0:00 Grand Theft Auto has done more than just 0:02 dominate the gaming industry. It has 0:04 actively influenced pop culture globally 0:06 for decades, incited political crusades, 0:09 and broken more sales records than any 0:12 other product to come out of the 0:13 entertainment industry as a whole. Yet, 0:15 the architects behind the franchise 0:17 virtually remain ghosts. [music] 0:19 Rockstar Games operates with a level of 0:21 secrecy that rivals intelligence 0:23 agencies, burying the glorious chaos of 0:26 their creative process well away from 0:28 the public eye. But 30 years of [music] 0:30 history cannot be completely hidden. So 0:33 today, I'd like to welcome you to the 0:35 entire behindthe-scenes history of Grand 0:37 Theft Auto, unpacking everything from 0:39 raw development hurdles and forgotten 0:41 production archives to toxic internal 0:44 wars, explosive public controversies, 0:46 and the secrets you were never meant to 0:48 discover. We're pulling back the curtain 0:49 on what actually happened during the 0:51 development of these games, and how the 0:53 series has evolved into what it is 0:54 today. And to do that, we have to start 0:56 right at the beginning. 1:04 Now, all the people in here are working 1:05 on what DMA hopes will be its new 1:07 blockbuster. It's a game called Grand 1:08 Theft Auto. It's got to be finished by 1:10 the end of June, so they're involved in 1:11 some pretty hard work in here. It's all 1:14 about a car chase through the streets of 1:15 a fictional probably American city. Here 1:18 are some of the maps they've been 1:19 working on. It's May 1996 and a small 1:22 team of developers from Dundee, Scotland 1:24 called DMA Design are hard at work on a 1:26 brand new game called Grand Theft Auto, 1:29 a game the world had never yet heard of. 1:31 In fact, this old BBC working lunch 1:34 episode where we got to see a little 1:36 behind the scenes was the public's very 1:38 first introduction to GTA, which is why 1:40 Dave Klin, a prominent member of the 1:42 development team who worked only on GTA 1:45 1, has to explain the basic concept of 1:47 what they're building to journalist Rory 1:49 Selen Jones. Basically [music] like a 1:51 kindergartener. A top-own openw world 1:53 action adventure game where you play as 1:55 a [music] criminal, stealing cars, 1:56 completing missions, and causing as much 1:58 chaos as possible across three different 2:00 cities. At the time, that idea alone was 2:03 almost unheard of. Most games up until 2:05 the mid9s were very light-hearted or had 2:07 you playing the hero saving the day. A 2:09 game that put you in the shoes of the 2:11 villain, the anti-hero or criminal, 2:13 whatever you want to call it, simply 2:14 wasn't something mainstream games did. 2:16 However, at this point, GTA 1 was still 2:18 a huge work in progress, not dropping 2:20 until roughly a year and a half after 2:22 this working lunch episode aired. just a 2:24 handful of developers, most of them 2:26 barely experienced, working out of a 2:28 cramped studio with minimal resources 2:30 and really not much belief from anyone 2:32 that what they were building would ever 2:33 amount to anything. And yet, without 2:35 knowing it, they were laying the 2:36 foundation for a game that would become 2:38 embedded in pop culture for decades to 2:41 come. Because many of the core features 2:42 that would go on to define the franchise 2:44 were born here, such as the simple 2:46 concept of having the ability to steal 2:48 any car you see on the street. wanted 2:50 levels, the iconic wasted screen that 2:53 would become a staple of the series, and 2:55 an in-game radio featuring multiple 2:57 stations across different genres of 2:58 music. Although rather than licensing 3:00 popular songs, at first, every track was 3:03 composed entirely in-house by their own 3:05 music department. But as impressive as 3:07 it was, this small and inexperienced 3:09 team was pulling all of this together. 3:11 Even figuring out the direction they 3:12 were heading with the game was a battle 3:14 in itself. Originally, the game started 3:16 life under the name Race and Chase, a 3:18 cops and robbers game where you could 3:20 play as either side. However, the team 3:22 quickly came to a realization. As Gary 3:24 Penn, the creative director of the game, 3:26 later put it, "Nobody wanted to be the 3:27 cop. It's just more fun to be bad." So, 3:29 they scrapped the police angle, went 3:31 allin on the criminal side, and 3:33 everything changed from there. But even 3:35 with a clear direction, actually 3:37 building the game was where the wheels 3:39 really started to come off. For example, 3:41 Gary Penn stated that the writers were 3:43 driving the game one way while the level 3:45 designers were driving it another, and 3:47 they weren't meeting in the middle. So, 3:48 they'd end up with missions that made no 3:50 sense in the context of the world they 3:52 were being built in, and a game that 3:53 didn't hold together. The milestones 3:55 they had set to show the publishers 3:57 things were moving forward were not 3:59 being met. Meaning, at any point, the 4:01 whole thing could have been shut down 4:02 completely. And as it turns out, that's 4:04 exactly what the US publishers wanted to 4:06 do. a matter of months we had the US 4:08 because we'd have conference calls every 4:09 week at least once a week with the US 4:11 they they wanted to kill it every week 4:13 and I think this is amazing every week 4:15 they wanted to kill this game and we'd 4:17 have to kind of argue to try and keep it 4:18 going because we had some faith [music] 4:20 every single week the US publishers were 4:22 pushing to have this game cancelled and 4:24 every single week the team had to fight 4:25 to keep it alive and it wasn't just the 4:27 publishers they had to convince inside 4:29 DMA Design itself Grand Theft Auto was 4:32 considered bottom of the pile meaning 4:34 nobody inside the studio wanted to work 4:36 on it So, the team that did end up 4:38 working on it had barely any experience 4:40 between them. For example, Paul Farley, 4:42 the game's level designer, revealed that 4:44 only one person on the team had actually 4:46 shipped [music] a game before. Colin 4:47 Anderson, who was the head of audio, 4:49 admitted himself that he was just 22 and 4:51 knew nothing. And yet, they all kept 4:53 going despite everything working against 4:55 them. But by the time they were 4:56 approaching the finish line, the game 4:58 was still barely holding together. It 4:59 had reached the point where there were 5:01 so many things still being crammed in 5:03 that getting it out the door was the 5:04 only way to stop it from collapsing 5:06 under its own weight. And it really did 5:08 go right down to the wire. The 5:09 PlayStation version, which wouldn't 5:11 actually release until 2 weeks after the 5:13 PC version, still had to be locked and 5:15 submitted for approval, a full month 5:17 before the PC build was even finished, 5:19 which meant that the PC version itself 5:21 was only completed about a week before 5:23 it hit shop shelves. A week. So, they 5:26 were literally still fixing bugs and 5:28 changing features right up until the 5:30 absolute last minute. But against all 5:31 odds, they got it done. November 28th, 5:34 1997, and Grand Theft Auto was out. 5:37 However, it wouldn't be a GTA release 5:38 without some media controversy. And the 5:41 publishers behind the game had a plan to 5:43 make sure it created a firestorm. 5:56 Good job, kid. Here you go. 6:05 What unfolded was the result of one of 6:07 the most calculated marketing campaigns 6:09 in video game history. Because the 6:11 controversy didn't happen by accident, 6:13 the publishers behind Grand Theft Auto 6:15 had secretly hired a publicist named Max 6:17 Clifford, one of the most notorious PR 6:20 men in the UK, with one specific goal, 6:22 generate as much outrage as possible. 6:24 And Max Clifford knew exactly what he 6:26 was doing. He started leaking stories to 6:29 British tabloids about the game's 6:30 violent content months before it even 6:33 came out, feeding exaggerated stories of 6:35 hit-and-run missions and glorified crime 6:37 sprees directly to right-wing 6:39 politicians in Parliament, including 6:41 Lord Campbell of Croy, who then stood up 6:43 in the House of Lords and publicly 6:44 condemned the game. And all of this was 6:46 happening in May 1997, a whole 6 months 6:49 before the game was even released. One 6:51 of the co-creators of GTA 1 and 2, Mike 6:54 Daly, flat out stated that Max Clifford 6:56 made it all happen. He designed all the 6:58 outcry, which pretty much guaranteed MPs 7:00 would get involved. He told them his 7:02 entire plan, exactly who he would 7:04 target, and how those people targeted 7:06 would react, and basically every word he 7:08 said indeed came true. But the 7:09 developers themselves didn't expect it 7:11 to go anywhere near as far as it did. In 7:13 fact, nobody on the team really 7:14 understood the scale of the backlash at 7:16 the time, because to them, they'd just 7:18 been making a fun game. They weren't 7:19 pulling allnighters in that little 7:21 studio in Dundee thinking they were 7:22 making something dangerous. They were 7:24 just trying to finish the damn thing 7:25 without it falling apart. 7:27 >> The controversy thing really got out of 7:29 hand quite quickly and it took everyone 7:31 by surprise because we had been 7:33 developing a game that was all about the 7:35 fun. But Max Clifford was astonishing. 7:38 But whether they expected it or not, it 7:40 worked. The people trying to ban the 7:41 game were inadvertently doing all the 7:43 marketing for it. And when GTA 1 finally 7:46 came out in November 1997, it sold half 7:49 a million copies within 3 months and 3 7:52 million copies within its first three 7:53 years. 8:04 [music] 8:08 Enter Rockstar Games. Following the 8:10 success of Grand Theft Auto 1, BMG 8:13 Interactive was acquired by Take 2 8:15 Interactive in 1998. Sam and Dan Howser, 8:18 who had been executives [music] at BMG, 8:20 moved to New York, and by the end of 8:21 that same year had established a brand 8:23 new publishing label [music] under Take 8:25 2, Rockstar Games. And with Rockstar now 8:27 at the helm, a sequel was already on the 8:29 way. [music] 8:31 >> Earthquaking. 8:33 Finished one. Do you still have visual 8:35 [music] contact? 8:36 >> That's a negative suspect. 8:38 >> DMA Design. The same team of people 8:40 who'd fought tooth and nail to get the 8:42 first game out the door were back at 8:43 their desks in Dundee building Grand 8:45 Theft Auto 2. The whole [music] plan was 8:47 to refine, polish, and expand on their 8:50 controversial formula. But overall, it 8:52 didn't find itself innovating that much. 8:54 One developer even joked that it was 8:56 basically moving the franchise [music] 8:58 only 5 minutes forward. Something when 9:00 you think about it, you can rarely say 9:02 about a mainline Grand Theft Auto title. 9:04 Under development, the game was cenamed 9:06 GBH, which in English and Welsh law 9:09 stands for grievous bodily harm. And for 9:11 a while, they were actually considering 9:13 calling the game a stole a motor, 9:15 Scottish [music] slang for stealing a 9:17 car. But thankfully, the team realized 9:19 nobody outside of Scotland had any idea 9:21 what that meant. So, Grand Theft Auto 2 9:23 it was. And rather than basing the world 9:25 on any real place, [music] DMA designed 9:27 built anywhere city, a retrofuturistic 9:30 metropolis [music] set in an unspecified 9:32 amount of time in the future. The design 9:34 document for GTA 2 referenced the famous 9:36 quote [music] from the 80s TV show Max 9:39 Headroom 20 minutes into the future as 9:41 the creative direction. The visual 9:43 inspiration drawn from some of the most 9:45 iconic dystopian [music] films made in 9:47 the late 1900s such as Bladeunner, 9:50 Brazil, and Akira. Promo material for 9:52 the game described Anywhere City as a 9:54 completely dysfunctional urban hell. And 9:56 when it came to marketing the game, this 9:58 sort of creative uniqueness carried over 10:01 into how they were going to sell it to 10:02 the world, commissioning a live-action 10:04 short film that would go alongside the 10:06 game's release. It's 8 minutes of 10:08 liveaction shot in New York City in 1999 10:11 with the World Trade Center visible in 10:13 the background in some shots. There's no 10:15 dialogue at all, just music and a simple 10:17 story following the protagonist of the 10:18 game called Claude Speed. a small-time 10:21 crook who works his way through New 10:23 York's criminal underworld, playing 10:25 multiple gangs against each other for 10:26 money and favors. He carjacks his way 10:28 around the city, double crosses everyone 10:30 he works for, and by the end, one of the 10:32 gangs he's betrayed catches up with him. 10:34 Dan Howser actually wrote it himself, 10:36 and the lead role of Claude Speed was 10:38 played by Scott Malson, Jack bring from 10:41 East Enders for anyone watching in the 10:42 UK. Dan Howser even cast himself in it 10:45 as an uncredited monk riding in a step 10:47 van. It was easily the most ambitious 10:49 piece of marketing for GTA they'd 10:51 produced at that point. Though granted, 10:52 GTA 2 was only the second game, but to 10:55 this day, it's still actually one of 10:56 [music] the bravest things they've ever 10:58 done on that front. And more than that, 11:00 it showed us Rockstar wasn't just trying 11:02 to make games. They were building a 11:04 brand that their fans could connect to, 11:06 something that felt like it existed 11:07 beyond the screen. The box art for this 11:09 game also has this real raw energy about 11:12 it, which might have something to do 11:13 with the fact that they actually went to 11:15 the top of the Empire State Building in 11:17 New York, pointed a camera down at the 11:19 street below, and photographed a random 11:21 yellow cab passing by, and that was the 11:23 cover for Grand Theft Auto 2. However, 11:25 despite Rockstar publishing the game, 11:27 they didn't actually own the studio 11:29 making it. DMA Design had been passed 11:31 around like a hot potato, sold [music] 11:33 to British publisher Gremlin Interactive 11:35 back in 1997. Then Gremlin was acquired 11:38 by French publisher Infoggrams in 1999 11:40 for £24 million, meaning the team 11:43 building Grand Theft Auto were 11:45 effectively owned by a company that had 11:47 absolutely nothing to do with Rockstar. 11:49 And throughout all of this, the people 11:51 inside the studio were feeling it. 11:53 According to former employees, the 11:54 relationship between the team at DMA and 11:56 the various owners above them was tense 11:58 throughout this entire period. Staff 12:00 were distrustful, unsettled, [music] 12:02 and increasingly at odds with the 12:03 direction things were heading. Every 12:05 ownership change had a real cost on the 12:07 people sitting at those desks just 12:09 trying to make great games. And it 12:10 wasn't until September 1999, just one 12:13 month before GTA 2 was released, that 12:16 Take 2 finally bought DMA Design 12:18 outright from Infoggrams. For £1, the 12:22 price of a can of Coke with the small 12:24 caveat of taking on £11 million worth of 12:26 debt. GTA 2 launched on October 22nd, 12:29 1999, and reviews were mixed. Despite 12:33 over 1.2 2 million copies being shipped 12:35 to stores worldwide at launch, expected 12:38 to generate more than $33 million in 12:40 revenue. It still wouldn't come close to 12:42 GTA 1's overall [music] lifetime sales. 12:45 And amid all of the internal upheaval 12:47 within DMA due to all the corporate 12:49 acquisitions, Dave Jones, the co-founder 12:51 of DMA Design and one of the original 12:53 creative driving forces behind Grand 12:55 Theft Auto, left the studio altogether 12:57 following Take 2 Interactives purchase 12:59 [music] of it. So by March 2000, the 13:01 Dundee Studio DMA Design as the world 13:03 had known it was closed permanently. The 13:05 remaining staff relocated to Edinburgh. 