Since its
introduction 16 years ago, the wildly popular video game franchise GrandTheft Auto has been set in some of the most recognizable cities in the
United States. There were New York, Miami and San Francisco, and in the fifth
installment, released to great fanfare this month, Los Angeles.
Yet the
roots of the game can be traced directly back to Dundee, a former shipbuilding
city in Scotland, better known as the humble home of jam and jute, a vegetable
fiber used to make rope and burlap. It is a city that has, instead of the raw
urbanity celebrated in the video game, a quaint coastline, as well as a
population that prizes irreverence and wit.
“There’s
a cultural aspect in the U.K. of not taking other people too seriously,” said
Brian Baglow, a writer for the series’ first installment and the head of the
Scottish Games Network. “That’s a very large part of why G.T.A. works the way
it does.”
He added:
“Basically, we’re all just sarcastic. There’s a strong tradition of satire
here, which is centuries old. I think that in an American studio, you would run
the risk of being entirely serious and straight-faced, whereas there is
subversion in G.T.A. all the way through. It’s black humor.”
Grand
Theft Auto was created in 1995 by four friends — David Jones, Russell Kay,
Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly — in a two-room office above a small shop in
Dundee that sold baby clothes.
Mr.
Dailly, a programmer, had been toying with the idea of creating a “virtual 3-D
city” that would allow players to roam freely and choose their actions. The
team initially intended the protagonist to be a police officer, but it quickly
scrapped the idea in favor of inhabiting a criminal.
“You just
can’t go around running over people if you’re a cop — nobody liked playing the
cop,” said Mr. Baglow, an early member of the team.
Fascinated
by American gangster films like “Goodfellas” and “Scarface,” the four, who ran
a company called DMA Design, based the narratives on their vision of the United
States. (At the time, none of them had been there.)
“In the
1980s, Dundee was a shadow of its former self — it wasn’t the nicest of
places,” said Mr. Kay, who rewrote the game for consoles. “We didn’t think it
would be exciting if the games were set in Dundee.”
Creating
the game was a form of escapism, he said: “We made a lot of inside jokes.”
And while
the game — which has sold more than 125 million units worldwide since its debut
in 1997 — satirizes much of American culture, it is also peppered with Scottish
references. San Fierro, a fictional city, features a wealthy district called
Calton Heights, after the dilapidated Calton area of Glasgow. San Fierro is
also home to the Hippy Shopper chain, a twist on Happy Shopper, a grocery chain
with stores in Scotland and Britain. In another city, a Saltire, the
blue-and-white national flag, flies over a building. And a racehorse named
Scotland Nil alludes to the long, humiliating history of goal-less matches by
Scotland’s national soccer team.
DMA
Design was eventually sold, through a series of complicated takeovers, to
Rockstar Games, a label of the American game publisher Take-TwoInteractive Software, and the Dundee connection was broken. Rockstar Games has eight
studios, including Rockstar North, based in Edinburgh, which is responsible for
the creative content of Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar North is one of the biggest
game developers in Britain, employing 300 people.
Scotland
is now the biggest hub for game developers in Britain and among the biggest in
Europe, with around 80 developers huddled around Dundee.
While
some consider the game Scotland’s greatest cultural export since “Auld Lang
Syne,” the game’s louche tone does not resonate with everyone. David Paterson,
a councilor for the Scottish town of Hawick, said recently that he was “absolutelydisgusted” at the use of the town’s name for a “druggie hipster”
district in its latest installment.
“It is
going to destroy the good reputation of this town,” he said.
Still,
for those who were there at the game’s beginnings, its sly references to their
home bring smiles to their faces.
“These
little inside jokes are very clever,” said Mr. Baglow, who is Scottish. “It
makes me very happy.”
