felt that many of the new ways that attempted to deepen one's engagement with this world ultimately felt stupor lewis and unpolished but even those who came down hard on it and weren't named Jack Thompson agreed that it was still a tremendous experience little did Rockstar know that an even more tremendous catastrophe was about to befall it last year it was revealed that there was an explicit sexual scene hidden inside a video game called grand theft auto san andreas it turned out that was one of the best-selling games of the year his content was not disclosed to the industry's rating board so the game did not receive the adults-only rating that it deserved in the months leading up to san andreas release Sam Houser had trying to make a huge push with Rockstar to include adult oriented content in the game advocating for the inclusion of all manner of sexual acts and paraphernalia never before seen in a product of its caliber more than just wanting to shock and awe Sam felt it important that rockstars products continuously pushed the medium forward and challenged what it could be but after extensively researching how far they could push things it became apparent that if most of this content wasn't cut san andreas would be given an adults-only rating and be unable to hit store shelves at most retailers as a result any adult oriented content that had already made it into the game was either removed wholesale or buried deep in its code the latter became the fate of hot coffee a mini game in which players perform sexual intercourse with CJ's girlfriend crude and awkwardly animated hot coffee remained deep within san andreas recesses until 2005 when Patrick vildan bore a dutch software engineer active in grand theft auto's modding community released a modification for san andreas pc release that made it available for all to experience the backlash to hot coffees existence was Swift san andreas was slapped with an adults-only rating by the Entertainment Software Rating board Jack Thompson and his ilk embarked on a campaign of condemnation that succeeded in roping in the support of concerned individuals all over America including Senator Hillary Clinton and the Federal Trade Commission pulled rockstar into court in order to investigate whether it had intentionally tried to undermine the rating board by having hot coffee in the game while Rockstar eventually managed to pull through these crises and release San Andreas without his offending content the entire incident left the Hauser's and many within the company physically and emotionally drained for a brief moment the entire empire that they had built up seemed like it was about to come crashing down and with it the livelihood of the hundreds of employees that were invested in its future but they had a future now and that future was incredibly bright because after working within the confines of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox as Hardware for over half a decade Rockstar was going to be able to transition to their far more powerful successors and it's brain trust had tremendous ideas of how it was going to use this power [Music] so there is it so listen Tony I know you did a good thing first I know you've been lying low for a long time so I want you to take it easy for a while huh before these ideas would be laid bare before the world however gamers would be treated to Grand Theft Auto liberty City Stories on the PlayStation Portable in 2005 prior to Liberty City Stories Grand Theft Auto had long tried to make its mark in the realm of handheld gaming the year before a Game Boy Advance adaptation of a series titled Grand Theft Auto advance at Grace Nintendo's platform on the same day as san andreas as release and before that portable adaptations of Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 had both rolled out for the Game Boy Color in 1999 and 2000 respectively yet liberty City Stories which had been developed collaboratively by Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North would be its first handheld release to feature an open-world in the style of the series as PlayStation 2 trilogy as well as garnered considerable praise critics found its compressed version of its titular metropolis to be just as rife with detail and things to do as its console counterpart with many agreeing that its main story and assortment of side missions more than stood there own an inconsistent framerate as well as a few control issues stemming from the PlayStation Portable x' lack of a second analog stick ensured that not all fell in love with it but those who did found it to be a great experience and an incredible technological showcase of the portables capabilities eager to make the most of its foothold within the portables library Rockstar would follow up liberty City Stories with Vice City Stories the next year outside of some mechanical improvements and a new empire building system that tasked players with operating various businesses on property taken over from enemy gangs vice city stories didn't do much to reinvent the wheel of its predecessor but most didn't complain safe as it may have felt the core experience had offered still made for a highly enjoyable trip and by the time of its release Rockstar had already let the world know that the series next great leap forward was the it's way Oh welcome to Annette stupid people you maniac leave my people alone yet go days [Music] that the next iteration of this franchise grand theft auto san andreas will be coming exclusively to PlayStation 2 this fall we look forward with great anticipation to hearing more about this product in the months to come through the early 2000s grand theft auto had been as synonymous with the PlayStation 2 as its first party releases while all of its mainline entries eventually arrived on the Xbox and PC the series remained as much a part of Sony's brand identity as titles like Jack or Ratchet & Clank and helped push more units of the company's second console into homes that almost any other series at the dawn of the 7th console generation this relationship changed eager to score a one-up on its direct competitor Microsoft partnered with Rockstar to officially reveal Grand Theft Auto 4 to the world at its 2006 III press conference as well as receive a few other benefits instead of staggering it out to Microsoft's home consoles years later Rockstar would now release gta4 day and date on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and develop exclusive expansions to the game's main story for the latter all the while this shift was happening GTA 4 was shaping up within rockstars offices to be one of the company's biggest and most personal projects yet after doing a full tour of america's east and west coast during the previous console generation the Hauser's had decided that it was high time they returned back to Liberty City and imbue it with as much detail as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 starred where would allow for in the decades since they taken take choose offer to move to New York their love for the Big Apple had only intensified and they wanted this intensity to reflect proportionally in the game likewise in crafting its lead character they both agreed that it would be most interesting if they created someone who reflected their own experiences as Outsiders coming to the land of opportunity such as