Rockstar North | |
Formerly |
|
Company type | Subsidiary |
Industry | Video games |
Founded | 1987Dundee, Scotland | in
Founder | David Jones |
Headquarters | , Scotland |
Key people | Andrew Semple (studio director) |
Products |
|
Number of employees | 650 [1] (2018) |
Parent |
|
Website | rockstarnorth.com |
Rockstar Games UK Limited (formerly DMA Design Limited and Rockstar North Limited) is a Britishvideo game development company and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Edinburgh. The company was founded as DMA Design in Dundee in 1987 by David Jones, soon hiring former classmates Mike Dailly, Russell Kay, and Steve Hammond. During its early years, DMA Design was backed by its publisher Psygnosis, primarily focusing on Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64 games. During this time, they created successful shooters such as Menace and Blood Money , but soon turned to platform games after the release of Lemmings in 1991, which was an international success and led to several sequels and spin-offs. After developing Unirally for Nintendo, DMA Design was set to become one of their main second-party developers, but this partnership ended after Nintendo's disapproval of Body Harvest .
In 1997, DMA released Grand Theft Auto , which was a huge success; the game sparked a successful series. The company was soon acquired by Gremlin Interactive. Following the release of Grand Theft Auto 2 , Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames. After the Infogrames acquisition, the DMA Design assets were sold to Take-Two Interactive. In 2001, after the release of Grand Theft Auto III , DMA Design was ultimately renamed Rockstar North and became part of the Rockstar Games label. After the shift, the company worked on new titles, including Manhunt , provided support to other Rockstar games such as Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 , and continued the Grand Theft Auto franchise with Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) and Grand Theft Auto V (2013). Both games are considered to be among the best video games made, and Grand Theft Auto V became the second-best-selling game of all time. Leslie Benzies headed the studio since the Take-Two acquisition until his departure in 2016.
In 1984, David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly often met at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club (KACC) in Dundee. While Jones used an Amiga 1000, the others used ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64. They developed numerous small games while attending the KACC: Jones and Kay developed Moonshadow (eventually renamed Zone Trooper), Dailly developed Freek Out, and Jones and Dailly collaborated on The Game With No Name. [3] When later attending the Dundee Institute of Technology, Jones began development on a game tentatively titled CopperCon1, working under the temporary name "Acme Software", alongside Kay, Hammond and Dailly. To publish the game, Jones first approached Hewson Consultants, where Andrew Braybrook played and recommended the game. When Jones was informed that Hewson wanted the game to be the "Amiga version of Zynaps ", he realised that sales would be limited, and refused to sign the contract, [4] instead signing a deal with publisher Psygnosis. The game was renamed Draconia, with Tony Smith working on graphics and Jones designing levels. [5]
By 1987, Jones wanted to incorporate the company but found that the name "Acme" was already taken by a design company. [5] As he had to choose another, he considered to use "Visual Voyage" and "Alias Smith and Jones", but ultimately decided to go with "DMA Design". [5] The "DMA" was taken from Amiga programming manuals, where it stood for direct memory access, though the "DMA" in the company's name had no meaning and Jones would tell journalists it stood for "Doesn't Mean Anything". [6] [5] DMA Design was formally founded by Jones that same year. [7] Draconia was renamed Menace , and it was published in 1988 for Amiga, and in 1989 for Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. [8] The game sold 20,000 copies, [9] reportedly generating around £20,000, [10] allowing the company to develop more games. [11] This was followed by Blood Money , a side-scrolling shooter which began development in January 1989. [12] The game was in development for five months, and was released for Amiga and Atari ST in May 1989. The game was ported to MS-DOS by Tim Ansell of Creative Assembly in 1989, and to Commodore 64 by Dailly in 1990. [13] The company was also assigned to porting Ballistix to MS-DOS and Commodore 64. [6] Jones began developing the side-scrolling shooter Walker in 1989, following the release of Blood Money. [14]
