Created by Rockstar, a games development studio based in Dundee, Scotland, the GTA games have always been a parody of US excess, with witty in-game jokes on everything from heart attack-inducing burgers to smart homes. Started in 1997, the Grand Theft Auto series almost immediately created a name for itself as a nihilistically provocative and crudely satirical pop-culture sensation, in which players took on the roles of urban criminals testing the frameworks of US society as they tried to rise up the ranks of a gangland underworld.
"You just need to know where it is." His first cousin Niko Bellic – a man who has newly emigrated from the Balkans, and is completely unconvinced by America's abilities to fix their broken lives – bluntly interjects: "Yeah, but most people don't know where it is, so they stay at the bottom of the food chain! They stay there until they're burnt out or dead."Īlthough this profound exchange occurs in a throwaway side mission about a quarter of the way through Grand Theft Auto IV, it's a perfect reflection of how the 2008 game, now celebrating its 15th anniversary, dared to take the blockbuster gaming franchise (which has sold more than 400 million copies globally) somewhere darker and more political. "The fast food, the cheap gas, the fake – there's a shortcut for everything here!" beams Roman Bellic, the big-hearted immigrant owner of a failing taxi firm.
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