Interview: Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies on GTA OnlineBy Tim Weaver, Managing Editor for CVG UK
He's President of Rockstar North, his games have sold more than 130 million copies, he's the mastermind behind September's GTA V and GTA Online - and he's given so few interviews since the release of GTA III, you probably don't need a hand to count them on.
Entering the fourth floor of Rockstar North's top secret Edinburgh bunker feels like charting undiscovered territory. And yet, for a man who prefers to shun the limelight, Benzies is affable, welcoming, and incredibly upbeat. He also looks surprisingly stress-free for someone four years into development on Rockstar's biggest ever game.
Maybe it's the two air conditioning units running simultaneously at either end of his XXL-sized office. Or the scented candle he's burning. Or the fact he's the owner of the World's Biggest iMac. Or maybe - as the wall full of vehicle printouts, idea-crammed whiteboards, and TVs showing live feeds of bug fixes, attest - maybe he's just really, really good at these things after eight successive Grand Theft Autos.
More GTA: An exclusive first look at GTA Online | GTA V O'Clock: CVG's massive weekly GTA V show | Our preview of the GTA V single-player experience
"It's hard to understand what GTA Online is," he says when we ask him why he's decided to open up the doors to us now. "It's such a new development for us, I thought it best you got the info from the guys here who know."
But, the truth is, in forty-five minutes we covered a whole raft of subjects: GTA Online, GTA V, next gen, Cloud gaming, and much, much more. It's big. It's hugely interesting. It's exclusive. Oh, and if four-player tennis appears in the final game, you know who to thank...
When did you first start to think about GTA Online, and what was your vision for it?
Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies
This started when we began making GTA III, and every single game we've said, "Right, now we're going to do it, now we're going to do it," and I guess we've never felt like we've had the manpower or the tech power to do it. Now the time is right. We had a great engine to work from, and we had the staff to do it.
On GTA V O'Clock, we've been speculating for a while that GTA Online would, in fact, be an MMO-style experience - and it's exciting to see that's definitely where it's headed. A by-product of that is that players will be able to create their own missions and reshape the world. Can you expand a little upon that?
Well, let's take the most simple example: a deathmatch. You open up the Creator, you place all your spawn points, place some props, place cars, place planes, place anything you want around the world. When you're happy you've playtested it, when you're happy to publish, hit the button, and it sends it up to the Cloud - our Social Club Cloud. That's then available for everyone else in the world to use.
So, when (your friend) boots their game up, they could pick you as a preferred creator, and then all your content will get sucked back into (their game). It's constantly evolving. Everybody creates things. You choose whose content you want to see. You set up a blue marker, and that's kind of the instigator of the mission. You walk in there, and then it triggers whatever you've created. And that will constantly be evolving, so we'll be creating content all the time - every day you'll boot up the game and there'll be new things coming in.
But the tools for the Creator won't be available at the start?
Initially, you'll be able to create races and deathmatches, which are probably the simplest. And then, over time, when we feel comfortable that people are ready to get the new creators, they will be released. So it'll be a trickle, but it'll be a constant release of new creators and new content. We don't want to overdo it. It's a complex system. That's another reason for the two week delay between single-player and Online. We want to give people an opportunity to actually get their heads around what's happened, because even single-player is a big advancement from the old games. There's a lot of new things to learn.
"Grand Theft Auto Online is a different entity, a separate thing. It's not part of GTA V. It'll grow on its own..."
So, you could, in theory, have launched at the same time?
We could, but we want it to be known as a different entity, a separate thing, and it'll grow on its own. It'll be GTA Online; it's not part of GTA V. Obviously it's set in the GTA V engine, but it's going to grow and evolve into its own thing.
And after two weeks, how will you get access to it?
When it launches, you'll have an extra character on your Switch Wheel. Instead of choosing Franklin, Michael or Trevor, you'll select your multiplayer character and you'll be sucked straight in there.