Also in 1989, Dailly became DMA Design's first employee. [15] In early 1990, Jones scrapped Walker and began development on a new game called Gore!; [16] this was soon scrapped. [13] By the end of the year, Jones hired Ian Dunlop and Niall Glancey to continue working on Walker; Glancey redesigned the game, [17] and it was released for Amiga in 1993. [18] In 1990, Jones hired Tony Colgan to develop Cutiepoo, and assist with Gore! before its cancellation. [13] By the end of the year, Jones was irritated by the lack of progress on Cutiepoo, cancelling the game and firing Colgan as a result. [17] In June 1990, DMA was commissioned by Psygnosis to port Shadow of the Beast to the TurboGrafx-16 and Commodore 64; Dailly developed the former, while Richard Swinfen and Steve Hammond worked on the latter. Psygnosis teamed with Ocean Software to publish Shadow of the Beast for Commodore 64 Games System; Swinfen and Hammond adapted accordingly. [19] Swinfen, who was subcontracted for his work on the game, found it unfair that Jones was getting paid for the game, despite not working on it; the two never worked again. [17] DMA also released Hired Guns for Amiga and MS-DOS in 1993, designed by Hammond and Scott Johnston. [20]
DMA's major breakthrough came with 1991's Lemmings , a dynamic puzzle game originally released for Amiga in February 1991. The game ultimately sold over 15 million copies, and received numerous ports to different consoles. [9] The game led to numerous sequels by DMA: Oh No! More Lemmings (1991), [6] Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993), [21] and All New World of Lemmings (1994), [6] as well as two Christmas Lemmings (1993–94). [22] It also spawned various Lemmings games by other developers, such as 3D Lemmings (1995) and Lemmings Revolution (2000). [21] Revenues from Lemmings allowed the company to expand, adding their own motion capture studio and a division called DMA Music, consisting of the team's in-house musicians. [23]
Following Sony's acquisition of Psygnosis in 1993, [24] DMA signed with Nintendo to publish Unirally in 1994. [lower-alpha 1] DMA then spent six months studying development for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, but they cancelled all their plans for the console when the success of Unirally led Nintendo to offer to publish an original DMA game for the upcoming Ultra 64 console (later renamed Nintendo 64). [23] In response, DMA created Body Harvest , an action-adventure third-person shooter. Originally intended as a launch game for Nintendo 64 in 1996, Body Harvest received numerous delays following Nintendo's various issues with the content. Nintendo ultimately scrapped the game, which was later published by Midway Games and Gremlin Interactive in September 1998. [6]
Around 1995, DMA Design was developing Kid Kirby, an entry in the Kirby series for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System intended to utilise the Super NES Mouse; the game's slow development and the poor sales of the Super NES Mouse eventually led to the project's cancellation. [25] [26] [27] DMA Design began developing a new game, Race'n'Chase, in April 1995. [28] The development team consisted of mostly inexperienced members, who struggled with the task until producer and creative director Gary Penn joined the project. [29] Originally scheduled for release in late 1996, the game was ultimately released as Grand Theft Auto in November 1997 for Windows, following many development issues. [28] The game was a critical and commercial success, and ultimately spawned a successful series. [6] Following the release of Grand Theft Auto, DMA was bought by British publisher Gremlin Interactive for £4.2 million in 1997. [30] DMA completed Space Station Silicon Valley in 1998, and both Tanktics and Wild Metal Country in 1999, [6] before Gremlin was acquired by French company Infogrames for £24 million [31] ( US$40 million). [32]
Games will always be here ... If you do good games, they'll always sell well. What I like is that people are not daft anymore. They really look at games deeply now before they buy them ... There was a time when you could sell anything in this business ... That was more disappointing ... Times are hard now, making people focus more on quality and innovation which is great.
