14 DAY TRIAL // A very interesting subject can be found on a well known gaming site today, regarding former Rockstar employee's labeling the company as the "most poorly-managed company in the history of the planet." According to "Jeff's" account, people over at Rockstar seemed nice blokes, all of them, but the management was a different matter altogether. Apparently, the success of GTA 3, "went straight to the heads of several of Rockstar's key staff," as 360-gamer.com reports.
"Every Rockstar project turned into a huge clusterf**k. I mainly blame this on a horrendously inefficient company structure combined with a few individuals who thought they were hot s**t but really didn't know anything about either video games or marketing." He goes on criticizing the developing company's attitude after launching GTA III, by stating the following:
"By that time, Rockstar was arrogant to the point of absurdity. I can understand a little swagger - we had the #1 selling game in the world in GTA3, and in fact of all time on the PlayStation 2. Still, we thought that it was because of some sort of 'mystique' that we had created around the Rockstar name, that it was all down to good marketing and that we were responsible for that. No credence was given to the thought that maybe - just maybe - GTA3 was just a fun game."
OK, you can't say you haven't heard stuff like this happening in other companies. However, this one you won't believe: "It didn't help that certain members of the management team liked to lock themselves in their office and play soccer on their PS2." And to think that developers work on the tightest schedule possible to get the game as soon as possible on the market. Makes you wonder doesn't it: what if other developers fail to deliver the goods on schedule, just because they liked playing video games in their offices all day long?
Jeff also revealed that late nights at the office occurred on a regular basis, and when he says late, he means LATE: "There were many nights when I was stuck waiting for someone to even look at a project until around 10pm - and then there would often be changes requested. Leaving the office at midnight was not uncommon - 2AM was not unheard-of."
Of course, Rockstar is the company behind some of the most controversial titles ever, so, what did you expect? Not that everything Jeff stated should be 100 percent true either.