13:07 And with that, an era was over. But in 13:09 this new studio, something was already 13:11 taking shape that would change gaming 13:13 forever. And the biggest chapter in the 13:14 franchise's history was only just 13:17 beginning. 13:21 >> Change. 13:24 Following the mixed reception of GTA 2, 13:26 a core team of just 23 people, mostly 13:29 the same developers who had worked on 13:31 Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon 13:33 Valley, such as Leslie Benzy's, Obi 13:35 Vermi, and Aaron Garbett, wanted to 13:38 break free from the top-down 13:39 perspective. You see, this now legendary 13:42 trio had spent years working on the 3D 13:44 side of DMA Design, specifically on the 13:46 innovative N64 games Body Harvest, a 13:50 thirdp person openw world action 13:52 adventure, and Space Station Silicon 13:54 Valley, a creative 3D platformer where 13:56 you inhabit the bodies of different 13:58 animals to solve puzzles across a fallen 14:00 space station. Working on those games 14:02 exposed them to the power of a fully 14:04 navigable 3D environment, experiencing 14:06 firsthand how a 3D thirdperson camera 14:09 could unlock visual storytelling, 14:11 immersive physics, and a realistic sense 14:14 of scale that flat pixels simply 14:16 couldn't compete with. So, having tasted 14:18 that creative freedom, going backward to 14:20 a top-down game felt counterintuitive. 14:22 In fact, DMA support engineer Alan Jack 14:25 described the original internal pitch 14:27 for GTA 3 as explicitly combining Body 14:30 Harvest's openw world exploration with 14:32 Space Station Silicon Valley's level 14:34 design. But the team didn't go straight 14:36 into building GTA 3. The project they 14:39 actually started with was something 14:40 completely different. They began 14:42 building a prototype for a Godzilla 14:44 game, a destructible 3D city where you 14:47 played as a massive kaiju monster that 14:49 could tear through buildings, throw 14:50 objects, and watch city blocks collapse 14:53 in real time. However, it was never 14:54 really meant to be an actual game with 14:56 some downtime between projects and 14:58 access to a couple of Dreamcast dev 15:00 kits. The team were essentially just 15:02 playing around seeing what was possible. 15:04 Just a small group of developers 15:05 experimenting with new hardware to see 15:07 if they could build a convincing 3D 15:10 city. And crucially, while the Edinburgh 15:12 team were doing this, the remaining 15:13 Dundee team were simultaneously working 15:15 on an entirely separate GTA project of 15:18 their own. Coden named Grand Theft Auto 15:20 2.5, a top- down isometric 3D game set 15:24 in Miami. Two different teams, two 15:26 completely different visions for the 15:28 future of the franchise running 15:29 simultaneously. And the last thing the 15:31 Edinburgh team wanted was to cause 15:33 internal conflict by openly developing a 15:35 3D successor. while the other team were 15:37 hard at work on their own version. One 15:39 developer described it as not wanting to 15:42 cause a bloodbath, so they kept it 15:45 quiet, kept it under the Godzilla label, 15:47 and let the work speak for itself. As 15:49 Obie Vermi later recalled, the team were 15:51 very deliberate about staying under the 15:52 radar until they had something concrete 15:54 to show. But what they ended up building 15:56 was something truly astonishing for its 15:58 time. a fully navigable 3D city filled 16:01 with moving vehicles, pedestrians 16:03 walking the streets, and buildings 16:05 lining every block. And when Sam Hower 16:07 saw it, even in its earliest, most 16:09 broken state, he knew immediately this 16:12 was exactly what he'd been waiting for. 16:13 In his own words, it was mind-blowing. I 16:15 was like, "Oh man, if we do this in 16:17 proper 3D, it's going to be insane." 16:19 Danhouser's reaction was slightly 16:21 different, stating, "What did I think 16:23 when I first saw it?" Well, to begin 16:24 with, I had the natural reaction of, 16:26 "What is Sam talking about? The code 16:28 would literally run for 10 seconds and 16:30 crash. But when you started playing, you 16:32 understood the magic. And Haron Garbett, 16:34 the art director who had helped build 16:36 the prototype, later summed up the 16:38 team's mindset perfectly. We were young 16:40 and arrogant and made a conscious 16:41 decision to redirect the project to be 16:44 GTA. We knew that we could do it. The 16:46 prototype did exactly what it needed to 16:48 do, and Sam, who'd always wanted to take 16:50 GTA into 3D, gave the green light 16:53 immediately. Take Two chose Edinburgh in 16:55 the full 3D version over the Miami 2.5 16:58 project, which was quietly cancelled 17:00 when the Dundee studio closed in March 17:02 2000, though that setting wouldn't stay 17:04 buried for long. And so, from August 17:06 1999, 23 people in a studio in Edinburgh 17:10 got to work. What followed was 27 months 17:12 of building something the games industry 17:14 had never seen before. 17:18 The first major decision was the 17:20 platform. The prototype had been built 17:21 on Dreamcast dev kits, but 4 months into 17:24 development, the team made the call to 17:26 [music] switch to PlayStation 2. The 17:27 Dreamcast simply wasn't commercially 17:29 viable. Obie Vermi described it as a 17:31 genuinely disappointing decision. The 17:34 team loved the Dreamcast, but business 17:36 was business. From day one, the 17:37 technical challenges were unlike 17:39 anything the team had faced before. One 17:41 of the biggest problems they ran into 17:43 was the streaming. The PS2 only had 32 17:46 megabytes of memory, enough for just a 17:47 couple of city blocks around the player 17:49 at any one time. But the total assets 17:51 that made up Liberty City came to around 17:55 130 megabytes, nearly four times what 17:57 the console could hold at once. So, as 17:59 the player moved through the city, new 18:00 graphics had to be constantly loaded 18:02 from the DVD. But the DVD drive was 18:05 painfully slow, causing buildings to be 18:07 completely invisible until they suddenly 18:09 popped into view right in front of you. 18:11 So, the team got creative. They 18:13 deliberately slowed the players movement 18:14 speed down to give the city more time to 18:16 load. Portland Island originally had a 18:18 long straight road running all the way 18:20 down it, but that let players drive too 18:22 fast and the streaming couldn't keep up. 18:24 So, they changed the road layout 18:25 entirely to slow players down and even 18:27 slightly increased the air resistance on 18:29 vehicles in certain areas. The city 18:31 itself went through a significant 18:33 creative overhaul during development. 18:35 Dan Howser originally described the 18:37 early version of Liberty City as a 18:38 generic hybrid, a blend of Chicago, 18:41 Pittsburgh, Detroit, New York, and 18:42 Philadelphia all rolled into one. But as 18:44 the team actually started building 18:46 missions and stories within it, they 18:48 realized that basing it more firmly on a 18:50 single real city gave them so much more 18:52 to say about it. So they redesigned 18:54 Liberty City to be much more closely 18:56 modeled on New York. Portland 18:57 representing Brooklyn, Stuntton Island 18:59 representing Manhattan, and Shoreside 19:01 Veil representing parts of New Jersey 19:03 and Staten Island. Now, a lot of what 19:05 you're about to hear next comes from an 19:07 incredibly rare source, the official GTA 19:10 3 design document, a physical document 19:12 dated December 29th, 2000, almost a year 19:15 before the game released. Originally 19:17 distributed to department leads and 19:19 developers during production, this 19:21 document was tracked down and purchased 19:22 on eBay for $1,025 19:25 by a YouTube channel called GTAer 19:28 videos, one of the most dedicated GTA 19:30 research channels on the internet that's 19:32 been posting Grand Theft Auto content 19:34 since 2007, pretty much since YouTube's 19:37 inception. Rather than keeping it to 19:38 themselves, they shared everything, 19:40 breaking it all down in a nearly 2-hour 19:42 long video. So, a huge thank you to GTA 19:45 series Videos. If you want the full deep 19:47 dive, their video is linked in the 19:48 description. And what this document 19:50 reveals about how GTA 3 was originally 19:53 conceived is quite fascinating. For 19:55 starters, the original story of GTA 3 19:58 was completely different to what we 20:00 ended up with. The villains weren't the 20:02 Colombian cartel at all. They were a 20:04 mysterious, unnamed gang referred to 20:06 only as the Masks, a shadowy criminal 20:08 organization with no clear identity. And 20:11 Claude's story didn't begin with a 20:12 betrayal by Catalina. He was simply 20:14 ambushed by the masks during a heist 20:16 gone wrong. The personal betrayal angle, 20:18 the Catalina character, the Colombian 20:20 cartel, all of that came later in 20:22 development. Even Claude having no voice 20:24 wasn't part of the original plan. On 20:26 page 172 of the design document, Claude 20:29 actually has written dialogue for two 20:31 specific missions. So, a talking Claude 20:33 was absolutely on the table at some 20:35 point, but the audio department were 20:36 already overwhelmed by having to voice 20:38 dozens of NPCs along with nine radio 20:41 stations and an entire cast of 20:43 characters. And so a corner that had to 20:45 be cut ended up becoming one of the most 20:47 iconic design choices in the series. The 20:49 list of features that never made it into 20:51 the final game from this document is 20:53 also remarkable. GTA 3 was originally 20:55 going to have split screen multiplayer 20:57 with five different game modes. 20:59 Deathmatch points races, stunt races, 21:02 and tag. NPCs called grasses were also 21:05 planned. Civilians who would run to the 21:07 nearest phone box and report Claude to 21:08 the police if they spotted him doing 21:10 something illegal. a feature Rockstar 21:12 ended up using years later in another 21:14 one of their games, the Warriors. And 21:16 then there's Darkl, one of the most 21:18 mysterious cut characters in the 21:20 franchise. According to the design 21:21 document, Darkl was an insane bomb maker 21:24 who wandered Liberty City and always 21:25 seemed to have some heinous job for 21:28 Claude. Described as a stinky shuffling 21:30 profit of the apocalypse, he was 21:31 supposed to give Claude five missions in 21:33 total, essentially replacing the kill 21:35 frenzies from GTA 1 and 2. But his 21:38 missions kept getting cut one by one 21:40 until Rockstar pulled him from the game 21:42 entirely. They addressed him in a 2011 21:44 Q&A, confirming he was removed long 21:47 before any 9/11 related changes, and 21:49 that despite years of fan speculation, 21:51 none of his missions involved Russian 21:53 communists blowing up a school bus or 21:55 flying planes into buildings. And with 21:57 the game stripped of everything that 21:59 couldn't make the cut, by mid 2001, it 22:02 was finally coming together. And in June 22:03 that same year, Rockstar brought GTA 3 22:06 to E3 in Los Angeles, the biggest gaming 22:09 event in the world. 22:10 >> The original game was based on watching 22:12 too many American movies and uh watching 22:14 all that overhead helicopter chase 22:16 footage and which was the only camera we 22:18 could use due to the limitations on on 22:20 the old hardware, but we always wanted 22:21 to make an action movie when you 22:22 actually felt like you were controlling 22:23 a real character. And that's what we've 22:25 done this time. 22:26 >> But surprisingly, nobody really cared 22:28 all that much. GTA 3 was mostly 22:30 overlooked as all the attention was on 22:32 Halo, Zelda, and Metal Gear Solid 2. Sam 22:35 Hower later admitted he was shocked by 22:37 how little interest the game generated 22:39 at the event. But rather than deflating 22:41 the team, it only made them more 22:42 determined. They went back to Edinburgh 22:44 and kept polishing. Still certain they 22:46 had something revolutionary on their 22:47 hands. Then on the morning of September 22:49 11th, 2001, just 6 weeks before GTA 3 22:53 was set to release, everything changed. 22:55 Following the September 11th attacks on 22:57 the World Trade Center, Rockstar's 22:59 offices in Manhattan couldn't be 23:00 accessed for days. And with a game set 23:02 in a city modeled on New York, filled 23:04 with crime, violence, and satire weeks 23:07 away from releasing, Rockstar went back 23:09 through the game with a fine tooth comb, 23:11 a mission referencing terrorists was 23:13 removed, dialogue was altered, flight 23:15 paths of planes near buildings were 23:16 changed, and the police car colors, 23:18 originally designed to resemble the 23:20 NYPD's blue and white livery, were 23:22 switched to black and white. But 23:24 Rockstar later confirmed the game ended 23:26 up being only about 1% different as a 23:28 result of 9/11. The biggest change of 23:30 all though was the cover art. The 23:32 original GTA 3 cover was deemed too raw 23:34 for the American market in the immediate 23:36 aftermath of the attacks. So Rockstar 23:38 redesigned it in a single evening. 23:40 Drawing inspiration from the collage 23:42 style of 1960s movie posters, they 23:44 created the iconic split panel design we 23:47 know and love today. Sam Hower said the 23:50 new cover was instantly preferred over 23:51 the original and that design created 23:53 overnight out of necessity became the 23:55 signature visual style for the series 23:57 moving forward. GTA 3 launched on 24:00 PlayStation 2 on October 22nd, 2001. The 24:03 same journalists who had barely glanced 24:05 at it at E3 4 months earlier were now 24:07 giving it perfect scores. It became the 24:09 bestselling game of 2001, then the 24:12 second bestselling game of 2002, beaten 24:14 only by its own sequel. It sold over 24:17 14.5 million copies and the industry was 24:20 never the same again. 23 people in a 24:22 studio in Edinburgh had just changed 24:24 gaming forever. And DMA Design, the 24:26 studio that had started Life Above a 24:28 Chip Shop in Dundee, was officially 24:29 renamed Rockstar North in May 2002. The 24:33 branch that would go on to become 24:34 Rockstar's most recognizable studio and 24:37 redefine what modern openw world gaming 24:39 looks like. 24:42 Before 24:54 the dust could even settle from GTA 3's 24:57 massive success, Rockstar [music] 24:59 was already working on their next major 25:01 Grand Theft Auto title. But without even 25:03 realizing it yet, according to Llo 25:05 Jones, work began on Vice City just 1 25:07 month after GTA 3 was released. However, 25:10 what they were building wasn't intended 25:12 to be a brand new game at all. That's 25:14 right. Vice City was originally planned 25:15 as a mission pack/DLC 25:18 for GTA 3. Just a short story line, a 25:21 new map, some new weapons to have fun 25:23 with, and a few new vehicles, a quick 25:25 turnaround to basically capitalize on 25:27 GTA 3's extraordinary momentum. It was 25:29 the Hower brothers in Rockstar New York 25:31 who had their hearts set on an 80s Miami 25:33 setting. And Rockstar North just started 25:36 building it on top of the GTA 3 code 25:38 base with no major code changes. Only 25:41 once Grand Theft Auto 3 kept selling the 25:43 way it did, and Vice City started 25:45 looking sufficiently different from what 25:46 came before it was the decision made 25:48 roughly 6 months into development to 25:50 make it a standalone game. Dan Hower 25:53 described the inspiration as simply 25:54 Scarface, Miami Vice, and our 80s 25:57 childhoods. Throughout development, the 25:59 team watched Miami Vice constantly as a 26:01 reference point. Art director Aaron 26:03 Garbett used the series specifically as 26:05 a reference for the neon lighting. And 26:07 in recreating an 80s setting, the team 26:09 found it relatively painless given the 26:11 distinct culture of the era and their 26:13 personal familiarity with it. But they 26:15 didn't just watch films and call it a 26:17 day. The entire development team was 26:19 packed off on an all expenses paid 26:21 research trip to Miami Beach, splitting 26:23 into small groups, walking the streets, 26:26 taking photographs, and absorbing 26:27 everything. The architecture, the light, 26:29 the colors, the way the sun hit the art 26:31 deco buildings on Ocean Drive. Aaron 26:33 Garbert later said basing the city on 26:35 Miami made things pretty easy because 26:37 Miami is just such a visually distinct 26:39 place. But there was one element of this 26:41 world they had to get right to nail that 26:43 80s Miami Vice atmosphere, which is the 26:46 music. Every GTA before this relied 26:48 almost entirely on original 26:50 compositions, avoiding the cost and 26:52 legal complexity of licensing real 26:54 tracks. Grand Theft Auto 3 had dipped 26:56 its toe in, but Vice City was a 26:58 completely different scale entirely 27:00 because of the atmosphere they were 27:01 trying to sell. You can't sit there in a 27:03 studio and manufacture something even 27:05 remotely close to Billy Jean or Out of 27:07 Touch or Iran. The era had a sound that 27:10 was completely unique and inimitable. 