— David Jones, founder of DMA Design, March 1997 [33]
Game development at DMA Design generally involved taking risks and being unique. When an idea was pitched within the company, the question "What's different about it?" was asked; the team wished to make unique and innovative games, rather than mimicking the trend. [33] By doing this, they found that they were taking risks in the business, witnessing the market reactions and seeking respect from players. The company also strongly valued the development of the games, as opposed to business and marketing. "It doesn't matter if we were owned by somebody or if we were as we are, we'd still just write games", said Jones. [33]
Jones has expressed his distaste of linear gameplay. "I just love games that are pretty open-ended; you can try things, you can go wherever you want", he said. [33] He claims that this distaste is reflected in the games by DMA Design, including the options available to players in Lemmings and the open world of Grand Theft Auto. [33] DMA Design had a fairly open office space for the developers. "There was this fantastic 'try it out and see' attitude," said developer Gary Timmons. [6] Following his departure from the studio, Kay said that the team members "know each other pretty well and understand each other's strengths and weaknesses". [6]
BMG Interactive, publisher of Grand Theft Auto, were bought by Take-Two Interactive in March 1998 for 1.85 million company shares, around 16% of their common stock, and some staff, including Sam and Dan Houser, were carried across to Rockstar Games, which was formed as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in December 1998. [34] During the changes in management, DMA Design lost many employees, including Kay, Hammond and Dailly. Several games were also scrapped during this time, including Nintendo 64 ports of Grand Theft Auto and Wild Metal Country, a 64DD port of Unreal (1998), and a game known as Attack!. [6] On 29 September 1999, Take-Two Interactive announced that they had acquired DMA Design from Infogrames for US$11 million. Sam Houser, who became Rockstar Games' executive producer, said that "the ability to align Rockstar with a development house [...] that is clearly approaching video-game development in a new and exciting manner, makes this a perfect match". [35]
Following the acquisition, it was announced that DMA Design would continue developing Grand Theft Auto games, including GTA3D and Grand Theft Auto: Online Crime World; [35] the former was compared to the gameplay of Quake , while the latter was set to have worldwide servers allowing players to compete with others in local cities. [36] The company received various staffing changes following the acquisition: Jones left the company and founded Realtime Worlds, [37] while DMA Design was headed by Leslie Benzies and Andrew Semple, among others. [38] The studio had about 25 employees at the time of the changeover. [39] Under new management from Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive, DMA Design developed Grand Theft Auto III , which was released for PlayStation 2 in October 2001. [34] In March 2002, DMA Design became Rockstar Studios, being integrated into Rockstar Games, [38] and renamed to Rockstar North in May 2002. [40]
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released in October 2002 for PlayStation 2 after nine months of development. The game retained the engine and core gameplay of GTA III while adding a number of refinements and a roster of top Hollywood voice talent. In 2003, the company released a PC port of Vice City, as well as a two-pack of both Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City for Microsoft's Xbox console, ported by Rockstar Vienna. The developer's next release, also for PlayStation 2, was Manhunt in November 2003, after the studio refocused post Vice City. The game was released amidst a media frenzy surrounding some of the game's violent content.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas followed for PlayStation 2 in October 2004 and became the highest-selling PlayStation 2 game ever, with 17.33 million copies sold. It went on to sell 27.5 million copies total after ports to Xbox and PC were released in 2005. [41] Following in 2005 and 2006 respectively, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories were two new instalments for PlayStation Portable, both developed by Rockstar Leeds under supervision from Rockstar North. Both games subsequently received ports to the PlayStation 2. After San Andreas was released, and due to growing staff numbers, the company moved from their Leith offices to a new location at Calton Square. Starting from an original team of around twenty-five, the studio now has over 360 staff. [39]
Grand Theft Auto IV was released on 29 April 2008, after around four years of development, for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, marking the debut of the developer's wildly popular Grand Theft Auto franchise on the seventh-generation of video game consoles. GTA IV was another huge financial and critical success, breaking sales records amongst all types of entertainment media. [42] Rockstar North continued work on GTA IV in the form of two pieces of downloadable episodic content. The first of these, The Lost and Damned , was released on 17 February 2009, with the second, The Ballad of Gay Tony , released on 29 October 2009. Rockstar Games later released a disc-based version of both episodes, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
On 2 June 2009, at Sony's E3 conference, it was announced that Agent was being developed by Rockstar North for PlayStation 3. [43] This was later confirmed in an interview with Ben Feder, President of Take-Two Interactive. [44] It was announced that the game would be set in the world of the late 1970s. According to Rockstar North, it would "take players on a paranoid journey into the world of counter-intelligence, espionage, and political assassinations". [45] The "Agent" trademark was abandoned in November 2018, [46] and the game's website was deactivated by October 2021. [47]
On 17 September 2013, the studio released Grand Theft Auto V on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which became one of the most critically acclaimed games ever. [48] The game was a return to the fictional city of Los Santos, last seen in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game also introduced multiple playable characters for the first time in the series, allowing players to switch between Franklin, Michael and Trevor. It quickly became the studio's most commercially successful release, as well as one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, surpassing the total gross of Grand Theft Auto IV within its first week and breaking the one-day gross record for video games.
