Rockstar games drop a hint that GTA VI might be an episodic release in response to contraversy over crunch and work ethics

[Master Disaster]

Some of you may remember the huge backlash fired at R* after RDR2 dropped when they went on record as saying "some staff at R* have been working 100 hour weeks".. Well Kotaku recently reported on internal emails sent to R* employees about this and about how they're changing the way they operate in regard to working conditions. The jist of the email was this...

Quote

“In these last several months we have undertaken a lot of work across every area of the company, looking at our processes to determine what works and what doesn’t, what we are great at and what we could improve,” Kolbe wrote in the email, which was reviewed by Kotaku. “We hope that the majority of you have felt some of these positive changes already and those that haven’t soon will.”

Kolbe went on to outline some of their plans for 2020: flexible schedules for developers at Rockstar’s studios, from California to the United Kingdom; management and leadership training; anonymous surveys to collect feedback from employees; regular updates on the company’s future games and updates; and better communication all around. The tenor of the email was straightforward: after the controversies of 2018, Rockstar wanted to do better. They also wanted to cut back on crunch, the ubiquitous practice of working nights and weekends to finish video games.

“We have taken conscious steps to improve our approach to developing games in order to reduce the need for overtime,” Kolbe wrote. “We realise we still have plenty to do in this area and will continue to take steps so we can more accurately predict and schedule games and DLC in a way that is more sustainable but still allows us the creative flexibility to iterate on the incredibly ambitious and complex games we make.”

Kotaku have interviewed employees about the changes and things do seem to be improving at the company.

Quote

Now, however, the climate appears to be shifting at the longrunning game studio. Interviews with 15 people who either work at Rockstar or left within the last year paint the picture of a company that’s changing in significant ways. As one Rockstar staffer described it to Kotaku, management seems to now be set on “running the company like a company.” (Rockstar declined to provide an interview or comment for this story.)

“It does seem like a healthier culture overall,” said a second Rockstar developer. “We’ll see in a year or two if I’m pulling my hair out, but it does seem like we’re moving in the right direction for being a company the size we are.”

Even today, with production slowed down and staff working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, the company’s management seems to be saying the right things. “They keep emphasizing that it’s normal to not be productive and our focus should be on our health and taking care of our families,” said a third Rockstar employee.

Quote

Since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar has made several major management changes. Last spring, Dan Houser went on a sabbatical that later turned into his departure from the company. Throughout the year, Rockstar replaced studio heads at its San Diego, California and Lincoln, UK offices. The company also booted directors and managers who were said to contribute to cultural issues. Rockstar held meetings about conduct and sexual harassment, and made plans to bring in a coaching organization called Mindful Talent for management training.

It’s been a slow process, Rockstar developers say, but it’s led to improvements to some people’s lives. “It’s like there’s an operation to get rid of bad eggs,” said one Rockstar employee. “There are still bad eggs around, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like their days are numbered.”

Rockstar’s leaders have told employees that they hope to mitigate crunch on the next big project by improving their technology pipelines and planning out more of the game’s beats in advance. One belief shared by Rockstar employees is that Dan Houser’s departure will lead to fewer last-minute rewrites and overhauls—the type that led to a great deal of overtime on Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar has also implemented “flexitime” scheduling for many employees, allowing them to work variable hours based on their preferences and needs.

But by far the most interesting revelation is that they might look at scaling down the next GTA for release then update it with new features over time.

Quote

One plan that management has laid out for the next game, a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, is to start out with a moderately sized release (which, by Rockstar’s standards, would still be a large game) that is then expanded with regular updates over time, which may help mitigate stress and crunch.

Source - https://kotaku.com/18-months-after-red-dead-redemption-2-rockstar-has-mad-1842880524

 

I'm calling it right now, GTA VI will have no single player at all. Its going to be GTA Online only. It makes sense considering they lost Dan Houser who was the driving force behind the creative team and the fact that GTAO has been so profitable for them. Making SP content is expensive for relatively little return.

 

Also if you read the article in full it seems to infer that maybe Houser was pushed out by R* as he was part of the culture problem they faced.

[Alex Atkin UK]

If its online only, I won't be buying it unless its VERY different to how GTA Online currently works.

 

I've tried playing it as a single player game as it didn't cost me anything (Prime bonuses, etc), but I just constantly get killed which is no fun at all.

[Jurrunio]

I really doubt there wont be singleplayer, at the very least it will force players to go online with the option to hide all other players. It's just too dangerous and stressing to always be forced to see other players.

