So, I'm Steve. I probably could start when I was sitting in that classroom basically thinking, how I'm going to get into games industry? How I'm going to make games? My first big deal, basically, the Capstone at Michigan State was huge. When I worked on Computer Science Capstone, we had a project for Image Space. It's a game company in Ann Arbor. They made like, Nascar racing games, and rFactor and some other games. So, that senior capstone was working on some tools programming for their game, like UI based race car editor. So, we made them some tools, and that was my first game-related project that was helpful to pad the resume. So after that, I got an internship at EA. I went to EA, LA and I was a part of the RTS team working on Battle for Middle Earth 2. So, they base their command and conquer team had been working on SQL and finally moved onto the battlefield. So, I worked on that for about three or four months, working as a gameplay programmer. Working on units and structures for about four months. That was still internship. I went back to Michigan state, graduated, and I had an offer to go to a few companies, but the one I chose was Rockstar San Diego. So, as I meant to be working on a mini club LA racing game, and having that tool I built for rFactor Image Space in Ann Arbor that helped me get my foot in the door at Rockstar as a tools programmer. So, I worked at mini club LA for maybe a good 2-3 years, working under tools. Eventually, I move down to working on gameplay, working on races. I wasn't the biggest racing game fan in the world. So, I asked around and saw that there were weekends game called Red Dead Redemption, and I was like, "That sounds awesome!". So, there's this hybrid game designer slash programmer, so it is a pure programmer. So, you get a little bit of both and I was like, "That sounds like the best job ever. I want to do that". So, I moved over to that. Once mini club LA was wrapping up, I moved over to Red Dead, and at that point it was pretty much a flat giant open space. So, I worked on the ambient team, and that was one of the first times we had a dedicated ambient team. A lot of times, it's all about the missions and the story flowing, and you start everything else as secondary, but we had a dedicated ME team focused on what are we going to fill the world with? With this massive open wilderness, massive. What are you going to do when you go out, and tell that's what you're going to see or we're going to find? So, I spent a good- let's see three or four years working on Red Dead and once that shipped, we had a really quick three months to make Undead Nightmare. Which is just kind of an awesome experience. Usually, you work on games for years and years and years and you start over, but with Undead we got all those lessons we learned making Red Dead Redemption, all the tech, all the stuff we had on our Bellevue real turn-off quickly to make Undead which is awesome. After Undead, we rolled on to GTA five. We were the team- my team here, we're responsible for the odd jobs in mini games, tennis and golf, and their trafficking and taxi Holocaust sets out the ambient content in a game. So, we think it was a good three years we spent working on GTA until that shipped. And then, we moved on to Red Dead Redemption Two. So, for the last, really for the last eight years, I'm working on Red Dead Redemption Two and some form. Like the first couple of years, it's just a handful of people who are talking about ideas and doing paper design and discussing what is going to be, where we're going for. But probably full on developments at least for a year, maybe, five years I've had Red Dead Redemption Two. So, and obviously, we just finished that up. So right now, we are figuring out what's next. At the least, that's my game story arc. A little bit about. Since it's so new, that the release of Red Dead Two and what that's been like for you and the studio? It has been amazing. As I said, it's been a long journey and we put so much into it. It's really exciting to read how people react to it. There's so much attention to detail and depth that as you work, you don't know people are going to get it. If people are going to dig deep into it and CLOs there. So, it's scene people understanding what can be done and what they're finding is rewarding, but with my team specifically some unbelievable world designer and my team's job is when you go to learners, make sure that there's the right density and variety of things to do and things to find. So, I guess at two levels when players go and explore, like that has to be incredibly rewarding, interesting experience. My job is to almost getting away from the missions. This is the stuff you want to be doing. The side stuff that the stuff you find on your own stuff you're not told to do. So, my job is to basically fill the world with enough stuff, enough density, enough variety, so that, when you go out and explore, you'll find stuff. But having the right balance, it can be these little errands are screaming and waving and bloods everywhere in trying to get your attention, and so, I feel like an organic experience. So, the team spends a lot of time making game that right. There's all- I'll play the game different ways. So people, they go to mission and they rarely go off mission. So, we need to make overall [inaudible] two. So, looking at those those rides between missions and making sure that stuff along those rides. So, they're still getting a taste of the ambient world, but then, people actually take hours and hours and hours hunting, exploring, make sure that there's enough for them to do as well. So, the last five years or so, we've been working hard to make sure that, that comes to fruition. So, we're pretty excited about the reaction to the upper world, specifically. And the other guys on my team are pretty passionate about specifically, they're like, what do you do when you explore? What you do when you felt? What can you do on your own? Whats the very open-ended play that you want to play? Choose what