Grand Theft Auto

• 1. Introduction

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  Grand Theft Auto, the action-adventure series created by David Jones and Mike Dailly, takes its name from a term for motor vehicle theft in the United States. It has shipped almost 470 million units. That figure alone marks it as one of the best-selling video game franchises ever made. Yet the series began modestly, released in November 1997 for MS-DOS and Windows by a British studio then called DMA Design. From that start grew seven standalone titles, four expansion packs, and a place in a list of British design icons. How did a game about rising through the criminal underworld become both a national export and the most controversial video game series in history? The answers lie in the cities it invented, the actors it hired, the courtrooms it entered, and the listener who started it all by stealing a car.

• 2. Three Cities, Three Universes

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  Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City were the three settings that made up the map of the original 1997 game. Liberty City is based on New York City, San Andreas on San Francisco, and Vice City on Miami. Each later returned and grew far beyond its first form.

  The series is split into separate fictional universes, named after the level of graphics in each era. The original game, its expansions, and its sequel form the 2D universe. Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels form the 3D universe. Grand Theft Auto IV, its expansions, and Grand Theft Auto V form the HD universe. Each universe is a separate continuity, sharing only brands, place names, and background characters.

  Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, set in 1992, reimagined San Andreas as a whole state rather than a city. Based on California and Nevada, it held three cities: Los Santos based on Los Angeles, San Fierro based on San Francisco, and Las Venturas based on Las Vegas. Connecting train tracks and airports let players travel between them.

  Vice City returns in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI, set in the present and again based on Miami. It is reimagined as a major city in the fictional state of Leonida, the county seat of Vice-Dale County, based on Miami-Dade County. Vice Beach becomes its own separate city with its own police force, much like the real Miami Beach.

• 3. Building Los Santos

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  Around 250,000 photos and hours of video footage were captured during the making of Grand Theft Auto V, published in 2013. The team organised field research trips through Los Angeles with tour guides and architectural historians. Since release, hundreds of in-game buildings have been identified as based on real-world landmarks.

  The New Yorker's Sam Sweet noted the strange scale of that effort. With sales reaching thirteen million copies, he observed, there would be more people living in the imaginary state of Los Santos than in the real city it was modelled on. That version of San Andreas remains the only setting in the series without map limitations, letting players explore the entire island from the start.

• 4. The Wanted Level

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  Five or six stars mark the ceiling of trouble a player can reach in Grand Theft Auto. Criminal activity does not go unnoticed by the police, and the response is measured in stars. Running over a pedestrian might earn a single star and a few chasing police cars. Shooting an officer earns more. At five or six stars, tanks and attack helicopters hunt the player down.

  The player can shed a wanted level by avoiding detection or by spending in-game money at specific locations, such as a mod shop to repaint a car. If the character dies, they respawn at a hospital with the wanted level gone, though they may lose money, guns, and other benefits. This wanted-level concept has since become common in similar open world games.

  That openness defines the genre. Traditional action games run as a single track of linear levels, but here the player chooses which missions to undertake. The cities can be roamed freely at any point, an idea influenced by the earlier game Turbo Esprit. Pedestrians generally obey traffic signals, fleshing out a working city. The same atmosphere was borrowed by other games, including The Simpsons: Hit & Run, which downplays crime, and Lego City Undercover, which reverses the roles of officer and criminal.

• 5. Voices From The Screen

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  Frank Vincent, Michael Madsen, and Kyle MacLachlan all took prominent roles in Grand Theft Auto III, released in 2001. At the time it was rare for a video game to use such high-profile actors, and the game is considered a pioneer for doing so. This came despite a limited budget and the series' low profile then.

  Ray Liotta voiced the player character in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the first game in the series to feature a speaking protagonist. The next major title, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, again drew film actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda, and James Woods. By then a decision had been made to reduce the use of such actors, especially in leading roles, so many prominent parts went to lower profile actors or rappers.