[Master Disaster]

9 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

If its online only, I won't be buying it unless its VERY different to how GTA Online currently works.

 

I've tried playing it as a single player game as it didn't cost me anything (Prime bonuses, etc), but I just constantly get killed which is no fun at all.

I said it when they lost Dan, without him the company will struggle to continue making the games they used to make. IMO this is already present in RDR2, yes the game was a technical masterpiece but it lacked the usual "R* Magic" in the story. It was a very nothing game, it had a lot to say but what it said didn't really make a point.

 

I'm of the belief that R* might not ever make another single player game now, or at least nothing on the scale of what they used to make. I think the only reason we got RDR2 was because it was already almost finished.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, huilun02 said:

I dont think an episodic release model works well for an online-only title.

Usually the whole point of it is to release a single long story in chunks as they are completed.

 

And I seriously doubt the switch to this model is meant to address their work ethics issue.

Its just an undercover reason to ultimately charge customers more for the final complete product.

They've been doing exactly that with GTAO since it released. Twice yearly content updates to the online portion only.

[Sauron]

Doesn't this just introduce more crucial deadlines to crunch for?

[Master Disaster]

5 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Not at the scale where they can justify charging for said content updates. And if they could justify it, they run the risk of fragmenting the online playerbase.

Dude, at one point GTAO was making them million of dollars a week in microtransactions. They don't need to charge for content updates when the game is literally paying for itself once per week.

 

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Doesn't this just introduce more crucial deadlines to crunch for?

Not really. It makes the big release much less work then once the framework is done smaller updates are quicker and can be pushed out when they're actually ready.

[paddy-stone]

34 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

jist

should be gist

[Master Disaster]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

should be pedant

FTFY

 

I think I was thinking of Jism which is a similar sounding word with a very different meaning

[paddy-stone]

10 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

12 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

should be pedant

FTFY

 

I think I was thinking of Jism which is a similar sounding word with a very different meaning

I was trying to be helpful, asshole.

[Master Disaster]

21 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

So are you suggesting that even with the episodic release model, they are going to charge players only once upfront? I have no faith in them not taking the opportunity to ultimately charge more for the complete base game.

They don't need to charge you again, its simple economics.

 

GTA V had a development budget of $137m, lets round it to $150m to make the math simpler.

 

Being conservative probably 75% of that budget was spent on the Single Player portion of the game (with some of that work being shared across both titles) so again being generous I'd estimate that GTAO probably cost no more than $50 million to develop (or 33% of the total budget).

 

Lets also say they're making $2m a day from shark cards (and to be clear, nobody except R* & Take Two know exactly how much they make, that number could be wildly inaccurate it either direction). After 7 days they've made $14m just from the game existing (they're literally doing nothing) and this ignores the $60 entry price of every game they sell.

 

3 weeks and the game has paid for itself purely in monetisation.

 

Another way to look at it is $6b in 7 years, that's more than any other entertainment product has ever made across all formats.

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

You lost me there.

I am not talking about needs.

I am talking about wants. They want more profit. With the new model they have the opportunity to charge more for a complete product. And I am going as far to say that this is the motivation behind the new model.

 

From a consumer point of view the result is paying more for the same thing. The result is a ditrement.

If it was any other company we wouldn't even be having this conversation, I'd be agreeing with you but with R*, I don't think so. They've built up a fair amount of good will with their customers by releasing GTAO updates for free, they pushed back against Take Two when TT suggested they should be releasing games more frequently and I think they're clever enough to realise how good of a model GTAO is for making them a consistent profit. Giving away free updates keeps the players happy and engaged for longer which means the extra money keeps on rolling in.

 

If they start getting to greedy they risk the entire thing collapsing around them and they definitely do know this. When they started tweaking GTAO to make it more grindy nobody really said anything until the third or fourth time when they took the piss. The player base was very quick to call them out and they quickly backpedalled once they realised the money stopped rolling in.

[2FA]

MMORPGs have been doing this model for decades now, not surprised to see Rockstar try it out more.

[TempestCatto]

I see this as a good thing honestly. Currently, it's very easy to get bored of GTAO. As soon as a new DLC drops, it's already boring and old. The best example of this is the Arena War Series. There was so much grinding and time you had to spend just for very little gain. It got old very quick. If they release things episodically, it could help to retain the interest of players much longer as it would give the player base something to actually look forward to at intervals.