27:12 And if this game was going to transport 27:13 people there, it needed the actual 27:15 thing. So Rockstar went ahead and got 27:17 it. Over 100 fully licensed songs spread 27:20 across multiple radio stations covering 27:22 every genre the decade had to offer. 27:24 Pop, metal, hip-hop, new wave, R&B, 27:27 Michael Jackson on the same soundtrack 27:29 as Mega Death, Tears for Fears next to 27:31 Herby Hancock. It was an enormous 27:33 undertaking, a massive financial 27:34 investment and a licensing operation the 27:36 studio had never attempted at anything 27:38 close to this scale. And pulling it off 27:40 came down to who was actually running 27:42 Rockstar before co-founding the company. 27:45 Sam Hower had spent years working at 27:47 BMG, one of the biggest music labels in 27:49 the world. He knew how record labels 27:51 operated. He knew the industry. He knew 27:53 the people. And he knew who to call. And 27:55 he leveraged every one of those 27:57 connections to make it happen. The 27:58 result was a soundtrack so carefully 28:00 curated, it didn't feel like a playlist. 28:02 It felt like a time machine. Every 28:04 station was a different entry point into 28:06 1986 Miami. And for an entire generation 28:09 of players, many of whom weren't even 28:11 born in the 80s, Vice City was their 28:13 first introduction to half of these 28:14 songs. However, all of that music came 28:16 with a catch nobody talked about at the 28:18 time. Licenses expire and years later 28:20 when Rockstar tried to re-release the 28:22 game digitally. Songs started vanishing 28:25 one by one as deals ran out, including 28:28 multiple Michael Jackson tracks. the 28:30 version of Vice City that millions of 28:31 people grew up with. The complete 28:33 version technically no longer exists in 28:35 any official release. But the world was 28:37 only half of it. If Vice City was truly 28:39 going to be brought to life, it needed a 28:41 worthy cast. And oh boy, did Rockstar 28:43 deliver. 28:44 >> Should try this at home sometime. This 28:46 [ __ ] is hardcore. 28:48 >> Hell yeah. 28:49 >> You know, but you got to see cuz once 28:51 they put this [ __ ] together, it's going 28:52 to be what they say, off the hook. 28:56 >> For $320, give him a stick. I mean, 28:58 [music] [ __ ] 28:59 I'll take an ass whip when we're 320. 29:01 >> I stick my neck out with nobody. 29:03 >> This is a disaster. We are so screwed, 29:07 man. I was in it. 29:08 >> That was perfect. 29:09 >> I was in it. 29:10 >> That was excellent. 29:10 >> Oh, it felt so good. 29:12 >> It's so funny that the only thing that 29:14 I'd ever do and it's this. You know, the 29:16 most nastiest thing ever. 29:18 >> Funny old guy recently. 29:20 >> Don't take it personally, my dear. 29:22 [laughter] 29:24 >> Luck. You know what lucky stands for? L 29:26 U C K Y 29:29 >> L L U C K Y means living under correct 29:32 knowledge yearly. 29:33 >> What Rockstar had quietly assembled was 29:35 an elite level Hollywood cast, the kind 29:37 you'd expect to see on a film poster 29:39 outside a movie theater, not a silly 29:42 PlayStation 2 [music] video game. Ray 29:43 Leota, the star of Good Fellas as Tommy 29:46 Veti, the first fully voiced protagonist 29:48 in the history of the franchise. William 29:50 Fishner as Ken Rosenberg. Luis Guzman as 29:53 Ricardo Diaz. Bert Reynolds as Avery 29:55 Carrington. Fuzza Balk as Mercedes 29:57 Cortez, Danny Dyier as Kent Paul, Gary 30:00 Buuzy as Phil Cassidy, and Philip 30:02 Michael Thomas, the actual Ricardo Tubs 30:04 from Miami Vice itself as Lance Vance. 30:06 And the list goes on. It was 30:07 jaw-dropping. But as you can imagine, 30:09 when you're dealing with that many 30:11 Hollywood egos in one project, things 30:13 were never going to go entirely smoothly 30:15 behind the scenes. And let's just say, 30:17 not everyone on that list was a pleasure 30:19 to work with. Danhauser later recalled 30:20 that during one recording session, he 30:22 and Bert Reynolds got into a heated 30:24 argument over the direction of a scene. 30:26 It escalated to the point where Bert 30:28 reportedly turned to the room and 30:29 yelled, "Get the Limey out of here." The 30:31 sessions were so hostile that Dan Howser 30:34 apparently considered cutting him from 30:35 the game entirely. But Rockstar never 30:38 forgot about it. Years later, when they 30:39 brought Bert Reynolds character Avery 30:41 Carrington back in Liberty City Stories, 30:44 they killed him off immediately, had his 30:46 body eaten by another character, and 30:48 revealed mid-scene that he'd been 30:49 wearing a wig the entire time. A petty, 30:52 perfect act of revenge buried inside a 30:54 PSP spin-off, classic rockstar at the 30:57 time. Then there was Ray Leota, who 30:58 director of production Narvid Consari 31:00 described as frequently difficult on 31:03 set. Sam Hower later said that in some 31:05 sessions he was into it, but then 31:06 sometimes he was very cold and couldn't 31:08 work. Aliota himself later admitted he'd 31:11 done the game purely for the money. And 31:13 after feeling he'd been underpaid when 31:14 Rockstar came back asking for a cameo in 31:17 San Andreas, he said no, making GTA Vice 31:20 City, the only game he ever appeared in, 31:22 which in hindsight only adds to the 31:24 legend of it. However, it was these 31:25 experiences that made Rockstar rethink 31:27 their approach to celebrity casting. 31:29 They'd still go big on San Andreas, but 31:31 never quite at the same caliber as Vice 31:33 City. Over a decade later, Dan Hower 31:36 eventually put it plainly, stating, "We 31:38 don't bring in name actors anymore 31:40 because of their egos. But for one game 31:42 built in 9 months, Rockstar had created 31:44 something that transcended the medium, 31:46 and the numbers reflected it." Grand 31:48 Theft Auto Vice City launched on October 31:50 29th, 2002. It sold 500,000 copies 31:54 within the first 24 [music] hours and 31:56 1.4 4 million in its first 3 days, 31:59 making it the fastests selling game in 32:01 history at the time. It went on to sell 32:03 17.5 million copies in total, outs 32:06 selling GTA 3 and becoming the 32:08 bestselling game of 2002. Two games in 2 32:11 years, both the bestselling titles on 32:13 the planet, back to back. But Rockstar 32:15 wasn't even close to being finished 32:16 because even as Vice City was flying off 32:18 shelves, Rockstar North were already 32:20 building something bigger, something 32:21 that would take everything Vice City had 32:23 done and blow the roof off it entirely. 32:25 Still, this is a thriving industry. 32:27 Violent video games selling more than $6 32:30 billion in software just last year. 32:33 >> Hi, Anthony Sullivan here with a great 32:35 new invention that'll change your life. 32:37 No more boring conversations or dull 32:39 evenings. No more envy at other people's 32:42 happy, successful lives. All this from 32:45 one amazing product, Grand Theft Auto 32:48 Vice City. 32:49 >> After Vice City became a worldwide 32:51 phenomenon, Rockstar had a target on 32:52 their back. By 2003, the video games, a 32:56 dangerous conversation in America, had 32:57 reached fever pitch. Congress was 32:59 holding hearings, parent groups were 33:01 organizing, and news networks were 33:03 running segment after segment about the 33:05 corrupting influence of violent video 33:07 games on children. And sitting right at 33:08 the center of all of it, the most 33:10 controversial name in the entire 33:12 industry was Rockstar Games. And leading 33:14 the charge was an American activist 33:16 called Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney 33:18 who had made it his personal mission to 33:20 bring Rockstar down. Jack Thompson had 33:22 spent years targeting violent media such 33:24 as rap music, films, and television, but 33:27 GTA was his obsession. He began 33:29 targeting the franchise in early 2003, 33:32 attempting to insert himself into a 33:33 murder case in Ohio, arguing that GTA 3 33:36 had essentially trained the teenage 33:38 killer to commit the crime. The defense 33:40 strategy was so absurd that the 33:42 perpetrator himself ultimately rejected 33:44 Thompson's help, firing him from the 33:46 case entirely. But that didn't stop him 33:48 on his witch hunt. Just a few months 33:49 later, in June 2003, when an 18-year-old 33:52 named Devon Moore walked into a police 33:54 station in Alabama, grabbed an officer's 33:56 gun, and killed three people, then 33:58 calmly told authorities, "Life is like a 34:00 video game." Jack Thompson immediately 34:02 pointed the finger at Vice City. He 34:04 called the game a murder simulator on 34:06 national television and went on cable 34:08 news making unsubstantiated claims about 34:10 what players could do in the game. He 34:12 even personally videotaped Miami Best 34:14 Buy selling a copy of Vice City to a 34:16 child and sent a letter to the company's 34:18 headquarters warning of prosecutions if 34:20 they didn't stop. He was a relentless 34:22 Karen. Yet, the more coverage he got, 34:24 the more games Rockstar sold. Cuban and 34:26 Haitian-American communities in Florida 34:28 had also taken serious issue with how 34:31 their communities were portrayed in the 34:32 game, and specifically with a mission 34:34 objective that literally appeared on 34:36 screen reading, "Kill the Haitians." 34:38 Protests were organized in Florida and 34:40 the story ended up hitting national 34:42 news. And by late 2003, a full year 34:44 after the game had launched, Rockstar 34:46 issued a public apology and committed to 34:48 releasing a censored version of Vice 34:50 City in 2004 with that dialogue removed 34:53 entirely. It was the first time Rockstar 34:55 had ever been made to go back and change 34:57 a released game, and it wouldn't be the 34:59 last. 35:15 From the very beginning, San Andreas was 35:17 built differently. It was obvious that 35:19 Vice City hadn't innovated that much, 35:21 and another reskin wasn't going to fly 35:23 in technical director Obi Vermay's own 35:25 words. So this time they had two whole 35:27 years of development, more than double 35:29 what Vice City had received. And the 35:31 difference would show. Instead of one 35:33 city, this time they were going for 35:34 three. One based on Los Angeles, one 35:36 based on San Francisco and one based on 35:39 Las Vegas. Although the original plan 35:41 was actually three separate maps 35:43 connected only by trains and planes, 35:45 similar to how the first GTA games 35:47 worked. But in a meeting that Obi Verai 35:49 later said publicly he still has 35:51 nightmares about, the room was 35:53 apparently split. Three people wanted 35:55 separate maps, but two didn't. Obie went 35:57 home that night genuinely convinced they 35:59 were about to make a massive mistake. 36:01 However, the next morning, Leslie Benzes 36:03 walked back into the room with his mind 36:05 made up. One map, three cities, all 36:07 connected. And when Leslie Benzes had a 36:09 strong opinion on something, that was 36:11 just what they did. But building three 36:13 cities across one enormous connected map 36:16 on PS2 hardware was only half the 36:18 challenge. Because San Andreas wasn't 36:20 just going to be bigger than anything 36:21 Rockstar had built before, it was going 36:23 to feel completely different to anything 36:26 they'd ever made. San Andreas was set in 36:28 early '90s LA when gang culture was at 36:31 its peak. The crack epidemic was tearing 36:33 communities apart and the Rodney King 36:35 riots had just set the city on fire. 36:38 This was raw. And for a studio full of 36:40 developers from Edinburgh, Scotland, 36:42 they were going to need help from 36:43 someone who actually knew this world, 36:45 someone who lived it. Enter DJ Pooh, a 36:47 legendary West Coast hip hop producer 36:49 who had co-written Friday alongside Ice 36:52 Cube. DJ Pooh came on board as a 36:54 creative consultant and coowwriter. He 36:56 took the team around Los Angeles 36:58 himself, drove Scottish developers 37:00 through South Central, through Compton, 37:01 through the actual neighborhoods that 37:03 CJ's world was built on, showing them 37:05 the blocks, the people, the gangs, and 37:07 the culture. For a group of developers 37:08 from Edinburgh, it was like landing on 37:10 another planet. Sam Hower later recalled 37:12 being both fascinated yet terrified by 37:15 what they encountered during that 37:16 research. But DJ Pooh's contributions 37:18 didn't stop there because it was also 37:20 Pooh who found the voice of CJ. Young 37:22 Melee, a Los Angeles rapper and close 37:24 friend of DJ Pooh, didn't even know he 37:27 was on Rockstar's radar. Pooh called him 37:29 up for what seemed like a completely 37:31 normal conversation about music. What 37:33 Melee didn't know was that the call was 37:35 on speakerphone and Rockstar were 37:37 listening in the whole time. They heard 37:38 his voice, his natural LA delivery, and 37:41 liked what they heard enough to bring 37:42 him in for a proper audition. 37:43 >> When he hung up, he called me back like 37:46 15 minutes later, and he was like, "Hey, 37:48 man. Uh, I was in the meet with Rockstar 37:50 Games and I didn't want to tell you 37:53 because I didn't want you to put too 37:54 much on it 37:55 >> or not enough. I wanted you to be Melee. 37:57 >> But when Melee actually pulled up to the 37:59 studio on the day, there was a massive 38:01 line wrapped around the building. 38:02 Rockstar had cast a wide net and every 38:05 candidate was given the same thing to 38:07 read. A scene from Menace to Society. 38:09 Specifically, the iconic drive-through 38:11 carjacking burger scene. 38:13 >> You know what I mean? So, I'm on there 38:14 doing my thing and um he said, "Dude, 38:17 like you know, you're really good. You 38:18 had me like actually scared, you know, 38:22 it's it's it's so authentic." 