Rockstar Games

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Rockstar Games is a multinational video game developer and publisher based in New York City, owned by Take-Two Interactive following its purchase of British video game publisher BMG Interactive.[2] The publisher is known for the Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, L.A. Noire, The Warriors, Bully, Manhunt, Midnight Club and Red Dead games, as well as the use of open world, free roaming settings in their games. It comprises studios that have been acquired and renamed as well as others that have been created internally. While many of the studios Take-Two Interactive has acquired have been merged into the Rockstar brand, several other recent ones have retained their previous identities and have become part of the company's 2K Games division. The Rockstar Games label was founded in New York City in 1998[3] by the British video game producers Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King and Gary Foreman.[4][5]

The main headquarters of Rockstar Games (commonly referred to as Rockstar NYC)[6] is located on Broadway in the SoHo neighbourhood of New York City, part of the Take-Two Interactive offices. It is home to the marketing, public relations and product development departments.[7]

As of February 2014, Rockstar Games titles have shipped more than 250 million copies, the largest franchise being the Grand Theft Auto series which alone has shipments of at least 157.5 million.[8] In March 2014, Rockstar Games received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award at the British Academy Video Games Awards


Company philosophy

In October 2011, Rockstar creative vice-president Dan Houser told Famitsu that Rockstar was intentionally avoiding developing in the first-person shooter genre. "We're deliberately avoiding that right now", he said, according to a 1UP.com translation. "It's in our DNA to avoid doing what other companies are doing. I suppose you could say that Max Payne 3 is something close to an FPS, but there are really unique aspects to the setting and gameplay there, too, not just in the story. You have to have originality in your games; you have to have some kind of interesting message. You could say that the goalpoint of Rockstar is to have the players really feel what we're trying to do". Houser went on to say that Rockstar has "made new genres by ourselves with games like the GTA series. We didn't rely on testimonials in a business textbook to do what we've done. I think we succeeded precisely because we didn't concentrate on profit... If we make the sort of games we want to play, then we believe people are going to buy them."


Technology

RAGE

Rockstar Games have developed their own game engine called the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) to facilitate game development on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows, Mac and Wii systems.

Social Club

The Rockstar Games Social Club is an online gaming service created by Rockstar for use with their games.


External developers

  • Edge of Reality developed Monster Truck Madness 64.
  • Z-Axis developed Thrasher presents Skate and Destroy.
  • Opus in collaboration with ASCII Entertainment developed Surfing H3O.
  • Bungie developed the game Oni for Windows and Macintosh, which was then ported by Rockstar to the PS2 and published by them. Before Bungie was bought by Microsoft, their breakthrough product, Halo, was planned for release on video game consoles with Rockstar as publisher
  • VIS Entertainment in collaboration with Dubtitled Entertainment is known for developing the State of Emergency game.
  • Capcom had early development in Rockstar San Diego's Red Dead Revolver and previously owned the Japanese distribution rights to the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
  • Remedy Entertainment developed Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.
  • Team Bondi an Australian independent gaming developer who developed L.A. Noire with Rockstar.
  • War Drum Studios ported a number of Rockstar titles to mobile platforms such as Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Max Payne. They also ported Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to the Xbox 360.
  • Image Metrics has done most of the facial animation in many of Rockstar's games.


This article has been mostly taken from Wikipedia