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Original GTA Design Docs, Dated March 22nd 1995
An anonymous reader writes "Mike Dailly, part of the original GTA team at DMA Design, just posted scans of the original design documents for Grand Theft Auto, which were recently unearthed. It makes for interesting reading!"
After following the link, hit the "Newer" button to scroll through the "Race'n'Chase" documents in order. It's interesting to see what concepts they felt the need to state explicitly back then. "If a player-controlled car has a serious crash, it will blow up after a short time. Hence, the player must get out of the car and find another one."
I'm disappointed that the words "Murder Simulator" aren't in there anywhere.
I don't think the hooker gimmick came in until GTA 3, which was almost a completely different kind of game. I was never offended by the part where you could take a hooker to a quiet place, whereupon your bank balance would fall a bit, your car would rock around a bit, then she'd get out of the car and walk off.
What was more unpleasant was that you could then beat her up, to get your money back plus a bit more. Yet, having included the (implied) car sex part, how could they avoid this without breaking the sandbox element? You have an attack button. You have a weapon in your hand. The only thing they could do would be to create classes of NPC who were magically immune to your attacks, which would really break immersion.
The defence I can offer is that the game doesn't require you to kill prostitutes. It doesn't really reward it (the money they drop is hardly significant). It must give you the ability to do so in order that the world is consistent. If you choose to do it, that reflects more on you than on the game designer.
I don't recall any child murder from GTA3 onwards. GTA 1/2 may have had children, but since they were tiny cartoony sprites, it's a fairly different prospect.
Mind you, I don't really see why murdering adults is less objectionable than murdering children.
I guess it's predicable that some people are focused on the whole "murder simulator" thing, which can't seemingly be separated from GTA. Since I was at DMA at the time (I'm mentioned in the first paragraph on pg 4), I can tell you that nothing like that was in our minds. What no-one seems to get - or remember - is that GTA was in large part a pisstake. We deliberately made the graphics bright and garish. We deliberately added humour. We didn't take it too seriously. If anyone still has the paper map that came with it (you didn't all pirate it surely?) just take a look at the adverts around the side. (I'm paraphrasing but... "Enjoy a meal while our technicians accelerate particles to the speed of light." - An advert for a combined cafe and particle accelerator!) GTA was a cartoon.