Wired Profiles Rockstar's "Road to Ruin"

Wired Profiles Rockstar's "Road to Ruin"

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.

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Kushner's book MASTERS OF DOOM about id Software should be a must-read for anyone seriously considering working in the game industry because it takes an insider's look at a high profile game developer and the reality behind the myths. Yes, there are some liberties taken to make it a better story, and the major players are reduced to the level of cartoon-character status. And I suspect that most of the dirt in the book came from former employees of the company. As Crankygirl noted, it's a small industry. Speaking seriously ill of an employer, current of former, and being on the record is a short road to career suicide.

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.
Deepthroat wasn't anonymous to Woodward and Bernstein -- they knew he was Mark Felt from the very first meeting. The anonymous sources that no respectable news agency will use are ones that are anonymous even to the reporters.
Don't get too excited by all the "ex-employees." A huge number of folks always take off at the completion of a big project, whether disgruntled or not (if the company doesn't lay them off, which they routinely do even if they're expecting to start work on a sequel soon) because they've probably been living under their desks for the past year and need to see the sun and their children again. And this biz is so small nobody will ever, ever go on record. Just the way it is.
I just love how all of these accusations are coming from disgruntled ex-employees. Add to that the fact that a lot of people don't like Take-two, including Game Politics, because they feel they somehow hurt the gaming industry with Hot Coffee and you get a bunch of BS that doesn't deserve a second thought.
Well, I eat my words, some of them at least.

Names have been added to the article, giving it credibility.
@Crash

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.
Sounds like a bunch of bitter ex-employees, the story sounds exaggerated and contrived...Not that certain developers don't have big egos and such but to make it sound like Rockstar is on the decline because some intern didn't get the right bagel sounds like a big stretch...Rockstar is the most recognizable gaming label in the industry today and they set the standard for coolness, bring on GTAIV please...
@TBone:

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.
And kudos for superb reporting again, fair and balanced as always:

"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.”
Once again, a story with a pixelated image attached. Can someone please correct this? This forum is a great place for people to discuss (and yes, sometimes rant) about current issues affecting video games, and I appreciate how professional the site seems to have been made and is currently run. However, it only took a few minutes for me to find a better copy of the logo.
I think that JT simply wants to be the first to play GTA4. In his counter suit he states that he wants to review the game before release, thus becomeing the first to play the game.

These lawsuits are simply a gradeschool crush. He picks on the people he likes.
Oops that was supposed to be in another story.
My only problem with this story is that it is made up entirely of former employees. I guess a few semesters of journalism has made me wary of such things, but the story is one sided, and of course, how do we know that A) these events really did happen B) that these events were not exaggerated or C) that these people are trustworthy. Important questions I would love to know about these 'former employees' is why they left and under what circumstances. Anyone who has held a job under a good boss must know that occasionally people leave and they end up viewing the boss as evil and terrible.

Basically, this story may be interesting to read, but a lot of it lacks credibility since it is mostly an anonymous story.
My first reaction was the same as DoggySpew's above - who cares what the internal politics are like so long as they make good games?

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.
Gamers really don't care how big, bad or screwed up Rockstar might be. They just care about the games. If GTA4 is screwed up (which I hope it doesn't) THEN Rockstar is in trouble.

TakeTwo on the other hand is wholly diferent matter.
I thought this was a good read. I don't have any trouble believing the stories about the Housers being a bit nuts. They mesh with the rumors I've heard from other places. It's a poor idea to claim that ex-employees aren't trustworthy just because you don't want to believe what they tell you, but it doesn't really matter... the article was more focused on Take 2's financial problems than on internal R* politics anyway.

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.

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