The agent before the agent, a lost project of Rockstar San Diego

In 2009, at the Sony E3 press conference, Jack Tretton, then CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, announced a game called Agent.

"For more than a decade, Rockstar Games has offered unparalleled interactive experiences to fans around the world," said Tretton. "Grand Theft Auto, Bully, Midnight Club and Manhunt all started on PlayStation. Today we would like to announce a new Rockstar North property. This is called Agent. And it will be exclusive to PlayStation 3. "

It must have been, as Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser says in a press release, the "ultimate action game".

"The game, like anything from Rockstar North, is going to be very, very cool," Ben Feder, then CEO of Take-Two Interactive, owner of Rockstar, told GamesIndustry.biz. "This will push the edge, define the genre, and it will be a whole new way to experience video games that we have never seen before."

And then, apart from Take-Two confirming in 2010 and 2011 that the game was still in development, Agent almost disappeared from the public eye. For much of the decade, many wondered if and / or when the game would materialize. Neither Rockstar nor Take-Two commented on its status, focusing instead on support for their other blockbusters: 2013 Grand Theft Auto 5 and 2018 Red Dead Redemption 2.

An answer may have finally arrived on November 19, 2018, when Take-Two abandoned the Agent trademark. Although neither Rockstar nor Take-Two announced the status of the game at the same time, many saw proof that they would never have played the missing Rockstar game.

Before Tretton came on stage, another Rockstar studio, Rockstar San Diego, had its own version of Agent. A project full of ambition and different philosophies. A generation project PlayStation 2 / Xbox which, in the opinion of the studio, would be the next big release of Rockstar. A project whose parts have been partially reused in the first Red Dead Redemption.

To eight former Rockstar employees, we have recently reconstructed the story of AgentThe phase in San Diego. This is not the complete Agent the story of Rockstar San Diego's debut as a studio. It is a story that involves a work environment that some describe as toxic.

All the people we interviewed for this story, with the exception of one, spoke under the guise of anonymity, with disturbing repercussions from Rockstar. Rockstar declined to comment on this article.

Culture shock

Agent did not start like other studio projects. The members of the team describe it as a test.

Rockstar bought Angel Studios in 2002, after working for several years with the Smuggler's Run and Midnight Club series, transforming the studio's name into Rockstar San Diego. With this acquisition, all the talent and technology of the company have been acquired. This also brought Rockstar to Red Dead Revolver, the first game in the Red Dead series, which was originally under development at Angel Studios for Capcom. The Angel game engine has become RAGE, the advanced Rockstar game engine.

According to former members of the Angel Studios team, the founder, Diego Angel, originally headed his company as a family. They say that they were well paid and that they had a lot of holidays. On Fridays, Angel was distributing tequila vaccines to his employees.

Then the purchase took place and many say that the family culture of the studio has changed.

According to former employees speaking for this story, many members of the team felt that Rockstar executives, including Sam Houser and Dan Houser, wanted the San Diego team to prove itself. And Rockstar approached the studio with a new game idea to give them that chance: Agent.

"As I understand it, there has been a dispute within Rockstar about the purchase of Angel Studios," said a former team artist. "The fight was mainly about the price paid for Angel Studios, and was it worth it? I think the Agent The project was: "Show us you're worth all the money".

"I heard that Agent was supposed to be the project for us to prove that we were a "Rockstar studio," said a member of the project team, recalling that Agent was a test for the latest Rockstar studio.

Agent, under San Diego, was to be a spy game of the world open in the vein of British crime drama Professionals, would be a favorite of the Houser brothers and James Bond movies. The player would have a range of weapons and gadgets, such as a suitcase that can be used as a go-kart and a "kind of camera drone", as a developer calls it, that players could throw and use. take photos.

Rockstar commissioned his most recent studio to produce a demonstration, a prototype of what the game could be, with producer Luis Gigliotti leading the project. The main parts of the game consisted of what one of the developers called the Gigliotti team, who had collaborated on other projects, such as the 2001 action sports game. Transworld Surf.

"We just gave up everything we did and started on that basis," said a designer, referring to a Justice League game that has never gone beyond the conceptual stage. But, as developers will soon discover, development on Agent would not be like what they were used to.

For Angel Studios, a typical game development cycle saw project leaders meet early to determine gameplay, technology and timelines. From there, they would build a production team as the development progressed and provide the necessary staff to complete the game. Agent was not like that From the first day, the demo had what a developer calls a "normal sized crew".

