A former Senior Environment Artist at Rockstar Games has talked about his experience at the studio and its culture during GTA V’s development.
Jonathan Gwyn worked at Rockstar from 2011 to 2012 on Grand Theft Auto V’s desert, roads, train track, mountains and more. He was just interviewed by Reece Reilly of YouTube channel KIWI TALKZ which focuses on speaking with games developers.
A wide range of topics were covered in the hour long video from what it was like to work on The Matrix games, meeting Sam Houser, behind the scenes at Rockstar and more. A particular section people might have interest in is what it was like to work within Rockstar at the time GTA V was in the middle of production. Jon shares he left Rockstar due to people and culture around him every day.
After Jon described how everything in GTA V is hand placed, he said they just started Red Dead Redemption 2. He then started to touch on his experience 1 year in at the company.
Rockstar’s aggression for GTA V
You probably heard stories about Rockstar. I don’t want to diss them but there’s people there that have a very like aggressive managing style and they make so much money that there’s really no incentive for them to change the way they do things.
Jonathan Gwyn
It has been documented by reports by outlets in the past that Rockstar’s work culture during GTA V and Red Dead 2 could be brutal especially as the games came close to the finish line. However, it was also reported that since RDR2, things have improved a lot until recently with GTA VI…
This is relevant following news on how Rockstar Games management have become more strict over the past year or so. The game has reportedly entered the final stages of development and a change in mood has occurred. The full change, working in the office 5 days a week, is to be enforced sometime later this month.
It was not really the company but the people
It’s not so much the company that was bumming me out it was the attitude of the people in the company, the people around me, they were complaining so much and they were like so sour on things and after a time you know you can’t spend eight to ten hours a day five days a week with people that just don’t like what they’re doing.
A lot of people were leftovers from when there was the huge controversy about overtime and the Rockstar wives and all that stuff so I ended up getting that job I was talking about at Qualcomm and I went over there, they weren’t happy when I left but you know, you got to do, what you got to do.
Jonathan Gwyn
You can check out Jon’s portfolio of GTA V work here which shows earlier in-development screenshots of the game. Plus, be sure to watch the full interview with the artist.
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