Develop: Inside Rockstar North - Part 1

[Magic_Al]

http://www.develop-online.net/studio-profile/inside-rockstar-north-part-1-the-vision/0183989

 

Interview done in August when GTAV was nearly done and being tested. Interesting bits:

 

GTAV was in "full development" for 3 years, though discussions began almost 5 years ago.

 

Vice City was done in 9 months. "We were on such a high from III we just ran through it."

 

GTA IV was "dark times" because of the Hot Coffee scandal after San Andreas and the mood of the studio affected the darkness of IV.

 

Rockstar North has a lot of schedule and budget freedom from Take-Two. They spend a lot of time polishing after a game is 90% done, and they can't finish a game per year anymore. They can make what they want.

 

The studio will be reorganized so a core team can maintain GTA Online while others do other things.

 

GTA VI: "We’ve got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do,” The Benz laughs. “We don’t know what GTA VI will be, but we’ve got some ideas. GTA Online is the focus right now. There ain’t no rest between finishing V and then Online. Plus we have some other things – stuff, DLC, I don’t know how to describe it exactly – that we’d like to do, and we’ll pick the right ones.”

[nuer]

Interesting.

[iFight]

They can do everything with next gen. Adding many interiors, better graphic like watch dogs, all features from old gta games, more animals, more peds, more traffic, more weapons, more activities, more cities, more missions.

 

The problem is they don't want to add many things, it's ok if they want to make DLC later.

In gta V almost all interiors are mission only..

[jimmycakes]

PC VERSION NOW

[mikeinthahouse]

Very interesting!

[Spider-Vice]

Absolutely amazing article about the insides of Rockstar. For those more "nerdy" ones, hey, they were working in V here

 

Edit: lol ther pic links changed

Edited October 4, 2013 by Spider-Vice

[epicluca]

Pretty cool of them to do this actually

[BillGates]

Damn, I mean... The studio looks so unorganized.

[BigBadMF]

Genius is not concerned with mundane matters such as "appearance".

Thanks so much for posting this. I am seriously looking forward to reading the last two parts.

[NYC PATROL]

Interesting only 3 years of FULL development.(Still awhile) Figured that though. They spent time/resources helping out with Red Dead, LA Noire and Max Payne 3 first.

Edited October 5, 2013 by NYC PATROL

[Blazevski12]

He pretty much confirms that there will be GTA VI ( they got ideas already).

[Vercetti42]

GTA VI: "We’ve got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do,” The Benz laughs. “We don’t know what GTA VI will be, but we’ve got some ideas. GTA Online is the focus right now. There ain’t no rest between finishing V and then Online. Plus we have some other things – stuff, DLC, I don’t know how to describe it exactly – that we’d like to do, and we’ll pick the right ones.”

 

What does 'stuff' mean? Surely not online, The Benz mentioned it separately, not DLC's so there is only one thing left out the PC version.

 

Overall, a good and interesting read, definitely worth the time.

Edited October 6, 2013 by AceKingston

[Zancudo]

He pretty much confirms that there will be GTA VI ( they got ideas already).

No way! I thought making one billion dollars of cash in 3 days means there won't be any sequels! Astonishing and surprising I must say!

[lincolnimp]

In GTA6 I'd love to be able to play VC or SA on the TV in the protagonists house, like you could play a game on CJs in SA, or in an arcade like Cubed in IV. With next gen consoles space shouldn't be an issue, I think it would be mad to play a GTA within a GTA !

[stockwiz]

that's' funny that there was such a big deal over a hidden sex scene. American culture is so strange... open killing and drug use is fine but you can't show naked people or have sex. Sex is still so 'taboo' among media circles.

[archiebunker]

that's' funny that there was such a big deal over a hidden sex scene. American culture is so strange... open killing and drug use is fine but you can't show naked people or have sex. Sex is still so 'taboo' among media circles.

 

While America does indeed generally have a puritanical hang-up about sex, the Hot Coffee scandal was basically about the ESRB not knowing about the hack-accessible sex minigame. From there, it snowballed into another GTA-is-corrupting-our-youth moral panic in the media and in politics, but the real problem was that the sex stuff was "hidden" from the board and consumers to begin with.

 

The fact that Rockstar at first lied and claimed that the sex minigame was not on the disk, instead blaming it on being wholly the result of a fan mod, was the true catalyst for the controversy. IIRC Hot Coffee was made accessible by a fan a few months before the media circus finally picked up on it. A Rockstar spokesperson initially denying that the developers had made the minigame at all and the back and forth that ensued before Rockstar finally admitted the content WAS in the base game is what really made it a story. If Rockstar had actually featured the Hot Coffee sex in the game and had in turn allowed the ESRB to know about it in the first place, there probably wouldn't have been anywhere near the outrage. I mean, look at what we have now in GTA V, tits with nipples on them and male genitalia (the latter which debuted in The Lost & Damned DLC).