The size of the team was not the only thing atypical agents development; From the beginning, the team cracked for the demo. Rockstar told his most recent studio that he had little time left to launch the project and that everyone had to put everything he had.

"Basically, everyone had to stay at work as long as possible," says a former artist. "The idea was:" Anyway, you do not go home before bedtime. "

Some developers at the time of Angel Studios say they found that the culture change was abrupt. Before the acquisition, after launching a project, the studio usually gave a week or two of rest to the developers. So, if they worked long hours to release something, they were rewarded by the time spent away from the office.

"Rockstar has ended all this," said a former developer. "Even after the milestones, you know, we'd all be tightening, and then [the studio would] give us the next day or two to breathe. [Rockstar] never did that. We crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, and they would expect us sometime the next day – even if it was a weekend – to make things easier. "

Despite these pressures, many members of the team were excited about the demo. At that time, the game was more cinematic than other Rockstar games, with an emphasis on decors and historical accuracy. The demo had a level where the player was pursued by a helicopter, with buildings exploding, rocket launchers blowing structure doors and hang gliders landing on the roof of the White House.

"[Our demo] It was a level of play in itself very neat, with a full-fledged mission, "said one artist on the team. "It was a lot more than what you expect from a prototype."

Team members say the demo impressed the Housers, who gave the green light to the studio to switch to full production.

Build the game

Initially, the idea was to do, as one artist on the team said, "at least three" levels of Agent. The only two that the team eventually worked on were an open-world Washington hub and a smaller, more linear level in Cairo. To gain a level of authenticity, members of the San Diego team visited both cities and took reference photos.

Along the way, staff members were arrested for taking pictures in both downtown and Cairo.

In DC, the event was fast, while in Cairo, the situation became a complex ordeal between the staff of Rockstar and the police, which worried some of them.

"The studio has been very tense for a long time," said a developer.

Once the teams came home safely after each trip, photos in hand, the developers of Rockstar San Diego got to work building levels from the reference material.

Combining travel photos with historic 1970s Washington images, the team created the open world level and then the largest open space the team had worked on. This was the only level that the team had almost completed.

"Basically, the core of D.C. has been fully modeled," says the artist about the level. "Everything was pretty accurate – and it was even pretty accurate for the 1970s."

The idea was to make Washington a major meeting place for the player, while other cities around the world would serve as linear levels, geared toward specific elements, to which the player would fly throughout the campaign.

Building an ambitious open world game was a fight for Rockstar San Diego, the developers told Polygon. The team had already participated in smaller games in the open world, such as racing games. Midtown Madness and Nightclubbut none with the extent of Agent, an open world action game. This required major changes to the company's engine. And while the studio was trying to tweak the technology and gameplay, the sources indicate that the headquarters of Rockstar in New York continually asks the team to work on the story of the game, adding to the stress of the team.

"The designers came in while the level designers had to adjust the suspension of the vehicles because none of that really existed," said one of the designers, adding that the team was working on levels while respecting fundamental game mechanics, such as hand-to-hand combat, were still at the conceptual stage. "We were building this engine, we were building this fighting engine, we were building this fighting engine. And in the meantime, the guys in New York say, "When will the story end?" It was a bit chaotic.

According to those who speak for this story, Rockstar New York was constantly changing gears with what it wanted from the game and its history. And despite the tight membership for many team members, some San Diego players did not always have much to work on, as things changed and changed, as the game had been a full staffing project from the start .

The developers we met said that the New York office is constantly changing Agent leads to a lot of problems for the project. While they were saying it, the Housers were asking for changes faster than the team could follow. The team did not have the story told, nor the game, and progress began to slow down. Nevertheless, everyone in the studio kept cracking.

"They just did not give us enough time," said one developer. "We worked very hard on it, there was basically a full team, and even standing all day and all night, we could not get the changes quickly enough."

"We were doing so many things," says another. "I mean, every day we work weekends and 16-hour days. We were so scattered.

Health problems persisted in Rockstar San Diego at that time too, sources told Polygon, some unable to continue working because of stress.

According to the developers we talked to, working at Rockstar San Diego at the time meant integrating with Rockstar culture, whether we like it or not.

A developer talking about this story had sent us a message the day before his interview asking him if he had to worry about any legal consequences that might have the talking about the project.

