- And of course, Michael's from Grand Theft Auto V.
And he's one of three protagonists with also Franklin and
Trevor. And you said that of the things you're proud of creating and you
think was a great accomplishment, it was Red Dead Redemption 2,
the ending of Red Dead Redemption 1,
all of Grand Theft Auto IV, and the middle part of Grand Theft Auto V
when the three characters come together. Can you speak to the Grand Theft Auto V?
Is there some degree... I don't know if you're a Dostoevsky guy, but...
- A little bit.
- Is there some aspect of
the three protagonists, sort of, you know, Brothers Karamazov,
...Alyosha, Dmitry, and Ivan, sort of, using the protagonists to
explore the spectrum of human nature and...
- Yes, sure.
- ...just the tension between them that allows you the, the,
the three of them become a character in themselves.
- Their relationship.
- Their relationship.
- is more... Yeah, it was, it was, I think one of the reasons that,
that the team did such... That Grand Theft Auto is still so popular
is we always tried as a group to really innovate from game to game within
the confines of what it was. It was a crime, it was a crime drama, you know, began as
a crime, a crime sim in GTA 1 about stealing, you
know, 2D top-down cars. And we always tried to innovate with the narrative and
innovate with the art direction, innovate with every piece of the game.
And I think having done, you know, GTA IV, which
was this kind of operatic journey for this big lead character, and then
these two extra stories that came afterwards. So the challenge,
the, the, the challenge was, can we combine... Can we make a video
game which tends to be very much focused on one protagonist, but
have multi-protagonists? And the technical
challenge of moving from character to character. The team
did such an amazing job that I don't think people realized how hard it was.
But we would sit there just sort of holding our heads 'cause they hurt so much around
like, what happens if you do this, then do that? It's just, this is so hard.
Why have we, why have we decided to do this? It's horrible. And then it all came
together. But I think the idea was to develop
three characters who do feel like characters. They don't just feel like
philosophical, you know, psychological avatars. But where
one is really, really driven by ego, one is really driven by
id, and one is really driven by trying to get ahead. So some kind
of representation of the super-ego and see how that feels when they all play off against
each other.
- One of the most upvoted questions on Reddit about GTA V,
From a fan, "GTA V is my favorite game ever made. I spent over
1,000 hours in the world of GTA V and GTA Online. GTA
IV is a hard second or third. It never ceases to impress me. When you
lead a team of over 1,000 people to make a masterpiece like GTA V
or Red Dead Redemption 2, how do you ensure that the bar of perfection is always
met? How's that even possible? We know the answer isn't money, because there's
other studios with a lot of money, and they are two decades behind
Rockstar." So what does it take to create these worlds, to create these
incredibly compelling games and stories?
- I think the cult- I mean, certainly when I was at Rockstar, I was a
worker amongst workers. You know, the culture was one of excellence and
tried to provide creative clarity. And people would just, you
know... And also an ambition to make... I think we were
like... We thought GTA III could be really popular.
Really popular to us meant, quite honestly, it's gonna sell two or three million copies.
And we thought we were making something pretty innovative. I mean, we knew we were
making something innovative, but we didn't know if people would understand how innovative
it was. And then when we got the chance to make Vice City,
and to try and repeat it, I think every time from then on the team was
very driven to make something better. And to use, this was
long before we had lots of resources, to use time and whatever money we had to
always put impressive stuff on the screen, always think
about what we can do to push the
medium of video games and the sort of medium of building fake worlds further.
And that was always... You know, there was a, it was, you know, both
clarity of, "Here's what we're trying to do. Here's what the tone of the game is going to
be. Here's how features will fit into that, and why these features would
work and these features wouldn't work." Because fundamentally by 2002, you
could put pretty much any feature into a game you wanted. It wasn't a question, it wasn't a
technical limitation. It was just making it cohesive. And
then it was also just everyone committing to a culture of excellence.
- Navid Khansari, an award-winning director and virtual reality game maker,
who worked with you on a number of Grand Theft Auto games, spoke highly about
his time working with you. Quote, "We always worked ourselves to
the bone, but it wasn't coming from the top down. Sam and Dan always
rolled up their sleeves, and they were always there. They never left us
holding the bag. We all thought we were making badass shit,
so it didn't matter how hard we worked." So I'm sure there were some tough grinds.
- I think finishing it is certainly... It's tough, but it also
is intensely rewarding. And you get something done, and you've
made something. And that feeling is, as you say, really,
really incredible. I mean, it can sometimes feel a bit empty as well because
it's... when you're finished, you're like, "Then my life's got nothing to it," and then you have to...
You know, but that's the same with any big undertaking that you take. I don't think there are...
You know, when you're working that hard, you do not have a good work/life balance.
But the truth is, you're not working that hard all of the time.
So you just have to manage it slightly differently.
- Man, that's such
such a heavy thing about the human experience. I've talked to Olympic gold medal winners,
and many of them face real depression after they win the gold medal.
because they've been pursuing
a thing that they deeply care about. This has been everything, and
they're so truly happy to do it, and then it's like, "What else
is there in life?" What, compared to this, what else is there? So that's
the ups and downs of life. You need the darkness and you need the
lows to really experience the highs. Let me ask you