CEOInterviews.AIDan & Sam Houser Rockstar Games

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Host0:00

The nominees for British Game, sponsored by Yuki, are: DmC Devil May Cry; Grand Theft Auto V — jeez, your therapist has a lot to answer for; Gunpoint; Lego Marvel Superheroes; The Room Two. And the winner is Grand Theft Auto V!

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Sam Houser1:43

Amazing to say thank you very much. A lot of work went into this thing, as you can probably imagine, and so to get this for Britain, for the team — amazing. Thank you so much.

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Interviewer2:01

I'm with the legends from Rockstar Studios. So first of all, you've got — wait, how many? One, two, three, four. Can you remember what they're all for, though?

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Sam Houser2:09

No, I think we got one for design, one for multiplayer, one for best British game, and one for being old — being at it a long time.

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Interviewer2:23

Were you like — I mean, you guys, you know, you have such commercial success. How much does it mean to be getting sort of the accolades that you get today?

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Sam Houser2:31

Well, I mean, it's everything. To get this sort of recognition from our peers and our friends in the rest of the industry is an enormous privilege for us. And when you combine that with the fact that the game players also seem to enjoy our games, it's a really wonderful thing.

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Interviewer2:50

I mean, you guys obviously create these fabulous open worlds and then everyone just goes — are you always sort of surprised by what people get up to in the worlds that you create? A little bit? Because you must have a rough idea what people might do and then you must look on YouTube and think, 'Oh God, think of that.'

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Sam Houser3:04

Yeah, I mean, we're constantly amazed by the direction the players are taking the games in. And now with YouTube and Twitter and all these networks of kind of dialogue we have with the audience, we're able to see the good and sometimes the not so good — and definitely the creepy. And it's a really exciting time for our medium, having that two-way dialogue, because there's things you can respond to and react to when you see how the players are enjoying them.

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Interviewer3:38

Is there anything you would have said to yourself, like your version back at the start, that you know now that you would have liked to impart some wisdom upon? What have you learned through doing this particular game, do you think?

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Sam Houser3:51

Uh, lie to these guys when we're planning out features and then drop them on them at the end and everything — that's, you know, how we always do things. We always try and, you know, bite off more than we can chew. If you don't do that, you're going to do what you did last time. You know, for thirteen years we've been making very big games, jamming it onto the hardware harder than was possible. The only way we can do that several times in a row and over this longer period of time is by always being more ambitious than ever seems sensible. So I think at the start we're always looking to make the biggest world, to put in the most characters, to have the most innovative multiplayer. And we've got a lot of ambitious people. You know, those are the people that do well at Rockstar — the guys that really want to push hard. You know, we give a lot of freedom down to individual guys, but the ones that do well are the ones that really believe in the overall project and want to push that a bit further.

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Host4:45

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present — this is the BAFTA Fellowship award, Rockstar Games. And welcome Sam Houser, Lesley Benzies, and Aaron Garbut.

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Sam Houser5:15

Thank you. This is a tremendous honor for us as a mostly British-run company, and as passionate advocates of the medium, and also as lovers of British film and consumers — as children, almost — of the mountains of British television. This is wonderful. We used to watch so much TV in the late '70s and early '80s that my closest friend was the test card. Now we stand here, her equal. Rockstar was founded with a mission statement that video games were the next mass-market entertainment medium, that they were uniquely interesting and powerful, and that we as a company would serve two masters to prove this fact — combining the production values of movies with an obsession with gameplay above all else. Back in '98 and '99, we began shouting this to whoever would listen. A few people laughed at us for our hubris, both in ourselves and in the medium. Most people simply ignored us. Now, as far as I know, this is the first time BAFTA have given an award to 900 people.