The Dundee Gaming Tour: Just GTA

Unlike the original tour I don't talk about ZX Spectrums, nor Lemmings nor Minecraft. Just GTA.

This is an unofficial tour based on numerous interviews in print, on YouTube and in person conversations with former employees.

However if you let me know you can't make it the day before your tour, you may be able to attend another tour.

This is an outdoor event - please dress appropriately

Please note the tour route is about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) and finishes outside the Vision Building. The duration is at least 60 minutes.

I will begin the tour near the Mandarin Gardens Restaurant at 3.30 pm please be there 5 minutes beforehand so I can check tickets and run though the itinerary.

Look out for a guy wearing a SFP baseball cap.

The first game in the franchise took 3.5 years to make as they had to code a city from scratch.

The game may look very different to the later titles but a lot of the features were there as you explore a virtual city listening to different radio stations.

There are many fascinating stories to share from how they created the music and dialogue in house with their “duvet Studio” to its controversial marketing campaign.

The sequel was set in the near dystopian future so the cars looked like “As if Havana got transported to the 21st Century” it still had the dated top down view but they still valued gameplay over graphics.

The first appearance of satirical adverts and DJs with personality to the radio stations. Find out how they fixed a last minute bug in dramatic fashion, in a time before wide spread internet access and day 1 patches to fix them.

For the third game they broke into 3D. Hear how a mostly fresh team made one of the most influential games ever made.

For this interactive gangster movie they started using celebrity voices and added cut scenes to introduce missions. But why is the lead character mute?

The fourth game set in Miami was intended to be an expansion pack to GTA3 but with 1980s cars and music and a brighter colour scheme it felt like a whole game so it was released as one.

Hear about the Easter eggs and references to Dundee in the game such as the radio station Wave 103.

In the fifth game set in California the theme was 1990s gang culture so they switched from celebrity voices to more authentic voices.

There are some interesting stories including about the writing the dialogue of the game characters and the casting process for the voice actors. They used actual gang members.

The sixth game returned to New York. As they were no longer able to use the Renderware game engine. They had to develop their own, RAGE which gave a more realistic and detailed 3D environment.

Find out how the Zoology department of Oxford University got involved in adding realism to the game. Hear about the incredible amount of work that went into making their version of the Big Apple.

For their most recent game the team returned to the west coast but concentrated on Los Angeles.

A lot of players take the pedestrian dialogue and the ambient sound for granted but its an integral part of the immersive experience of GTA. We take a closer look at the process, for instance each pedestrian has a backstory.

Finally I will talk about the hugely successful online version and the much anticipated sequel.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Outside Mandarin Garden Chinese Restaurant, 44 South Tay Street, Dundee, United Kingdom

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