Rockstar Games Developer Reveals GTA Trailer Secrets

A former Rockstar Games developer has offered some interesting insight into how the developer makes its beloved Grand Theft Auto trailers. While most companies typically have big blow out press conferences or appearances at such things like Summer Game Fest, The Game Awards, or Gamescom, Rockstar has a history of doing things differently. There was a time where Rockstar Games had a presence at E3, as the studio had a huge booth in 2005 to promote Bully, The Warriors, and run ads for the already released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Subsequent years toned things down, but they announced games like Grand Theft Auto IV and the canceled PS3 exclusive Agent at E3 press conferences.

However, since then, Rockstar has grown into a highly elusive entity that finds success in doing things on its own time. There’s no need for flashy press conferences when you can own the news cycle on some random week in May. Regardless, there’s still not much known about how Rockstar markets their games. Everyone has their own expectations based on previous patterns and history, but Rockstar has shown with GTA 6‘s marketing that it doesn’t want to be predictable. After the first trailer was announced ahead of time and eventually leaked, GTA 6 trailer 2 and a boatload of screenshots were randomly dropped with no prior warning. Fans were even caught off guard as GTA 6 had just been delayed days prior.

Despite the high level of secrecy, it’s apparently well-known within Rockstar when a trailer is being put together for a new game. During an interview with Kiwi Talkz, David O’Reilly, a former Rockstar Games employee who worked on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and some of GTA 6 noted that a new trailer becomes a priority when it’s in the works.

“When a trailer is coming out, it’s a big deal,” said O’Reilly “Everybody knows about it and if there’s a bug for a trailer-focused thing, that is number one priority. It’s all hands on like, ‘This is a trailer bug.’ When it’s coming out, it’s quite exciting or maybe you don’t even know and it’s like ‘Oh the trailer just dropped!’”

It sounds like a lot of work goes into polishing up the game to make it look as good as it can for a trailer. O’Reilly also noted that when a trailer is being made, the team looks at where they want to put the camera for certain shots and then hyper-focus on bringing everything in frame up to snuff while everything just outside of view may not be anywhere near close to done.

“When you’re making a trailer, they look at where the camera’s gonna be and everything in that view is getting madly polished,” he said. “Everything not in that view is not being madly polished yet, so the whole world doesn’t look like that. You focus on the areas of the trailer. That’s the projection of what the entire full game is going to be like. Which is why you get differences [between] the trailer and final game. You can’t view that as ‘That’s locked down now and that’s how the final game will be, and that tree will be there when it releases.’ You can’t look at it like that because you’re asking the company to show you the final game in a trailer when it’s not finished. It’s unreasonable to pick at trailers and the final product, like so many people do.”

It’s interesting to hear how collaborative the work on a trailer for a game like GTA 6 actually is. While a movie trailer might compile a bunch of shots from the finished film, a trailer for a video game likely does require some extra effort from the team so it looks more finished than the rest of the game and can make a meaningful impression. O’Reilly’s point about only focusing on things that can be seen is true. The very first trailer for GTA 5 was great for the time, but if you go back and look at it frame by frame, you can see the lack of detail in the distance.

There are even a couple shots where you can make out the unfinished parts of the world as cars race into the abyss. It probably isn’t wasn’t meant to be broken down frame by frame in high resolution nor with hindsight where we know how San Andreas is supposed to look in the game. Either way, it’s an interesting peak behind Rockstar’s very secretive curtain.

Continue Reading