Founded 1988 · Dundee, Scotland · Founders: David Jones,Russell Kay,Steve Hammond,Mike Dailly · First game: Menace (1988)
A Dundee bedroom studio that made Lemmings, then invented the modern open-world game with Grand Theft Auto — and became Rockstar North.
DMA Design began with a redundancy cheque. David Jones lost his job at the Timex factory in Dundee in 1987 and used the severance pay to buy an Amiga 1000, on which he developed the shoot-'em-up Menace alongside friends Russell Kay, Steve Hammond, and Mike Dailly. The company was founded in 1988 in Jones's hometown of Dundee, and Menace, released that October under a six-game publishing deal with Psygnosis, sold 15,000 copies and earned Jones £20,000 — enough to prove the venture was real. The studio's first phenomenon arrived in 1991. Lemmings was an ingenious puzzle game whose streams of suicidally oblivious creatures had to be guided to safety by assigning them specialised roles, and it sold 55,000 copies on its first day on the Amiga alone. Psygnosis pushed DMA hard to capitalise, and the studio produced Oh No! More Lemmings (1991), Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993), and All New World of Lemmings (1994) as the franchise was ported to more than thirty platforms and sold millions. The second phenomenon was larger still, and stranger in origin. Jones had been developing an idea for a fighting game set in a city; after the release of Syndicate Wars in 1996, the concept was revised into something quite different — a "living city" crossed with a driving game. The result was Grand Theft Auto, an enormously successful and enormously controversial title that spawned one of the biggest franchises in entertainment, and whose third instalment would go on to define the 3D open-world genre for the entire industry. Success made DMA an acquisition target. The studio was bought by Gremlin Interactive, beginning a chain of ownership changes that eventually delivered it into the hands of Take-Two, whereupon it was renamed Rockstar North — the studio it remains today. Few developers have created two franchises as culturally significant as Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, and fewer still have done it from a bedroom in Dundee.
The studio's origin is almost absurdly humble: David Jones was made redundant from Dundee's Timex factory in 1987 and spent the severance on an Amiga 1000, using it to build the shoot-'em-up Menace with three friends. That game earned him a six-title deal with Psygnosis and £20,000, and DMA Design was in business. Four years later came Lemmings, a puzzle game of such immediate, universal appeal that it moved 55,000 copies on its first day on the Amiga and went on to reach more than thirty platforms and an estimated 15 million sales. For a bedroom studio in Scotland, it was an extraordinary arrival.
DMA's second act reshaped the entire medium. Jones had been circling an idea for a fighting game set in a city, and after Syndicate Wars shipped in 1996 the concept was reworked into something far more ambitious — a "living city" fused with a driving game. Grand Theft Auto arrived as a top-down crime game, a commercial success and a lightning rod for controversy, and its 2001 sequel GTA III would drag the series into three dimensions and define the open-world genre for everyone who followed. The studio was acquired by Gremlin Interactive and, through a chain of ownership changes, became Rockstar North — meaning the team that made Lemmings also made the biggest entertainment franchise on earth.