Edited October 8, 2013 by archiebunker

[caseclosedjk]

Inside rockstar: servers that do not work.

[Terminus]

Interesting to know what exactly was game changer between SA and IV, because it didn't seem very familiar.

[TheGodDamnMaster]

This is f*cking magical to me. It's like getting to see inside Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

 

[Zancudo]

Woman spotted working on the computers.

 

Fap Mode: ENGAGED

[theworldfamous]

 

that's' funny that there was such a big deal over a hidden sex scene. American culture is so strange... open killing and drug use is fine but you can't show naked people or have sex. Sex is still so 'taboo' among media circles.

 

While America does indeed generally have a puritanical hang-up about sex, the Hot Coffee scandal was basically about the ESRB not knowing about the hack-accessible sex minigame. From there, it snowballed into another GTA-is-corrupting-our-youth moral panic in the media and in politics, but the real problem was that the sex stuff was "hidden" from the board and consumers to begin with.

 

The fact that Rockstar at first lied and claimed that the sex minigame was not on the disk, instead blaming it on being wholly the result of a fan mod, was the true catalyst for the controversy. IIRC Hot Coffee was made accessible by a fan a few months before the media circus finally picked up on it. A Rockstar spokesperson initially denying that the developers had made the minigame at all and the back and forth that ensued before Rockstar finally admitted the content WAS in the base game is what really made it a story. If Rockstar had actually featured the Hot Coffee sex in the game and had in turn allowed the ESRB to know about it in the first place, there probably wouldn't have been anywhere near the outrage. I mean, look at what we have now in GTA V, tits with nipples on them and male genitalia (the latter which debuted in The Lost & Damned DLC).

 

 

Good explanation. It was them denying it at first that did them in. If they hadn't done that, it would've been interesting to see how that 'controversy' would've turned out.

[RyanBurnsRed]

http://www.develop-online.net/studio-profile/inside-rockstar-north-part-1-the-vision/0183989

 

Interview done in August when GTAV was nearly done and being tested. Interesting bits:

 

GTAV was in "full development" for 3 years, though discussions began almost 5 years ago.

 

Vice City was done in 9 months. "We were on such a high from III we just ran through it."

 

GTA IV was "dark times" because of the Hot Coffee scandal after San Andreas and the mood of the studio affected the darkness of IV.

 

Rockstar North has a lot of schedule and budget freedom from Take-Two. They spend a lot of time polishing after a game is 90% done, and they can't finish a game per year anymore. They can make what they want.

 

The studio will be reorganized so a core team can maintain GTA Online while others do other things.

 

GTA VI: "We’ve got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do,” The Benz laughs. “We don’t know what GTA VI will be, but we’ve got some ideas. GTA Online is the focus right now. There ain’t no rest between finishing V and then Online. Plus we have some other things – stuff, DLC, I don’t know how to describe it exactly – that we’d like to do, and we’ll pick the right ones.”

 

I knew Vice City was a rush job!

And GTA IV was kind of depressing. The endings aren't exactly happy ones, no matter which ending you chose.

[universetwisters]

If the time between San Andreas and IV were the "dark days", then how did they get LCS and VCS a more "upbeat" feel?

[Magic_Al]

If the time between San Andreas and IV were the "dark days", then how did they get LCS and VCS a more "upbeat" feel?

 

Much of those were done by Rockstar Leeds, since North was working on IV at the same time. Co-writer David Bland is credited for these and Chinatown Wars but not any of the console titles, so Hot Coffee may not have weighed on him as much since he was kind of in his own separate flow, I guess.

[Finn 7 five 11]

They can do everything with next gen. Adding many interiors, better graphic like watch dogs, all features from old gta games, more animals, more peds, more traffic, more weapons, more activities, more cities, more missions.

 

The problem is they don't want to add many things, it's ok if they want to make DLC later.

In gta V almost all interiors are mission only..

I don't think so, people were saying the same thing last generation "Oh my god, next generation we can do everything".

Trust me, we'll be running out of hardware power much faster than you seem to think, the end of next generation will surely be quite amazing compared to what we have now, but people will still be saying the same thing, there is still huge steps to be made in terms of AI for example, which no amount of raw processing power is going to fix for us.

 

Edited October 18, 2013 by finn4life