When asked why he was worried, he replied:[They] scare me a little. "

"I would say that there is really a culture of fear," said a former Rockstar. "If you have leaders who think that everyone is replaceable except for them and that everyone's life should be work-centered, it's not a good way to live for the modern peoples of the first world" .

Working in these conditions raises the question: why stay? Some developers we talked to said that we had to love to play games and be married to their work. A developer also added that he had the desire to be part of Rockstar, even if it did not work: "We just liked what we were doing and we wanted to be accepted."

It was at that moment, while the studio was working Red Dead Revolver and Agent, that some developers say that the work environment at Rockstar San Diego has become toxic – partly because of the problems mentioned above, and partly because of the premature death of three people who worked at the studio.

In the mid-2000s, three people closely related to Rockstar San Diego died: one, Mike Haynes, while he was working there, and two others, Carlos Hernandez and Bill Purvis, after leaving the society. Although circumstances vary from one country to another, it's something even today, which is difficult to talk about for some developers interviewed for this story.

After about a year of work Agent, The producer of the game, Luis Gigliotti, left Rockstar to become general manager of Concrete Games, a THQ studio that closed in 2008 before being able to launch a game. Shortly after his departure, a large number of AgentThe Gigliotti team – the leaders of the group – also joined Concrete.

To compensate for this, Rockstar has moved many of the tracks from Red Dead Revolver, who launched on May 4, 2004, sure Agent.

Room of cards

When new tracks have resumed Agent in San Diego, some say that the development was not as advanced as it appeared. They say that the demo that initially impressed the Housers looked good, but that she was using too many "smoke and mirror" development tips to provide a stable starting point for a complete game. .

One source on the team disagrees with the assessment, saying the demo was rough but a good start. But eventually, the team ended up spending the next year largely focusing on the game's engine, improving the tools needed to create an open-world action game, while working a little on the game. himself.

Under this new direction, Rockstar San Diego has been working on Agent for about another year. A source on the project said it was a struggle for new recruits, who did not "understand" what the Houser brothers wanted from the game. After talking with Sam Houser about his vision of Agent, they just did not understand, he said.

"You know, Professionals was a British show, "says a member of the project team. "It's very British. It's like in the late 1970s, in Britain. None of us were really connected to it. [Rockstar’s headquarters in] New York was getting frustrated at not having understood it. The technology was good. That's what we got and everything went well, but we did not really understand the game. "

After a year of work, put the engine of the game in a place where he could play games in open world, Agent as a game Rockstar San Diego has become less and less a reality. But the technology under the hood of the game would not be scrapped. It was still used – just for something different. Following Red Dead Revolver: Red Dead Redemption.

"I do not know how much we were trying to convince them.Sam knew anyway that he wanted to do Red Dead, but in one way or another, the decision was made Agent and take all the work we had done and start Red Dead Redemption,"Said a member of the team. "Because, you know, the technology was usable [on] either project – and probably maybe even more appropriate for Red Dead Redemption. "

The transition between the two games was immediate, according to a developer. "We got the word," Hey, we're going to be a westerner. Collect all assets, group them together. Start immediately creating these kinds of western things, "explains the person.

For some people lower in the hierarchy of studios, the news was a shock. Many to the team felt Agent was going to be the next big rockstar property. According to one developer, they were told that in addition to supporting Red Dead Redemption With Rockstar San Diego technology, Rockstar Games will use some of the technology for future Grand Theft Auto games.

Work on Redemption started in 2005 with the release of the game in 2010. It was later considered one of the greatest games of all time. But the development of this game would not be without challenges.

What happened next?

Difficult working conditions have proven to be a constant problem in the two initial Rockstar San Diego projects. After work on Agent completed, Red Dead Redemption It's also proven to be a demanding project for the studio.

This became public in two ways. First, a group of employees and anonymous family members started talking about the demanding schedules of the company.

On January 7, 2010, a collective claiming to be "dedicated dedicated brides of Rockstar employees in San Diego" published a blog on Gamasutra, an information site about the gambling industry, blaming Rockstar for its terms and conditions. extreme work, claiming that the worst crisis had started in March 2009. a little over a year before the launch of the San Diego studio Redemption.

