A former Senior Environment Artist at Rockstar Games spoke about his experience at the studio and its culture during the development of GTA V.
Jonathan Gwyn worked at Rockstar from 2011 to 2012 on Grand Theft Auto V's desert, roads, train track, mountains and more. He was righteous interviewed by Reece Reilly from YouTube channel KIWI TALKZ which focuses on talking to game 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 that people might be interested in is what it was like to work within Rockstar at the time GTA V was in mid-production. Jon shares that he left Rockstar because of the people and culture around him every day.
After Jon described how everything in GTA V is manually placed, he said that they had just started Red Dead Redemption 2. He then began to touch on his experience 1 year in the company.
Rockstar's aggression for GTA V
You've probably heard stories about Rockstar. I don't want to reject them, but there are people out there who have a lot of likes aggressive management style and they make so much money that there is really no incentive for them to change the way they do things.
Jonathan Gwyn
It has been documented by outlet reports in the past that Rockstar's work culture during GTA V and Red Dead 2 could be brutal especially as the games neared the finish line. However, it was also reported that since RDR2, things have improved a lot until recently with GTA VI…
This is important after news of how Rockstar Games management has become stricter over the past year. The game is said to have entered the final stages of development and a change in mood has occurred. The full shift, working in the office 5 days a week, should be completed sometime later this month.
It wasn't really the company but the people
It's not so much the company that upset me, it was the attitude of the people in the company, the people around me, they complained so much and they were so nasty about things and after a while you know you can't. spend eight to ten hours a day five days a week with people who just don't like what they do.
A lot of people were holdovers from when there was the huge controversy about overtime and the Rockstar wives and all that so I ended up getting that job I was talking about at Qualcomm and I went there, they weren't happy when I left. but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Jonathan Gwyn
You can check out Jon's portfolio of GTA Va work here which shows earlier in-development screenshots of the game. Besides, absolutely watch the full interview with the artist.
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