you want to do with this content. Not very guided. So, we've been focusing on that type of content for a long time now. There you go. So, obviously, I'll start by asking a couple questions that I'll open it up to others. So, how long have you been at Rockstar then across your curve? Let's see, I think it's my 12th year now. So, just about to hit 12 years. All right. I had that right then when I pre-introduced you. So, is that normal to be at? Because I know there's a lot of moving around in the game industry and particularly on the West Coast there and it seems like 12 years is- are you the oldest guy there? Or is that- do people come to Rockstar in pretty much stay at Rockstar because of the culture there? We get a lot of people there for a long time. Because of the department- I speak for my department at least. I know all the design leads had been there at least 12, 13, 14 years. No one in my team has left over the course of the whole project. It's been at least four or five years, I haven't lost one of my team. So, yes, there's- it tends to be pretty- the senior staff because they had been here for a very long time. It's part of the games you make, the teams is- big part of it is when you can just focus on your job, focus on your piece of the gaming. You don't worry about anything else like, the marketing, Cinemax, or the cast scenes. Everything's going to be amazing. So, you can focus on your breath of the game. No one is going to hold you back. Every other department is going to take up their end of the bargain and deliver on a massive level. So, the people you work with are so talented. It makes your job easier, but also just with the games we make. Like, you work on something for six, seven, eight years, you really want that game to be something special. You want it to be something that sort of moves games forward, moves to the genre forward, a big deal if you don't want to be spending that time working on something that's not- you're not passionate about. Here that's a big thing. Everyone at the team is very, very passionate about the games we make and their individual content. I'll make sure they have all of their content. We care a lot about it and it shows on screen. Cool. Being a senior personnel, you've been I think instrumental and being the beachhead bringing another MSU folks. There's at least three, right? Beyond yourself there on your team or associated with your team and your project. Can you talk maybe a little bit about that? And tell me what you do you look for in future talent? For people here in the class that are maybe aspiring to go out in the industry? Yes. So specifically to Rockstar, specifically to our design team, we look for hybrid programmers designers. The programming parts are a little more important than the design part. Initially, because you don't have as much creative input as you do as long as you're here and once you get it might get more and more, but initially, it's programming is a bit more important. So, we look for that specific combination which can be pretty challenging. So, we had really good luck with the hires we've pulled from MSU. Having both sides of that done pretty well. They've done really well here, but more general, it's really just looking for one. Someone whose resume stands out. It doesn't mean it will be different. All resumes are blend together. I would say in the same classes. Seven has a similar- the GP isn't that critical. Whether what kind of products they've done on their own, what can they talk, what they've done, what internship have they'd done, what side project have they worked on outside of school. That's the question we always ask during every processes like, "What have you done outside of class?" And they'd say, "I've done nothing. All I've done is class", and that doesn't actually show the passion. So, the second thing is, they just absolute passion to work on games, working in the industry, really wanting to be a part of the game industry, and work on game projects. Then just a strong sense of ownership, like really caring about your work, not just wanting to work to be as best as possibly we can be. That's basically you on screen. If you're planning a game, they play your content. That's a reflection of you having that kind of abuse because it could possibly be. So, we look for all sort of things, but our every process basically, is we look at the resume and we'd send design tests plus programming tests. We create that test and if we like it, we do a phone interview. If that works out, then we do an on-site interview. Once you get to the end of it, then we might make an offer. So obviously, I don't know how much you want to speak to it, but with the release of the games have been hugely successful in high scores and then at the same time, there's all this information about Rockstar culture or work ethic and stuff like that. Somebody within the studio and what's your impression of that? Do you feel like it is a constant crunch there? Or what's the thoughts on that? That's definitely a bummer and that all that stuff blew way out of proportion. Today, I'm speaking for myself and this is my team. This game has been the best managed ever worked on, as far as hours and crunch wins. Like in the past or by 12 years, there's been projects where we worked ton of hours. We worked really hard. But this game was managed a lot better. Hours weren't nearly as bad, much more manageable. It's personalized and there's no broad user to minimum hours. It's completely up to the individual and what their situation is. Like some of my team had a baby like promising to my baby. So, he was at crunching, he was not working weekends, he wasn't putting in extra hours. But suddenly, a guy like fresh out of college, they want to prove themselves. They want to do a lot of content to be amazing, so they put in extra time, extra effort. But it was product. To me was much more manageable than it's ever been and it's sort of a bomber a couple lines are blown out of proportion. But overall, it seems the team