The story
Founded by David Jones in 1988, in Dundee.1
Background and formation (1983–1988)
Rockstar North was founded as DMA Design by the Dundee native David Jones. Having frequently played Space Invaders in his youth, he gained early programming knowledge when his secondary school, Linlathen High, obtained an Apple II computer and piloted O-level qualifications in computer studies. In 1983, he took up an apprenticeship at the local plant of the electronics manufacturer Timex. Although the company was best known for producing watches, the Dundee factory also built home computers for Sinclair Research, including the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, which had boosted interest in hobbyist programming in the area. Timex paid for programming courses at the local Kingsway Technical College, which also hosted the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club (KACC). Jones, the oldest attendee at the KACC, soon befriended Steve Hammond and Russell Kay. Mike Dailly, the youngest participant at 14, joined the club at the recommendation of a friend in 1984 with the Plus/4 he had received for Christmas. The quartet bonded over their shared interest in creating original games instead of playing or cloning existing ones.
During their time at the KACC, Dailly and Hammond developed Freek Out for the Plus/4, which they finished and sold to the publisher Cascade for "a modest fee", while Jones and Kay cooperated on Moonshadow for the ZX Spectrum, which was eventually released as Zone Trooper. Jones and Dailly also worked on The Game With No Name. As Sinclair Research's market share dropped significantly during 1986, Timex enacted layoffs in Dundee. Jones accepted a voluntary redundancy for £3,000, a roughly half-year salary that he invested into an Amiga 1000, and subsequently enrolled in computer science at the Dundee Institute of Technology (DIT). Hammond also attended the DIT, and all four soon joined its computer club. Because Jones easily passed the course's first year, he had much time to learn to program for the Amiga and spent one year creating the shoot 'em up CopperCon1. Working out of his parents' bedroom, he provisionally used the moniker "Acme". The game featured graphics by the demoscene member Tony Smith, with whom he communicated by post, and sounds Dailly and Hammond recorded from a Salamander machine at a local arcade.
After courting publishers at the Personal Computer World Show, Jones initially agreed to a publishing deal with Hewson Consultants but, fearing that his game would merely become the Amiga version of Zynaps, he walked away from the agreement. Instead, he turned to the nascent Psygnosis in 1987 and agreed to a six-game publishing deal. CopperCon1 was renamed Draconia, which was ultimately changed to Menace because the name was too similar to that of Draconus. Jones also agreed to bring Psygnosis's Ballistix from the Amiga to the Commodore 64, for which he engaged Dailly and Hammond. In his search for a company name to replace the already taken "Acme", Jones discussed alternatives with the members of the DIT's computer club in 1988. Among others, "Milliard", "Visual Voyage", and "Alias Smith and Jones" (in reference to Menace's artist) were floated, and Jones finally settled on "DMA Design". The abbreviation "DMA" stood for "direct memory access" in Amiga manuals but carried no meaning in the company name. While "Direct Mind Access" was official briefly, Jones eventually began stating that the abbreviation was short for "Doesn't Mean Anything". He formally founded DMA Design in 1988, when he was 22 years old.
Initial games with Psygnosis and Lemmings (1988–1994)
Menace was released in October 1988 after 18 months of development. It was DMA Design's debut game and the first game under Psygnosis's Psyclapse label for budget-priced games. Jones only received £0.75 for every copy sold, which he retrospectively viewed as a "terrible" deal. Still, the 20,000 sales allowed him to buy a car and regularly visit the Psygnosis offices to meet other game developers. While working on a sequel to Menace, the difficulty of Jones's university programme spiked, leading him to drop out and pursue game development full-time, against the advice of his professors. He intended to return after one year but never finished his studies, eventually receiving an honorary degree. Jones hired Dailly, who had just been expelled from college, as the first employee in 1989. Dailly began working on a Commodore 64 conversion of Menace. Hammond joined second on a part-time basis as he continued his education, followed shortly by Kay and Brian Watson, one of Jones's university friends. The Menace sequel, Blood Money, was released in April 1989. It sold 40,000 copies. Gary Timmons joined the studio shortly after the game was completed, while Dailly developed its Commodore 64 version and began working on a PC Engine port of Shadow of the Beast for Psygnosis. DMA Design also made Shadow of the Beast's Commodore 64 port and the PC Engine and MS-DOS versions for Ballistix.