38:23 >> Rockstar liked him so much they called 38:25 him in to read again a short while after 38:27 the first audition. Narrowed down the 38:29 candidates some more and eventually he 38:31 got the final call from Rockstar asking 38:32 if he could come to their headquarters 38:34 in New York. 38:35 >> Would you be, you know, able to come to 38:36 New York in in 2 weeks? I said, "Hell 38:39 yeah." You know what I mean? I'll start 38:40 walking right now. And when he arrived 38:43 in New York and got into the recording 38:44 booth, the scale of what he'd taken on 38:46 became very real very fast. Melee 38:49 described the script as being thicker 38:51 than two Bibles. Almost every line had 38:54 to be recorded multiple times in 38:56 different states of CJ's health, a 38:58 thinner voice for when he was lean, and 38:59 a heavier delivery for when he'd get 39:01 bigger due to the brand new muscle and 39:03 weight system. And just like DJ Pooh had 39:05 done on the streets of LA, Melee made 39:07 sure the dialogue came out as real as 39:09 possible. He corrected slang throughout 39:11 the script, making sure every line CJ 39:13 delivered actually reflected how people 39:15 spoke on the streets of early9s Los 39:18 Angeles. And despite all the headaches 39:19 that came with Vice City's Hollywood 39:21 cast, it had also proven that the right 39:23 voices could elevate a game to something 39:25 else entirely. So for San Andreas, they 39:27 put together another that was seriously 39:30 impressive. Fewer big names than Vice 39:32 City, but the ones they got were 39:33 perfectly placed. Samuel L. Jackson as 39:36 corrupt cop Frank Tenpenney, the biggest 39:38 villain of the game who became the most 39:40 iconic antagonist of the entire 39:42 franchise. Chris Penn as his ruthless 39:44 partner Eddie Pilaski. Ice Tea as rap 39:46 mogul Mad Dog. Charlie Murphy as Jizzy 39:49 B. David Cross as Zero. James Woods as 39:51 the mysterious government agent Mike 39:53 Torino. Peter Fondonder as the truth, an 39:55 aging hippie conspiracy theorist who 39:57 becomes one of CJ's most unlikely 40:00 allies. And William Fishner returning 40:02 from Vice City as Ken Rosenberg. But 40:04 unlike the chaotic sprint of Vice City, 40:07 the production this time around was 40:08 relatively smooth. Grand Theft Auto 3 40:11 was built by just 23 people. Vice City 40:14 by a similarly small team under enormous 40:16 pressure. But for San Andreas, Rockstar 40:18 had grown significantly, bringing over 40:20 the entire team from Manhunt after that 40:22 game wrapped, swelling the development 40:24 team to around 80 people by the time the 40:26 game was released. The biggest Rockstar 40:28 North had ever gotten up until that 40:30 point. But while this expanded army of 40:32 developers meant more hands-on deck, 40:34 Leslie Benzy's mandate for a single 40:36 seamless map meant the programming team 40:38 in Edinburgh was about to face a brutal 40:40 battle with the PlayStation 2 hardware, 40:42 a machine that was already 4 years old 40:44 with just 32 mgb of RAM to work with. 40:47 GTA 3 was 8.12 km squared. Vice City was 40:51 9.11 km squared, but San Andreas was 40:55 38.2 [music] 40:56 km squared, more than double the size of 40:58 both previous games combined. And they 41:01 were doing all of that on the exact same 41:03 hardware those first two 3D games were 41:05 made on. While it was also rumored both 41:07 before and after release and even till 41:09 this day that San Andreas used a dual 41:11 layer DVD disc capable of holding double 41:13 the storage of a standard disc, they 41:15 actually managed to cram the entire game 41:17 onto a standard single layer disc coming 41:20 in at around 4.5 GB on PS2 and 4.7 GB on 41:25 PC. So how did they actually pull it 41:27 off? Well, firstly, the streaming system 41:29 had to be completely rebuilt from the 41:31 ground up and pushed beyond its limits. 41:33 In GTA 3 and Vice City, the map was 41:36 split into islands separated by long 41:37 bridges and water channels. The engine 41:39 relied on these pathways as choke points 41:41 to artificially slow the player down, 41:43 giving the PS2 enough time to load the 41:45 next area. If you cross those borders 41:47 too quickly, the engine simply couldn't 41:49 keep up, completely shattering your 41:51 immersion with a sudden loading screen 41:53 mid drive. But for San Andreas, Rockstar 41:55 redesigned the system to use a far more 41:57 aggressive form of streaming because the 41:59 map had to run as a seamless singular 42:02 massive land mass. Instead of waiting 42:04 for structural boundaries to clear 42:06 memory, the new engine maintained a 42:07 dynamic, high-speed bubble around the 42:10 player. It constantly pulled in assets 42:12 directly ahead of your path while 42:13 aggressively purging everything that 42:15 slipped out of your radius the absolute 42:17 second it was deemed no longer needed. 42:19 While this real-time world streaming 42:21 technique successfully eliminated 42:23 Midgame loading screens altogether, 42:25 stretching it across a map four times 42:27 the size of Vice City meant playing a 42:29 dangerous game with the conso's 42:31 limitations. And the cracks showed in 42:33 ways players encountered daily, such as 42:35 your jet exploding into a radio tower, 42:37 tree, or a telephone pole that the game 42:39 hadn't even rendered on screen yet. 42:41 Basically, the game would load an 42:43 object's collision, its physical [music] 42:45 presence in the world, before it had 42:46 time to actually draw them on screen. 42:48 They also had to deliberately add extra 42:50 air resistance onto vehicles in certain 42:52 parts of the map in order to slow 42:54 players down just to give the streaming 42:55 system enough time to load the world 42:57 ahead. And thanks to a fellow GTA 43:00 YouTuber called TJGM who mapped every 43:03 single hidden speed zone across the 43:05 entire state. We can actually see where 43:07 Rockstar put them. They're located in 43:08 the most assetheavy areas of the map 43:11 where the engine was under the most 43:12 strain and in places where the player 43:14 could build up enough speed to outrun 43:16 the streaming system, such as [music] 43:17 freeways and bridges. However, despite 43:20 all of the technical limitations, the 43:22 magicians at Rockstar North did what 43:24 they always did. They found a way and 43:26 delivered something that nobody in the 43:27 industry was quite ready for. Grand 43:29 Theft Auto San Andreas launched on 43:31 October 26th, 2004. The reviews were 43:34 immediate and unanimous with perfect 43:36 scores across the board. It became the 43:38 fastests selling PlayStation 2 game in 43:40 history. It went on to sell 17.3 million 43:43 copies on the PS2 alone and 27.5 million 43:47 across all platforms, making it not just 43:49 the bestselling game of 2004, but the 43:52 bestselling PlayStation 2 game of all 43:54 time, a record it still holds to this 43:56 day. 44:01 But Rockstar's time in the limelight was 44:04 about to turn into a nightmare. Barely 44:06 eight months after launch, a Dutch 44:07 programmer dug into the game's code and 44:09 uncovered a secret Rockstar thought they 44:11 had safely locked away forever. And its 44:13 discovery would trigger a mainstream 44:15 media meltdown that nearly destroyed the 44:18 entire company, becoming the biggest and 44:20 most expensive controversy in Rockstar's 44:22 history and one of the most infamous in 44:24 the gaming space as a whole. 44:25 >> How about a little coffee? 44:28 All right, let's have her some coffee. 44:30 >> During development, Rockstar had built a 44:32 very explicit miniame into San Andreas, 44:34 one where CJ could take a girlfriend 44:36 home and the camera would cut inside and 44:38 an interactive sequence would play out 44:40 that went far beyond anything considered 44:42 acceptable in mainstream gaming. Late in 44:44 development, the decision was made to 44:46 pull it. But rather than removing the 44:48 code entirely, Rockstar simply disabled 44:50 and buried it, confident nobody would 44:52 ever find it. However, on June 9th, 44:54 2005, just 2 days after San Andreas 44:57 landed on PC, a Dutch modder named 44:59 Patrick Wildenborg uploaded a single 45:02 file to gtagar.com 45:04 named Hot Coffee. The file size was 45:06 tiny, only around 1.23 megabytes since 45:10 all the mod did was edit a tiny bit of 45:12 code, basically like flipping a switch 45:14 to unlock the content that was already 45:16 in the game. Within days of the mod 45:18 being uploaded, videos began circulating 45:20 around the internet. And from there, it 45:21 didn't take long to reach the mainstream 45:23 news. And when it did, the reaction was 45:25 exactly what you'd expect. [music] 45:27 Jack Thompson, who had spent years 45:29 trying to burn Rockstar to the ground, 45:31 finally had the ammunition he'd been 45:32 looking for. He went on every network 45:34 that would have him, calling it proof of 45:36 a deliberate conspiracy to expose 45:38 children to corn. [music] And 45:39 infamously, Hillary Clinton, then a US 45:41 senator, grabbed the political 45:43 spotlight. She officially petitioned the 45:45 FTC or Federal Trade Commission to 45:47 investigate whether Rockstar Games had 45:49 deceived the public and violated rating 45:51 disclosures while also demanding new 45:53 laws to regulate video games and protect 45:56 the American youth from what she called 45:58 a silent epidemic. Rockstar's initial 46:00 response only made things worse, 46:02 releasing a statement blaming hackers 46:04 and modders for creating the explicit 46:06 content themselves. But that [music] 46:08 defense instantly crumbled. Since the 46:10 mod was only 1 megabyte, it proved the 46:12 massive graphic files and animations 46:14 were already sitting on millions of 46:16 retail discs worldwide. Within weeks, 46:18 Hillary Clinton successfully pressured 46:20 the Entertainment Software Rating Board 46:22 to change the game's rating from M for 46:24 mature to AO for adults only. And in the 46:27 retail world, an adults only rating was 46:29 the kiss of death. Major retail giants 46:32 like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy were 46:34 forced to pull the game from their 46:35 shelves, and Rockstar had no choice but 46:37 to immediately halt production. recall 46:39 millions of copies and patch out the 46:41 hidden code in order to get it back on 46:43 store shelves. The financial damage was 46:45 astronomical. Rockstar's parent company, 46:47 Take 2 Interactive, lost over $20 46:49 million in recalled inventory and legal 46:52 fees. They eventually had to settle a 46:53 class action lawsuit from angry 46:55 consumers for another 20 million. Even 46:58 worse, Hillary Clinton's petition 46:59 successfully forced the FTC into action, 47:02 hitting the company with a federal 47:03 investigation that put their business 47:05 practices under a microscope for years. 47:07 The wild untamed era of Rockstar Games 47:10 being an untouchable industry rebel was 47:13 effectively over, forcing the company 47:14 into an era of strict corporate secrecy. 47:24 But with the wounds from one of the 47:26 biggest scandals in gaming history still 47:28 fresh, the team at Rockstar North found 47:30 themselves facing a completely new 47:32 challenge. The PlayStation 2 era was 47:35 drawing to a close, and a new generation 47:37 of hardware was arriving with the Xbox 47:39 360 and PlayStation 3. Rockstar had 47:41 always been about pushing the boundaries 47:43 and redefining what a video game could 47:45 be. And this time around would be no 47:47 different because what was coming next 47:48 would shake the industry all over again, 47:50 and nobody saw it coming. Production on 47:53 Grand Theft Auto 4 began roughly a month 47:55 after San Andreas was released. Rockstar 47:57 knew immediately the series needed to 47:59 transition into the highdefinition era 48:01 and committed to transitioning GTA into 48:04 the HD universe from day one. But first, 48:06 they had a problem to solve. For the PS2 48:08 era games, Rockstar had been using a 48:10 third-party engine called Renderware, 48:12 developed by a company called Criterion 48:15 Games. However, in 2004, EA acquired 48:18 Criterion. And overnight, the engine 48:20 powering Rockstar's biggest franchise 48:22 now belonged to a direct competitor. For 48:24 Rockstar, that was unacceptable. Grand 48:26 Theft Auto was now a household name and 48:28 they had no intentions of building the 48:30 future of the franchise on an engine 48:32 they didn't own. So they abandoned 48:33 Renderware and turned their focus toward 48:36 developing their own technologies. All 48:38 of which led to the creation of the 48:39 Rockstar Advanced Game Engine or Rage 48:42 developed by Rockstar San Diego. The 48:44 engine that would go on to become not 48:46 just the backbone for Grand Theft Auto 48:48 moving forward, but every major game 48:50 Rockstar released from that point 48:52 forward. However, building a brand new 48:53 engine from scratch was a pretty large 48:55 risk to take with your studio's biggest 48:57 franchise on the line. Rockstar needed a 48:59 safe way to essentially stress test 49:01 their new tech before building a massive 49:04 next generation digital metropolis. 49:06 Their solution was unexpected to say the 49:08 least. A ping-pong simulator called 49:10 Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis 49:12 released in 2006. While it seemed like 49:15 an odd detour for the creators of Grand 49:17 Theft Auto, this simple title was 49:19 actually a strategic Trojan horse. 49:21 Developed by Rockstar San Diego, it 49:24 served as the live test bed to prove 49:25 their new proprietary engine, Rage, 49:27 [music] on next generation hardware. It 49:29 gave engineers a low stakes environment 49:31 to work out the core systems rage needed 49:34 to actually work. Physics, lighting, the 49:36 surface rendering a chance to find and 49:38 fix problems before scaling any of it up 49:40 to a massive open world. one that would 49:42 end up being the most detailed and 49:44 technically complex thing Rockstar had 49:46 ever attempted. The Rage Engine gave 49:48 Rockstar the ability to build a world 49:50 with a level of simulation that had 49:52 never been possible before. And 49:54 alongside it, Rockstar integrated a 49:56 second piece of technology that would 49:58 define the entire physical feel of the 50:00 HD era, Natural Motion's Euphoria 50:03 Engine. The previous games had these 50:04 stiff bakedin animations, pre-recorded 50:07 movements that played out identically 50:08 every single time. Euphoria destroyed 50:11 that limitation by doing something that 50:13 quite frankly seemed impossible at the 50:15 time. Instead of playing back 50:16 pre-recorded animations for how a 50:18 character reacts physically, it 50:20 generated those reactions live on the 50:22 spot using a mix of artificial 50:24 intelligence, biomechanics, and realtime 50:26 physics. Because all of this ran through 50:28 the CPU in real time, no two physical 50:31 reactions played out the same way. Every 50:33 reaction to a bullet impact or a moving 50:35 vehicle produced a reaction that was 50:37 unique. characters had what natural 50:38 motion called euphoria behaviors. An 50:41 advanced dynamic balancer gave them 50:43 natural balance under adverse 50:45 conditions, meaning a character 50:47 stumbling on uneven ground would 50:48 instinctively adjust their footing 50:50 rather than snapping to a preset 50:52 animation. And working alongside the 50:54 Rage Engine, Euphoria gave the NPCs an 50:56 underlying sense of self-preservation 50:58 that really made them feel alive in a 51:00 way no game had ever done before. But 51:03 taking this from a controlled demo to an 51:04 actual living open world was, as you can 51:07 imagine, no walk in the park. In fact, 51:09 when Sam Hower first showed interest in 51:11 using Euphoria in the game, he was told 51:13 it would be technically impossible. They 51:15 advised it to be restricted to 51:16 unplayable cutscenes or scripted 51:19 sequences, such as a character falling 51:20 down a flight of stairs. However, 51:22 Rockstar refused to accept a limited 51:24 version of the tech. Engineers from 51:26 Natural Motion relocated to Edinburgh 51:28 and worked on site at Rockstar North for 51:30 several months at a time, rewriting code 51:32 to weave Euphoria directly into Rage's 51:35 realtime physics thread until it worked, 51:37 resulting in a major engineering triumph 51:39 for the game to match the physical 51:41 realism provided by Rage and Euphoria. 