weathered that storm. Sure. So, in terms of the fresh out of college person working overtime. You Rockstar pays overtime, right? Yes. Yes, so I remember talking to Nick and Joe. They were talking about working as much as they could, to make as much as they could when they first got out of school. Greatly, we get overtime. We get double time. Yes, and then Rockstar is very generous about profit sharing bonuses. So, it's a pretty good situation. But it kind of comes onto the kind of each team, each person, what kind of hours they put in. Yes. Well, I can open it up for questions. Because you talked about all the ambiance in your open world games, how do you decide what stays and what goes and the level of density for open world? Yes, the density is tough because the real difficult thing is- like in Red Dead Redemption Two, on rather rare events are- we decided not to put them which makes a big deal. If they're blipped, you need far less because every time they spot a pacing they go and see it. If they're not blip, you suddenly need tripled the number because you kind of need a cast as wide on the player, where there's three at once, and every direction goes and hopefully you'll see something or hear something. So, that kind of dictates- having the right density is about making sure that every hour you explore, you see x number of pieces of content. Whether it's around an event or you can come across shacker or a homestead or a robbery, we just want to make sure that things are happening. You never feel bored and the most important thing is the first time the game opens up, and you can explore the open world. You go spend an hour exploring and you find nothing, like you're never gonna do it again, because it's incredibly disappointing experience. You say, "I guess who's going to play the missions, I'm not going to bother explaining the world because there is nothing out there". So, that first hour is sort of critical to ensure that there's some pretty cool, interesting stuff that they come across. And then they say, "Okay. This is a world full the stuff. I'm going to spend time exploring". But as far as, well what stays is what goes. I mean it's a long process. Initially, certainly pay for the design, you discuss the idea, you reiterate, and once everyone is kind of on board with the idea, you get it in the game. First pass really roughly representing the game. You iterate on it a bit there making sure it kind of works the flow of the timing. Once that feels right, people are happy with it, and you'd go to MOCAP it. MOCAP Documenting it up, you should have a MOCAP. Get the MOCAP in, and then you keep iterating, and keep poshing. Get the file art, get the final dialogue, get the dialogue approved, and at any point during that process, you could just- "This isn't working. This doesn't make sense. This isn't reading". And either you fix it by re-shooting it or adjusting the MOCAP or cutting it up or you cut it. But we had a pretty good success rate of content. Like either it wasn't working first pass. We just keep digesting it and in some stuff that you know it changed, like as a named no I'm making sense parameter called boat attacks, and by the time we shifted there was no boat. So, some stuff changes a lot from the initial idea and gets better and better as it goes. But at the very end, you might have a handful of cuts. When we're lucky, we have this much time left. Do we have enough? Do you have enough? What can we cut to make sure that we get the game done in time? And after this discussion, at least arrives there we'd much rather have 50 curly polished, detailed, deep, interactions than a 100 sort of shallow, basic, simple interactions. So, we usually skew towards having onwards. You talked a little bit about the makeup of the team. So, you're the open world team, like obviously there's a multiplayer team. What kind of happen? How was the project divided? Yes we have a mission team, an open world team, a systems team, and then the multiplayer team. So in the systems team, basically supports all the other teams. Works on kind of core functionality. They might work on stuff like the horse RPG system, where the plants are producers and crafting and stuff like that. An open world team works on everything that's off mission. So, if you'd come across on the world on mission and I think there gets multiplayer missions pretty self-explanatory. Cool. Other questions? Yes. Go ahead. Since a lot of us are worried about getting into the industry as a whole and putting our foot in the door kind of way. Is there anything that you've learned after going through this whole process that you wish you had known earlier on or at the beginning? Well, that's one of the tough parts is like, what classes are actually going to apply to your fields, and I wish I had paid more attention to 3D math because that does. It's hard to tell something when you don't know where you're going to wind up or what department you are going to be in. So I guess, taking as much core logic classes as you can. But the other thing, actually worked really well for me when I was in sophomore year, I started applying in a team. I applied at a hundred games company. I had like every word document, every Email, depart for HR, and like software applied to all of them, In junior, I applied to all of them. In senior year, I applied to all of them, and every year I got a little bit better response. So, that sort of didn't really wait for the job to come to me, any way for the job fair to come to me. I was kind of reaching out and super productive and trying to find a job as early as I could, and even though I've- a job. I wind up getting wasn't through that. I didn't think that I'd always say similar offers through the sort of means of just constantly interviewing and sending resumes out. Does Rockstar hire interns? Is that there are formal internship program there do you know? No, I didn't wind up with an intern in 12 years because they are like a family member. But this parser tends to be pretty nervous