Jones's father-in-law, the owner of the Dundee fish and chip shop The Deep Sea, lent him a small office space above the shop's former location at 134B Nethergate in Dundee. The infill building, built in 1893, is sometimes called the Wee Pink Nethergate House. The office was inaugurated on 1 August 1989. The studio continued to expand, also hiring many students to work part-time. In 1990, DMA Design cancelled several projects: The Golden Axe-inspired Gore! was shelved due to technical restrictions of the Amiga at the time and the platformer Cutiepoo did not make adequate progress after one year of work by the freelance programmer Tony Colgan. Jones further put aside his game Walker as he found he could not achieve his vision for it and stopped working on the Monster Cartridge, a cheat cartridge for the Amiga, after another such product was released first.
Working remotely from Edinburgh, the programmer Ian Dunlop and artist Neill Glancy began to experiment with the technology from Walker. When Dailly learned that they were working with characters just sixteen pixels tall, he challenged himself to create characters that were recognisable at half the height. During one lunch break, he animated a demo of small characters walking in a line and being killed comically, to the amusement of the office. Kay remarked that a game could be created from this. Jones concurred and thought of a design in which the player should prevent the characters from being killed. Kay wrote a demo before it was passed on to Dailly and later to Jones, who worked out the gameplay foundations with Timmons. The game was named Lemmings upon Kay's suggestion and released in February 1991. It sold 55,000 copies on its first day and was swiftly brought to other regions and platforms. Jon Dye, another former KACC attendee, was hired later that year to bring the game to the ZX Spectrum.
Lemmings had 20 million lifetime sales across 21 platforms. At 25 years old, Jones became a millionaire and subsequently bought multiple luxury cars. The company rapidly expanded and began working on several additional projects. As Psygnosis sought DMA Design to produce Lemmings expansion packs and sequels in the wake of this success, the studio developed Oh No! More Lemmings (1991), Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993), and All New World of Lemmings (1994). It also made the Christmas-themed Holiday Lemmings to be distributed for free on covermounts in 1991 and 1992, before Psygnosis made it a commercial release for 1993 and 1994.
By November 1992, DMA Design had grown to 22 staff, including 10 former classmates of Jones, and relocated to proper offices at the Dundee Technology Park. As Kay left DMA Design in 1993 to form Visual Sciences, Jones and Dailly hired Keith Hamilton as a replacement and put him in charge of All New World of Lemmings. This entry focused on larger, more detailed lemmings, which Hamilton and Jones later believed diminished the game's charm. In the same year, Psygnosis released the Amiga-exclusive Walker and Hired Guns, which had been created principally by Scott Johnston with a story by Hammond. All New World of Lemmings was the final game in Jones's original deal with Psygnosis. With the studio experiencing fatigue for the Lemmings series, Psygnosis hired other developers for subsequent entries, including Kay and Visual Sciences for Lemmings Paintball.
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Partnerships with Nintendo and BMG Interactive (1994–1997)
After leaving Lemmings behind, DMA Design began researching development for the 3DO. In another project, Psygnosis briefly had DMA Design emulate an in-development Star Wars game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). During one trade show, Jones caught the attention of Nintendo with a full-motion video Star Wars clip running on the SNES, something previously believed impossible. At the time, the company was seeking development partners for its upcoming Nintendo 64 console, which was then called Project Reality. DMA Design signed a two-game contract—worth several million pounds—and joined Nintendo's "Dream Team" of external partners. When this partnership was announced in April 1994, DMA Design was only Nintendo's second partner for the platform. Using these funds, the studio grew to occupy 2,500 square feet (230 m2) of office space at the Dundee Technology Park and spent around £250,000 outfitting all rooms with high-end devices. The partnership also led DMA Design to cease developing for the 3DO. The studio steered clear of other consoles, like the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, because Jones disliked "multiformat publishing for the sake of it".