So your multiplayer avatar will appear after two weeks?
Yes.
There won't be any other download required?
There may be a tiny download, but it'll just be a code. We've just got to figure out how that will work with Sony and Microsoft.
When you first start playing Online, will you have anything to start with, any stats that will carry over from the single-player game?
There's a character creation system, so you'll create a new character to start with. But, no, none of your stats, as the three guys in GTA V, (will carry over). Again, this speaks to the difference between the two: the world of Grand Theft Auto Online is set slightly before the events of GTA V, and so while it shares some of its experiences and it shares characters, the stats are all separate.
They're all separate, yeah. Each character has his own set of stats, and as you create your character, depending on what you're creating, your stats will be different.
So Michael, Trevor and Franklin don't exist within GTA Online?
We've got to be careful for story spoilers. (Laughs)
Okay. When you start GTA Online, you presumably begin with no money. So what are your first steps in the game to get things moving?
In traditional GTA style, you'll be taken on a journey through the first few missions of the game, just to give you a feel for it. We'll have the usual Rockstar help, to keep you on the straight and narrow all the way through. So, it'll be a nice, hopefully well-paced introduction to the game. There's a lot for people to learn, so we don't want to just throw you into the world. You're not just going in and playing deathmatches.
Characters from GTA V will introduce you to the experiences of GTA Online. You'll meet characters from single-player, who'll introduce you to things in the same way as they do in single-player. So, for example, someone will say to you, "Here's Ammunation, here's where you can get weapons..." It's got a flow like a single-player has a flow, so there is a progression through some things - not a story, but a progression through Online. It's a different type of flow.
At the end of the demo, you mentioned that players are ranked on performance and everything is tracked. What kinds of things will players be ranked on?
It depends on the type of mission. A deathmatch will score differently to a race, which will score differently from what we saw today, which will score differently from any other mode, so it just depends what mode it is. But we do have an internal score that we hold, that can rank people. It encompasses shooting, driving, flying, parachuting, so we can tell where people exist within the leaderboard.
And is that just for internal use - or will players be able to see that information?
There's enough data for people to know exactly where they stand within all their skills.
Do you have any plans for people to gain access to that data when they're not necessarily tied to those consoles? For example, on an iPad or phone?
Everything's available through the Social Club. Social Club pages will all work through iPhones and iPads.
So no plans for specific apps?
I think if (the Social Club pages) are written well, you don't really need to. They'll be written specifically so they work on Android and iOS. You'll be able to get all your stats. It's a little bit finicky on an iPhone, but it's all available.
As you complete missions, you also showed that you can share your winnings. Have you found, as you've played it, that certain types of personality have developed because of that; that people are willing to become the bad guy?
Yeah, of course. Even in a race, you've got the (people) who will happily clip your back end as you start a race to get you out - or some guys will help you. So, definitely, there's going to be a lot of different types of players. I guess the tricky thing with Online is keeping all these players in the same world, and not having them mess with each other too much. So, we've got some good cheater management, some bad sport management, to make sure everybody's behaving themselves.
"We've got some cheater management, some good bad sport management, to make sure everybody's behaving..."
We were going to ask how you prevent it becoming like Lord of the Flies...
With a lot of these things, we don't see the problems until we actually sit in a big session and play. We've got a thing called Passive mode. If you're spawning and being killed immediately, go to Passive mode - it means you can't shoot people, but they can't shoot you. So you can just kind of hang around and get to grips with the game.
A lot of what we saw in the demo today appeared to be team-based or versus AI. Will there be much direct, head-to-head player combat?
Yes. They were kind of tricky to show in this format, and I think we all know what kind of style they come in. So, yes, all the traditional stuff is there, plus a bunch of new modes.
You also showed how, if you're carrying a lot of cash, and then die, that money then spills onto the streets, so there's a big risk carrying cash around...
Yeah. You want to be visiting the bank a lot. So, do I want to do this job with fifty grand on me, or do I want to go to the bank and take five with me? It's another little gameplay element.