51:43 Rockstar wanted a world that felt 51:45 grounded, gritty, and alive. And what 51:48 better place than the concrete jungle, 51:50 New York City. So, they decided to 51:52 return to the setting that started it 51:53 all in the 3D era, Liberty City, 51:56 rebuilding it from the ground up 51:57 entirely. The goal wasn't just to 51:59 recreate New York's physical layout, but 52:01 to capture its soul, the claustrophobia 52:03 of the streets, the griiness, the noise 52:06 that never stops. So in March 2005, a 60 52:09 to 70 person research crew from Rockstar 52:12 North flew out to New York, spending 52:13 nearly two weeks going boots on the 52:15 ground across all five burrows, 52:17 Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, 52:19 and yes, even Staten Island. The mission 52:21 was spearheaded by art director Aaron 52:23 Garbbert, who directed his team of 52:25 artists and sound engineers to look past 52:27 the pristine touristy postcard stuff. 52:30 And instead, he ordered them to focus on 52:32 the mundane reality of the urban 52:34 landscape, like the architectural 52:35 clutter, trash buildup, public 52:37 bathrooms, and alleyways. Rockstar even 52:39 arranged for retired NYPD officers who 52:42 had previously worked the beat in 52:43 Washington Heights to personally drive 52:45 the team around the neighborhood, giving 52:47 them a real unfiltered street level view 52:49 of the city. Armed with high-end digital 52:51 cameras, camcorders, and audio 52:53 recorders, the team fanned out across 52:55 the city to capture the raw, unfiltered 52:58 data needed to transition the franchise 53:00 into the HD era. They studied every 53:03 layer of street detail imaginable. To 53:05 put it into perspective, the combined 53:06 research effort had produced well over 53:09 100,000 reference photographs and 53:11 several hundred hours of raw video 53:13 footage. Back at Rockstar North in 53:15 Edinburgh, these recordings were played 53:17 on a constant loop throughout the studio 53:19 on large monitors, soaking the mid2000s 53:22 New York atmosphere into the team's 53:24 daily workflow environment to keep the 53:26 tone as consistent as possible and 53:27 ensure a Liberty City that felt totally 53:29 authentic. Rockstar even hired a 53:31 full-time research team permanently 53:33 based in New York to handle ongoing 53:35 requests, such as the ethnic makeup of a 53:37 specific neighborhood, traffic patterns 53:39 at particular intersections, or the 53:41 exact architecture of a specific subway 53:43 entrance. And the team didn't just stop 53:45 at New York, they crossed the border 53:47 into New Jersey, thoroughly documenting 53:49 the industrial landscapes, dense 53:51 suburban neighborhoods, and the gritty 53:53 streets of Jersey City. In the final 53:54 game, this area became, a completely 53:57 separate in-game state that actually 53:59 absorbed some repurposed assets from 54:01 Staten Island, the only one out of the 54:03 five New York burrows that failed to 54:05 make the final cut. These wireframe 54:07 shots, released inconspicuously by 54:09 Andrew Susay, a former environment 54:12 artist at Rockstar North, show a block 54:14 that is modeled directly after 577 Bay 54:17 Street in Staten Island. In the final 54:19 game, the only change to this block was 54:20 the Paramount Theater, which was swapped 54:22 out for a cinema modeled after the 54:24 Tennerly Cinema in Jersey. Looking at 54:26 Rockstar's earliest concept sketches, 54:28 originally the map would have featured 54:30 the entire tri-state area with different 54:32 terrains like San Andreas, stretching 54:35 from the mountains of upstate New York 54:36 all the way down to the Hamptons in Long 54:38 Island. The Hamptons technically exists 54:40 as a location within the game's 54:41 universe, referenced on the radio under 54:43 the name the Carowways. But as 54:45 development progressed, the tri-state 54:47 concept quickly collided with the harsh 54:49 realities of the technical limitations 54:51 of the hardware at the time. If Rockstar 54:53 kept the map that large, the game's 54:55 overall quality would have taken a major 54:57 hit. So, they scaled it back, keeping it 54:59 to just Liberty City and Alden, allowing 55:01 them to pour all of their resources into 55:03 making those environments as dense, 55:05 alive, and visually uncompromising as 55:08 possible. With the world built, Rockstar 55:10 now had to come up with a protagonist 55:12 worthy of it. And in a recent interview 55:14 on the Lex Friedman podcast, his first 55:17 major public appearance since leaving 55:19 Rockstar, Dan Howser finally opened up 55:22 about how Nico Bell came to life for the 55:24 very first time. It began with a single 55:27 sentence. A Serbian immigrant in 55:29 America. From there, Dan and his team 55:31 spent nearly a year building that idea 55:33 outward from every angle. What this 55:35 person would die for, what broke them, 55:37 what made them laugh. But what really 55:38 separated Nico from every GTA 55:41 protagonist before him was how personal 55:43 and human he felt. Dan described GTA 4 55:46 as an attempt to capture an immigrant 55:48 experience. Someone both enchanted and 55:50 alienated by America. Because Dan 55:52 himself was living that, a British 55:54 immigrant in New York, single, 55:56 miserable, and unsure whether he even 55:58 wanted to stay in America while writing 55:59 the game. Years later, he wondered to 56:01 himself why the game was so dark and 56:03 realized that was why. It was two 56:05 moments early in the writing that told 56:07 his instincts this character was 56:08 working, even though it was taking a 56:10 huge risk. The comedic scene of Nico 56:12 discovering his cousin's glamorous 56:14 promises were a delusion and a darker 56:16 moment where Nico opens up about his 56:18 wartime past. Comedy and tragedy side by 56:22 side. That combination gave Dan the 56:24 confidence Nico could carry the whole 56:26 game. And in retrospect, he wasn't 56:27 wrong, was he? To bring Nico to life, 56:29 Rockstar turned to a Russian actor named 56:31 Vladimir Mashkov, whose character Sasha 56:34 Ivanic in the 2001 film Behind Enemy 56:36 Lines had been the direct visual 56:38 inspiration for Nico from the very 56:40 beginning. Rockstar approached Mashkov 56:42 about voicing the character. However, he 56:44 turned it down. In 2006, video game 56:46 voice acting still wasn't considered 56:48 serious work, especially by actors who'd 56:50 already landed leading roles in major 56:52 Hollywood blockbusters. So, the role 56:54 ended up going to a Broadway performer 56:56 named Michael Hollik, who'd most notably 56:58 made several minor guest appearances 57:00 across the Law and Order TV show. Hollik 57:02 actually landed the voice acting role of 57:04 Nico Bellic by accident after initially 57:07 being hired only to perform the physical 57:09 motion capture work. 57:10 >> I initially was hired to do the motion 57:12 capture. 57:13 >> Oh, I didn't. 57:14 >> And uh so I did all the motion capture 57:16 for the character as well. For the first 57:18 two weeks on set, Hollik performed 57:20 without knowing the game's true 57:21 identity. As Rockstar developed the 57:23 project under the strict code name 57:25 Frozen [music] to prevent leaks. To help 57:27 himself fully embody the character he 57:29 was performing on the mocap stage, he 57:31 began using an Eastern European accent 57:33 as a physical acting tool. And as the 57:35 sessions progressed, Hollik began 57:37 naturally inhabiting the character. The 57:39 Serbian accent, the body language, the 57:41 emotional weight. It was all there. 57:43 Motion capture director Rod Edge, who 57:45 serves as the senior vice president of 57:47 performance production at Rockstar to 57:49 this day, realized this and decided that 57:51 Hollik actually fit the character all 57:53 round perfectly. So, two weeks into 57:55 production, Rockstar officially asked 57:57 Michael Hollik to take on the voice 57:59 acting role as well as the mocap. But 58:01 since Michael Hollik is from Brooklyn, 58:03 New York himself, Rockstar brought in a 58:05 dialect coach to work with him 58:07 throughout production. Here is the only 58:08 surviving photo we have from all of the 58:10 shoots, which was actually taken during 58:12 motion capture for the opening cutscene 58:15 during the mission Essa of the Streets. 58:17 On the far left, you can see the 58:19 background dancers from the scene. Then 58:20 we have Michael Hollik and Berto Coen 58:22 aka Nico and Manny right in the center 58:25 of the shot. And then Daniel O'Brien, 58:27 aka Jay Hamilton, the cameraman on the 58:29 right side, being directed by Rod Edge. 58:31 And over the course of those 15 months, 58:33 what Michael Hollik delivered became the 58:35 beating heart of the entire game. 58:37 >> Remember, during the war, we did some 58:40 bad things, and bad things happen to us. 58:45 War is where the young and stupid are 58:48 tricked by the old and bitter into 58:50 killing each other. I was very young and 58:54 very angry. 58:57 Maybe that is no excuse. A performance 58:59 so utterly convincing and so deeply felt 59:02 that it would go on to win him best male 59:04 voice actor at the 2008 Video Game 59:06 Awards. But Hollik's supporting cast 59:08 were extraordinary in their own right. 59:10 Unlike the 3D era games, this time 59:12 around there were no name Hollywood 59:14 actors or recognizable faces in the 59:16 game. Every single actor in GTA 4 was 59:18 completely unknown, at least until the 59:20 game was released. And the performances 59:22 they delivered spoke for themselves. 59:24 character after character, each one 59:25 unforgettable, proving Rockstar's theory 59:27 that hiring unknown actors gave the 59:29 performances a far more authentic and 59:32 believable quality. An approach to 59:33 casting they haven't abandoned since. 59:35 And while the game was still being built 59:37 behind Rockstar's now impenetrable 59:39 walls, they chose to announce GTA 4 at 59:42 Microsoft's E3 press conference on May 59:45 9th, 2006, still just under 2 years out 59:48 from release, and it became one of the 59:49 most iconic E3 moments of all time. 59:52 Peter Moore, then corporate vice 59:54 president of Microsoft's interactive 59:56 entertainment business, famously 59:58 announced GTA 4 for Xbox 360 by rolling 1:00:01 up his sleeve to reveal a freshly done 1:00:03 tattoo of the game's logo. Less than a 1:00:05 year after this legendary reveal, the 1:00:07 first trailer for the game was released 1:00:09 on March 29th, 2007, titled Things Will 1:00:13 Be Different, just over a minute long. 1:00:16 >> Perhaps here, things will [music] be 1:00:18 different. It was the first time the 1:00:20 world had ever seen Grand Theft Auto in 1:00:22 high definition, and for anyone who'd 1:00:24 grown up with the PS2 era games, it was 1:00:26 a jaw-dropping moment. It was 1:00:28 overwhelmingly wellreceived, generating 1:00:30 massive hype. GTA 4 was originally 1:00:32 scheduled to launch in October 2007. 1:00:35 However, the game was pushed back by 6 1:00:37 months to April 2008 with Rockstar 1:00:40 citing the need for additional 1:00:41 development time to ensure the game met 1:00:43 the standard they were holding 1:00:45 themselves to across both the Xbox 360 1:00:48 and PlayStation 3. A delay that, as any 1:00:50 Rockstar fan will tell you, would become 1:00:52 something of a tradition. Grand Theft 1:00:54 Auto 4 launched on April 29th, 2008. In 1:00:57 its first 24 hours alone, the game 1:00:59 generated $310 million in sales. By the 1:01:03 end of its first week, that number had 1:01:05 climbed to $500 million, shattering Halo 1:01:08 3's record as the fastests selling 1:01:10 entertainment product in history. Not 1:01:12 just the fastests selling game, the 1:01:13 fastests selling entertainment product, 1:01:15 period, which includes film, music, 1:01:17 television, everything. Nothing had ever 1:01:19 made that much money that fast. It broke 1:01:21 three separate Guinness World Records on 1:01:23 launch and scored a 98 out of 100 on 1:01:26 Metacritic, making it the second highest 1:01:28 rated game ever recorded on the platform 1:01:30 at the time. And remember the problems 1:01:32 Hillary Clinton caused for Rockstar due 1:01:34 to the hot coffee drama? Well, players 1:01:36 quickly noticed they hadn't forgotten. 1:01:38 Sitting in the middle of Happiness 1:01:39 Island, in clear parody of the Statue of 1:01:42 Liberty, stood the Statue of Happiness 1:01:44 with a face bearing an uncanny 1:01:46 resemblance to Hillary Clinton herself. 1:01:48 And in her raised hand, instead of a 1:01:50 torch, was a steaming cup of coffee. 1:01:52 Rockstar also carved a satirical message 1:01:54 into the tablet in her other hand, 1:01:56 taking a jab at American politics. And 1:01:58 with that, GTA 4 took its place as 1:02:01 something more than a game. It showed 1:02:03 this medium could be as raw, as human, 1:02:05 and as emotionally devastating as 1:02:07 anything Hollywood had ever produced. 1:02:09 Sam and Dan Hower had always believed 1:02:11 that themselves, and now they'd proven 1:02:13 it without a shadow of a doubt. This 1:02:15 title truly became the benchmark every 1:02:17 open world game would be measured 1:02:19 against. And still, to this day, nearly 1:02:21 two decades later, it's still one of the 1:02:23 greatest games ever created. A game so 1:02:25 ahead of its time that titles releasing 1:02:27 right now are still struggling to match 1:02:29 what Rockstar built back in 2008. 1:02:35 The development period between Grand 1:02:37 Theft Auto 4 and 5 was a defining era 1:02:40 for Rockstar Games. Before GTA 5, the 1:02:42 company's studios largely operated as 1:02:44 separate creative kingdoms. Rockstar 1:02:46 North autonomously handled GTA while San 1:02:49 Diego spearheaded Red Dead [music] 1:02:51 Redemption. But as the gaming industry 1:02:53 hurtled deeper into the HD era, the old 1:02:56 ways crumbled. The level of detail and 1:02:58 sheer scale of the games they envisioned 1:03:00 for the franchise moving forward was 1:03:02 something Rockstar North could no longer 1:03:03 handle mainly on its own. For GTA 5, 1:03:06 they weren't content with just a larger 1:03:08 map and varied terrain. They envisioned 1:03:10 a world built around three distinct 1:03:12 switchable protagonists, an audacious 1:03:14 mechanic they had actually 1:03:15 conceptualized all the way back during 1:03:17 San Andreas, but lacked the technology 1:03:19 to execute. The only way to survive this 1:03:21 level of ambition was to fundamentally 1:03:23 restructure. For the first time in the 1:03:25 company's history, the walls between its 1:03:27 international branches were torn down to 1:03:29 fully unite multiple teams under a 1:03:31 single massive project. The numbers 1:03:33 alone illustrated this seismic shift 1:03:35 where Grand Theft Auto 4 was built by a 1:03:37 core team of roughly 200 developers at 1:03:40 Rockstar North in Edinburgh. GTA 5 would 1:03:42 demand a global army of over 1,000. 1:03:45 Preliminary work on Grand Theft Auto 5 1:03:47 began almost immediately after GTA 4 1:03:50 shipped. At this stage, it was a 1:03:52 skeleton crew, a tiny group quietly 1:03:54 laying the conceptual groundwork while 1:03:56 the rest of the studio caught their 1:03:58 breath from the most successful launch 1:04:00 in entertainment history. And from the 1:04:02 very beginning, the setting was never 1:04:03 really in question. Dan Hower later 1:04:05 confirmed that Sam and Aaron Garbbert 1:04:07 were both fixated on the idea of doing a 1:04:09 proper Los Angeles, something San 1:04:11 Andreas had only sketched out at a small 1:04:13 scale. This time they wanted it to feel 1:04:15 like the real thing. And so Los Santos 1:04:18 it was. Fast forward to April 2009 and 1:04:21 the earliest documented build of GTA 5 1:04:23 was created. A file named builds.xml was 1:04:26 accidentally left on the retail disc of 1:04:28 the original Xbox 360 and PS3 versions 1:04:32 of the game which modders extracted. 