DMA Design's first project for Nintendo was Unirally, a racing game featuring animated unicycles created using 2D sprites rendered from a 3D model. Following the game's 1994 release for the SNES, the animation studio Pixar sued Nintendo over perceived similarities between the game's characters and the unicycle protagonist from Pixar's 1987 animated short film Red's Dream. The judge ruled in Pixar's favour and the two companies agreed that Nintendo would cease the production of Unirally copies while Pixar was to receive a Nintendo 64 game development kit. Despite the ruling, the game sold 300,000 copies. DMA Design continued working with Nintendo on Kid Kirby, a spin-off in Nintendo's Kirby franchise made by Colgan after requesting a second chance from Jones. The game featured a young version of the title character, who would have been launched around levels using the Super NES Mouse. In November 1994, a team of five people commenced developing Body Harvest, scheduled to be a launch title for the Nintendo 64.
In the meantime, Dailly was experimenting with ways to render 3D buildings from a top-down perspective. To showcase this technology, he devised a game that saw the player control a dinosaur and destroy the city. After adding cars to make the scene more lively, a colleague suggested having the player drive these cars instead. Jones took notice of Dailly's project and passed it to a team that should turn it into a game. In July 1993, The Liaison and Promotion Company began handling the marketing for DMA Design and its games, and it introduced the studio to potential partners for the project. Jones consequently presented a prototype of the game, which became known as Race'n'Chase, to BMG Interactive, the recently formed games arm of Bertelsmann. The two companies signed a £3.4 million contract in March 1995, wherein the studio would develop four games for the publisher. According to The Liaison and Promotion Company, Jones had not informed the firm of the impending deal, instead claiming he would partner with another company, such as Virgin Interactive Entertainment. DMA Design and The Liaison and Promotion Company then severed ties just before the deal with BMG Interactive had been finalised, and this became a legal dispute when DMA Design refused to pay the marketing firm.
The publishing agreement with BMG Interactive covered Race'n'Chase, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tanktics, and the stealth game Covert. With the acquired funds, DMA Design intended to expand its offices and increase its 40-strong headcount, quickly growing to 130 people. The company took over an additional 5,000 square feet (460 m2) of office space and expanded to two adjacent buildings, therein also setting up a £500,000 motion capture studio that found little usage. Another section housed DMA Music with seven full-time musicians. Race'n'Chase formally began production in March 1995. The development team consisted mostly of recent graduates with little development experience, with Hamilton as the lead programmer. As such, the unorganised team struggled with the development until Gary Penn moved from BMG Interactive to DMA Design as the game's creative director and producer. BMG Interactive's production team, including the head of development Sam Houser, was hands-off during the development.
Body Harvest progressed slowly and faced numerous delays, such that it missed its intended launch with the Nintendo 64. The production also stalled on Kid Kirby and the climbing-themed action game Zenith, and Nintendo cancelled the former following the low sales of the Super NES Mouse. Furthermore, the American division of BMG Interactive regularly pushed for Race'n'Chase to be cancelled because the team kept missing development milestones. As the studio continued work on multiple games, several staffers believed Body Harvest would be a bigger hit. With DMA Design struggling financially, Jones kept agreeing to game projects solely to receive sign-on bonuses and with no plans to complete them. At one point, the studio had seven or eight projects in development at the same time. In the latter half of 1996, GT Interactive signed with DMA Design for Attack! and Clan Wars, despite neither draft having a proper team assigned. Jones also sold the rights to Grand Theft Auto to BMG Interactive to help keep the studio afloat. In November 1996, DMA Design opened a satellite studio in Boulder, Colorado. Anthony Harman was installed as the studio's manager, and it had 27 employees by April 1997.
Sale to Gremlin Interactive (1997)
The development on Body Harvest stalled under the conflicting demands between the Japanese and American branches of Nintendo. The team sought to keep up its relationship with Nintendo and caved in to these demands. Despite stark changes to the game's design, Nintendo was dissatisfied with the result and cancelled the game. Still in financial disarray and wanting his company to focus on game development, Jones arranged for Gremlin Interactive to acquire DMA Design for £4.2 million in April 1997. The publisher was impressed with DMA Design's multi-use 3DMA game engine and wanted the two companies to cooperate on research and development. It also expected DMA Design to become profitable within two years of the acquisition. Gremlin Interactive introduced several project management methods—including Microsoft Project and Gantt charts—that the studio perceived as unnecessary bureaucracy. Additionally, the company made DMA Design finish games as quickly as possible, as opposed to Jones's prior methodology of releasing a game only once it is good. Jones received a 5% stake in Gremlin Interactive and became a member of its board of directors. He subsequently moved into the creative director role for DMA Design. In May, the studio had 100 employees.