  From Liberty City Stories onward, the series kept lesser known actors for main characters while still using celebrities and radio personalities to voice DJs on its many radio stations. Some games feature celebrities playing themselves, including Lazlow Jones, Phil Collins, Ricky Gervais, Katt Williams, and Dr. Dre. Those radio stations, introduced with Grand Theft Auto III, simulate driving to music with disc jockeys, commercials, talk radio, and American culture.

• 6. The Most Controversial Series

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  Over 4,000 articles published about Grand Theft Auto earned it a particular title from The Guinness World Records 2008 and 2009 Gamer's Edition: the most controversial video game series in history. The accusations include glamorising violence, corrupting gamers, and connections to real-life crimes.

  The first game was condemned in Britain, Germany, and France for its extreme violence, and Brazil banned it outright. Publicist Max Clifford planted sensational stories in tabloids to help sell that original release. Grand Theft Auto III reignited the outcry, partly because players could restore health by paying prostitutes, then kill them to reclaim some money.

  Grand Theft Auto: Vice City drew protest over a mission instigating a gang war between Haitian and Cuban gangs. Jean-Robert Lafortune of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition said, "The game shouldn't be designed to destroy human life, it shouldn't be designed to destroy an ethnic group." After the threat of a lawsuit, Rockstar removed the word "Haitians" from a line in the game's subtitles.

• 7. The Lawsuits

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  On the 20th of October 2003, the families of Aaron Hamel and Kimberly Bede filed a US$246 million lawsuit against Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, Walmart, and Sony Computer Entertainment America. The two young people had been shot by teens William and Josh Buckner, who claimed their actions were inspired by Grand Theft Auto III. Rockstar argued the ideas and purported psychological effects were protected by the First Amendment. The plaintiffs soon filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal.

  Devin Moore, 17 at the time, shot and killed two police officers and a dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama, in June 2003 before fleeing in a police car. A 2005 lawsuit claimed the games caused the killings. On the Glenn Beck program, attorney Jack Thompson said, "There's no doubt in my mind that but for Devin Moore's training on this cop killing simulator, he would not have been able to kill three cops." The case was dismissed on the 29th of March 2006.

  Jack Thompson recurs through these cases. He brought a September 2006 suit claiming Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father, stepmother, and stepsister on a ranch in Albuquerque, New Mexico, asking for US$600 million in damages. It was dismissed in December 2007. Due to his conduct, Thompson was disbarred in 2008 and fined more than $100,000 by the Florida Bar Association.

  Khuan Phokaeng, a 50-year-old taxi driver, was murdered on the 2nd of August 2008 in Bangkok by an 18-year-old high school student who wanted to emulate a carjacking from the game. Thailand banned Grand Theft Auto the day after the killing. The victim's 25-year-old son then sued the game's distributor in the country.

• 8. A British Design Icon

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  Concorde, the Jaguar E-Type, and the Supermarine Spitfire kept Grand Theft Auto company in 2006, when it was voted one of Britain's top 10 designs in the Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum. The same list of British design icons held the Aston Martin DB5, the Mini, the World Wide Web, the London tube map, and the AEC Routemaster bus. In 2013, The Telegraph ranked the series among Britain's most successful exports.

  The release of Grand Theft Auto III is treated as a major event in the history of video games, compared to the arrival of Doom nearly a decade earlier. Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono said, "It would be no exaggeration to say that Grand Theft Auto III changed the industry, and we can basically separate the time before and after its emergence as distinct eras." Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard added, "The mark of a truly great game is how many people try to recapture or emulate it and fail."

  That influence produced a label all its own. Games that follow the formula of driving and shooting through an open world came to be called Grand Theft Auto clones, among them Saints Row, Watch Dogs, Sleeping Dogs, Just Cause, Mafia, and The Godfather. Rockstar confirmed on the 4th of February 2022 that a new entry was well underway. Officially announced as Grand Theft Auto VI in December 2023, it carries a release date of the 19th of November 2026.