At the end of the year, Rockstar North agreed to take over rental of the 75,000 square feet (7,000 m2) Barclay House on Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, which had been opened in 1999 as headquarters of The Scotsman newspaper group. After alteration work, Rockstar North moved into this building in 2014. [49]
Following the release of Grand Theft Auto V, studio president and producer Leslie Benzies went on sabbatical on 1 September 2014, and left the company in January 2016; art directors Aaron Garbut and Rob Nelson took over Benzies' responsibilities at Rockstar North. [50] Nelson later became co-studio head alongside Andrew Semple. [51]
On 12 April 2016, Benzies sued Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive for US$150 million in unpaid royalties, and for being dismissed without warning during his sabbatical, amongst several other accusations towards the president of Rockstar Games. In a document revealed by his attorney, Benzies claimed not only that Rockstar Games had not paid the due royalties but also that he was drawn into a scheme inserted into a so-called "2009 Royalty Plan" where Benzies would earn evenly split profits between the three called "Rockstar North Principals" (Sam Houser, Dan Houser and Benzies), a coalition created for the three by Dan and Sam Houser to try to separate from Take-Two Interactive, using the company's funds to do so. When Benzies was due his split, he never received any money, given the Houser brothers had unknowingly allocated US$93 million in profit-sharing payments to themselves, with another US$523 million in profits still unaccounted for. [52]
In 2014, Benzies was reportedly encouraged to take a sabbatical pause by the Houser brothers, in order to "recharge batteries", given how hard he had worked for the company during all the years it has existed. Benzies also accused the Houser brothers of being unable to work without his presence, by revealing e-mails during the Red Dead Redemption development troubles that showed Houser urgently asking for Benzies' help because he could not manage any big projects without him (in the case of Red Dead Redemption, having trouble finishing the project, whilst Benzies was not even allocated to work on the game), constantly pestering the ex-developer via e-mails asking for help, saying that nothing was the same without him, treating him like an extraordinarily necessary asset for the company, having him working on projects he wasn't even a part of. [53] Sam Houser was also accused of orchestrating and encouraging "a company culture involving strip clubs, personal photography of employees in sexually compromising positions, and other conduct grossly in violation of standard workplace norms." [54] On the evening of 12 April 2016, Take-Two counter-claimed Benzies' lawsuit, saying the accusations were "downright bizarre". [55]
On 29 March 2018, Benzies' litigation against Rockstar and Take-Two suffered a significant setback when the companies succeeded in dismissing 12 out of 18 of his claims, though the court did rule that Benzies "remains entitled to receive certain royalties" as part of his compensation. [56] [57] [58] Sometime in 2018, Take-Two levied a legal warning against Benzies' new company Royal Circus Games, citing the similarity of its acronym (RCG) to Rockstar Games (RSG) as infringement of intellectual property; due to this, Benzies later renamed his company Build a Rocket Boy Games in October 2018. Take-Two had also decried their employment of Rockstar North staff as a deceptive tactic to create an affiliation between them. [59] On 7 February 2019, Benzies' litigation with Take-Two had officially come to an end. [60] All parties involved in the case successfully executed a confidential settlement, with each agreeing to bear its own costs and expenses, including, without limitation, attorney's fees. [61]
TaxWatch UK, a UK-based investigative think tank, reported in July 2019 that Rockstar North had not paid any corporation tax between 2009 and 2018. Meanwhile, the studio received £42 million in tax credits through the UK government's video games tax relief (VGTR) scheme, 19% of the scheme's entire payout since its establishment in 2014. [62] In a statement released in January 2020, Rockstar Games stated that VGTR significantly supported the company's investments in the country. The company did not address the reported non-paying of corporation tax. [63]
