Jeff, or "badasscat," a former marketing guy for Rockstar, dishes out all the dirt on the often troubled games publisher-developer.

Okay, so the offices were bit grungy:

"For my initial interview, Scott [a fake name to protect identity] took me out to a pizzeria. I thought this must be the mark of a pretty cool, relaxed company. It was only later that I found out the real reason - the Take 2 offices were a dump. There was no space to interview anyone. There was really not enough space to walk. What there was was a series of metal tables pushed up against each other in several rows throughout a single window-less room. They didn't believe in cubes - ok, I understand that. But they didn't apparently believe in air either. Or cleanliness. I'm not always the cleanest guy myself, but the Rockstar offices were just packed with junk - loose papers, electronic equipment, empty boxes, etc. Clutter central."

And there were office...erm... office romances:

"Despite the industry's reputation as being male-dominated, Rockstar was about an equal mix of guys and girls, all young, and all more than willing to get shitfaced on any night of the week. I will say that, as a faithfully married guy, I never took advantage of this situation - but I can't say nobody else did. I'm not naming names, though."

But they got conceited:

"Every Rockstar project turned into a huge clusterfuck. I mainly blame this on a horrendously inefficient company structure combined with a few individuals who thought they were hot **** but really didn't know anything about either video games or marketing. By that time, Rockstar was arrogant to the point of absurdity. I can understand a little swagger - we had the #1 selling game in the world in GTA3, and in fact of all time on the PlayStation 2. Still, we thought that it was because of some sort of "mystique" that we had created around the Rockstar name, that it was all down to good marketing and that we were responsible for that. No credence was given to the thought that maybe - just maybe - GTA3 was just a fun game."

Words were often screamed--angrily:

"There was constant micromanagement of even the most minor issues. A splash page announcing the release date for a minor game like Max Payne for the GameBoy Advance would take days to get approved, going back and forth between directors and requiring multitudes of changes. Every project involved at least four different approvals - Scott, Jenny Gross, Dan Houser, and Terry Donovan. If any one of them requested a change, the project would be sent back. Often they didn't communicate and didn't agree with each other, so we'd do one change only to have someone else up the chain ask us to change it back. Then an argument would inevitably ensue. And when I say "argument", I mean "screaming at the top of your lungs and throwing objects around the office" type of argument. This was not a relaxing environment in which to work."

And Manhunt split the company:

"And honestly, I was pretty vocal in telling my superiors that while I'd do whatever they asked me to do (within reason), I didn't support Manhunt's release. It may sound surprising, but there was almost a mutiny at the company over that game. It was Rockstar North's pet project - most of us at Rockstar Games wanted no part of it. We'd already weathered plenty of controversy over GTA3 and Vice City - we were no strangers to it - but Manhunt felt different. With GTA, we always had the excuse that the gameplay was untethered - you never had to hurt anybody that wasn't a "bad guy" in one of the missions. You could play completely ethically if you wanted, and the game was parody anyway, so lighten up.

"Manhunt, though, just made us all feel icky. It was all about the violence, and it was realistic violence. We all knew there was no way we could explain away that game. There was no way to rationalize it. We were crossing a line."

source/link to full article

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I thought this was very interesting, and honestly couldn't stop reading it once I'd started.

WOW! Intriguing!

Cool, very nice. So which offices are they talking about?

   

We know from the article that it wasn't Rockstar London so...

image from wikipedia

This post was last modified: 07-31-2007 02:54 PM by gft77.

It's a great read if you read the full thing. A bit long but still good.

once this gets more coverage/press, GTA4 is gonna sell ridiculous amounts. ya cant beat free advertisement.

...and manhunt was one hell of a game. cant wait to play bully on the 360 too.

I don't think GTA4 needs any real promotion, and I don't think a story about how dysfunctional Rockstar is as a whole helps them in any way. As for Manhunt...sure you'll play it on something, but it'll be tamed down quite a bit.

but yeah...this made me laugh..... and I agree. GTA4 will be the best selling yet, all because of this guy.

This post was last modified: 07-31-2007 05:19 PM by gft77.