Former GTA dev on the studio that became GTA 5-maker Rockstar North: "There was a spirit of creativity and freedom that just doesn’t exist today"
Aug. 20, 2024Here’s a bit of history you might not know
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One Rockstar veteran has reflected on the history of the developer that would become known for the Grand Theft Auto series, and how it started off as a very different studio.
Before it became Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, GTA’s developer was called DMA Design, founded in 1987 in Dundee by David Jones. The studio’s two most well-known games were Lemmings in 1991, and the first GTA game six years later in 1997.
It’s this studio that the ever-chatty Obbe Vermeij, former technical director at Rockstar North, is remembering in the tweet from earlier this week, just below. Vermeij reflects on DMA Design’s arguably lesser-known games like Hired Guns, Blood Money, Body Harvest, Space Station Silicon Valley, and Wild Metal.
More crucially, however, Vermeij believes DMA Design represents “a spirit of creativity and freedom that just doesn’t exist today.” This isn’t the first time Vermeij has soured on modern game development, in particular atRockstar Gamesitself - earlier this year, Vermeij told of howhe left Rockstar after GTA 4 because the series had become “too dark, too depressing almost.”
“I thought GTA 4 wasn’t as good and as fun as the games before. And I thought that the next one was going to be like, even darker. I’m happy to see that I was wrong. GTA 5 is a lot more light-hearted than GTA 4. So I got that wrong,” Vermeij continued at the time.
If you’re curious about the history of DMA Design, Vermeij points his Twitter followers in the direction ofthis website, which chronicles things like staff pictures, the establishing of the studio, and hits like Lemmings.
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