Grand Theft Auto was once voted "most likely not to succeed" by GTA’s original staff

There is no doubt that Grand Theft Auto is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time in the present day. However, GTA 1's original staff didn't expect that to happen. One employee who worked with the earliest titles is Colin Macdonald, and he recently had an interview with BBC News about the series' initial days.

Rockstar North was known as DMA Design back then, and there was a survey in 1997 about how employees felt about the seven upcoming projects and how successful they would be. Talking about the impressions back then, Colin Macdonald recalled:

"The one voted most likely not to succeed was Grand Theft Auto."

As gamers know today, the opposite actually happened.

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Why GTA's original staff voted Grand Theft Auto as "most likely not to succeed"

The first GTA game was played from a top-down perspective (Image via Rockstar Games)

Fortunately, Colin Macdonald did give some more clarification as to why the original staff wasn't so high on the project:

"That's because, mid-development, the direction of the game wasn't clear. It was also quite buggy - you couldn't play it for more than a couple of minutes without it crashing, so certainly at grassroots level there wasn't a lot of confidence in it."

Buggy games can understandably kill one's enthusiasm about a title. Many players still mock new video games bundled with glitches and crashes, especially from something without an established series behind it.

Who knows how different video game history would be if GTA 1 was as buggy as Colin Macdonald described.

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Grand Theft Auto and dinosaurs

This was never a thing (Image via Rockstar Games)

One bizarre story that has been getting updated lately was whether or not the GTA series originally started with a dinosaur protagonist or not. This amusing development came from Colid Macdonald's interview, which included:

"So he basically came up with a dinosaur game. You had this city that moved around in some form of 3D, but you were a dinosaur roaming around and destroying the buildings. That was what Grand Theft Auto started as."

However, in a chat with PC Gamer, a different employee by the name of Mike Dailly said the account was different:

"Colin got the details wrong. There was never any Dinosaur tech demo."

He went on to clarify that there was a dino.bat file from a game called Cavemen and Dinosaurs, but there were never any plans for Grand Theft Auto to actually have dinosaurs.

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GTA's 25th anniversary

Examples of some free tees (Image via Rockstar Games)

Although there were low expectations for the Grand Theft Auto series before its launch, it has since evolved to become a juggernaut in the video game industry. GTA 5 has become the second best-selling game of all time, while its sequel is undeniably the most anticipated upcoming game today.

Rockstar Games hasn't done much to celebrate the series' 25th anniversary. Players who play Online Mode got a few free tees every week for the past few weeks, but that was it.

It's quite a story to go from "most likely not to succeed" to Rockstar's flagship series, as well as one of the most successful video game franchises of all time.