1:04:34 Inside the file is the entire build 1:04:36 history of GTA 5's development. every 1:04:38 internal version Rockstar compiled, 1:04:41 timestamped, logged, and even annotated 1:04:43 with the developers own notes on bugs 1:04:45 and fixes, right up until the final 1:04:47 submission build in August 2013, a month 1:04:50 out from the game's release. The first 1:04:52 entry dates all the way back to April 1:04:54 20th, 2009, labeled initial version, and 1:04:57 then nothing. The log goes completely 1:04:59 cold for over a year until May 2010 when 1:05:02 the build entries suddenly resume almost 1:05:04 daily. The exact same month Red Dead 1:05:07 Redemption 1 shipped and every resource 1:05:09 Rockstar had was finally free to point 1:05:11 at one place. It was around this time 1:05:13 the white box map blueprint which the 1:05:15 skeleton crew had spent that silent year 1:05:17 building was finally completed. an 1:05:19 untextured 3D sculpture mapping out the 1:05:22 fundamental landmarks, road layouts, and 1:05:24 districts of Los Santos, which was 1:05:26 accomplished by scouring Google and 1:05:28 virtual street view scouting. So, with 1:05:30 the white box blueprint completed, the 1:05:32 first research teams were dispatched to 1:05:34 Los Angeles in July 2010, spending over 1:05:37 100 days embedded in the city, working 1:05:40 alongside architectural historians and 1:05:42 specialized tour guides who helped the 1:05:44 art team understand the specific design 1:05:46 eras, structural [music] shapes, and 1:05:47 history of iconic LA buildings so they 1:05:50 could be accurately parodyied in Los 1:05:52 Santos. And similarly like they had done 1:05:54 for GTA 4 in New York, Rockstar hired 1:05:57 offduty LAPD officers to drive the team 1:05:59 around the city, giving developers 1:06:01 firstirhand insight into local gang 1:06:03 territories under the radar crime 1:06:05 dynamics and the unfiltered reality of 1:06:07 different neighborhoods. Rockstar also 1:06:09 brought back a familiar face. DJ Puh, 1:06:12 the legendary West Coast producer who 1:06:13 had been instrumental in making San 1:06:15 Andreas feel as authentic as it did, 1:06:17 returned once again, acting as a crucial 1:06:20 cultural consultant. His job was to 1:06:22 bridge the gap between Rockstar's 1:06:23 development teams and the realworld West 1:06:25 Coast street culture of the present day. 1:06:28 A world completely changed from the 1:06:29 early '90s Los Santos he had originally 1:06:31 helped Rockstar build just under a 1:06:33 decade earlier. And in an incredible 1:06:35 fullcircle twist that nobody could have 1:06:38 predicted, DJ Puh would end up shaping 1:06:40 the franchise's legacy for a second 1:06:42 time. Reaching out to one of his close 1:06:44 friends, Shawn Fontino, to audition for 1:06:46 the role of Franklin, who just happened 1:06:48 to be the real life bloodrelated cousin 1:06:50 of Young Melee, the voice of CJ. 1:06:52 >> I got Young Melee, man. Y'all know who 1:06:54 Young Melee is, man. The world know who 1:06:56 this [ __ ] is, man. That's a 1:06:57 [ __ ] man. Tell them who you is. 1:06:58 >> CJ from San Andreas. 1:07:00 >> What's up, y'all? 1:07:01 >> What's up? What's up, CJ? 1:07:02 >> Live and direct. CJ and Franklin up in 1:07:04 this [ __ ] real life [ __ ] 1:07:06 though. 1:07:06 >> But the research didn't stop at Los 1:07:08 Angeles as GTA 5 wasn't just going to be 1:07:11 a city. It was going to be an entire 1:07:12 state based off of multiple parts of 1:07:15 Southern California. So the teams 1:07:16 traveled far beyond the city limits as 1:07:18 well to capture the distinct contrasting 1:07:20 regions that would form the world around 1:07:22 it. But back at Rockstar North in 1:07:24 Edinburgh, this mountain of realworld 1:07:26 data immediately ran into a 1:07:28 technological wall. The rage engine 1:07:30 framework left over from GTA 4 was 1:07:33 completely unequipped to handle the 1:07:35 sprawling uninterrupted horizontal scale 1:07:37 of San Andreas that Rockstar were going 1:07:39 for this time around. One of the most 1:07:41 immediate problems was the draw 1:07:43 distance. In GTA 4, Liberty City 1:07:45 effectively went dark beyond a certain 1:07:47 range with the city's lights simply 1:07:49 ceasing to exist past an invisible 1:07:50 boundary. It became such a known 1:07:52 limitation that a very popular mod 1:07:54 called Project 2DFX existed specifically 1:07:57 to fix it on the PC version. 1:07:59 artificially extending how far the game 1:08:01 would draw the lights of Liberty City. 1:08:02 While the previous games had always used 1:08:04 2D light sprites to create the illusion 1:08:06 of a glowing bulb, those sprites were 1:08:08 strictly tied to the physical 3D lamp 1:08:11 posts and buildings loaded immediately 1:08:13 around the player. If the distant 1:08:14 buildings and lamp posts didn't load, 1:08:16 the glowing light sprites didn't load 1:08:17 either. What Rockstar did for GTA 5 was 1:08:20 sever that dependency entirely. The 1:08:22 light sprites were decoupled from the 1:08:24 physical world objects and given their 1:08:26 own independent rendering system, one 1:08:28 that could stream and display thousands 1:08:30 of light sources across the map, 1:08:32 regardless of whether the underlying 3D 1:08:35 buildings and lamp posts had actually 1:08:36 loaded in, even including moving car 1:08:39 headlights along distant highways. 1:08:41 Beyond the city lights, the engine's 1:08:42 general render distance was dramatically 1:08:44 extended, and it needed to be. Aaron 1:08:47 Garbert himself confirmed that the maps 1:08:49 large enough to fit the worlds of San 1:08:50 Andreas, GTA 4, and Red Dead Redemption 1:08:53 1 inside of it all at once. And that 1:08:56 scale had a consequence GTA fans had 1:08:58 been anticipating. Fixed wing aircraft 1:09:00 were back. Rockstar quietly removed 1:09:02 planes from GTA 4 because Liberty City 1:09:04 simply wasn't large enough to justify 1:09:06 them. But of course, going back to San 1:09:08 Andreas, it made total sense. The static 1:09:10 weather presets from the previous game 1:09:12 were also replaced with a fluid dynamic 1:09:14 system. Instead of abruptly snapping 1:09:16 between conditions, weather now 1:09:18 transitioned a lot more organically with 1:09:20 clouds building and dispersing and the 1:09:22 sky shifting gradually from one state to 1:09:24 the next, making the day and night cycle 1:09:26 feel far more immersive. But 1:09:28 accommodating all of the graphical 1:09:29 enhancements, and a world of this scale 1:09:31 on what was [music] now 7-year-old 1:09:33 console hardware demanded a trade-off. 1:09:36 GTA 5 used the same natural motion 1:09:38 euphoria physics engine as GTA 4, but 1:09:41 its parameters had to be toned down 1:09:43 significantly, resulting in noticeably 1:09:45 less reactive and dynamic character 1:09:47 physics that players had experienced and 1:09:49 fell in love with in Liberty City. By 1:09:51 March 2011, the build log shows the game 1:09:53 had climbed from version 18 when the 1:09:55 research teams first touched down in LA 1:09:58 to version 70. Along the way, the basics 1:10:00 were slowly coming together. Multiplayer 1:10:02 was confirmed loading in and the wanted 1:10:04 level system still broken in places was 1:10:06 being chipped [music] away at. Meaning 1:10:08 at this stage of development, much of 1:10:09 the map, roads, police AI, and 1:10:12 navigation already existed in some 1:10:14 playable form, even if it was still far 1:10:16 from finished. And it was that very same 1:10:18 month, March 2011, that the first major 1:10:21 crack in Rockstar's secrecy regarding 1:10:23 their new Grand Theft Auto title 1:10:25 appeared publicly. A casting call 1:10:27 surfaced online for an interactive 1:10:29 project titled Rush, posted by Telsey 1:10:31 and Company, Rockstar's go-to casting 1:10:33 studio. Rush was one of GTA 5's earliest 1:10:36 aliases to prevent leaks. Not even the 1:10:39 future protagonists themselves had any 1:10:41 idea they were auditioning for the next 1:10:43 entry in the globally celebrated Grand 1:10:45 Theft Auto series. The casting callost 1:10:48 immediately sparked speculation that it 1:10:50 was secretly GTA 5, all because of the 1:10:53 over-the-top character descriptions. 1:10:55 There was Kevin Dilva, a fat pot smoking 1:10:57 FPS gamer son with anxiety issues who 1:11:00 enjoys trashtalking while playing 1:11:02 online. Mitch Hayes, an annoying, wise, 1:11:04 cracking, highly successful FBI agent in 1:11:07 great shape, but still has a sense of 1:11:08 humor. Nervous Jerry, a paranoid 1:11:10 reclusive living out in the sticks. And 1:11:12 Harut Fatinyan, an Armenian car dealer 1:11:15 heavily connected to the underworld, but 1:11:17 irritates people so much no one likes 1:11:19 him. Around this time, fans were also 1:11:21 uncovering more hints of what Rockstar 1:11:23 was building behind the scenes. The 1:11:25 studio had quietly registered a handful 1:11:27 of oddly specific web domains, each one 1:11:30 carrying that GTA tone. The big the 1:11:33 biggest being lifeinvader.com, which 1:11:35 would later become the actual in-game 1:11:37 Facebook parody in GTA 5. In the months 1:11:40 that followed from all the speculation, 1:11:42 Rockstar stayed completely silent. While 1:11:44 behind closed doors, the game was edging 1:11:46 closer to the point where it could 1:11:47 finally be revealed. Michael, [music] 1:11:49 Franklin, and Trevor's character models 1:11:51 all entered the build log within about 5 1:11:53 weeks of each other between June 1st and 1:11:55 July 7th, 2011. We also have some 1:11:58 screenshots here pulled from a Rockstar 1:12:00 developers portfolio of how the game 1:12:02 looked around this point in time. As you 1:12:04 can see, the radar is still a circle 1:12:06 like GTA 4, but the bars are already 1:12:09 split into three sections. One for 1:12:11 health, one for armor, and one for the 1:12:13 protagonist's special abilities. While 1:12:15 the map clearly wasn't anywhere close to 1:12:17 being 100% complete, it was far along 1:12:19 enough to reveal. So, it was right about 1:12:21 here in the summer of 2011, Rockstar 1:12:24 began working on GTA 5's first trailer, 1:12:26 completely unbeknownst to the world. As 1:12:28 on October 25th, 2011, a few months 1:12:32 later, Rockstar finally broke its 1:12:34 silence in the simplest way possible. a 1:12:36 single tweet reading #GTAV, linking to a 1:12:39 page on their website that displayed 1:12:41 nothing but the game's logo and a live 1:12:43 countdown clock ticking down to the date 1:12:45 of a first trailer. And the internet 1:12:47 went crazy. This was the first 1:12:49 confirmation from Rockstar themselves 1:12:51 that GTA 5 actually existed. And a week 1:12:54 later on November 2nd, the first trailer 1:12:56 [music] arrived. Why did I move here? I 1:12:59 guess it was the weather 1:13:02 or the 1:13:04 I don't know that thing that magic. 1:13:07 >> The build log shows that on that exact 1:13:10 same day, the game sat at version 150 1:13:13 with bugs being tracked on yoga and 1:13:15 streaming issues like the game 1:13:16 stuttering when driving at speed along 1:13:18 with some multiplayer specific issues 1:13:20 such as reload animation for pump 1:13:22 shotgun loops on remote player screen. 1:13:25 And from the first trailer itself, it's 1:13:26 evident the map was still a work in 1:13:28 progress. Barely anyone noticed at the 1:13:30 time, but in the scene of Michael flying 1:13:32 past the camera in an obey. You can 1:13:34 actually see huge chunks of the map are 1:13:36 completely missing when slowing the 1:13:38 footage down or pausing it. The trailer 1:13:40 may have been the world's first look, 1:13:42 but the game itself still had two more 1:13:44 years of work ahead of it. One of the 1:13:45 most significant changes happened a few 1:13:47 months later on February 2nd, 2012 when 1:13:50 the circular radar was changed for the 1:13:52 first time in the series to the new 1:13:54 square 3D mini map. Throughout the first 1:13:56 half of 2012, the build log paints a 1:13:58 picture of the game steadily coming 1:14:00 together. The weapon wheel, a brand new 1:14:02 addition to the GTA series, first 1:14:04 appears in the build log in March 2012. 1:14:07 Described as weapon selection wheel, is 1:14:09 now active. By this stage, all of the 1:14:11 foundational systems were pretty much in 1:14:13 place. And 3 weeks later, updated 1:14:15 lighting shaders were added, a sign that 1:14:17 the game was entering a stage of visual 1:14:19 polish. Months of quiet progress led to 1:14:21 July 12th, [music] 2012, when Rockstar 1:14:23 released its first official screenshots 1:14:25 of GTA 5, a police maverick soaring over 1:14:28 downtown Los Santos, and this shot of 1:14:31 Mirror Park, which has these gorgeous 1:14:33 pink trees, which didn't actually make 1:14:35 it to the final game. In fact, comparing 1:14:37 some of the development screenshots we 1:14:39 have of the game to what we got on 1:14:40 release, you can tell a lot of 1:14:42 vegetation simply never made it in. Both 1:14:44 the PS3 and Xbox 360 were working with 1:14:47 just 512 MGB of total RAM, a fraction of 1:14:50 what a modern PC has today. The hardware 1:14:53 simply lacked the memory to handle the 1:14:54 sheer amount of trees, bushes, and 1:14:57 highdensity grass present in these early 1:14:59 builds, [music] and much of it had to be 1:15:00 stripped back to avoid tanking 1:15:02 performance or crashing the systems. 1:15:03 Rockstar would go on to release 10 more 1:15:06 screenshots the following month in 1:15:07 August, and the hype only kept building 1:15:09 from there. Shortly after, on October 1:15:11 30th, 2012, Rockstar felt confident 1:15:13 enough to finally commit to a release 1:15:15 date and dropped the bombshell. GTA 5 1:15:18 was officially coming worldwide in 1:15:19 spring 2013, with pre-orders dropping 1:15:22 the following week, essentially doubling 1:15:24 down on that window. The build log tells 1:15:26 a slightly different story. 1:15:28 Around this exact period, the recurring 1:15:30 note, "Memory is low," appears again and 1:15:33 again. Build after build, almost 1:15:35 certainly forcing the team to keep 1:15:36 cutting back vegetation and interiors 1:15:38 just to keep the game running. But it 1:15:40 wasn't just memory issues. The game's 1:15:41 own prologue, the literal first mission 1:15:44 every player would experience, had a 1:15:45 handful of bugs that completely broke it 1:15:48 outright. For example, Michael wouldn't 1:15:49 get into the driver's seat, and Trevor 1:15:51 was being killed before gameplay could 1:15:53 be handed back to the player during the 1:15:54 car chase. Core gameplay mechanics were 1:15:56 also causing major issues. Stealth mode, 1:15:59 for instance, would stop working the 1:16:00 moment the player fired a weapon, a bug 1:16:02 that persisted for weeks across multiple 1:16:04 builds. With bugs this significant, were 1:16:06 Rockstar really going to make that 1:16:08 spring window coming up within the next 1:16:10 3 months? The answer, of course, was no. 1:16:12 Rockstar gave the news fans had been 1:16:14 dreading. GTA 5 would miss its spring 1:16:17 window entirely, being pushed back 1:16:18 months beyond its original release date. 1:16:20 Their reasoning being that the game 1:16:22 simply needs a little more polish to be 1:16:24 of the standard both they and the fans 1:16:26 held them to. Sound familiar? However, 1:16:28 it was a delay that was very much 1:16:29 needed, allowing Rockstar to smooth over 1:16:31 and polish the rough edges that had 1:16:33 threatened the spring [music] release. 