Blank cell indicates game was not released on any platform(s) by the specified manufacturers | |
Cell with games console(s) indicates game was released on platform(s) by the specified manufacturers |
Title | Release details | Platform(s) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Microsoft | Nintendo | Sega | Sony | Other | ||
Menace |
| MS-DOS | Amiga Atari ST Commodore 64 | |||
Ballistix [lower-alpha 2] |
| MS-DOS | Commodore 64 | |||
Blood Money |
| MS-DOS | Amiga Atari ST Commodore 64 | |||
Shadow of the Beast [lower-alpha 3] |
| Commodore 64 TurboGrafx-16 | ||||
Lemmings |
| MS-DOS | NES SNES | Master System Sega Genesis Game Gear | 3DO Amiga Amiga CD32 Amstrad CPC Atari Lynx Atari ST CD-i CDTV Commodore 64 FM Towns Classic Mac OS TurboGrafx-16 ZX Spectrum | |
Oh No! More Lemmings |
| MS-DOS | Archimedes Amiga Atari ST Mac OS SAM Coupé | |||
Walker |
| Amiga | ||||
Hired Guns |
| MS-DOS | Amiga | |||
Christmas Lemmings 1993 [lower-alpha 4] |
| MS-DOS OS/2 | Amiga | |||
Lemmings 2: The Tribes |
| MS-DOS | Game Boy SNES | Sega Genesis | Amiga Atari ST FM Towns Archimedes | |
All New World of Lemmings [lower-alpha 5] |
| MS-DOS | Amiga | |||
Christmas Lemmings 1994 [lower-alpha 6] |
| MS-DOS OS/2 | Amiga, Mac OS | |||
Unirally [lower-alpha 1] |
| SNES | ||||
Grand Theft Auto |
| MS-DOS Windows | GBC | PlayStation | ||
Body Harvest |
| Nintendo 64 | ||||
Space Station Silicon Valley |
| GBC Nintendo 64 | PlayStation [lower-alpha 7] | |||
Tanktics |
| MS-DOS Windows | ||||
Wild Metal Country |
| Windows | Dreamcast [lower-alpha 8] | |||
Grand Theft Auto 2 |
| Windows | GBC | Dreamcast | PlayStation | |
Grand Theft Auto III |
| Windows Xbox [lower-alpha 9] | PlayStation 2 | iOS Android | ||
Blank cell indicates game was not released on any platform(s) by the specified manufacturers | |
Cell with games console(s) indicates game was released on platform(s) by the specified manufacturers |
Title | Release details | Platform(s) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Microsoft | Nintendo | Sony | Other | ||
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City |
| Windows Xbox [lower-alpha 9] | PlayStation 2 | iOS Android | |
Manhunt |
| Windows Xbox | PlayStation 2 | ||
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas |
| Windows Xbox Windows Phone | PlayStation 2 | iOS Android | |
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories |
| PlayStation Portable PlayStation 2 | iOS Android | ||
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories |
| PlayStation Portable PlayStation 2 | |||
Grand Theft Auto IV |
| Xbox 360 Windows [lower-alpha 10] | PlayStation 3 | ||
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned |
| Xbox 360 Windows [lower-alpha 10] | PlayStation 3 | ||
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars |
| Nintendo DS | PlayStation Portable | iOS Android | |
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony |
| Xbox 360 Windows [lower-alpha 10] | PlayStation 3 | ||
Grand Theft Auto V |
| Xbox 360 Xbox One Windows Xbox Series X/S | PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 | ||
Grand Theft Auto Online [lower-alpha 11] |
| Xbox 360 Xbox One Windows Xbox Series X/S | PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 | ||
Blank cell indicates game was not released on any platform(s) by the specified manufacturers | |
Cell with games console(s) indicates game was released on platform(s) by the specified manufacturers |
Title | Release details | Platform(s) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Microsoft | Nintendo | Sony | Other | ||
Red Dead Redemption [lower-alpha 12] |
| Xbox 360 | Nintendo Switch | PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 | |
Undead Nightmare [lower-alpha 12] |
| Xbox 360 | PlayStation 3 | ||
L.A. Noire [lower-alpha 13] |
| Xbox 360 Xbox One Windows | Nintendo Switch | PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 | |
Max Payne 3 [lower-alpha 14] |
| Xbox 360 Windows | PlayStation 3 | ||
Red Dead Redemption 2 [lower-alpha 15] |
| Xbox One Windows | PlayStation 4 | Stadia | |
Red Dead Online [lower-alpha 15] |