You can also insure cars now, so that - if someone steals it, or blows it up - you can get that same car back for a premium. You can also leave your cars somewhere in the world, and come back to that place and they're still there...
We don't let anyone steal your personal vehicle. If we were in a personal vehicle, and I jumped out as the owner, you could take it. But if it's locked, it's locked. You could blow it up, if you're that way (inclined), but anything that's going to annoy other players, we will punish by giving you what we call a Bad Sport stat. We store how you behave in there. If you're too bad, you will be punished.
Can other players see when someone has a Bad Sport stat?
Yeah. They'll be able to check it out, and think "I'm not playing with that guy."
So going back to the vehicles - are you almost more encouraged to buy them than to steal them?
You can buy cars, just like you can (in the real world). Or you can steal them if the mod shops are prepared to dabble with them. If they are, you can spray them and change the plates. If they're not prepared to do that, when the cops spot you in a stolen car, you'll get a Wanted level.
Is that why you'd want to employ the $50-a-day man to mod your stolen cars?
He won't deal with stolen cars. All he does is repair busted-up vehicles, and deliver your car. So, if you're out in the countryside without transport, you can give him a phone and he'll come out and drop the car off for you.
We saw switches of camera angles as you were driving in the demo - that's all still manually controlled?
Manually controlled. Remember in GTA IV, you had all the cinematic cameras, and you could flick the stick up and down to change the modes? All that stuff - an expanded version of that - is in GTA V, and in Online.
So with that in mind, are there any plans to give people the opportunity to record, edit and share videos they've made?
A dream of ours is, when you finish the game, you press a button, and it's made a film of your game. Maybe one day. It depends on lots of things.
It sounds complex...
Not really. It's all doable.
How is Weazel News going to work online? You showed news feeds of fellow players escaping from the cops - are we going to have the ability to share them?
You don't share them. All you can do at the moment is watch the feeds when people have Wanted levels, from your apartment. It doesn't get fed out anywhere else.
It'll just pick the people who are currently on Wanted levels?
It'll pick your friends, Crew members, if they've got Wanted levels, yeah.
What sort of money can you earn from missions?
The money in the game is one of the things that has to be so very finely balanced that we're still working on it. If I was to give you a number, it would probably change tomorrow. Because you're buying properties, and you're buying cars, and you're earning money, we need to make sure that that fits in with the flow. So it'll change. But we try and base everything on real life, so imagine the kind of sums you would get in real life for doing a job. If you're robbing a store, you're going to get a couple of hundred dollars, three hundred dollars; if you're nicking a car, you're going to get a thousand, two thousand, depending on the car. We'll probably base it on what happens out there.
"We try and base the economy on real life, but it's so finely balanced, we're still working on it..."
We saw, in the recent gameplay trailer, that you could invest in stocks and shares as well - will you be able to do that too in GTA Online?
Yeah. You can go online, buy some shares in a car company, target that company's cars, blow them up so the insurance will replace them and the stock price will go up. Everything's tied in, the same as it is in single-player.
So could you, as an online group, organise into cartels?
You could, yeah. But then, of course, there's the government - us - who has to make sure there's nothing untoward happening.
Can you give us a steer on the geography of that last mission, where we stole the Titan? It looked like the player came along Vespucci Beach, along the western coast, and there looked like there was another, previously-unseen town on the western edge?
That wasn't all of the map. You saw a bit of city, you saw some countryside, there's a whole other chunk of map. (The air field that you end up at) is where the plane in the (first) demo took off from. A big military plane. In fact it was the same plane that we stole today. That's what Franklin looked at in that demo when he was parachuting.
And we landed next to the Alamo Sea in that last mission?
Yep. It was in Blaine County.
And approaching Zancudo River way?
You guys know your shit! You saw a bit of a map, and there's a lot more going on. There's a lot of toys out there, and a lot of areas for people to use, to make their missions.
