A chance at renaissance without a true dark age
Rockstar have a well-deserved reputation for making the most masterfully produced games in the industry, ones with the highest production values. Indeed, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 (released in 2018) are acknowledged to be unparalleled masterpieces.
However, many have expressed concern about the direction of the company in recent years. Longstanding creative and production experts have decided to leave Rockstar, apparently dismayed at the lack of impetus to make great single player experiences, given the enormous cash cow that Grand Theft Auto V’s multiplayer provides, roughly a billion dollars per year. Sometimes, a creative venture can be a victim of its own success.
Many formerly loyal and patient fans are increasingly upset, feeling that Rockstar no longer cares about giving players the artful single player experiences that they wish for, and claiming that Rockstar and their publishers, Take-Two, have become complacent.
Such accusations of complacency have been reinforced by the lazy and broken remastering of the first three 3D Grand Theft Auto games, which has been exceptionally poorly received. Indeed, the re-release has been excoriated as a disgrace by the press and player base. The work was farmed out to a small mobile development team, and the woeful results are deeply embarrassing for a company which once held such a fine reputation for quality.
Rockstar has gone from being the best of the best, to being mocked and loathed as an example of the fecklessness and greed that they ironically lampoon in their games.
The company has problems at a fundamental, philosophical level and is on the brink of losing its esteemed reputation permanently. Rockstar is a shell of its former self just a few years ago. However, it can be saved. It's not too late to change, to become a creative powerhouse, to win back the fans, and find a sustainable future.
Some of the greatest companies in the world were once on the brink of implosion, having lost the impetus that had once propelled them to greatness, such as Apple and IBM. These companies rediscovered what made them special, and brought it to market in a new fashion, one that people were ready to receive.
The collective body corporate can become diseased just like any individual. Healing requires letting go of things that are damaging its health. That’s half the battle; the other is to promote rejuvenation. The essence of reform is to find the great aspects still buried within something, and to restore them to preeminence.
It is not enough to provide sufficient value to people to gain their money; one must nourish their spiritual wellbeing like a godchild to receive transformative success.
Producers of adulterated and health-destroying food – would you feed your own children such dross? Never!
Managers of crunch period death marches – would you want your child to ruin their health for months on end? Certainly not.
Why do so many believe that it’s acceptable to externalize such costs that onto others, simply because they are not our nearest kin? The moment that we choose deep down to walk away from such a transactional mindset is when the transformative power of spiritual quality can manifest.
Making people feel delighted is sticky. Being stand-up and honorable is sticky. Doing the right thing is sticky – No amount of money, no clever PR campaign, can buy these things. They are earned by consistently showing up for people with one’s heart in the right place.
Rockstar's turnaround requirements are not money related, unlike most failing ventures. Take 2 and Rockstar have no lack of money. However, they are experiencing a spiritual insolvency.
I offer to work with Rockstar to correct these issues, and to help restore the heart and soul back into the once-great development house that has lost its great spirit. I have helped a few ventures to find a safe, fair, and fun way forward from an ethical or spiritual tight spot – ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ for the souls of systems, companies, and the people who constitute them.
I seek to serve as Dr. W Edwards Deming once did, teaching corporations to enshrine and uphold a quality of spiritual wellbeing in customers and employees – a critical factor for success. I offer to help balance these books which are becoming filled with karmic red ink. I can work with you to put together a 'medicine trust' to guide the spiritual healing of Rockstar, and return it to the path it has wandered from.
Below is my 8 point plan of action necessary to the spiritual restoration of any great venture, in this case Rockstar.
Commit to Accountability. A confession of past errors, a mea culpa to the community, and an open commitment to do better is necessary to draw a line in the sand, and to restore trust.
Commit to Hygiene. Abandon the easy complacency comes with having a milkable money machine by letting go of it like a heroin habit. This will take formidable skills of leadership to manage investor expectations, and to sell them on the long term value of the venture, which is about to be permanently curtailed. It can be done.
Commit to Fair Work Ethics. Creativity requires slack. A relaxed and slightly bored mind with time for experimentation and irreverent goofiness is a creative one. Respect your staff enough not to rob their loved ones of their presence unnecessarily or egregiously in the run-up to a release. All in moderation.
Commit to Nurturing Talent. Become a company with management that is again worthy of harboring the colossal talent who felt that they needed to leave. People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.
Commit to Delivering. Scale back in terms of scope where necessary to achieve shorter release schedules, and demonstrate an ability to produce meaningful single player content. Implement procedures to ensure that no game is ever again released in the tragic state that the Definitive Editions were pushed to the public.
Commit to Giving People What They Want. The fans and content creators have given so much love to Rockstar and its amazing games, though loyal support over decades, and fantastic mods, expansions, and updates. Restore respect to the modding community and players by treating them fairly and giving them what they want:
Access to the original games as well as the new versions (which Rockstar has since promised), in as many online stores as possible.
Restore unfairly and arbitrarily legally threatened mods such as lovingly-created free graphical fidelity mods, and offer them an ex gratia cash payment to apologize. Never, ever punish your customers for loving your product. Attacking modders is a direct assault on your community.
Stop abusing trademarks to attack organizations that are clearly not acting in bad faith against your interests.
Provide a smaller single player game expansion such as a ‘GTA IV Stories’, ‘Bully Stories’, or single player expansion for GTA V whilst working on GTA VI in order to demonstrate good faith.
Update and re-release Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories on modern systems including on PC, and ideally ChinaTown Wars also.
Work with the fans to ensure that any release respects their wishes and expectations.
Commit to Long Time Horizons. Concentrate on actually making and doing things, in a truly artful, audacious and original fashion. Farming past successes through financial artifice is a sweet kiss of death. Invest in the future instead of eating the seed corn.
Commit to Fulfilling Existing Promises. Bring development on the Definitive Edition in-house and work earnestly to make a Definitive Edition: Redux what it always should have been, proving that the company’s word is worth something.
These core points in bold are simple, timeless, universal principles which can be adapted to any business that has forgotten how to delight people as it once did.
Whilst I would love for Rockstar/Take-Two to drop me a line, I don’t think the leadership recognise just how much they are in need of help. The revenue machine is masking the critical condition of the enterprise. Should any wise leader wish to restore spiritual greatness in their own respective enterprise, I offer myself and my extended braintrust as your humble court wizards.