how protagonist niko bellic a brooding Serbian looking to star new life in Liberty City came into being in addition to all of this it was decided that gta4 would feature an online multiplayer mode while the series had experimented several times in the past with various types of multiplayer Suites rockstars plans for what it wanted to do with GTA fours were a significant step above any of its past efforts rather than just confined players to small arenas to play conventional multiplayer game types together like capture the flag or races the company wanted to allow players to both do that and explore the game single-player map together in squads of people in order to preserve the game sense of spontaneity and freedom when with others to accommodate for all of this the studio would let go of the renderware engine which it had been using since the days of gta3 to build its open worlds and adopt its proprietary Rockstar advanced game engine which at first demonstrated in 2006 with the release of Rockstar Games presents table tennis many staff from rockstars various international subsidiaries which it had been steadily growing since its acquisition of Rockstar Canada in 1999 were also brought on to ease the amount of Labor necessary and before the world knew it Grand Theft Auto 4 was out on store shelves in April of 2008 sales figures once again smashed expectations and reviews from all corners of the industry showered it in praise with a few caveats compared to GTA 3 Vice City and san andreas GTA fours narrative was thematically far sombre and tone delving into Nico's tormented psyche and his relationships with his family and friends with greater fervor greater than anything that had previously been done with CJ or vercetti war is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other I was very young and very angry maybe that is no excuse Roman Tom are you sleeping you fed up oh come on what's the time [ __ ] I've got to get the cab back it's on the shift this didn't make the games open world which offered a tremendously more fleshed out sandbox to play around in than anything before it any less deep or rewarding but it did provide the entire experience with a layer of seriousness that was difficult to fully tune out something that didn't sit well with all the played it at the end of the day however there was no dispute whether or not one welcomed GTA forced darker tone the sheer flexibility of the world this tone permeated was still a tremendous achievement and another sizeable step forward for the series and this time around the controversies that followed this step forward were much less pronounced than normal while the likes of Jack Thompson still attempted to turn Minds against it squalor they ultimately failed to inspire nearly the same level of vitriol that had followed the series prior titles and retreated relatively quickly it took 75 years and countless billions of dollars to train our soldiers to kill today 60 bucks buys your kid the same thing whatever happened to pong following this forest first expansion the lost and the damned would arrive in February of the following year set concurrently to Nicko's actions in gta4 proper the Damned followed Johnny Club 'it's the vice president of a motorcycle club chapter on a quest to keep his gang running while weaving his way through an increasingly complicated web of heists and deception critical opinions on the expansion would be as strong as ever and would continue to be as strong with his follow-up The Ballad of Gay Tony would arrive eight months later also set concurrently to the events of GTA 4k Tony offered a more comical experience following Luis Fernando Lopez The Bodyguard of nightclub owner Anthony Tony Prince on a series of over-the-top missions to scrape prints out of debt coming off of the emotional seriousness of the damned gay Tony offered a solid palate cleanser and more importantly an even solid ER conclusion to force overarching story no franchises not the way the club is all about the people [ __ ] up people [ __ ] come on we popped your dick all over them despite Microsoft's earlier intentions to keep them exclusive to the Xbox 360 both the lost and the damned and the Ballad of Gay Tony would go on to be made available on the PlayStation 3 and PC in 2010 watching the two expansions become platform agnostic took many by surprise though most agreed it was far from the most surprising turn the series had taken in recent memory for during the same period of time that GTA 4 s expansions were being put out Rockstar had released grand theft auto chinatown wars exclusively on the Nintendo DS set within a top-down rendition of Liberty City reminiscent of its series first two entries chinatown wars impressed fans of the series with both how deftly it took advantage of this viewpoint and its platform's unique hardware whether used to display emails with important mission information or a hot-wiring mini game when jacking into certain cars players found the ways chinatown wars utilized the touchscreen on the DS to be consistently creative and smart and only rarely gimmicky unfortunately chinatown wars also fell well short of its sales expectations following its release prompting Rockstar to bring it over to the PlayStation Portable later in the year many assume that Nintendo's more casual player base had been repulsed by chinatown wars emphasis on violence or if not that by how different it was an appearance from this series most well-known entries however in an interview later in the year with MTV Nintendo's then vice-president of sales and marketing Tammy Dunaway would blame the game's lackluster performance on the lack of marketing behind it pointing out how other mature oriented titles had succeeded in breaking even on Nintendo's consoles in the past after being endowed with the right amount of support whatever the exact reason for it chinatown wars under performance would prove the last performance of any sort that the Grand Theft Auto series would have on a Nintendo platform with Rockstar refusing to release any other entry in the series on the house of Mario's consoles ever again after [Applause] [Music] a little over a month after forest expansions arrived on the PlayStation 3 and PC Rockstar fans were treated to a fantastic yet decidedly different open-world experience by way of Red Dead Redemption developed primarily by Rockstar San Diego redemption presented players with a sandbox bursting with the nuance and level of detail of Grand Theft Auto yet set within the world and emotional framework of the Wild West what it lacked in terms of cars and modern technology it more than made up for an incredibly strong riding as well as one of the most complex animal ecosystems that gamers had ever interacted with establishing itself almost overnight as a classic and its brand as a second pillar upon which Rockstar could rest when not working on its main juggernaut the stakes were now higher than ever for the next Grand Theft Auto to deliver and the wait to see how it would do was growing longer and longer by the day yet as usual Rockstar had good reasons for taking its time for not only had the developments of Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 taken much longer than anyone had anticipated but its plans of where it wanted to take Grand Theft Auto 5 had stretched its resources to their absolute