1:16:34 In March 2013, Rockstar began revealing 1:16:37 the cover art in one of the coolest ways 1:16:39 possible by secretly having it painted 1:16:41 piece by piece onto the side of a 1:16:43 building on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. For 1:16:45 quite a while, nobody even realized what 1:16:47 was being painted or knew it was 1:16:49 actually an official Rockstar [music] 1:16:50 stunt. However, the mural even included 1:16:52 the game's rating pending ESRB logo, 1:16:56 making it look almost too official to be 1:16:57 fan art, and [music] people were 1:16:59 catching on. But Rockstar confirmed it 1:17:01 themselves the very next day the mural 1:17:02 was finished, releasing [music] the 1:17:04 finished digital cover art for the world 1:17:06 to see. It was around this time in early 1:17:08 2013 that the build log began referring 1:17:10 to multiplayer by its new name, GTA 1:17:13 Online. What had once been planned as 1:17:15 something closer to an expansion on GTA 1:17:17 4's online mode was by this point 1:17:19 clearly something far bigger. The game 1:17:21 was entering its final stretch with the 1:17:23 very last entry in the build log landing 1:17:25 on August 11th, 2013, just over a month 1:17:28 out from the game's release date. Just 1:17:29 weeks before launch, Rockstar teamed up 1:17:32 with West Coast Customs, the famous auto 1:17:34 body shop behind those one-of-a-kind 1:17:36 cars on Pimp My Ride to take their 1:17:38 marketing to a whole another level. 1:17:40 Together, they forged a reallife, fully 1:17:42 street legal version of the series most 1:17:45 iconic sports car, the Bravado Banshee. 1:17:47 Rockstar dumped over $200,000 into the 1:17:50 car built from a [music] 2006 Dodge 1:17:52 Viper SRT. With every single detail 1:17:55 customshaped to flawlessly match the 1:17:57 in-game model, right down to the badges. 1:17:59 It was first teased on Rockstars 1:18:01 Newswire on August 22nd before the 1:18:04 finished car was fully revealed just 1:18:05 under two weeks later, then given away 1:18:07 through a GameStop pre-order sweep 1:18:09 stakes. The winner was a 56-year-old 1:18:11 woman from North Carolina named Sher 1:18:13 Parker, who later sold the car to help 1:18:15 pay for her son's college tuition. Grand 1:18:18 Theft Auto 5 was launched on September 1:18:20 17th, 2013. After 5 years of development 1:18:23 and a script that had grown past 3,500 1:18:25 pages, more than triple the amount of 1:18:27 its predecessor. Within its first 24 1:18:29 hours, the game generated $800 million 1:18:32 in sales, moving roughly 11 million 1:18:34 units. By the third day, it surpassed 1 1:18:37 billion in revenue, shattering global 1:18:39 records to become the fastests selling 1:18:41 entertainment product in history at the 1:18:43 time. 1:18:46 But while the public broke [music] sales 1:18:48 records, the game was entering its 1:18:49 post-launch transition phase. The plan 1:18:52 originally was simple. Repeat what 1:18:54 worked for GTA 4. So behind the scenes, 1:18:56 writers and designers were already hard 1:18:58 at work on massive singleplayer story 1:19:00 expansions, including a zombie 1:19:02 apocalypse mode, an alien invasion, and 1:19:04 a James Bond style spy thriller cenamed 1:19:07 Agent Trevor, confirmed by Dan Howser 1:19:09 himself to be about half finishedish 1:19:11 when Rockstar pulled the plug. You see, 1:19:13 after Rockstar turned the key on GTA 1:19:15 Online a couple of weeks after launch, 1:19:17 their priorities shifted fast. 1:19:19 Everything changed with the introduction 1:19:20 of shark carts, which let players buy 1:19:22 in-game cash with real money. And the 1:19:24 numbers crushed any projection story DLC 1:19:27 could touch, so they were quietly 1:19:29 shelved. None of this information would 1:19:30 surface publicly for almost a decade, 1:19:33 only coming to light years later through 1:19:34 data leaks. However, the unfathomable 1:19:36 success of GTA Online coincided with an 1:19:40 internal earthquake that shattered the 1:19:41 studios leadership structure. Just a 1:19:43 year after launch in September 2014, 1:19:46 Rockstar North's legendary president and 1:19:48 the lead producer behind the Grand Theft 1:19:50 Auto franchise, Leslie Benes, went on a 1:19:53 company sbatical. However, when he 1:19:55 attempted to come back to work at the 1:19:57 brand new Edinburgh office in early 1:19:59 2015, he discovered his key card had 1:20:01 been completely deactivated and security 1:20:03 ordered him off the premises. The 1:20:05 fallout was catastrophic. By 2016, 1:20:07 Leslie had launched a huge $150 million 1:20:11 lawsuit against Take 2 and the Hower 1:20:13 Brothers for unpaid royalties. The 1:20:15 unsealed court documents pulled back the 1:20:17 curtain on a bitter civil war brewing 1:20:19 right under the surface of GTA 5's 1:20:22 massive success. Leslie Benes claimed he 1:20:24 was intentionally pushed out through a 1:20:26 lengthy deception, alleging that Sam 1:20:28 Hower's resentment had peaked when 1:20:30 Leslie placed his own name last in the 1:20:32 GTA online credits, a premium spot 1:20:34 traditionally reserved for Sam Hower 1:20:36 himself. But Rockstar fired back, 1:20:39 dismissing the claims as bizarre and 1:20:41 citing performance and conduct issues as 1:20:43 the reasons for his forced exit from the 1:20:45 company. One of the masterminds behind 1:20:46 Grand Theft Auto was now gone, leaving 1:20:48 Rockstar North completely altered just 1:20:50 as GTA Online was morphing into an 1:20:53 unstoppable billion-dollar juggernaut. 1:20:55 To fill the massive void left by Leslie 1:20:57 Benzes, Rockstar turned inward, 1:20:59 promoting two senior creatives to 1:21:01 jointly run the Rockstar North Edinburgh 1:21:03 office, art director Aaron Garbett and 1:21:06 animation director Rob Nelson. Having 1:21:08 personally shaped the visual layout of 1:21:10 every single 3D open world the company 1:21:13 had ever built since 1996. Aaron Garbert 1:21:16 was an absolute institution at Rockstar 1:21:18 North. Rob Nelson, on the other hand, 1:21:20 was a veteran from Rockstar's Toronto 1:21:22 branch who had massively stepped up and 1:21:24 proved himself during the development of 1:21:26 GTA 5. But unfortunately, there was 1:21:28 another set of shoes waiting to be 1:21:30 dropped. Shoes that absolutely no one in 1:21:32 the gaming industry could ever fill. In 1:21:34 early 2020, Rockstar's parent company, 1:21:36 Take 2 Interactive, dropped a massive 1:21:39 bombshell on the industry. Dan Howser, 1:21:41 co-founder, vice president of creative, 1:21:43 and the lead writer responsible for the 1:21:45 script of every single major game 1:21:47 Rockstar had ever released, officially 1:21:49 walked away from the company. For over 1:21:50 two decades, Dan Howser was the voice of 1:21:53 Rockstar. He was the chief architect 1:21:54 behind the cynical, satirical humor that 1:21:57 defined the franchise. 1:21:58 >> Welcome to America. But behind the 1:22:01 scenes, his vision and the companies 1:22:03 were drifting further apart. Dan was a 1:22:05 purist for singleplayer storytelling. He 1:22:07 was the guy who had pushed hardest for 1:22:08 the GTA fivetory expansions before they 1:22:11 were scrapped for live service updates. 1:22:13 As GTA Online continued to grow into a 1:22:16 multi-billion dollar cash cow, the 1:22:18 corporate push for microtransactions and 1:22:20 recurring revenue increasingly clashed 1:22:22 with his creative vision. When his exit 1:22:24 was officially finalized in March 2020, 1:22:27 it marked the true end of an era. Two of 1:22:29 the core architects of Grand Theft Auto 1:22:31 were now unexpectedly out of the 1:22:33 picture, leaving Sam Hower to steer a 1:22:35 fragmented multi-studio empire into the 1:22:38 unmapped territory of GTA 6. 1:22:47 In October 2013, just weeks after GTA 5 1:22:51 launched, Rockstar North president at 1:22:53 the time, Leslie Benzees, gave an 1:22:55 interview to Develop magazine. And when 1:22:57 he was asked directly whether a GTA 6 1:22:59 was even on the table yet, he didn't 1:23:01 dodge the question, revealing, "We've 1:23:02 got about 45 years worth of ideas we 1:23:05 want to do. We don't know what GTA 6 1:23:07 will be, but we've got some ideas." It 1:23:09 was the first time anyone at Rockstar 1:23:10 had acknowledged, even loosely, that a 1:23:12 sixth game was on their mind. And yet, 1:23:15 actual preliminary concept work on Grand 1:23:17 Theft Auto 6 wouldn't begin for at least 1:23:20 another year, with real pre-production 1:23:22 not starting until late 2018 following 1:23:24 the release of Red Dead Redemption 2. 1:23:27 Initially, GTA 6 went under the code 1:23:29 name Project Americas. And from that 1:23:31 name alone, you can probably guess how 1:23:33 ambitious the early scope of this game 1:23:35 actually was. The very first GTA 6 leak 1:23:38 surfaced in March 2018 through a news 1:23:40 channel called Inside Gaming, which was 1:23:43 formerly The No, who correctly 1:23:45 identified the game's internal 1:23:46 development code name as Project 1:23:48 Americas, and claimed that the game 1:23:49 would be set primarily in Vice City, 1:23:51 Rockstar's version of Miami with the map 1:23:54 stretching out to its neighboring 1:23:55 regions like South and Central America. 1:23:58 At the time, it was just another 1:23:59 unconfirmed rumor in a sea of them. 1:24:02 Everybody took it with a grain of salt, 1:24:03 but behind the scenes, Rockstar was 1:24:05 actually furious about this information 1:24:07 getting out, especially this early. In 1:24:09 an interview that later came out with 1:24:10 Brian Gar, the writer of that Inside 1:24:12 Gaming episode, he revealed what 1:24:14 happened shortly after that video went 1:24:16 live. They had insidefo as to what it 1:24:18 was looking like at the time. And it was 1:24:20 like it's it was codeame project 1:24:23 Americas and you're going to be doing 1:24:24 drug missions to and you know uh from 1:24:27 from uh the US to to Central South 1:24:30 America and all this. got the person to 1:24:32 confirm who they were. Uh, typed up the 1:24:34 script. Um, we put out the video and, 1:24:38 uh, and no one believed us at the or it 1:24:41 was kind of the audience was kind of 1:24:43 like, eh, I don't know. You're full, you 1:24:45 know, kind of like, you're full of [ __ ] 1:24:47 or whatever. Rockstar Rockstar flipped 1:24:50 out like they locked down the studio to 1:24:55 f to find the leaker and a vice 1:24:59 president of Rockstar called me and was 1:25:02 like he's very nice but he wanted to 1:25:04 know you know who you know who my source 1:25:08 was and I was like you can't do that. 1:25:09 >> Yeah. I was like, I was like, "Look, 1:25:11 man. I cannot." 1:25:12 >> But [snorts] soon enough, in the years 1:25:13 to come, the leaked details regarding 1:25:15 GTA 6 would be validated to the public 1:25:18 three times over. One of them in the 1:25:21 worst way possible for Rockstar. The 1:25:23 first came just a year later. In October 1:25:25 2019, a letter from a professional 1:25:28 location manager/cout 1:25:30 working on behalf of Take 2 was posted 1:25:32 on Reddit by a user named Fresh. The 1:25:34 letter detailed a research trip 1:25:36 scheduled for that same month. a team of 1:25:38 four to six people mainly interested in 1:25:40 scouting interior spaces with Rockstar 1:25:43 willing to pay property owners an access 1:25:44 fee to photograph and study the spaces. 1:25:47 The scout team's mission was to tour and 1:25:49 photograph various interesting locations 1:25:51 throughout the state of Florida, stating 1:25:53 that the research they gather will 1:25:54 become part of the company's research 1:25:56 library and will be used to inspire 1:25:58 Rockstar's developers to build 1:25:59 environments in their games that reflect 1:26:02 real life environments. Rockstar 1:26:03 respects intellectual property rights 1:26:05 and will not recreate protected 1:26:07 artwork/sculptures, 1:26:09 use employee or customer likenesses, or 1:26:11 recreate business interiors without an 1:26:13 owner's express [music] written 1:26:14 permission to do so. A well-known 1:26:16 rockstar leaker who the studio had 1:26:18 personally asked to stop leaking because 1:26:19 his information kept turning out to be 1:26:21 accurate publicly vouched for the letter 1:26:23 confirming the scouting trip was real. 1:26:25 Though after this leak, the GTA 6 trail 1:26:28 went cold for years until Rockstar 1:26:30 tweeted this in 2022, letting the world 1:26:33 know that active development for the 1:26:35 next entry in the series was underway. 1:26:37 It wasn't much, but after nearly a 1:26:38 decade of speculation, even that felt 1:26:41 massive. Then that same year, on July 1:26:43 27th, 2022, Bloomberg's Jason Shrier, a 1:26:47 respected American journalist who 1:26:49 primarily covers the video game 1:26:50 industry, confirmed that the original 1:26:52 leak from Inside Gaming was largely 1:26:54 accurate. Rockstar's early plans for the 1:26:56 game called for the inclusion of 1:26:58 territories modeled after large parts of 1:27:00 North and South America. Hence why the 1:27:02 project had been codenamed Americas in 1:27:04 the first place. By this point though, 1:27:06 Rockstar had already reeled in those 1:27:07 ambitions, cutting the map down to just 1:27:10 Miami and its surrounding areas. The 1:27:12 report also revealed something else 1:27:13 entirely that would be groundbreaking 1:27:15 news for GTA fans, stating that Grand 1:27:18 Theft Auto 6 would include a playable 1:27:20 female protagonist for the first time in 1:27:22 the series. and even more specifically a 1:27:24 Latina woman paired as one of two 1:27:26 leading characters in a story inspired 1:27:28 by the infamous bank robbing duo Bonnie 1:27:31 and Clyde. Then just 2 months later on 1:27:33 September 18th, 2022, [music] 1:27:36 everything got blown wide open and in 1:27:38 the most unbelievable way possible. A 1:27:40 user on GTA forums going by the name 1:27:43 Teapot Uber Hacker posted 90 real videos 1:27:46 of GTA 6 in early development straight 1:27:49 from Rockstar's internal Slack workspace 1:27:52 using logging credentials he'd stolen 1:27:53 that belonged to a Rockstar employee. 1:27:55 Arian Curt, an 18-year-old British 1:27:58 hacker from Oxford and a member of the 1:27:59 hacking group Lapsis, the same group 1:28:02 responsible for breaches at Uber, 1:28:04 Microsoft, Nvidia, and even more 1:28:06 gigantic companies, was out on bail 1:28:08 awaiting sentencing for those previous 1:28:10 attacks. Staying in a hotel under police 1:28:12 supervision with his laptop already 1:28:13 confiscated, and yet using nothing but a 1:28:16 hotel TV, an Amazon Fire Stick, and a 1:28:19 smartphone, he managed to hack one of 1:28:20 the most secretive studios on the 1:28:22 planet. Once inside the Rockstar 1:28:24 employees Slack Messenger, he found 1:28:26 links to the company's internal 1:28:27 development servers and downloaded 1:28:29 everything he could get his hands on. 1:28:30 Around 50 minutes of raw footage of GTA 1:28:33 6 in development, nobody outside 1:28:35 Rockstar was ever supposed to see. And 1:28:37 not only that, but the entire source 1:28:39 code of GTA 5. The source code is 1:28:42 essentially the actual underlying 1:28:43 blueprint of a game. Every line of 1:28:45 programming that tells the game how to 1:28:47 run, how physics behave, how the AI 1:28:49 thinks, how everything actually works 1:28:51 under the hood. It's one of the things 1:28:52 that as a company that makes games, you 1:28:54 guard more than anything else because in 1:28:56 the wrong hands, it can be copied, 1:28:58 picked apart, or used to build 1:28:59 unauthorized mods, or even entire 1:29:01 competing games. With all of that now 1:29:03 sitting in his hands, Arian messaged 1:29:05 Rockstar directly, threatening to leak 1:29:07 everything he had unless someone from 1:29:09 the company got in touch with him within 1:29:11 24 hours. And when he didn't get a 1:29:13 response within that time frame, he 1:29:14 followed through, posting 90 clips of 1:29:17 indevelopment GTA 6 footage for the 1:29:20 entire world to see. And the amount of 1:29:21 details those 90 clips revealed was 1:29:24 almost hard to process. To name just a 1:29:26 few things, 11 plus characters were 1:29:28 leaked, 20 items and tools that would be 1:29:30 in the game, 16 weapons, eight 1:29:32 activities, a ton of names of businesses 1:29:34 and brands, over 50 new features and 1:29:37 gameplay mechanics, 100 plus cars, and 3 1:29:40 to 400 interesting random world events. 