As per a recent talk from Rockstar’s ex-tech director Obbe Vermeij, it turns out that GTA 3 was maybe going to be the very first Grand Theft Auto to have online play, if things worked differently. The idea to do it wasn’t new for Rockstar, Vermeij said, and they tried doing it again for Vice City, but it didn’t happen in the end. For San Andreas, they didn’t even try it.
GTA 3 Had a Prototype, but It Didn’t Go Far
According to Vermeij, during the GTA 3 development time, he actually worked on something like a basic deathmatch mode where the players were able to kill each other and drag them from vehicles and spawn again somewhere else in Liberty City. It seemed fun, maybe, but they couldn’t continue it properly.
“We needed lobbies, scripts working over the network, etc. We decided to cut the effort,” he mentioned in one of his blog writings.
Vice City and San Andreas Tried Again, But Still Failed
Image via Rockstar Games
Later when Vice City got in development, Rockstar gave another shot. This time, Vermeij said they even brought in network coders to work for it, hoping to make multiplayer work somehow. Still, even then, because the project deadline was already too tight and complicated, the online part was removed again. So it didn’t make it into the final game either.
With San Andreas, there wasn’t even a chance. Vermeij said directly, “we didn’t even try… not worth the effort.” The game was huge already, and trying to add online into it wouldn’t be a good use of time. Also, the PS2 hardware probably made things too difficult to try anything big like that.
GTA 4 Finally Had Online Properly
Image via Rockstar Games
Then, in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, GTA 4 finally had a working online. It wasn’t like what GTA Online is now, but it was something. Obbe Vermeij gave respect to the few programmers and level designers who worked day and night on that part. It was the first time they got it working in the game itself.
It could have Been Sooner If Things were Different
Now when you think how huge GTA Online is today, it’s wild to imagine that all this might’ve started way back in 2001 already. Though it didn’t happen that time, still those early efforts probably helped Rockstar see what was possible.
After all these failed tries, the fans didn’t wait forever. They created online mods like SA-MP and Multi Theft Auto, which made multiplayer work unofficially in San Andreas, showing how much people really wanted it, even before Rockstar could give it.
