Grand Theft Auto (electronic game)
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a video game franchise that began in 1997 and has become one of the most popular and controversial series in gaming history. Developed initially by DMA Design, now known as Rockstar North, the games are set in expansive, sandbox environments where players assume the roles of characters involved in organized crime. The gameplay typically involves completing various missions that often include violent activities such as theft, carjacking, and armed assaults, reflecting the series' mature themes.
The original GTA featured a top-down perspective and allowed players to explore three fictional cities modeled after real-world locations. Subsequent titles, especially since Grand Theft Auto III, transitioned to a third-person view and enhanced graphics, significantly increasing player immersion. The franchise has seen numerous successful installments, with Grand Theft Auto V becoming the highest-grossing media title by 2018.
While the games are celebrated for their open-world design and storytelling, they have faced criticism for their depictions of violence and adult themes. As of late 2023, anticipation is high for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI, which promises new features and a return to Vice City, further solidifying the series' impact on the gaming landscape.
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Grand Theft Auto (electronic game)
Grand Theft Auto is a 1997 video game that spawned an entire franchise of wildly popular and notoriously violent games of the same name. Developed by DMA Design (which later became known as Rockstar North) and first published by BMG Interactive (which was later succeeded by Take-Two Interactive and subsidiary Rockstar Games) the original Grand Theft Auto and subsequent titles in the series are action- and driving-oriented games in which players are required to carry out an array of violent missions as protagonists with ties to organized crime.
While their designs have drastically changed and evolved over time, all the Grand Theft Auto games feature sandbox environments in which players are allowed to roam freely and complete missions at will. In each iteration of the series, these predominantly urban-themed sandbox environments grow larger and offer an ever-increasing array of opportunities for interactivity. While the Grand Theft Auto series games are extremely popular among consumers, they have often drawn sharp criticism for their brazen depictions of violence and decidedly mature themes.
Background
In Grand Theft Auto and all subsequent titles in the broader Grand Theft Auto series, players take on the role of a character seeking to improve their standing in the seedy underworld of organized crime. The player works to accomplish this goal by completing various missions in a virtual city. These missions often require the player to engage in such violent activities as robbery, armed assault, and carjacking. The latter is one of the most fundamental elements of Grand Theft Auto gameplay, as well as the inspiration for its name. At any time during the game, the player can approach a vehicle, remove the driver, and take control. Players also have access to an entire arsenal of weapons that includes everything from knives and pistols to assault weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers.
Another fundamental element of Grand Theft Auto is the open-world sandbox style of play that each game in the franchise has featured. Unlike side-scrolling or other types of games that sharply restrict the player’s movements and activities, sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto allow players to roam freely through a large virtual environment and do as they please at any given time. This style of gameplay also gives players the ability to complete missions at will instead of forcing them to move through each mission in a linear fashion. Players can even choose not to take on missions at all and instead simply wander around and wreak havoc in their environment.
While the basic concept of Grand Theft Auto has remained largely the same since the original incarnation appeared in 1997, the series has evolved significantly over time. This evolution is most noticeable in the point of view from which the games are played. The first Grand Theft Auto and several of its earliest sequels featured a bird’s-eye perspective that saw players looking down on the landscape from above. Later entries switched to a third-person perspective that helped players feel as if they were actually on the street. The increased sense of immersion that players gained from this perspective change was further enhanced as the series’ graphics improved with each successive title as well.
Overview
Released in 1997, the original Grand Theft Auto was produced by Scottish software designer David Jones. Having previously developed the successful Lemmings game franchise in the early 1990s, Jones was already an established figure in the video game industry by the time he began work on Grand Theft Auto. Jones’s Grand Theft Auto was initially developed for MS-DOS and Windows-based personal computers but was later made available for play on the original Sony PlayStation console and Nintendo Game Boy Color as well. In the game, players controlled a criminal protagonist who must commit crimes such as bank robbery, assault, and—of course—grand theft auto in order to advance his underworld career. Thanks to the game’s sandbox-style design, players also have the ability to travel through three different virtual cities at will and wreak havoc as they see fit. The three virtual cities included Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. Each of these is effectively a stand-in for a real-world city, with Liberty City being modeled after New York, Vice City mimicking Miami, and San Andreas designed to emulate California and Nevada locations like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Unlike later entries in the series, the original Grand Theft Auto features two-dimensional, top-down graphics that allow players to view the action looking downward from a vantage point several stories above the street. Players earn points in the form of money as they accept and complete missions.
Grand Theft Auto was well-received upon its release. Its popularity soon led to the development of a series of follow-ups. The first of these were Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969 and Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961, both of which were released in 1999. Rather than being full-scale sequels, however, both were simply expansion packs to the original game. Both also featured the same type of gameplay and top-down perspective of Grand Theft Auto. As their names suggest, both expansions were set in London and featured loose narratives dealing with the British capital’s criminal underworld. The first full sequel to Grand Theft Auto was Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999). Similar in most respects to its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto 2 was set in an anonymous urban center called Anywhere City, USA, and again required players to engage in wanton violence and commit all sorts of crimes.
The first and most significant departure in the design of the Grand Theft Auto series came with the release of Grand Theft Auto III (2001). Dispensing with earlier entries’ top-down perspective and two-dimensional graphics, Grand Theft Auto III introduced a third-person perspective and greatly improved three-dimensional graphics. Grand Theft Auto III also featured a more detailed narrative and more clearly defined characters. Enormously popular with players, Grand Theft Auto III set a new standard for the series that all future releases would follow. The major releases among these included Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), and Grand Theft Auto V (2013). A number of additional expansions and side games such as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005) and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (2009) have also been released as the series has progressed. The franchise has enjoyed huge success, and by 2018, Grand Theft Auto V was hailed as the highest-grossing media title of all time after generating more than $6 billion since its release in 2013.
After years of speculation, Rockstar Games revealed Grand Theft Auto VI in December 2023 through a trailer posted to YouTube that gathered more than 93 million views in the first twenty-four hours, breaking the record for a non-music video debut on YouTube. Its return to Vice City, the series’ first playable female protagonist, and a planned release in 2025 were all widely commented on by observers of the trailer, leading many to call Grand Theft Auto VI one of the most anticipated video games of all time.
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