We still get a lot of feedback from people saying the map isn't that big...
It's big, and the level of detail in there is ridiculous. It's really quite impressive what the artists have managed to do; to squeeze it all on to this machine.
Wheeling back to the sections set in and around your apartment, there was a show playing in the background on the TV which looked like it was set in and around a private detective agency...
You guys don't miss anything!
Are you allowed to talk a bit more about that?
You know what, to be honest I don't know what that is.
Really?
Yes.
So, your team has gone off and created something entirely off their own back?
There's a lot of stuff in there. Those TV shows, I think they just went into the game a week ago, so I've not had the chance to watch them. But everything's tied into the world in some way. It's going to relate to something that's happening in the world.
We saw a glimpse of the planning room in your apartment too...
Yes. You will get a very similar planning board to what you get in single-player, with all the maps, and the people, and the dots around the map to show you where you're going to have to go.
How do the heists in GTA Online compare to the heists in single-player? Will they be more like the tentpole heists in GTA V, or the 'Blitz Play' mission we saw in the demo a couple of months back?
Initially, they'll be simpler. But we do have plans to set up heists that could contain twenty individual components. A lot of these questions are hard to answer because there's now, and then there's what we have in our heads for the future. But to answer your question: initially, they'll be fairly straightforward heists, but they will get more complex as time goes on.
In the single-player, you've mapped underwater as well - will there be underwater gameplay in GTA Online?
We're not really pushing the underwater side right now, but once we get the first batch of content out - which is going to be a lot; hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of missions - then we'll start looking at some other things. Underwater. Getting all the subs going. They're all there, it's all ready to go. And underwater's kind of cool. I think we're going to find that a lot of people like underwater, so I think it's an area that we might utilise in future.
One thing you did confirm was that minigames like tennis were available - does that mean you can play four-player tennis?
That's a good question. Four-player tennis is something we've never even thought about, you know that? Shite. No, tennis is only two-player. Can I write that down?! (Goes off to get a pen and paper.)
We've made a contribution to GTA V!
That'll be fairly straightforward, actually. I should mention that, when you play those sports games, you won't be terrorised by jet fighters when you play tennis. In the sense that, you can enjoy a game of tennis in your online world without people spoiling things for you.
So a gang couldn't sniper rifle you when you're about to hit a volley?
Exactly. Something else we didn't talk about today was the whole phonecall side of things. So, as you progress through the game, you'll meet all these various characters, and you can call contacts almost anytime - on mission or off - to ask for their assistance. You use the mobile phone to call one of the characters you've met as you play through and each character or business you call provides a different service. When on the phone with them they will ask you which service you require and you are given a list of options to choose from.
We saw today these army guys, who you can also enlist to help you in missions. Let's imagine we were playing the first mission and we needed some goons to come and help us. I'm doing it on my own, or we're doing it the two of us, but it's an eight-player mission and we find we're struggling with only two people. We can actually call in some computer character help from these guys, the Merryweather, or call in an air strike, or turn off our blips so people can't see us. So just a bunch of different things you can have to assist in a deathmatch, or in a race. If you're in a race, you could call in an air strike and take out whoever's in first place.
As you get higher, you're introduced to new characters with new abilities. So you could call the bikers, and say, "Send over a couple of bikers, we're going to do a job," and they'll come and help you. Or call an air strike. Or, if we're doing a deathmatch, I can call a character and hide my blips, so you can't see where I am on the map. Little things like that, just to mix up the modes a bit.
Will there be a way for Crews to directly face off in a mode to show who's the best?
We've got pretty huge plans for Crews, playlists, challenges, all that kind of stuff. We could set up a bunch of missions: you make five missions, I'll make five missions, we then combine them in the game, put them in a playlist, and then challenge all these guys to a head-to-head.
So you could start a set of missions on your map, with your set of goals, and we play yours, then we swap to mine?