limits like with all of the series prior entries it had been agreed from the get-go that five would set as many new benchmarks for the open world genre as it could with rockstars braintrust deciding early on that they would try to deliver the most lifelike menagerie of people cars and chaos that they could muster in a reimagined version of San Andreas Los Santos but this time around instead of only allowing players to experience this chaos from a single protagonists perspective GTA 5 would allow them to take control of three Michael Trevor and Franklin whose stories would interconnect as they completed missions well you have manual houses in previously Rockstar had drawn up plans to allow several playable characters in San Andreas only to nix them early on due to the technical limitations around which Andreas's world needed to be built following this the introduction of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 superior hard during GTA force development had made it possible to revive this idea but it was only after watching the intertwining narratives of GTA for single-player expansions go on to be well received by the community that Rockstar became motivated to attempt it again with GTA 5 the company hoped that this feature would be able to further ease the process of exploring their sandbox as well as take his narrative to Heights previously unseen by being able to switch between three different characters that could be located in vastly different parts of Los Santos one would theoretically be able to easily explore the city without having to spend a long time in transit to their next destination and when embroiled in the game's more story intensive segments the switching would likewise allow one to gain a more comprehensive view on what's going on then if one was confined to a single characters viewpoint to bring these aspirations to life rockstar would go on to pump more money into GTA 5 production than any of its prior projects as well as rope every single one of its subsidiaries into working on it both this and its enthusiastic marketing campaign eventually resulted in it becoming the most expensive game ever made at the time of its development a statistic that was quickly offset by its sales which proceeded to shatter records around the world effortlessly following its release in September of 2013 players were enamored with how much more detailed its world contained compared to its predecessors finding the level of accuracy with which has succeeded in recreating Los Angeles to be impeccable and the immersiveness of the sandbox have provided almost unrivaled there was almost no dispute GTA 5 was like three and four before it another quantum leap forward for its genre in terms of the freedom it allowed for by comparison critical opinions were more divided when it came to its cast of characters most generally agreed that the gameplay opportunities that switching between them resulted in were great as were the many bombastic set pieces they often found themselves forced into but there was no consensus on whether Trevor the trio's loose cannon was brilliant or childish and most tended to agree that for all the exciting hijinks that took them through their shared narrative ultimately didn't spin as interesting of a yarn as it could have well he didn't make you sure man cuz he might be oh he didn't make in the end these criticisms would ultimately do little to stop most players from logging plenty of hours exploring Los Santos by themselves but in time they would end up spending countless more exploring it alongside others in GTA 5 s online multiplayer mode Grand Theft Auto online billed as a more fleshed out take on GTA fours multiplayer set in a continuously evolving version of Los Santos online initially found itself mired in mixed reviews upon its release critics mostly agree that while the promise of what it could eventually become was tantalizing its execution was lacking glitches and technical issues were everywhere and the experienced one was treated with for muscling through them well not without its bright spots was repetitive and unrewarding unwilling to let online live on in this state Rockstar thereafter worked hard over the following years to improve its offerings flushing out missions or features that weren't living up to their standards as well as providing a plethora of new modes and events tailored to almost every possible proclivity players might have and eventually after a tremendous amount of tinkering the company managed to wholly transform online from an interesting failure into one of the video game industry's most consistently popular titles unfortunately as a partial consequence of all the work that went into getting online to this state Rockstar would quietly shelve plans to release expansions to GTA 5 single-player campaign despite the latter being heavily teased and anticipated for years by Rockstar and its fans respectively in a 2017 interview with Game Informer rockstars imran san juan would explain how after working themselves dry developing GTA 5's main campaign for two different console generations and then drier still making its multiplayer component into an attractive commodity the team reached the breaking point and decided to leave its story work concluded everyone still believed in the value of single-player expansions and all of the unique narrative and mechanical possibilities that they alone allow for they just no longer felt like they were necessary or possible with gta5 it's anyone's guess at this point what Grand Theft Auto 6 will look like let alone when it will materialize speaking with GQ magazine ahead of Red Dead Redemption twos launch dan Houser expressed being thankful that he wasn't releasing 6 on the western title stead explaining that he was at a loss as to how his development studio should tackle it in an era where American politics and culture move at a mile a minute there seemed to him to be nary an opportunity to satirize either without having said satire become immediately outdated and for a series as laser focused on lampooning american society as grand theft auto this represented a sizable creative problem in the end however it's unquestionable that regardless of what happens next in America the series will continue well into the future and that Rockstar might need to clip grand theft auto online swings prematurely when this future comes the studio currently has nothing to lose by continuing to support its multiplayer juggernaut but if online is still as popular as it is now when its successor launches it may very well end up cannibalizing the latter's offerings compared to hot coffee and all of the other politically charged controversies that Rockstar was forced to deal with on its journey to stardom this predicament that the series is currently facing is almost benign but it's a predicament all the same one that the studios brightest minds will need to skirt around carefully going forward lest they want to risk becoming victims of their own incredible success [Music] thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons who have pledged to our highest rewards here Caleb cheese kovitch EMU movies.com Jefferson dos Santos Oliveira Maktoum Saeed Al Maktoum Mohammad Khayat Timur to this bake-off if you enjoy our content please consider subscribing to our Channel and joining us on patreon thank you