1:29:43 The world got its first ever look at GTA 1:29:46 6, but in a way Rockstar never intended. 1:29:48 The following morning, less than 24 1:29:50 hours after the footage surfaced, 1:29:52 Rockstar issued an official statement 1:29:54 confirming the leaks were real and that 1:29:56 they were extremely disappointed to have 1:29:57 any details of their next game shared 1:30:00 with players in this manner. The leaks 1:30:01 cost Rockstar [music] Games $5 million 1:30:04 in recovery expenses and countless hours 1:30:06 of staff time. But overall, it had no 1:30:08 significant impact on the game's [music] 1:30:10 development schedule or Take 2's 1:30:12 financial standing. But for a studio 1:30:14 this obsessed with secrecy, Rockstar had 1:30:16 an odd blind spot. its own legal 1:30:19 paperwork. Starting in October 2023, 1:30:22 nearly a dozen patent filings have been 1:30:24 traced back to Take 2 Interactive, 1:30:26 Rockstar's parent company. Fully public 1:30:29 legal records uncovered by fans simply 1:30:31 digging through government patent 1:30:32 databases, pointing toward GTA 6, 1:30:35 featuring revolutionary leaps in AI, 1:30:37 character animations, and multiplayer 1:30:39 infrastructure. One patent completely 1:30:41 reworks how NPCs and traffic navigate 1:30:44 the world, replacing the old scripted 1:30:46 pathing with AI that reacts to what's 1:30:48 actually happening around it. Traffic, 1:30:50 weather, the specific situation, rather 1:30:52 than mindlessly following invisible 1:30:54 [music] train tracks. Another describes 1:30:56 characters physically assembling their 1:30:57 own movement in real time out of smaller 1:31:00 modular blocks based on injury, fatigue, 1:31:02 terrain, and weather instead of just 1:31:04 playing back a pre-recorded animation. 1:31:06 And then there's the patent which 1:31:07 revealed a system built to eliminate 1:31:09 loading screens between multiplayer 1:31:11 sessions altogether. Coming from GTA 5 1:31:13 online with its infamously painstakingly 1:31:16 long loading screens, it's a detail 1:31:18 players genuinely found hard to picture. 1:31:21 On November 8th, 2023, Rockstar finally 1:31:23 broke a silence that had lasted over a 1:31:26 year since the Mega [music] Leaks. A 1:31:27 tweet signed personally by Sam Hower 1:31:30 revealing that they will release the 1:31:31 first trailer for the next Grand Theft 1:31:33 Auto [music] in early December. Shortly 1:31:35 after, Rockstar followed up with the 1:31:36 specifics, but they wouldn't even get to 1:31:38 keep that promise. On the evening of 1:31:40 December 4th, less than 16 hours before 1:31:42 the scheduled reveal, a lowquality 1:31:44 version of the trailer leaked online 1:31:46 because Rockstar had already uploaded 1:31:48 the video to their YouTube channel 1:31:50 unlisted and scheduled it. The backend 1:31:52 system staff used to manage videos was 1:31:54 accessed, and the trailer was basically 1:31:56 ripped from there. Of course, it began 1:31:58 spreading like wildfire. And rather than 1:32:00 having millions of fans view these 1:32:02 lowquality, dodgy versions of the very 1:32:05 first trailer for the game, Rockstar 1:32:07 reacted fast, releasing the real trailer 1:32:09 within a couple of hours, moving their 1:32:11 premiere up from the next morning to 1:32:13 that very same night. It didn't really 1:32:14 matter, though, since the trailer broke 1:32:16 several YouTube records. Anyway, within 1:32:18 about 3 weeks of the trailer dropping, 1:32:20 the investigators of the community had 1:32:22 already zeroed in on the voice actor 1:32:24 playing Lucia, the Puerto Rican actress, 1:32:26 Manny L. Perez. Now, besides the uncanny 1:32:29 resemblance, Manny had already done 1:32:31 minor voice work for Rockstar before, 1:32:33 playing a blackjack dealer in the 1:32:34 Diamond Casino update in GTA Online. 1:32:37 >> Betting is closed. Good luck. That's 15. 1:32:41 Got 11. A blackjack. Win goes to the 1:32:43 dealer. In one resurfaced interview, a 1:32:46 host brought up GTA and her expression 1:32:48 visibly changed before she deflected the 1:32:50 question. And in another clip, she 1:32:52 talked about transitioning her career 1:32:54 into voice over and motion capture, 1:32:56 mentioning she'd been attached to 1:32:57 something big she couldn't discuss under 1:32:59 NDA since 2021. Then there's a couple of 1:33:02 details that are genuinely too crazy to 1:33:04 be a coincidence. Manny Perez played a 1:33:06 character on a 2022 CBS show called East 1:33:10 New York, and the character's name is 1:33:12 Lucia Santiago. On top of that, her 1:33:15 resume lines up with a pattern. Manuel 1:33:17 Perez has appeared in Law and Order, and 1:33:19 she's not the first GTA lead with that 1:33:21 same show on their IMDb. Ned Luke, who 1:33:24 played Michael Dant in GTA 5, was in Law 1:33:27 and Order. Steven Og, who played Trevor, 1:33:29 and Michael Hollik, the voice of Nico 1:33:31 Bellic, was in Law and Order, too. 1:33:32 Rockstar's home base is in New York and 1:33:35 Law and Order films there. So for 1:33:36 Rockstar, it practically became their 1:33:38 unofficial casting pool. So with the 1:33:40 trailer out and the internet doing its 1:33:42 detective work, everybody was 1:33:43 anticipating the next trailer and the 1:33:45 initial 2025 set release date. But 1:33:48 behind the curtain, Rockstar's 1:33:50 relationship with its own workforce was 1:33:52 starting to fracture. In 2023, Rockstar 1:33:54 had pushed staff toward a mandatory 1:33:57 3-day office week, meaning staff had to 1:33:59 actually show up to the office instead 1:34:01 of being able to work remotely. A move 1:34:03 that led to 170 UK employees signing a 1:34:07 petition against it, one of the largest 1:34:09 trade union actions the game industry 1:34:11 had ever seen. Rockstar responded to 1:34:13 staff with an employeewide email 1:34:15 stating, "This is not our first step to 1:34:17 5 days a week. We understand no one 1:34:19 wants to go [music] back to the old way 1:34:20 of working." However, they did a 1:34:22 complete Uturn and broke that promise 1:34:24 less than a year later. On February 1:34:26 28th, 2024, Rockstar announced that from 1:34:29 April 15th, the vast majority of staff 1:34:32 would be required back in the office 1:34:34 five full days a week with remote access 1:34:36 to company systems cut off entirely. For 1:34:39 a lot of employees, this wasn't just an 1:34:41 inconvenience. Many had built their 1:34:43 entire lives around the flexibility 1:34:45 Rockstar had promised to protect, 1:34:46 relocating to different cities and 1:34:48 taking on caregiving responsibilities. 1:34:50 specifically because remote work made it 1:34:52 possible. The backlash was immediate. 1:34:55 The IWGB, a UK trade union representing 1:34:58 part of Rockstar's workforce, called it 1:35:00 reckless decision-making, accusing 1:35:02 leadership of ignoring workers basic 1:35:04 requests and going back on its word time 1:35:06 and time again. Rockstar's own 1:35:07 justification cited security concerns as 1:35:10 one of the reasons for the mandate, 1:35:12 referencing the leaks that had already 1:35:14 plagued the project. But to a lot of 1:35:16 employees, that reasoning didn't add up 1:35:18 and fed into a much bigger fear that 1:35:20 Rockstar was returning to the brutal 1:35:22 crunch culture they'd built a reputation 1:35:24 for after Red Dead 2. With staff now 1:35:26 back in the office full-time, Rockstar 1:35:28 and Take 2 pushed forward with 1:35:29 confidence toward the initial release 1:35:31 date. As late as February 2025, Take 2 1:35:34 CEO Strauss Zelnik told IGN he and the 1:35:38 studio felt really good about hitting 1:35:40 their full 2025 target. But that 1:35:42 confidence didn't last long as even with 1:35:44 all hands literally on deck. Rockstar 1:35:46 had to break the news nobody wanted to 1:35:48 hear. The game was delayed and pushed 1:35:50 back to a specific date of May 26th, 1:35:53 2026. Strauss backed the decision fully 1:35:56 knowing Rockstar needed this extra time, 1:35:58 telling investors the studio was 1:36:00 constantly seeking perfection. And just 1:36:02 4 days later on May 6th, Rockstar 1:36:04 dropped trailer 2 and 70 screenshots of 1:36:07 the game. Clearly time to soften the 1:36:09 blow. They also overhauled the official 1:36:11 website, revealing full character bios 1:36:13 and location names across the state of 1:36:15 Leonida for the very first time. The 1:36:17 reaction to it was universally glowing, 1:36:20 including from a name you'll already 1:36:21 recognize. Mike Daly, one of the 1:36:23 original co-creators of GTA back in 1:36:26 1997, publicly stated, "Even if they'd 1:36:29 released it broken, it'd still have sold 1:36:31 hugely. So, it's even more impressive 1:36:33 they took the decision to delay it. 1:36:34 Kudos." However, by fall 2025, another 1:36:38 giant controversy was quietly brewing 1:36:40 under the surface. And on October 30th, 1:36:42 Rockstar suddenly fired between 30 and 1:36:45 34 employees across its UK and Canada 1:36:48 offices in a single day. According to 1:36:50 Bloomberg's Jason Shrier, the employees 1:36:52 fired had one thing in common. They were 1:36:54 all part of a private Discord server 1:36:56 built around union organizing. 1:36:58 Rockstar's official reason was that the 1:37:00 employees were let go for distributing 1:37:02 and discussing confidential information 1:37:04 in a public forum, a violation of 1:37:06 company policy. But the IWGB saw it very 1:37:10 differently, alleging that some of those 1:37:12 fired had visas sponsored by Rockstar 1:37:14 itself or medical conditions tied to 1:37:16 their employment, meaning losing their 1:37:18 job didn't just cost them a paycheck. It 1:37:20 potentially cost them their health care 1:37:22 or their right to remain in the country 1:37:24 entirely. They described it as one of 1:37:25 the most blatant and ruthless acts of 1:37:27 union busting in the history of the 1:37:29 gaming industry. And just one week later 1:37:32 on November 6th, 2025, Rockstar 1:37:34 delivered some news fans had been 1:37:36 dreading for a second time. Another 1:37:38 delay, this one pushing the release 1:37:40 another 6 months past its already 1:37:42 delayed date. Take 2's stock dropped as 1:37:44 much as 18% on the day of the 1:37:46 announcement. The sharpest single day 1:37:48 hit the company had suffered throughout 1:37:50 the entire development of this game. The 1:37:52 new date, November 19th, 2026, is the 1:37:54 one we're all still counting down to 1:37:56 today. However, just a few months later, 1:37:58 after the second delay announcement, 1:38:00 Rockstar found themselves in the middle 1:38:02 of yet another breach. On April 13th, 1:38:05 2026, a hacking group called Shiny 1:38:08 Hunters leaked countless records stolen 1:38:10 from Rockstar's internal systems after 1:38:12 Rockstar refused to pay a $200,000 1:38:15 ransom. But this wasn't anything GTA 6 1:38:17 related. It was internal business 1:38:19 analytics, financial and performance 1:38:21 metrics for GTA Online and Red Dead 1:38:24 Online. And what those numbers revealed 1:38:26 flawed everyone. Sure, we all knew GTA 1:38:28 Online was profitable, but actually 1:38:30 seeing the exact figures in black and 1:38:32 white just hit differently. GTA Online 1:38:34 alone has generated over $5 billion 1:38:37 since launch, still pulling in more than 1:38:39 a million a day and $500 million per 1:38:42 year, over a decade after GTA 5's 1:38:44 original release. And of that, only 1:38:46 around 4% of active players were 1:38:49 actually spending real money, meaning a 1:38:51 tiny sliver of the player base was 1:38:52 basically carrying those statistics. But 1:38:54 rather than these leaks hurting 1:38:56 Rockstar, they did the exact opposite. 1:38:58 Take 2's stock shot up from around $22 1:39:01 to nearly $28 a share overnight, adding 1:39:05 an estimated billion to the company's 1:39:07 valuation by lunch the next day. Then on 1:39:09 June 18th, 2026, over a year after 1:39:12 trailer 2, the GTA 6 drought was finally 1:39:15 over as Rockstar reignited the marketing 1:39:18 machine, revealing the official cover 1:39:20 art for the very first time. And despite 1:39:22 plenty of doubts from fans convinced 1:39:24 Rockstar would modernize it, the studio 1:39:26 stuck with the iconic split panel 1:39:28 collage design, the same style they'd 1:39:30 been using since GTA 3 in 2001, [music] 1:39:33 and used on every cover since. Alongside 1:39:35 the cover art, pre-orders would 1:39:37 officially open one week later on June 1:39:39 25th. And when that date arrived, 1:39:41 Rockstar dropped a newswire and 63 new 1:39:44 screenshots showing off the additions 1:39:46 for the game, which unveiled a ton of 1:39:48 new details nobody had seen before. The 1:39:50 big running meme that GTA 6 would 1:39:52 actually cost $100 was put to rest with 1:39:55 the standard edition costing 80 bucks. 1:39:57 But for the first time in the series, 1:39:59 GTA went fully digital with no disc 1:40:02 version planned at all. and the 1:40:03 so-called physical version that comes 1:40:05 with just a code in the box. Something 1:40:07 of course many fans were not too happy 1:40:09 about. And from pre-orders alone, 1:40:12 analysts believe GTA 6 generated over a 1:40:15 billion dollars in its first 24 hours. 1:40:17 Some going as far as saying that number 1:40:19 was hit in under an hour. On its launch 1:40:21 week, the numbers are honestly anyone's 1:40:22 guess. GTA 5 made over a billion dollars 1:40:25 within 3 days after it actually came 1:40:27 out, a record that stood for over a 1:40:29 decade. Since 2013, Rockstar has only 1:40:31 kept expanding. And just like GTA 5 1:40:34 needed every one of their studios all 1:40:36 working on the same project, GTA 6 of 1:40:38 course would require the same thing, 1:40:40 except on an even bigger scale. Reports 1:40:42 suggest the game has been built by 1:40:44 roughly 6,000 developers spread across 1:40:47 10 of the current active Rockstar 1:40:49 studios worldwide. If there's one thing 1:40:51 this franchise has proven time and time 1:40:53 again is that records exist to be broken 1:40:56 by whatever Rockstar releases next. And 1:40:58 on November 19th, I'm certain this one 1:41:01 will not be any different. 1:41:20 And that's going to wrap up the 1:41:22 behindthe-scenes history of Grand Theft 1:41:24 Auto from 1996 to June 2026. If you did 1:41:28 enjoy, which come on, I know you did, it 1:41:30 would mean a lot to me if you subscribed 1:41:31 to the channel and smashed that like 1:41:33 button. I really tried to make this feel 1:41:34 like you were time traveling through 1:41:36 GTA's last 30 years of chaos right 1:41:39 alongside me. And if you felt even a bit 1:41:41 of that, then I did my job. Anyway, 1:41:43 like, subscribe, and until next time, 1:41:45 take care.