This is the tale of Jeff Williams, a web producer, who on his personal blog tells the inside story of the average man at Rockstar games, from just after Grand Theft Auto III's launch, to right before the "Hot Coffee" incident. A feature he says the company was well aware of, but due to massive turnover and disregard for the depths some PC gamers will go, Rockstar ended up lying about their knowledge of "Hot Coffee." That lie, along with other Rockstar games, helped create the video game censorship and regulatory issues we face today.Although not nearly as devastating as the EA Spouse chronicles, Williams does spin the tale of a company that hit it big with the GTA franchise, a franchise he says had little to do with the Rockstar he worked for, and never found another. Jeff says, "It was obvious to me from the start that the company had built itself on one major hit game. The question was whether they knew how to capitalize on that and create other hit games. Manhunt was my answer, and that answer was 'no'."
By the end he says Manhunt turned a lot of people off, burnout was high, management was inexperienced and it just fell apart with "Hot Coffee," which he says the company was well aware of the whole time. Rockstar still hasn't found another viable franchise as we all sit and wait for Grand Theft Auto IV. A good read to understand the average man's experience at a company, away from the suits and the PR spin.




















(Page 1) Reader Comments
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If they never intended for it to be accessed, that should be good enough. It was an unfinished mess, I don't think there's a chance it was an intentional easter egg.
So knowing something is there, and turning it off, should be fine. It's like painting over crappy wallpaper.
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Yes, Manhunt was such a failure they made a sequel... wait...
(not referring to the AO and all that, but to say rockstar couldn't make another "hit" game. Manhunt was not as big a seller as GTA, but it did well.
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making manhunt an over the top sadistic game, should give an idea, that these guys are just trying to stir controversy for their games and profit for it. GTA is a great original game, but they don't need to start adding stupid stuff like that, that only created that hideous idiot, Jack Thompson, and crazy censorship of r everyone, not just Rockstar.
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I liked Midnight Club. That was a hit game. So was Bully. Oh, and Table Tennis was great fun too.
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Of all the games you've listed, only the Midnight Club series can be considered "hit." But remember that the Midnight Club series isn't nearly as relevant as it once was and sales have declined dramatically for each new installment.
The GTA franchise was (is?) Rockstar's bread and butter and has sold 40+ million copies. Nothing else in their portfolio comes close.
It seems like he went from a web firm in the midst of the web bubble to a game firm. At that point, in the web world, you were a demigod if you could string together a few lines of HTML. In the software world (and games in particular), the web guy is almost a second-class citizen who you shove in a corner and hope he doesn't bother you too much.
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