Channel: GVMERS

Views: 1,693,887

Rating: 4.9202108 out of 5

Keywords: GTA, Grand Theft Auto, GTA 2, GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA 4, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, Chinatown Wars, GTA IV, Grand Theft Auto 4, Grand Theft Auto IV, GTA V, GTA 5, Grand Theft Auto V, Grand Theft Auto 5, GTA Online, Grand Theft Auto Online, Hot Coffee, Documentary, History of GTA, History of Grand Theft Auto, 4K, Gameplay, GTA 6, GTA VI, Grand Theft Auto VI, Grand Theft Auto 6

Id: bXMUBdqyVAE

Length: 55min 48sec (3348 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Autobrot]

I remember playing the original GTA at a friend's house back in the 90s.

At the time we thought it was hilarious and when GTA2 came out I played it for innumerable hours.

In retrospect it was an incredibly improbable candidate for a juggernaut blockbuster series, and nobody could have predicted the direction the franchise was going to go with GTA3.

[u/HearTheEkko]

This franchise just keeps pushing the bar higher. It's like the MCU of gaming.

It's really fucking impressive that every main GTA game since 3 is considered one of the best videogames of all time.

[u/gmgo]

Whats feels very sad is that this console generation saw no new GTA other than the port/enhanced edition of GTA V.

And if we expand to Rockstar Games in general, a company that published some really good games outside of GTA like Bully, LA Noire, The Warriors or Max Payne, this generation saw the release of ONLY ONE new game from them (RDR2).

I know RDR2 and GTAV are beasts, but I feel like I miss them.

[u/Kirboid]

Is this related to this older GamerSpawn video?