10 Little-Known Decisions That Changed The Course Of Gaming History

3. DMA Frame Their Game Around A Glitch

Nowadays, every new announcement or release in the Grand Theft Auto series is a huge media event, comparable to almost anything that the film world can offer in terms of buzz as Rockstar manage to do the impossible and top their previous efforts time after time. The series didn't begin to acquire truly stratospheric levels of popularity until after the release of the first 3D offering, Grand Theft Auto III, on the Playstation 2, but this built upon the criminal formula that had been established in its two modestly successful predecessors on the original Playstation. Before even these, however, the game existed as Race N' Chase, a game that allowed players to take on the role of a criminal or a police officer in modes geared around racing and chasing (as the title might suggest). A glitch in the game's code, however, made the police AI much more aggressive that originally intended, seeing them go all out in their attempts to take down the player. This prompted certain testers to ignore the game's objectives in order to evade the forces of law and order as long as possible. Instead of fixing the glitch and releasing the game under its original premise, developers DMA Design (not yet known as Rockstar North) instead made the fateful call to rework their creation around such a fun idea. Several months and a name change later, they had Grand Theft Auto, kickstarting a series that has since sold 220 million units across the world and earned almost every accolade going.