Grand Theft Auto began as a rough cops-and-criminals driving game, not the open-world crime series its name now suggests. Developer recollections explain how phone-box missions widened that first design, why several early 3D attempts failed, and how GTA III’s team wrestled with uncertainty, story and player freedom. The stories below concern the original game and GTA III—not every entry in the franchise—and are attributed to the people who recalled them.
How did the original GTA start?
It was first built around cops and criminals
Mike Dailly, a programmer and artist at DMA Design, recalled that the early project was called “Race and Chase.” In the 1994 engine, players could take the side of the police or the criminals: “You could play as the cops or you could play as the criminals.” Dailly remembered the driving demo as exciting, but buggy and prone to crashing. That prototype supplied a basic premise; it was not yet the more open structure of the finished game.
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Phone boxes opened up the design
Designer Paul Farley recalled seeing a crude 2D driving prototype before the team decided players could collect missions by visiting phone boxes. “Then we had the idea of allowing the player to pick up missions by visiting phoneboxes, and it became much more free and open.” The idea shifted the game away from simply keeping a driving session running for a short time, as the programmers had initially expected, and toward a city where players could choose what to do next.
The city concepts drew on three American cities
Farley said the team took the “essence” of Manhattan, San Francisco and Miami when developing Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City. He recalled that the developers did not travel to the United States for research: they relied on library materials and a single internet-connected PC. These were sources of inspiration, not blueprints; the recollection does not mean each fictional city was intended as a one-to-one copy of its real-world counterpart.
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- Grand Theft Auto III: It all starts in Liberty City. With the revolutionary freedom to go anywhere and jack anyone, Grand Theft Auto III puts the center of the criminal underworld at your fingertips, if you have enough guts to take it.
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Welcome to the 1980s. From the decade of big hair and pastel suits comes the story of one man's rise to the top of the criminal pile.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Five years ago, Carl 'CJ' Johnson escaped the haze of Los Santos, San Andreas...a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption.
A pedestrian bug inspired the Hare Krishna procession
Farley also recalled that a bug made groups of pedestrians follow one person. The developers noticed that the behavior could create a long procession and used it for the Hare Krishna characters. His account describes a creative use of an unintended behavior; it is not a separate technical postmortem explaining how the bug worked.
Why did it take until GTA III to make GTA in 3D?
GTA III was not the team’s first attempt to move the series into 3D. Gary Penn, a GTA developer, recalled “three or four attempts” before the team was able to make it work. He said those earlier efforts were beyond the team’s capabilities at the time. In his account, the people behind Space Station Silicon Valley, a 3D game, brought the ability and attitude needed to push GTA into three dimensions.
Rank #2
- Grand Theft Auto III: It all starts in Liberty City. With the revolutionary freedom to go anywhere and jack anyone, Grand Theft Auto III puts the center of the criminal underworld at your fingertips, if you have enough guts to take it.
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Welcome to the 1980s. From the decade of big hair and pastel suits comes the story of one man's rise to the top of the criminal pile. Grand Theft Auto returns with Tommy Vercetti’s tale of betrayal and revenge in a neon-soaked tropical town full of excess and brimming with possibilities.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Five years ago, Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson escaped the haze of Los Santos, San Andreas...a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption. Now, it's the early 90s. CJ’s got to go home - his mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart, and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster.
Penn’s number is an approximate memory, not a formal production count. The useful distinction is between the ambition to make a 3D GTA and the practical ability to build one: the idea came before the team could execute it.
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Why was GTA III’s team unsure of the game?
Dan Houser, GTA III’s co-writer, remembered that roughly ten months to a year before release, the team had a city, cars and weapons—but also a large number of unresolved problems. He described the game’s showing at E3 2001 as underwhelming and recalled that the team wondered whether it had misjudged the concept.
Rank #3
- Grand Theft Auto III: It all starts in Liberty City
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Welcome to the 1980s
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Five years ago, Carl 'CJ' Johnson escaped the haze of Los Santos, San Andreas...a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption.
That uncertainty matters because GTA III’s eventual influence can make its development seem inevitable in hindsight. Houser’s account instead depicts a project whose core ingredients were in place while the team still had serious doubts about whether they added up to a compelling game.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How did GTA III combine story and player freedom?
Houser said the team treated story and design as connected rather than separate tasks: “We don’t necessarily separate the story and the design–they’re kind of the same thing.” The design challenge was to give events narrative shape without removing the player’s ability to choose how to move through the game.
Rank #4
- Grand Theft Auto III: It all starts in Liberty City. With the revolutionary freedom to go anywhere and jack anyone, Grand Theft Auto III puts the center of the criminal underworld at your fingertips, if you have enough guts to take it.
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Welcome to the 1980s. From the decade of big hair and pastel suits comes the story of one man's rise to the top of the criminal pile.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Five years ago, Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson escaped the haze of Los Santos, San Andreas...a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption.
That approach could make a mission do more than advance the plot. In excerpts from a 2001 IGN interview reproduced by the fan site iGrandTheftAuto, associate producer Jeremy Pope described missions guiding players toward discoveries in the world, such as finding a sniper rifle on a rooftop. This is an example from the reproduced interview, rather than a separately verified production document.
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What reportedly changed in GTA III after September 11?
The same iGrandTheftAuto page reproduces excerpts from 2001 IGN reporting that Rockstar changed details after the September 11 attacks. According to that account, the team removed a jumbo jet from Liberty City’s skies, deleted a side character and changed police-car colors. These details should be understood as reported in the reproduced excerpts: the available account is secondary, not Rockstar’s own production record.
The fan-site reproduction also quotes then-DMA lead producer Leslie Benzies describing the concept as an effort to create a city and “breathe as much life into it as possible.” That statement fits the design stories above, but it comes to readers through the same reproduced material rather than a primary production document.
What these developer recollections reveal
The stories trace three shifts: a cops-and-criminals driving prototype became more open when missions moved into the city; repeated attempts at 3D preceded the technical capability to realize that ambition; and GTA III’s designers tried to connect narrative structure to the player’s freedom to explore. They are recollections by named developers, not a complete production history, and the post-September 11 details carry the additional limitation of being available here through a secondary reproduction.
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