Busy day for Jason Schreier. After the not folichon state reported from the remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republicthe Bloomberg journalist returns this time with news about GTA 6. And tells, through twenty testimonials, how Rockstar Games has been trying for several years to change its corporate culture.
It’s no secret that Rockstar’s image has taken a beating in recent years. The Dramatic State of the GTA Trilogy released last year being just the latest installment. The release in 2018 of Red Dead Redemption 2 had already set fire to the powder. It must be said that having one of the founders of the studio who boasts of his teams chaining the “100 hours a week” to finish the game had been the exit of too much. Pushing hundreds of employees to testify about their working conditions.
Since then, Rockstar has tried to react, and reinvent itself. In any case, this is what the testimonies collected by Bloomberg report. About twenty people who have worked or are still within the company, testifying nevertheless all on condition of anonymity because not authorized to speak publicly. But the facts would be there, and the transition from a boy’s club to a real business would be underway.
We thus learn that efforts have been made in terms of timetables, with the requalification of many external stakeholders as full-time employees. Abusive managers were also pushed out. And a mode of GTA Online entitled Cops ‘n’ Crooks was even canceled, deemed in bad taste at the time of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the summer of 2020.
Change of plan for GTA 6
This new corporate culture obviously impacted the development of GTA 6. At the start of work in 2014, the game was designed under the code name Project Americas wanted to make it even bigger than its predecessors. Gigantic territories, inspired by the expanses of North America, and therefore an even larger open world. Meanwhile, Rockstar has revised its ambitions a little downward. In order to offer the teams a more human project. The setting of GTA 6 would therefore be a fictional Miami, as for Vice City.
But with a twist. Jason Schreier reports that Rockstar now wants to update the game constantly, regularly adding new cities and missions. The idea being to reduce the crunch during the last months of development. The game would remain extremely large, with many more indoor locations than in previous GTAs.
And the most startling revelation is linked to the cast of GTA 6, which would include a female character for the first time. Good news as the franchise was stuck in this culture of people living their adventures between the balls. For GTA 6, we would therefore follow a duo inspired by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, with a Latin American heroine. If we go back for originality, we nevertheless welcome the approach. Rockstar has also reportedly stopped the clumsy banter about marginalized bands.
Will all of these changes keep a game GTA in mind? Some inside sources aren’t hiding their concern, wondering what a game that’s afraid to offend any sensibilities will look like. The others wondering about the possibility of making a pastiche of an America that has already become a parody of itself.