A former Rockstar Games developer who has participated in many classic “Grand Theft Auto” series recently started sharing various development secrets with players on his personal blog this month. However, these contents Soon after, all were removed at the request of Rockstar officials.
Former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij began blogging on November 11 about his past while working at Rockstar North, the Take-Two company responsible for developing Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. The Scottish game studio behind the Magic and other series.
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Several of the posts that sparked discussion revealed the development secrets of many early games in the Grand Theft Auto series and other Rockstar Games titles, such as one that talked about the development of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Before the project was formed, it was actually a zombie shooting survival game. In addition, this series of revelations attracted the most attention from players. Of course, it was also a game that was originally expected to be exclusively released on PlayStation 3, but in the end due to many problems And “AGENT” was canceled from development.
After completing “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”, Obbe Vermeij said that the team wanted to try something with a different style. At that time, Rockstar’s San Diego branch was building a James Bond-style game. An espionage action game, and Rockstar North’s then president Leslie Benzies also planned to develop similar works, so they began to test some espionage-style gadgets in “San Andreas”, such as paragliders or cars that can turn into submarines. wait.
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The project amazed studios in San Diego and New York, and they decided to join in on the project. However, the development of “Grand Theft Auto 4” also officially started at that time, causing Rockstar North’s development manpower to be divided into two, with half participating in “Grand Theft Auto 4” and the other half responsible for creating the ambitious “AGENT”.
According to Obbe Vermeij, compared to the “Grand Theft Auto” series that adopts an open world design, “AGENT”, code-named Jimmy, adopts a linear level design similar to the “Max Payne” series. Players will follow the As the plot progresses, you will travel to various locations and levels, such as Mediterranean cities, Swiss ski resorts, Cairo, Egypt, and even the universe for laser gun battles. Unfortunately, after more than a year of continuous development, the team found that the situation was not as smooth as expected. After another period of time, the team gradually shifted its focus to the larger development plan of “Grand Theft Auto 5” , and the scale of “AGENT” began to shrink as a result. First, many relatively large levels were deleted, and finally the entire game was abandoned.
Apparently, Rockstar North officials were not happy with Obbe Vermeij’s behind-the-scenes revelations, and the former employee had to have them removed. In a statement, Vermeij said that he originally thought that exposing some games that he worked on ten to twenty years ago would not cause any problems, but he still received an email notification from Rockstar North stating that some senior employees were dissatisfied with him. Revealing too many secrets on the blog felt that it destroyed the company’s mystique, so Vermeij had no choice but to cooperate and remove these articles.
In a follow-up Twitter post, Vermeij also emphasized that Rockstar Games did not directly force him to remove the content, but only informed him that some old employees did not like the articles. After all, Rockstar Games has been very secretive about its game plans for many years. It rarely talks about any internal game development secrets to the outside world. Even founder Sam Houser has not accepted interviews with the media for many years.
However, in recent years, many media have pointed out that Rockstar Games has an extremely high-pressure working environment culture, especially during the development process of 2018’s major hit “Red Dead Redemption 2”, but after that, the working environment within the company is also rumored to have also deteriorated. There have been very significant improvements, and senior management has also allowed its employees to develop the team’s next new game in a relatively relaxed way. Just next month, Rockstar Games is officially approaching its 25th anniversary, and the team confirmed earlier this month that they will reveal the long-awaited new game in the Grand Theft Auto series in early December.
