Red Dead Redemption 2 came out in 2018, and now, eight years later, Rockstar Games’ next game, Grand Theft Auto 6, is finally on the verge of release. It’s an incredibly long development cycle by any measure, even if GTA 6 really is as detailed as Rockstar claims. But, according to the team itself, its next title won’t take quite as long.
In a massive GTA 6-centric story on Bloomberg, heads of development Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut explained how important building the foundation for GTA 6 was. And that type of foundation means its next title will have some sort of head start.
“The engine, the tools, and the team we’ve built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly,” said Hooker. “I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content.”
Garbut expanded upon this, noting the team had a “shared understanding, shared knowledge, and a sort of shortcut to questions” after working together for so long.
“We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project,” Garbut says. “But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart.”
This eight-year development cycle stands in stark contrast to Rockstar’s earlier output. Grand Theft Auto 3 came out in 2001, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released in 2002. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas then hit the PS2 in 2004. This quick turnaround here can at least partially be attributed to the foundation built in GTA 3, which the two successive games were able to build off of. Obviously, the quality of assets and the complexity of modern games is going to change the calculus here — there’s absolutely no way the next GTA is going to just take a year or two — but the general idea of being able to hit the ground running because of prior work makes this a decent comparison.
There are many reasons GTA 6 took so long to make, as noted by the aforementioned Bloomberg article and a supplementary video from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. Having to decide how detailed the game would be elongated development, as making decisions that granular when the game isn’t much more than an idea made it difficult to scope. And then actually implementing those absurd details only stretched development out even more.
But the reasons for GTA 6‘s long development go beyond just what is simply in the game. Red Dead Redemption 2‘s development needed more time than anticipated, which sucked in people working on GTA 6. Rockstar doubling in size after RDR 2 shipped, the complexities of working from home during the pandemic (which Schreier said likely added a year to development), the scaling back of crunch, and splitting up directorial roles were all also said to have contributed in their own ways to stretching out development time.
It remains to be seen if Rockstar’s next title will actually take less than eight years. Game development is a fickle beast, and massive unexpected shifts in the industry or world at large aren’t exactly unheard of.
It’s also unconfirmed what this next game will be. The pattern here implies it could be another Red Dead Redemption, but it could also be something else entirely. Few studios have as big of a blank check as Rockstar, after all, so it isn’t beholden to just making sequels in the same franchises.
What game do you think Rockstar Games is making next? Red Dead Redemption 3? Bully 2? Table Tennis 2? Give us your thoughts in the comments.
