There were references to multiplayer in the original GTA 3 code, but the project was eventually scrapped.

Why no multiplayer in GTA 3? Although the GTA saga’s first limited multiplayer options were present in the earliest game in the series and then expanded with the PSP instalments, Rockstar dropped the online play option in the memorable Grand Theft Auto III. As it was later revealed, the studio had been experimenting extensively with launching multiplayer mode and had serious plans to make it part of the game.

What ultimately led Rockstart to the decision not to implement this option? In a recent interview with the killazspain channel, one of the studio’s founders, responsible for the birth of the great GTA titles and even Max Payne, attempted to answer this question.

According to Jamie King, who left Rockstar in 2006, the studio was “very aware of multiplayer. Sam Houser is brilliant, very astute and has a great vision,” he said. “At the time, MMOs were already booming, and multiplayer games were popular, but the concept of online gaming was not yet fully developed. It was Call of Duty on the Xbox that really, from a console gamer’s technical perspective, started to popularise online gaming on consoles.” He adds that when they were working on GTA 3, they had multiplayer in mind, “but technically it was very difficult to make GTA work on [the then] consoles, especially PlayStation 2”.

As the technology was not yet fully exploited on Sony’s console, Rockstar took the challenge upon itself:

“Where should we start? Because we never wanted to put something in the game that didn’t run great, and the whole multiplayer, the programming, the network coding… it was a lot of work,” King explains.

“We thought it was too big a task and we were afraid we couldn’t do it right. Nothing would have been worse than releasing a lame multiplayer; it would have killed us.”

Rockstar preferred to be patient, even if it meant fans spent two or three years asking, “Where’s the multiplayer? Where’s the online? But for us [creating multiplayer] was a big distraction from our ultimate goal. And that’s a shame, but I think that was kind of the culmination of the debate about the content of video games.”

As has happened elsewhere, in GTA 3, the players first created the multiplayer mode. Rockstar made the definitive leap towards multiplayer with the fantastic GTA IV. However, it was undoubtedly Grand Theft Auto Online that laid the foundations for a multiplayer experience that perfectly captured the essence of GTA.

Source: killazspain