Play can be made up of anything; anybody's mission, any style of mission. You just bung them in the playlist, it all goes through, and it'll score you at the end. You can do head-to-head challenges, or you could set a challenge for everybody in the world to beat. So you make a race - say, five races - set up a challenge, post it to the Social Club, then everybody else in the world can try and beat your score. If they do beat your score, then you've got to give them some cash - the amount you set when you set up the challenge.
Can you decide to only open it up to people with a certain reputation?
No, it's open to everybody. But one thing we do have to say is that, because this is in development, there's always things that come and go. Everything you saw today is in there, but maybe a couple of things we're talking about, we're still fiddling with.
The game was demoed on PS3?
Yep.
And, of course, the single-player demo we saw was also demoed on PS3. Is PS3 your lead platform?
Not really. This is probably the first game we've done where both platforms have been running in parallel. There's very, very little difference in the development state of them both. They're both very similar. It would be hard to tell them apart.
In terms of the fidelity of the Online world, have you had to cut any corners?
No.
"We already have plans for what the next world holds... We've got a bunch of old stuff we're toying with using..."
So single-player and GTA Online are literally exactly the same?
Usually we cut quite a lot out from multiplayer. We haven't (in GTA Online). That's not to say we might not in the next little while. But, no, what you see is what you're going to get. I think we might stream in the detail on cars at a slightly different time, because cars take up quite a chunk of memory. But the world is the world. We can't have two versions of it.
Obviously we've seen the game running on current gen systems, but in three months we'll be in a situation where next gen consoles will be arriving. How do you plan to develop GTA Online as the audience migrates over the next year or so?
We already have plans for what the next world holds in terms of missions, new content, clothes, apartments, for the next while. But we really want to see what people are playing, and we're putting a lot of effort into the back end, so we can keep an eye on exactly how long people are spending in deathmatches, races, and all the other modes - just to see what they're doing. And if we see any peaks anywhere, then we know where to concentrate our efforts. There's not a lot of data out there for us. There's very few games like GTA Online - so we'll play it by ear and see what the consumers want.
Do you see a player's online identity as being kind of agnostic? So, the stats they build up in GTA Online now will continue accruing, regardless of platform?
We've been working towards that for a while; started with Max Payne 3 and the Crews. The Crews you can take across and use them here, and we'll give you little bonuses if you've got a Max Payne character at a certain level. So, yeah, we want this to be an ongoing thing. This isn't just for GTA V. It's for the future of all our games.
What scope have you got for expanding beyond the locations we're seeing already?
Well, one thing we've toyed with - and we've talked about this before, so it isn't a spoiler - is (the ambition) to grow this world until it's the world. We're just going to add on new things to it, new places all the time. We've set this up so there are no limitations. The only limitation is the size of the disc and how much memory we've got. We could, if we wanted, simulate the entire world, different countries, whatever. Whether we do that or not... But we've got a bunch of old stuff that we're toying with using.
Is there some kind of Holy Grail at the end of the game - some kind of definitive end stop?
Probably not. Because we want it to last forever. We'll stop when we've simulated life - and then that will be the end! No, people have to keep going. There should never be an, "Oh, I've reached the end." We've got to have goals, and we've got to have stepping stones, but there should never really be an end.
Is there anything else in the GTA Online demo that we saw today that you wanted to make mention of?
What you saw in the demo today is such a tiny part of it. The actual thing is such a huge entity. It's massive and it's ever-evolving, and it can be whatever you and your friends want it to be. You can make your own world in any way you want. Place the missions how you want, have the types of missions that you want. So hopefully people will modify it to suit them.
So do you think the next generation will help and allow you to expand your plans more easily?
We'll get the current gen version out first and see what happens in the future.
But you're almost transitioning to a point at which GTA Online becomes a service, and the choice of console is irrelevant. Have you thought about a future where GTA exists within the Cloud?
