How Rockstar Games Kills It Every Single Time
Love them or hate them, Rockstar Games seriously know how to make games that everyone wants. From Grand Theft Auto still dominating the sales charts to the Red Dead Redemption 2 announcement pretty much breaking the internet, Rockstar Games have somehow crafted the perfect formula to drag pretty much everyone in with every game. How did they achieve this? I honestly couldn't even give a solid guess as to why. But I know for damn sure they make incredible games each time.
I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a title released by Rockstar games, even all the way back to the early GTA games. My "top games ever" list is dominated by Grand Theft Auto, the reason I met most of my internet friends (the other Nobeds)? Grand Theft Auto. The game I put most play time into on my PS3 even though it came out at the end of it's life cycle? Grand Theft Auto. The game I've put the most hours into on the new generation of consoles? Grand Theft Auto. I could go on, but I think I've made my point pretty clear.
One of the main reasons Rockstar keeps us hooked and buying new copies for all the new platforms we buy is their mastery of downloadable content. I personally believe that nobody does DLC better. Even in the early days of DLC, Midnight Club: Los Angeles did it in such an awesome way with South Central. Massive map expansion? Free, but the missions & cars for said expansion were paid. They mastered the ability to give everyone something new, get their money back on development costs and not split up the audience of the game. One game close to this time of note would have been Burnout Paradise. The paid expansions came flying out, one of which was a map expansion that practically just locked people out of that area, practically splitting up the lobby.
Fast forwarding to present day, all of their content for their latest title, Grand Theft Auto V is "free". I say it that way because technically it's not, you can play the game for hours and grind your way to buying this new content or spend real money to get them instantly. But the game is so balanced that even if you throw thousands of £££ into the game, you can still be stomped into the ground by someone that's never spent a penny.
I personally never spent a penny on the game up until the last year in where I started to create more YouTube content for the game. If I wasn't creating content for the game, trying to cover the latest cars as they come out and all, I would still very much be grinding away at the game pretty much every night. That feel of grinding and getting something has always been the method I prefer, I've often voiced my opinion on games that give you everything all to easily.
But the best idea I have as to why Rockstar's games keep you playing for more and for longer, is the fact they have the dev team the size of... I don't even know what. Their team is probably up there among the biggest there is. But rather than using their huge team(s) to push out games every year or every other year, they take much longer on their titles. Much longer. Once the titles release you can seriously feel why they took so long. Rather than just being games, they create incredible worlds ready for us to explore.
Their titles are made for us to keep coming back for more and more, to spend months to years pushing to unlock all the things WE want, rather than everything in the game. This could be true even with the base game all those years ago, but every few months they've been giving us even MORE to unlock and to do. New cars, new gamemodes, new tools to create our own maps! Rockstar have not only in my opinion become one of THE BEST developers, but also the smartest on hooking us for the long haul. Hooking us for the next game.
It's pretty rare for me to say I felt like I underpaid for a game, but with Rockstar games I always feel that way. To pay the same for Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto just feels like a con... but somehow they're okay with it and somehow they do it even better each and every time. I cannot WAIT to see what Rockstar has in store for Red Dead Redemption 2, if the last Read Dead game & Grand Theft Auto are anything to go off... it'll be nothing short of incredible.