 

BUT:

• If Cock* changes the economy that alone will make things much more fun.
• It's no fun to spend all day to make a few mil then some chump with nothing better to do comes and blows your shit up costing you everything - and they only make 2k for doing it.
• Having to buy a multi-million dollar building that looks like a dog shit with pink paint on it just to be able to buy a new car and start new missions is not a fun thing at all.
• Stop pushing Shark Cards so hard - Just fix the damn economy it's a fake world it's easy to do.
• More than half the time servers are down - can't play a game I payed 60 bucks for if the servers are down! Every time that happens I always say "I want my money back" and I actually mean that too.
• I live in North America. I recently removed my custom DNS because of unrelated issues. STOP PUTTING ME IN A LOBBY WITH PEOPLE FROM SOUTH KOREA. I have nothing against them - they're usually pretty nice. But I'd like to be able to chat with other players and do missions and stuff. Can't do that when you don't speak the other person's language!
• Loading times are so bad, I haven't got a clue what goes on anymore. I sit in the sky for ages only to be told "Loading failed, return to single player" then have to wait another few mins for that to happen.
• Loading in general is dumb. If you try and join a job and it's full, you have to go through the whole rigamarole of joining a new session. Why can't you just cache my current session, and if the one I'm joining is full - let me load back into the cached one?

 

They also need to have a better system against griefers. As a modder, I can (and do) simply kick griefers from the session, but I shouldn't have to be someone's guardian angle for that. I get that the point of the game is killing and stealing, but when you also put so much emphasis on grinding and doing all this work to make some money to buy one measly car, there needs to be a balance between blowing someone's hard earned work up vs how much one earns for doing all that hard work.

 

I will continue to mod GTAO for my own fun and for the fun of others. I'm not a mean modder at all, I'll give money, cars, guns, kick mean people, etc. But I mostly just give myself an anus load of cash, buy all the things, spawn cars for myself and just drive around and have fun (not hurting or harming other players). I will do this in the next GTA as well, fully expecting to not be able to do anything otherwise. GTA in general is too much grinding/work for not enough gain. Especially when the threat of losing absolutely everything you worked for via one damn missile is so prevalent.

[Totallycasual]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

If it was any other company we wouldn't even be having this conversation, I'd be agreeing with you but with R*, I don't think so. They've built up a fair amount of good will with their customers by releasing GTAO updates for free,

I'd argue that the existence of GTA Online and it's heavy monetization chewed up a lot of Rockstars accrued goodwill, there's a very large chunk of hardcore fans that are still super pissed about the single player DLC being abandoned so the massively profitable online mode could cannibalize its assets/resources. 

 

If it wasn't for Red Dead 2 (single player only) i'd have Rockstar ranked down in the gutter with EA, lets face it, they only got away with that online bullshit GTA because of who they were, they need to keep putting out solid single player games because if they convert to a studio that just does online shit and some type of single player episodic games as a service model, they'll have no goodwill left to trade in on. 

[Orangeator]

If there is no single player in GTA VI I will not be purchasing the game. My favorite series, that absolutely has to have a single player option...

[Master Disaster]

19 minutes ago, Newenthusiast said:

I'd argue that the existence of GTA Online and it's heavy monetization chewed up a lot of Rockstars accrued goodwill, there's a very large chunk of hardcore fans that are still super pissed about the single player DLC being abandoned so the massively profitable online mode could cannibalize its assets/resources. 

 

If it wasn't for Red Dead 2 (single player only) i'd have Rockstar ranked down in the gutter with EA, lets face it, they only got away with that online bullshit GTA because of who they were, they need to keep putting out solid single player games because if they convert to a studio that just does online shit and some type of single player episodic games as a service model, they'll have no goodwill left to trade in on. 

Its certainly an interesting debate. I'm on the side of probably not. The other factor to consider is the market they're operating in and gamers/customers these days are far more open to online only products. Heck R* are among a very small group of AAA developers still making SP content at all. Games as a service is very well established and R* know that for every fan they lose there's 10 more willing to play online only games. GTA V is still regularly in Steams Top 10 sellers list and there's no way that many people are still buying a 7 year old product to play the story mode.

 

I do fully acknowledge that it could go either way for them but even if they lost their reputation they're still Rockstar and they will still sell product no matter what happens.

[suicidalfranco]

meh stopped playing rockstar games after the release of GTAO

[Doobeedoo]

Episodic, for such a game, that would really suck. Being online only, well that would slightly surprise me. But I'd be interestes to see how they pulled that off. Online would need to be improved in every way. Well I look forward to it. 

[PlayStation 2]

How about we get another Midnight Club if they’re gonna shift to online only? It’s been far FAR too long since we’ve gotten a game in that series. 

Seems like a far better series to shift to online only anyways than GTA.