| Xbox One Windows | PlayStation 4 | Stadia | |
Lemmings is a puzzle–strategy video game originally developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1991 and later ported for numerous other platforms. The game was programmed by Russell Kay, Mike Dailly and David Jones, and was inspired by a simple animation that Dailly created while experimenting with Deluxe Paint.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a 2002 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the fourth main game in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 2001's Grand Theft Auto III, and the sixth entry overall. Set in 1986 within the fictional Vice City, the single-player story follows mobster Tommy Vercetti's rise to power after being released from prison and becoming caught up in an ambushed drug deal. While seeking out those responsible, Tommy gradually builds a criminal empire by seizing power from other criminal organisations in the city.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993.
Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, using the assets Take-Two had previously acquired from BMG Interactive. Founding members of the company were Terry Donovan, Gary Foreman, Dan and Sam Houser, and Jamie King, who worked for Take-Two at the time, and of which the Houser brothers were previously executives at BMG Interactive. Sam Houser heads the studio as president.
Grand Theft Auto III is a 2001 action-adventure game developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 1999's Grand Theft Auto 2, and the fifth instalment overall. Set within the fictional Liberty City, the story follows Claude, a silent protagonist who, after being betrayed and left for dead by his girlfriend during a robbery, embarks on a quest for revenge that leads him to become entangled in a world of crime, drugs, gang warfare, and corruption. The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Its open world design lets players freely roam Liberty City, consisting of three main areas.
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones and Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut. It is primarily developed by British development house Rockstar North, and published by its American parent company, Rockstar Games. The name of the series is a term for motor vehicle theft in the United States.
Grand Theft Auto IV is a 2008 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the sixth main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the eleventh instalment overall. Set in the fictional Liberty City, based on New York City, the single-player story follows Eastern European war veteran Niko Bellic and his attempts to escape his past while under pressure from high-profile criminals. The open world design lets players freely roam Liberty City, consisting of three main islands, and the neighbouring state of Alderney, which is based on New Jersey.
A Grand Theft Auto clone belongs to a subgenre of open world action-adventure video games, characterized by their likeness to the Grand Theft Auto series in either gameplay, or overall design. In these types of open world games, players may find and use a variety of vehicles and weapons while roaming freely in an open world setting. The objective of Grand Theft Auto clones is to complete a sequence of core missions involving driving and shooting, but often side-missions and minigames are added to improve replay value. The storylines of games in this subgenre typically have strong themes of crime, violence and other controversial elements such as drugs and sexually explicit content.
David Scott Jones is a Scottish video game programmer and entrepreneur who co-founded video game developers DMA Design in 1987, Realtime Worlds in 2002, and Cloudgine in 2012. Jones created Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, which both spawned many successful sequels. He also created the Crackdown franchise for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles, and the open-ended massively multiplayer online game, APB: All Points Bulletin.
Daniel Houser is an English video game writer and producer. He is a co-founder of Rockstar Games, where he served as the head writer and vice president of creativity until his resignation in 2020. His brother Sam is the president of Rockstar.