"Until now, working conditions persist[[[[sic]deteriorate as employees are manipulated by some hands that exercise the reign[[[[sic]of power at Rockstar San Diego, "reads the message. "In addition, the extent of degradation suffered by employees extends to their quality of life and their family members."

"Recently, with the accumulated stress, physical manifestations caused by stress have made health a concern," says the post. "We know that some employees have diagnosed depression symptoms and that at least one of them has suicidal tendencies. These will not be improved with a full-time masseuse and will only get worse if no change improves conditions.[[[[sic]and managers continue with their dishonesty of deadlines. "

Former employees who have defended this story corroborate these claims, with one of them mentioning: "I remember days when I was not coming home – or the bulk of the team – and that we just went to work the next business day to finish that day. before going home. I was young at the time, so I did not care as much.

In 2006, Rockstar was also the subject of a $ 2.75 million lawsuit filed by former employees, Garrett Flynn and Terri-Kim Chuckry, on behalf of more than 100 corporate employees. Rockstar San Diego, former and current, accusing Rockstar Games of paying unpaid overtime, both when the company was contracting with Angel Studios and after the acquisition.

The lawsuit remained unresolved for more than two years, until Rockstar agreed to settle all of the $ 2.75 million in November 2008, although the company denied any misconduct in the settlement. According to the agreement, the company "concluded that pending litigation would be long and costly for all parties and that the settlement is desirable".

Since the end of 2018, the relationship between Rockstar and its long working hours has been examined under a new microscope, thanks in part to the comments of Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser in an interview with Vulture and an investigation of the 'tightening culture' of the company by Kotaku. .

In his interview with Vulture, Houser mentioned that sometimes team members would work "100-hour weeks" on the company's latest game. Red Dead Redemption 2. He then added that he was talking specifically about his editorial team consisting of four people over a short period of time, not the entire team for long periods. But the discussion around the issue has highlighted various current and former employees of Rockstar, some of whom have painted less–than– ideal image of the pressure exerted by the company on the employees.

For the Kotaku report, some employees, past and present, said at the point of sale that they had found their work on Red Dead Redemption 2 rewarding and "happy to be working at Rockstar", while others said the development was "a difficult experience, which cost them friendships, time spent with family and mental health"

As part of Rockstar's response to Kotaku's claims, Editor, Jennifer Kolbe, said the start of Rockstar San Diego was a particularly difficult time for the company's problems. related to the crisis, claiming that society has since improved.

"We have certainly examined Red Dead 1 and what came out of it, and I knew we did not want to have such a situation, "she said. "I think, of course, as the team has developed its work practices together, we have improved the way teams are managed."

The state of Agent

We do not know the current state of Agent.

After the San Diego match, Jack Tretton's 2009 E3 announcement revealed that Agent was in development at Rockstar North. However, at this point in Rockstar's history, the company was trying to broadcast the development of its games in several studios. We do not know to what extent. Agent became a Rockstar North project specifically.

A source indicates that Rockstar Leeds in the UK also worked on Agent, taking up the torch when Rockstar North brought people to work Grand Theft Auto 5.

Another source indicates that Rockstar North made the San Diego decision Agent trumps, but worked on the game with a different engine. He remembers seeing a demo of the North roughly at the time of the transition between Agent and Red Dead Redemption that he said has largely overshadowed the work of San Diego.

"Rockstar North had a hand on ideas and stuff. They did a little test demonstration that dumped all the water we had, "he says. "One time we saw the Rockstar North demo – I think they had a car turned into a submarine or something like that, among other things – we were like" Holy Smokes! "

And two sources say that some aspects of Rockstar North's work on Agent – specific places and missions – ended up in Grand Theft Auto 5.

Take-Two Interactive renewed agents December 5, 2016, allowing the publisher to retain the rights to the name and logo of the game for three and a half years. But just two years after the renewal of the brand, Take-Two officially abandoned it on November 19, 2018. Agent is still listed on the Rockstar website and the official game site remains online. Both mention that the game is coming to PlayStation 3.

It has been almost 15 years since Rockstar San Diego began working on the project and nearly 10 years after Tretton passed the E3 stage to announce the game. Rockstar has not said anything publicly about Agent in years. After periods of ambition, struggle and speculation, it is possible that the closest player can actually play Agent maybe just start Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto 5.

If you have more information about Agent, or if you have any other advice, we would love to hear from you. Do not hesitate to ask for secure contact information at the address [email protected].

Special thanks: Aron Garst