Obbe Vermeij Svela: Behind the scenes of GTA III-IV – A "Regular" Work

Obbe Vermeij continues to unveil the secrets of the development process of the Great Oretti, dismantling the myth of the rocambolic image that was created around the saga. Former technical director of Rockstar North, accredited to Grand Theft Auto III until Grand Theft Auto IV, he published a thread on X (Twitter) in which he describes the everyday life of creating those games: much less "rock-and-roll" than we would expect for a series that made its fame thanks to its controversial nature. As he says, “it was more like a normal job that people imagine.” It’s not the first time he releases behindfront, having recently remembered the uncertain debut of GTA 3 at E3. The photo that emerges is almost welcoming: most of the team worked with headphones, focused on their discipline – art, code or music – for eight hours a day, with very few meetings. A small group made key decisions on gameplay and plot and all others built their slice, especially towards the end, a large part of the work was to solve an infinite flow of bugs. Vermeij added that the team stopped adding content about two weeks before a game reached “gold”, then playing through the whole product to search for the latest bugs. And it was precisely this test process, which describes it, the first time he himself experienced history from the beginning to the end, and occasionally played through missions he had never seen. Can we imagine? One of the characters who built Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas discover the story more or less as players would do, weeks before the expedition. He accompanied the thread with a photo of Rockstar North's office in Calton Square, Edinburgh, around 2010, which looks strangely normal and precisely for this. Of course, Rockstar Games today is no longer Rockstar of the past. Vermeij worked in an era in which the teams left about 30 people and you could build something and see it appear in the game. He left the company in 2009, partly because, as the study grew, each piece of work was replenished, meetings multiplied and games took more time to be realized. These days, Grand Theft Auto VI has almost the ok to do what you want, including the transformation of Miami into Vice City. Rockstar Games’ Development Process: Then and Now - How the process of development of a Grand Theft Auto has changed between the years of the trilogy and today, according to Vermeij and later reports. Over the years, the growth has reached Rockstar, causing a difficult period for the company in the mid-2010 years. Rockstar says that he has cleaned up his development process since after the maximizing of the Red Dead Redemption 2 period by adding producers, free time and limiting the mandatory extraordinary time. Unfortunately, the recent reports of British staff and one of Rockstar's trade union organizations tell a story of extraordinary times included in contracts, opaque bonuses, a return to the office pushed and dismissals that the union has called "union action". The reality is probably in the middle of what Rockstar refuses to say and what the frustrated parts say, with the company now a more professional society. VERDETTO: MISTO La rivelazione di Obbe Vermeij sull’approccio "normale" allo sviluppo dei Grandi Oretti è notevole per quanto contraddice l’immagine romanzata e spettacolare che si era creata attorno alla saga. L'idea di un team immerso in cuffie, concentrato su discipline specifiche, impegnato in una routine di testing da parte del prodotto stesso – settimane prima dell'uscita – offre uno spaccato affascinante dietro le quinte, lontano dai riflettori e dalle speculazioni sui segreti della Rockstar. È particolarmente interessante il dettaglio del team che giocava al gioco "gold" per individuare bug, un'abitudine che fa eco a pratiche di testing simili a quelle utilizzate nell’industria dei videogiochi in generale, ma resa così iconica dalla saga GTA grazie al suo contesto. L'evidenziazione di una differenza significativa tra la dimensione del team (circa 30 persone all'epoca) e le difficoltà crescenti che Rockstar ha incontrato con la crescita dello studio, e il fatto stesso che si concentrasse sul test tramite i suoi stessi membri del team offre un quadro più realistico delle sfide operative che hanno caratterizzato lo sviluppo di GTA IV. L'analogia con Vice City e San Andreas, attraverso l’immaginazione di personaggi che sperimentano la storia come i giocatori, sottolinea ulteriormente il livello di immersività che Rockstar mirava a creare, anche se ottenuta in modo del tutto diverso da quanto previsto dalle storie che circondavano il franchise.

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