Grand Theft Auto Mission Pack #1: London 1969 is an expansion pack for the 1997 action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto, developed by Rockstar Canada and published by Rockstar Games. It was released for personal computers and the PlayStation in April 1999. The expansion adheres to the same gameplay mechanics of the main game and takes place in a fictionalised version of London during the 1960s. Players assume the role of a criminal who works for several London-based crime syndicates, and complete levels by achieving a set score, within an open world environment that allows them to do whatever they wish alongside jobs to achieve their goal.
Leslie Peter Benzies is a Scottish video game producer and the former president of Rockstar North, a subsidiary of Rockstar Games. He was the lead developer on the Grand Theft Auto series, taking responsibility from Grand Theft Auto III to Grand Theft Auto V. Benzies left Rockstar in 2016, and was in a lawsuit with its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, over unpaid royalties from April 2016 to February 2019.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a 2009 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar Leeds in conjunction with Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. The game was released for the Nintendo DS in March 2009, PlayStation Portable in October 2009, iOS in January 2010, and Android and Fire OS devices in December 2014. It is the thirteenth game in the Grand Theft Auto series and a follow-up to Grand Theft Auto IV, and is the first entry to be released for handheld consoles since 2006's Vice City Stories. Set within modern-day Liberty City, the single-player story follows young Triad member Huang Lee and his efforts to recover a sword gifted by his late father after it is stolen from him, while inadvertently becoming caught in a power struggle amongst Liberty City's Triads.
Grand Theft Auto is an action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive. It is the first title of the Grand Theft Auto series and was released in November 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, in December 1997 for the PlayStation and in October 1999 for the Game Boy Color. The game's narrative follows a criminal who climbs in status within the criminal underworld across three fictional cities, inspired by real-life locations. The gameplay is presented from a top-down perspective and takes place within an open-world environment in which the player is required to gather a certain number of points to progress through the game's chapters. Said points are gathered by completing various missions throughout each city, although the player can gather the points through other means as well.
Menace is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis. It was originally released for the Amiga in 1988, and was ported for the Atari ST, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS in 1989. The game is set on the planet of Draconia, where players are tasked with destroying the planet's defence mechanisms in order to kill the harmful creatures.
Grand Theft Auto V is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the seventh main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 2008's Grand Theft Auto IV, and the fifteenth instalment overall. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas, based on Southern California, the single-player story follows three protagonists—retired bank robber Michael De Santa, street gangster Franklin Clinton, and drug dealer and gunrunner Trevor Philips, and their attempts to commit heists while under pressure from a corrupt government agency and powerful criminals. Players freely roam San Andreas's open world countryside and fictional city of Los Santos, based on Los Angeles.
A team of approximately 1,000 people developed Grand Theft Auto V over several years. Rockstar Games released the action-adventure game in September 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, in November 2014 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, in April 2015 for Windows, and in March 2022 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The first main Grand Theft Auto series entry since Grand Theft Auto IV, its development was led by Rockstar North's core 360-person team, who collaborated with several other international Rockstar studios. The team considered the game a spiritual successor to many of their previous projects like Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3. After its unexpected announcement in 2011, the game was fervently promoted with press showings, cinematic trailers, viral marketing strategies and special editions. Its release date, though subject to several delays, was widely anticipated.
Michael Dailly is a Scottish video game designer, best known for designing Lemmings and the original prototype of Grand Theft Auto, and is one of the four founders of DMA Design, alongside David Jones, Russell Kay, and Steve Hammond.
Everywhere is an upcoming video game developed by Build a Rocket Boy.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is a 2021 compilation of three action-adventure games in the Grand Theft Auto series: Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004). Developed by Grove Street Games and published by Rockstar Games, all three games are remastered, with visual enhancements and gameplay upgrades. The games feature different protagonists and locations within the same continuity. Grand Theft Auto III follows silent protagonist Claude in Liberty City; Vice City, set in 1986, features ex-mobster Tommy Vercetti in the fictional Vice City; and San Andreas, set in 1992, follows gangster Carl "CJ" Johnson within the state of San Andreas.