Everything's going to the Cloud, isn't it? It's the future, and the boxes become less relevant. It's more about the content. It's more about the data than the hardware. And, yeah, whether you're on your iPad, your iPhone, your Android or your console, to me it doesn't matter what it is. It's a game.
It's a topic that consistently talked about within the industry and yet, sometimes, it still feels like a pipe dream. But then you speak to someone like Hideo Kojima and he thinks that's where it's going. Do you think that, technically, it seems conceivable - and will it be better for developers?
It's good and bad for developers. It's good for developers because you write one set of code and it runs everywhere. But then Sony and Microsoft, they do set you up with a good platform. You can plug a game in, and it goes. You download something on your phone... iOS, it's fair enough, but you download it on an Android phone - and we've seen it with our apps - you download it on one phone it doesn't work, you download it on another, it does work. And that's a kind of level of frustration you don't want to be giving customers. If you get your game, plug it into something, and it doesn't work, you've basically lost your customer. So it's good and bad.
These guys (Sony and Microsoft) do a great job of making it nice and simple. You plug it in, you pop your disc in, you sit down and play it. But, you know, when somebody's figured out a way (for) the hardware to work together, so it's all compatible - like Apple have done a pretty good job of - then maybe it'll happen. But it's not coming for a while yet.
"What level of realism do people want? Do they want to cook a pizza? Do the shopping? We can do it, if they want it..."
At what point do you stop trying to base the GTA games on reality? Would letting people fill up cars with petrol be a step too far?
These are all things that go through our minds. Do people like that level of realism? Do people want to cook a pizza? Do they want to go shopping and buy the ingredients to eat and be healthy? Not that a pizza's healthy, but you know what I mean. That's all there for the future, if people want to do that.
The main thing to remember is that, when we're designing this... we don't design in a little bubble of orbs and dragons. We all live lives. Normal people doing normal things. So that's what we base it on. It's based on (life). If you think of something, chances are it's going to work. Like the car insurance - it's real life. You pay an insurance premium, you phone them up when it gets nicked, you get it back. So everything is based on normality - with a little twist, of course.
How do you decide where to draw the line?
I'm trying to remember what we did with (filling cars up with petrol). I remember thinking, "Should we do that?" maybe six months ago. I think it just sat in a list of 'Will we do that?' We do all the stuff we have to do first, and then see where we're at; if we get time. But that's such a change for the game that it would take a bigger discussion. It would take a lot more people in the company to decide if something like that was going to go in, because it would change the whole dynamic.
Also, single-player's always been in development ahead of the Online side, so a lot of what's in here is dictated by the single-player game. If we were to implement such a drastic change, we'd probably also have to do it in single-player.
What's been your personal highlight on the GTA journey?
GTA V! It's probably be the longest development time of any of our GTAs - four or five years - though we've been working on a lot of other games in the mean time.
And the lowlight?
There are no downs. The only downs are the frustration of getting it into a little box and getting it working. Certainly the scale and complexity of GTA V is something that I'm not sure a lot of us thought would be possible. To see the leap from GTA IV to GTA V, and to think it's (running off) the same box, is a high. And then, seeing some of the Online stuff... It was like making GTA III again.
GTA III, we did things in there that no one had done - streaming and that type of thing - and, again this time, we took a lot of risks with Online and it looks like it's paying off. And seeing it, seeing the guys in the Titan and the helicopter, that gives me a little spine-tingling moment.
Was that a 'Eureka!' moment in the development of GTA V where you thought: this is working, this is what we wanted, this is it?
Yeah. On every game since GTA III, there's a moment. I remember on GTA III it was when Misty got in the car, and you picked her up in the projects, and Kim Gurney - our secretary at the time - had done the voice, and she got in the car and said something cheesy. It was a spine-tingling moment. It was, like, this is cool. I've had that every game since, and I got it on this, and it was probably that last mission we played with the airplane. So, yeah, the 'spine-tinglers' - that'll be the moment when you think, "It might work..."
