Early work was just starting when I joined Volition in the fall of 2003. The team was very small, less than 10 people. The project was not officially green lit by THQ yet, but we had approval to take things to the next step at the studio level. The high level design evolved fairly quickly into a third person action/driving hybrid steeped in Hip Hop culture, based on Respect, in which you tried to take over the city and bling up your character and vehicle. The vision of the game moved toward an exaggerated, over the top, music video feel rather than a realistic one.  We immediately chose the Xbox 360 as our development hardware. We saw a great opportunity to bring this type of gameplay to Microsoft's platform. Multiplayer was also something we agreed upon very early. It was not a simple proposition, but everyone thought it was essential.

We developed what we call a 'vision trailer', the trailer that was used at E3 in 2005, and officially presented the project to THQ. The game was controversial because of its subject matter and because of the existing GTA series. Fortunately we had the support of our parent company, THQ, and the project was given the official go-ahead. It is worth remembering that this was in 2003. GTA San Andreas was more than a year away and we had no idea of what it would contain. The color chosen for the player's gang, green, also pre-dated San Andreas by a year.