10 Genius Ways Video Games Fixed Their Own Mistakes

8. Erratic Cop A.I. Gave Birth To Grand Theft Auto

The Grand Theft Auto series is an unstoppable commercial juggernaut today, and it's impossible to imagine the modern video game landscape without it.

But the series' existence as a blood-soaked cops 'n' robbers "crime simulator" was very much a happy accident, as what would become the original GTA was initially conceived by DMA Design (aka Rockstar North) as a top-down multiplayer racing game called Race'n'Chase.

Race'n'Chase bore a passing visual similarity to GTA, albeit without much of its eventual visual personality, and internal play-tests were generally met without much fanfare.

Until the cops started glitching out, that is.

Indeed, a seemingly random glitch caused the game's police cars to act hyper-aggressively towards the player, desperately attempting to ram them off the road at any cost.

Testers were naturally amused by this, with their enthusiasm for the glitch prompting DMA to re-shape the entire game around the tension between cops and criminals. And thus, GTA came into existence, and grew to become the AAA mainstay we know it as today.