Even GTA's original creators are waiting to play GTA 6 as launch nears

In a computer lab at Abertay University in Dundee, Dave Jones, co-creator of the original Grand Theft Auto, and Brian Baglow, who wrote it and handled its publicity, are asked whether either has played the new game. Baglow shakes his head. He isn't complaining, he says: he has the pre-order, like everyone else.

Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives after a 13-year wait, two delays and several high-profile leaks. Rockstar Games has kept its biggest release yet tightly under wraps, and that secrecy extends even to the people who helped build the series. "We're all waiting to see what they've done," Jones says. The game is expected to be the biggest video game launch ever.

The series began in Dundee in 1997, when DMA Design released the first game. The studio was small by later standards. It had just had a success with the puzzle game Lemmings and was toying with a racing game called Race'n'Chase. The team still felt it needed something new. Jones says the answer was what gamers now take for granted: getting out of the car. Being able to drive, switch cars, steal them and run around on foot produced, in his words, an interesting mix of gaming coming together.

The team first imagined players could be either a criminal or a police officer. Jones dropped the second idea quickly, because playing the officer meant behaving by the book. Being the bad guy was more fun, he says, so that is what the game became.

Sales were a slow burn compared with Lemmings, partly because, as Jones puts it, you had to play it to get it. Baglow remembers the game selling steadily through the whole of its first year, which the team put down to word of mouth. Controversy followed, with debates in the UK Parliament and calls for a ban. It later emerged that much of that noise had been generated by the publisher, BMG Interactive, as a viral marketing stunt. Jones says the developers never asked themselves whether something was controversial; they just did what they found fun.

The original looked basic, with a top-down 2D view and arcade-style graphics, but it set the blueprint for the satire that runs through the later games. Keza MacDonald, video games editor at the Guardian, says its Scottishness survives in the humour and the outsider's view of an exaggerated America. It is, she says, a deeply satirical game that takes aim at the hyper-individualist, hyper-capitalist nature of the US. A low budget and the cost of real-world licences pushed the team toward invented brand names and fake radio stations. Baglow says the world-building is what he is proudest of: the business names, the stations, the lyrics, the DJs, all making the environment feel like a cohesive whole.

The series became a cultural reference point. GTA V made $1bn (£760m) in three days after its 2013 launch, faster than any entertainment product had managed at the time. Jones recalls hearing films say "don't go all GTA on me" and finding it surreal. MacDonald argues that earlier GTAs took a lot from cinema, but films are now probably more influenced by GTA than the reverse. Jones thinks the appeal is simple: it is based on real life, and you need only know a city and driving.

PlayStation and Xbox, the two platforms GTA 6 launches on first, have both said it is the most pre-ordered title in their digital stores' history. Part of that may be the game's size, 212GB, which leads many to pre-order so they can pre-load it. MacDonald says the industry hopes for a shot in the arm, and that it is rare for one game to interest nearly everybody.

Jones and Baglow don't pine for the project. Jones says everyone enjoys their time on it, but eventually you want to do other things. Baglow calls watching the world fall in love with the game over 29 years joyful. When GTA 6 launches, both will be playing like everyone else.