Original GTA developers don't appear to have much confidence in BBC's upcoming drama
Members of the original Grand Theft Auto design team don't appear to be involved in the BBC’s upcoming 90-minute TV drama based on the franchise's creation.
Speaking with GamesRadar, former Dundee-based DMA Design writer Steve Hammond predicts the "DMA Design part of the story" will be comprised of an "opening text crawl" before jumping into the story of GTA 3.
“I find it quite telling that no-one from DMA I’ve spoken to so far seems to know anything about it," said Hammond. "With Rockstar’s famous reticence to talk to anyone, that makes the only behind the scenes source David Kushner’s book Jacked, which frankly has me a bit worried."
The show, based on David Kushner’s 2012 book Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto, will purportedly tell the story of "how the game was conceived and created" and touch upon the fallout from various groups which "objected to its violent gameplay.”
“My prediction is that the DMA Design part of the story will be an opening text crawl before the main credits, then skipping directly to GTA 3," Hammond continued. "Otherwise, I wonder if the GTA team will be portrayed as badasses and bad boys compared to the other teams, as per Kushner’s book? In reality, no more or less bad/weird/outsider than any other team."
He admits the DMA part of the story probably wouldn't make for "dramatic television" as there wasn’t "a single defined moment when GTA came into being" not to mention there was a "great deal of hard slog and fixing bugs."
"No singular act of creation, no flash of lightning, no sense of something which was destined to be forged in a mighty act of creativity," Hammond said. “The creative process was akin to pouring forty seven varieties of gunk into a cauldron and mixing and mixing until a vaguely GTA-shaped object started to congeal in the center. No-one knew it was supposed to be GTA in the first place.
"Was there a singular moment when Race ’n’ Chase became GTA? I really doubt it. The moment of creation, hardy dramatic, is more likely to have been: Mike figures a neat way to rotate semi-3D maps. Dave says: hmmm, we should do something with that.”
The GTA project is expected to start filming in late April, and rumor has it Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is said to be in negotiations to star as co-founder and president of Rockstar games, Sam Houser.