Former Developer: Grand Theft Auto Was Almost Canceled

Before Grand Theft Auto became a billion dollar video game juggernaut, it started as a meager top-down action game tentatively titled Race N Chase. According to former Rockstar North/DMA Design creative director Gary Penn, the game almost never saw the light of day.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Penn shed light on the problems that plagued the original Grand Theft Auto. "It never really felt like it was going anywhere," Penn said. "It was almost canned.

Suffering from constant crashes and appalling driving mechanics, Penn had no delusions of grandeur about the title's quality. "It was awful," he admits. "It was too sim-y." Suddenly, the team accidentally stumbled on a series-defining feature that reshaped the open-world action.

"Then one day, I think it was a bug, the police suddenly became mental and aggressive," Penn remembers. "Everybody suddenly went, 'Hey this is actually pretty cool. There's something in this, this is working.' It was less about the mission stuff, which we always thought was another mess, and more about just general play -- just being able to piss around."

And piss around we have. From Penn's perspective, maybe a little too much. "My point of view is it's stagnating," he said when asked about how he feels about the series today. "That's not, from tens of millions of people's perspective, a problem. But for somebody who's over exposed to playing games, it's not moving fast enough for me. But I'm not the audience, so it's kind of irrelevant."

You can read more about the creation of Grand Theft Auto in Gamasutra's three-page interview.