Out of all the Activities, this one received the most design changes. We always wanted to have one Activity that involved drugs (what's a city of crime without drugs?), whether it was dealing, stealing or delivering shipments. The initial design was way more comical, giving players a list of specific junkies they needed to provide "fixes" to within a certain time limit. Needless to say, the initial implementation just didn't show much promise, so we tossed the idea out and came up with several redesigns that involved helicopters dropping shipments, hijacking shipments from vehicles and a few others. None of these really panned out, and for a while Drug Trafficking was in a state of limbo. During this time we were also tweaking our turret-themed story-missions, which were proving to be quite fun. It only made sense to put two and two together and turn Drug Trafficking into our first turret-themed Activity. The initial implementation was a vast improvement over our previous attempts, and to this day, Drug Trafficking continues to be a favorite amongst the team.
Insurance Fraud
This one has an interesting past. During pre-production our programming staff was experimenting with rag-doll physics using the Havok physics system. To properly test this, they put in code that allowed the player to rag-doll at the press of a button. When we first saw this we knew this had serious potential to be a wildly entertaining (and over-the-top) Activity that fit perfectly with the tone of the game. We decided the focus was to rag-doll the character in front of vehicles to earn money (other factors determine how much is earned, including the speed and mass of the vehicle the player collided with). As with all Activities, we constantly looked at ways to add depth and excitement to prevent it from becoming stale. One issue we saw was that the player could do Insurance Fraud anywhere in the city. By allowing this, it became fairly obvious that the easiest way to rack up big money was to head to the freeways and take a dive in front of fast-moving cars. To combat this problem we decided to implement areas that the player must rag-doll in to earn money. If the player rag-dolls outside of these areas he will not earn cash from the collision. This solution solved the balance issue and ultimately made the activity more rewarding and enjoyable to play.
