Games Without Frontiers

Yesterday, I decided to take matters into my own hands and treated myself to a Nintendo Switch. I love gaming, I already have a PS5; I’ve been a gamer all my life, right back to the early Atari consoles and the Sinclair ZX81 - the very first home computer. It had a full 1kb of memory, which is roughly the size of a single QR code today. Even with the 16kb expansion pack, the memory would have only been large enough to hold an average smartphone icon.

Games were loaded via tape recorder and took roughly 4–5 minutes to load; the chances of them actually loading the first time were slim at best. I always laugh when people tell me I’m too old to be a gamer. You can fxxk right off with that. I was there at the start: Pong, Tennis, Breakout, all the crap, so you’re damn right I’m a gamer now, some of the games are mind-blowing. GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption II, and God of War (along with the sequel, Ragnarök) are four of my absolute favourites. In fact, like millions of others, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of GTA 6.

Rockstar, the creators of GTA, originate from the very place I used to go on Saturdays to buy my records: Dundee, just a short bus trip from Blairgowrie. While their global headquarters is in New York, the DNA of Rockstar Games - and the Grand Theft Auto franchise specifically - is entirely Dundonian.

The connection works in two ways: historical and current.

The DNA: DMA Design

The company we now know as Rockstar North (the primary developers of GTA) began life as DMA Design in Dundee in 1987.

* The Original HQ: Their first “proper” office was above a fish and chip shop (The Deep Sea) on the Nethergate.

* Dundee Roots: Founded by David Jones and a group of friends from the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club, they created Lemmings and the original Grand Theft Auto while based in Dundee.

* The Move: After being bought by Take-Two/Rockstar, they eventually moved their main operations to Edinburgh and rebranded as Rockstar North in 2002.

The Return: Rockstar Dundee

In October 2020, Rockstar officially “returned” to its birthplace. They acquired a Dundee-based studio called Ruffian Games (the team behind Crackdown 2) and renamed it Rockstar Dundee. This means there is once again an official Rockstar studio operating in the city where it all began.

The Sinclair Connection

Dundee became a gaming hub largely because of Timex. The Timex factory in Dundee manufactured the Sinclair ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum.

Because of those factories, the city was flooded with cheap, accessible hardware. That local availability is exactly what inspired the young Dundonian “bedroom coders” of the 80s to start companies like DMA Design. No ZX81/Spectrum factories, likely no Grand Theft Auto.

Don’t Look Back

But it’s not just about the hardware; it’s about the mechanics of the game itself. There is a striking similarity between computer games and life in general, especially now with the advent of the internet and social media. Things that happened early on have a habit of coming back to bite you.

It’s like starting a new game and shooting a nearby squirrel just to check your gun is working, only to discover forty hours later that that specific squirrel was the NPC you needed to unlock the legendary armour set. Like life, you will still be able to finish the game, but you’ll never be able to wear the Dragon Armour. The save file is written; the choice is permanent.

The venting is ongoing, the frequencies are still oscillating and the march to day 183 continues.

#cannabiswithdrawal #PAWS #neuroplasticity #cognitiverepair #recoveryjourney

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