Development of Gta3 (1999-2001)

5 min read
24 November 2023

The first prototype of gta3 ran on a Dreamcast. We all had Dreamcasts and all played Phantasy Star Online. This didn't last long as the Dreamcast lost out to Playstation 2 and we switched.

Rockstar New York had only just been founded. As the people in New York had to get set up and get to grips with a lot of games, they hadn't given us any projects to work on. We had started on gta3 because that seemed like a good idea. It wasn't until months later they gave us the green light.

R*NY were pretty hands off during gta3. They managed the voice actors and did all the commercial stuff. They made suggestions though and towards the end they were involved with Quality Control.

Our team was made up of the core of the Space Station Silicon Valley team in addition to new hires. Only 2 people on Gta3 were also on the original games (Ian McQue and Alan Campbell)

The game took 2.5 years to develop. Even with games being a lot less complicated in those days, that's still pretty quick for a game built from scratch (we didn't use any code/assets from gta2). There are a few reasons for this:

- The design was clear from the start. The Gta1 team started with a racing game. They evolved that into a pizza delivery theme. Then they redesigned it for the player to be a cop. Then they settled on the player being a criminal. We didn't have to do any of this. The design was obvious (gta1 in 3D) and we could focus on the missions from day 1.

- Rockstar New York didn't interfere much. They were happy to let us design and build the game. NY dealt with the business and marketing. When a developer and publisher have different ideas it can make things difficult.

- R*NY were happy to let us hire the people we needed.

- Most people on the team had worked together and most had at least one commercial game under their belt. This was rare in those days when the industry was still in its infancy.

The way of working was organic. People would come up with ideas for missions and we would just try them. If they were fun, they were in. The story was only secondary. In fact, the plot involving Catalina trying to kill Claude at the start of the game was added pretty late.

Leslie Benzies (the producer) plastered a wall in the boardroom with post-it notes. They were yellow, green and pink for missions, contacts and locations. Missions were moved around all the time and often handed from one contact point to another. Only once the voice acting was done, were these things set in stone. You sometimes come across locations on the map that are more detailed than you would expect. Chances are there was a contact here that got moved at some point.

For most of development, the game was in a sorry state. It crashed frequently, the frame rate was terrible and the map was full of holes. It was only in the last 5 months or so that everything came together and the game became playable.

Working on gta3 was a lot of fun. Every day there was something new going in. A new mission, radio station, car, ped, building or whatever. Things were added at a good rate.

Although everybody worked hard, I don't remember many people doing crazy hours. On the rare occasions that 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. I personally think it is difficult to concentrate on work for more than 8 hours a day. It's better to limit your time in the office but make sure you spend that time well, rather than dragging it out.

Did I think the game was going to do as well as it did? It always looked like it had the potential, but there are so many things that can go wrong. We didn't know we had made something special towards late on in development. Even then we had a poor showing at E3. Nobody seemed interested in it. To see it sell well and continue to sell (it was a slow starter) was an amazing reward.

In case you have found a mistake in the text, please send a message to the author by selecting the mistake and pressing Ctrl-Enter.
May I 63
Joined: 2 years ago
Comments (0)

    No comments yet

You must be logged in to comment.

Sign In / Sign Up