March 29, 2007
In the upcoming issue of Wired, scribe David Kushner (Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
) profiles the rise and apparent decline of Rockstar Games and its troubled parent company, Take Two Interactive.A four-page excerpt is available online, and it's a fascinating read as Kushner dishes some inside dirt on the massive egos at Rockstar HQ:
As one former employee puts it, “The money turned them into jackasses very quickly.”
The Housers became increasingly demanding. Gillian Telling, a former assistant to Dan, remembers being commanded to clean snow out of his home satellite dish. When she failed to bring in the right kind of bagel, she says he called her a “useless whore” and (worse). Former employees say they routinely heard yelled insults and slammed telephones. “These people are insanely smart and really good at being mean,” says one.
The Hot Coffee scandal, of course, is central to the Rockstar story, and Kushner provides some new info:
One ex-Rockstar employee claimed that Hot Coffee had always been in the game. “I knew it existed in April” — a full two months before (amateur GTA modder Patrick) Wildenborg’s mod — the alum said. “They released that bullshit quote about how this is the act of hackers, which is completely comical,” the ex-employee added...
The Hot Coffee scene confirmed all of the hysterical, overblown suspicions about Grand Theft Auto. And Rockstar’s publicity department, which in the past had displayed an uncanny knack for building brand mystique, only seemed to exacerbate the outrage. “Blaming it on hackers was a colossal PR screwup,” says Corey Wade, a former senior product manager at Rockstar.
Will the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV revive Rockstar's prospects? A lot will depend on how the company's new management team, which is likely to seize control at today's shareholders meeting.
Comments
I've been interviewed by Kushner (for the aforementioned MoD book ... though I do not appear within it's pages other than as a credit mention) and know that my answers to his questions were necessarily limited to information that was already public knowledge. I wasn't comfortable with both being on the record and revealing insider information about people I worked with.
But, having interviewed with Kushner and having read his book, I suspect that he'll be on target with his Rockstar article. The game industry, like other aspects of the entertainment industry, is ripe with characters with extreme personalities and behavior.
Names have been added to the article, giving it credibility.
I never said it doesn't matter nor that it was untruthful. It is just that because it is an anonymous story, as a reader - we have to be skeptical since the people who said these things are not named.
I am not saying that this doesn't matter, but simply stories like this should be taken with a grain of salt. The EA-Spouse thing was taken with a grain of salt by me simply because of the anonymity factor, however, when more and more information came out about the case, it allowed us to take it much more seriously. I am not saying anonymous sources should be completely disregarded or such, but usually, anonymous sources should be cause for further research into the subject.
For instance, the AP will generally not allow the use of anonymous sources. By not naming names, it is impossible for the reader to know if these allegations are truthful or not. Simply, it is a guy giving you a story with little ramifications of his part - he isn't named, so it will be hard to trace the leak back to him. Also, I have no way of knowing how the journalist gather the data - was it through email, was it a phone conversation, or face to face? And if it wasn't face to face, then why should we trust any of this? Without a name attached to it, we have an allegation, which may or may not be true. We have nothing.
Perhaps there are romantic ideas attached to anonymous sources because of cases like Deepthroat, however, those cases are few and far between, and there is always some evidence to back them up. Remember, Deepthroat may have given them the tip, but when they presented evidence, it doesn't matter that the tip was given by a man hiding behind a pseudonym, the evidence speaks for itself.
In this case, and in the EA_Spouse case - all we had was some nameless specter who could be real. It is only when there is further evidence or corroboration of the story that we can take them seriously. For instance - I could be a Rockstar employee. I am not - but then again - how would you know? I could go and say I work there and they are good and great, and you can't tell. I'm just TBone - just an author attached to a bunch of text that you'll never know. And in the case of this story - these people are just anonymous former employees who didn't give a name. That's just too fishy for me.
Yeah, I thought the same thing about EA, when I read the EA_Spouse thing. Funny thing is, after three or four people started saying the same thing (even though they no longer worked there), it still made me think less of the company. I'll be the first to admit that all I care about is the game, but to address the view that it doesn't matter: it DOES matter - to the people that WORK there.
The mentality that working conditions don't matter to the end consumer is the same mentality that allows the acceptance of child labourers, in Indonesia, to make your Nike's.
"But, others argue, the tirades were part of the Housers’ overarching obsession with quality. “That’s the only reason the games are so good,” says former Rockstar producer Mark Fernandez. “It was the most exhilarating, impassioned place — they were totally committed to perfection. Imagine a company where 100 people felt like they were in the Beatles.”
These lawsuits are simply a gradeschool crush. He picks on the people he likes.
Basically, this story may be interesting to read, but a lot of it lacks credibility since it is mostly an anonymous story.
On the other hand, it's going to get more and more difficult for them to keep employees if the higher-ups are as volatile and selfish as this report suggests - especially talented developers who know they'd be better appreciated elsewhere.
TakeTwo on the other hand is wholly diferent matter.
For bonus points, this article was the most accurate account of Hot Coffee i've read in a while. While I have much more specific opinions about that incedent, Wired at least got the facts right... unlike every single politician that's opened their mouth about this since it happened, and most "game journalism". I'm really sick of hearing about Hot Coffee, because every time someone brings it up they say something stupid... I was convinced that was going to happen here too, but the author kept things factual so it worked out.