As another result of the acquisition, the Boulder studio was spun off as a separate company. Under Harman's continued leadership, it was renamed Devil's Thumb Entertainment. The Boulder studio had been developing a remake of Hired Guns for Psygnosis with Hammond as the writer. Being more passionate about this project than Grand Theft Auto, he left DMA Design to work on the remake in a freelance position, which he later said he regretted "ever since". Devil's Thumb Entertainment also developed Mike Piazza's StrikeZone and Tides of War for GT Interactive. In March 1999, the studio was acquired and absorbed by the developer VR-1, also based in Boulder. The Hired Guns remake was never released.
Two months after DMA Design's acquisition, Gremlin Interactive became a public company on the London Stock Exchange. Jones's stake in the company was valued at £55 million at the time. Meanwhile, Bertelsmann had decided to withdraw from the video game industry and shut down the American division of BMG Interactive. In its place, the release in North America was licensed to ASC Games. Gremlin Interactive also picked up the rights to Body Harvest and engaged Midway Home Entertainment as the publisher in North America. For Tanktics, the North American publishing rights were sold to Interplay Entertainment. DMA Design further negotiated back the rights to Attack! and Clan Wars from GT Interactive.
By July 1997, The Liaison and Promotion Company had sued DMA Design for £1.5 million over breach of contract in relation to the deal with BMG Interactive. Lord Penrose, presiding over the case at the Court of Session, then opined that the marketing firm had been pivotal in the deal being reached and that DMA Design had taken a "rather cynical action" by excluding it from the negotiations, asserting that the actions did constitute breach of contract. Also in 1997, DMA Design became one of the founding members of the Scottish Game Alliance, alongside Visual Sciences and five other studios. Meanwhile, in November 1997, Jones helped the Dundee Institute of Technology (now called the University of Abertay Dundee) introduce an unprecedented computer games degree. In 1998, DMA Design developed games for a game design course at Dundee College.
Sale to Take-Two Interactive (1997–2000)
In the lead-up to the debut of Race'n'Chase, now renamed Grand Theft Auto, BMG Interactive hired the publicist Max Clifford, who wanted to use controversy to market the game. Baron Campbell of Croy warned of the game at the United Kingdom's House of Lords in May 1997, and several tabloid newspapers called for it to be banned in the country. Grand Theft Auto was released in November 1997 and, despite mixed reviews, quickly sold 500,000 units and generated £25 million. Visual Sciences developed the PlayStation port for Grand Theft Auto, which was largely programmed by Kay and produced by Houser. The success diminished the focus on other games, particularly Space Station Silicon Valley, and a sequel was soon approved. Bertelsmann decided to ramp down BMG Interactive to reduce costs. At the same time, the publisher Take-Two Interactive was looking to grow its business and invited Houser to discuss his vision for game development. As a result, Take-Two acquired BMG Interactive, since dormant, for 1.85 million shares worth US$14.2 million in March 1998. Through the acquisition, Take-Two also obtained the intellectual property of Grand Theft Auto and Space Station Silicon Valley, and it published the former's PlayStation version in North America later that year.
Houser subsequently moved over to Take-Two as its "vice president of worldwide product development", in charge of internal and external development studios. The company also incrementally purchased all individual publishing rights for Grand Theft Auto from other companies to hold the exclusive rights to the game worldwide. Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon Valley were released in late 1998 but were scarcely marketed, leading to meagre sales. Houser and some of his former BMG Interactive colleagues joined Take-Two to form the Rockstar Games publishing label in December 1998. The newborn company commissioned its internal studio, Rockstar Canada, to develop two expansions for the original game, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and Grand Theft Auto: London 1961, which were released in 1999.
From Wikipedia’s article on Rockstar North, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4