Rockstar North

In this blog I will be writing about a games developer. The games developer that I have chosen to discuss to Rockstar North. I will be looking at how Rockstar North came to be and to do this I will be looking at the games company DMA

Rockstar North originally started life as DMA. DMA started in 1987 by Dave Jones in Dundee. DMA had two early hits with Menace and Blood Money. These games gained the attention from gamers and critics for their high quality presentation and punishing levels of difficulty. DMA made their major breakthrough in the 1990’s with Lemmings.

Up until 1994 DMA had its games published by Psygnosis. Then in 1994 DMA developed Uniracers. This was published by Nintendo. Nintendo then asked DMA to join their ‘Dream Team’ of developers for the upcoming Ultra 64 System, which would later become the Nintendo 64. DMA accepted the arrangement and got to work on a new title. Body Harvest is what DMA came up with. However, Body Harvest never got published by Nintendo, this is because of Nintendo’s demands; they required a number of major overhauls to the original design. The game suffered numerous delays and Nintendo finally decided to drop their publishing plans for Body Harvest. The game was however finally released by Midway in 1998. DMA then went to create what it is best known for. Grand Theft Auto. When it was first released it attracted controversy which probably played a part into making Grand Theft Auto DMA’s biggest success since Lemmings. In 2001 GTA was released it became the Playstation2 best seller in the US and Europe. This caused Sony to pay DMA to keep GTA a Playstation2 exclusive for some time.

DMA changed hands many times before ending up with Rockstar Games. As I discussed earlier DMA first worked with Psygnosis, and then briefly with Nintendo. In 1997 DMA was sold to British publisher Gremlin Interactive. Dave Jones stayed on at DMA and became the creative director of both companies. Then in 1999 Gremlin interactive was sold to Infograms, as a consequence to this DMA left Gremlin Interactive soon afterwards. It was at this point Dave Jones left DMA and set up a new development studio in Dundee. The development studio was a subsidiary of Rage Software. This subsidiary later became Real Time Worlds due to a managerial buyout. DMA went on to gain a publishing deal with Rockstar games.

Rockstar Games was a new division of Take Two Interactive. Rockstar Games was founded in 1998 by Sam Houser, Terry Donovan, Dan Houser, Jamie King and Gary Foreman. Sam Houser is currently the Vice President of Worldwide Development for Take Two Interactive; he is also the President of Rockstar Games. Rockstar Games then went on and brought DMA outright in 2002. Rockstar Games then renamed DMA studios as Rockstar North. Rockstar Games has other different branches. One of these are Rockstar Vienna, this company ported GTA3 and GTA – Vice City for the Xbox. Another Branch is Rockstar Leeds which was formally Mobius Entertainment until Rockstar Games brought them in 2004, this company developed GTA – Liberty City Stories under the supervision of Rockstar North.