about weeks since. Even with NDAs, it's hard to attract this down, so they're a little bit sensitive when it comes to those kinds of stuff. So, we don't have an internship program. Yes, I don't know whether you know a lot of companies that are like that. So, it's really tough to sit. To break in and get that initial experience. There- are some bigger companies like EA and Blizzard now that have formal internship programs, but those are super competitive. So, yes. It's finding it. Like you did at Image Space, which no longer exists, by the way. But you were fortunate to find that opportunity and kind of get that first step. One of the things I was doing interviews, I got-. I would- if they pass on me, I would always ask them, "Can you give me a feedback on why?", and a few good tips to say. I was incredibly passionate about getting a game a shot. That's all I wanted. I also want a games job. Whether I come across an interview i was sort of like not very excited or very passionate, I got dinged a few interviews for that slide. Because that's a tip that might be helpful, let them know how passionate you are or how badly you want games. Are there some other questions? Yes. So, you mentioned you applied like hundreds of places? Where do we find those places? [inaudible] Zack a little bit. Can you hear? Yes. Basically, I scoured the Internet. This was 13 years ago, 14 years ago, but every game company basically has email for their HR departments. So, I just put that together myself to six scouring game companies. You emailed straight to the HR people or how did you [inaudible]? Yes, if they've had job postings, I'd reply to job posting. But even if they didn't have job postings I'd still reply, because they don't keep that stuff up-to-date all the time. Like we don't, our listings aren't super, super up-to-date, so you can get your foot in. I did find that people actually kept my resume because one company knew I had applied the year before. They had my old resume and my new resume, and they saw the growth in the two resumes and they saw I was persistent, so that seemed to be something they liked. Cool. Ian. Hey, my name is Ian. First, I wanted to thank you for joining us today, we really appreciate it. It's nice to have someone from the industry reach out and talk to us. My question might be a bit out of your purview, but it's an art question. So, when you have concept art for a game? At what point do the artists that, like the 3D modelers and such, recognize the style and are able to create, decide characters, or does very single thing get concept to art it up? I mean, the concept is always a tool, a lot of times driven by design. So, when our designer puts a request for art in often, the discussion is should does this need to go to concept first? Can the individual artist do a good enough job mocking up this murder scene, or this campfire or this homestead, or does concept need to do a pass first to give them the guidance they need to do it. So, the more complex it is the more likely it goes to concept first, the more the vibe comes in, the vibe is very important. Besides cookie cutter kind of setup, often it goes to the concept first. But yet, in the first year of the game, because a team of like six people, a couple of designers, a couple of the writers, a couple of concept artists. So, the concept artists would be churning away for that full year just doing different sketches, sending it to the rest of the team, the rest of those four or five people and discussing back and forth, is this the right vibe? Is this what we're going for? Is this the right look? So, if they hone that in for at least a good year before the concept actually goes to the artist and they started building the stuff. In the vibe, based on this project, they nailed it, the vibe pretty good pretty early on. Some specific characters might be reiterated and changed a bit based on feedback. The concepts are pretty critical tool and they go head the whole game. I mean, the last year we're still sending stuff to concept because it's not exactly straightforward for artists to just build this new piece of art without a drawing of it. How is art handled at Rockstar? So, you talked about programmer, designers is your discipline and what you're looking for. Is their separate art groups or? Yes. They have a character team, they have a prop and vehicle team, there's an environment team, and then there's the concept team. I think that's all of it. Yes. Including the art department is the animation department. They have a cinematics, and then they have mechanics, like skinning hard tying stuff and they have sort of an open world team that supports us. Cool. The MOCAP you mentioned is that all done on-site or do you use rented facilities and that sort of thing? MOCAP is crazy and is game. The exponential growth of MOCAP, it completely changed the way we're making games. Like last game, we had a MOCAP studio on-site and I'd go in there with two animators and then three days later we would get in the game. But now, it's like. We own an airplane hangar in New York. It's a former airplane hangar, it's now turned into a MOCAP. Two stages have a staff of 25 people. All actors are professionally casted and they apply for the position. Even if there's acting at a scene in motion, they're all casted for the for the roles. We're shooting MOCAP constantly, because there's just so much MOCAP in the game. But what we'll do is, so it's like piece of contents handled in San Diego will go in a VC, and we'll watch the MOCAP shoot in New York, and then if there's something we have to add or something we need to witness, talk over the VC and talk over the scene, what might needed to change, but most of that motion captures are all directed in New York. How does the process start? If it's a dialogue component does it start with the dialogue and then the voice- Is VC, Voice Characterism. Is that what VC is? Oh, no. It's video chat. We'll be on, we'll watch it. But the MOCAP process usually starts once the design is good. We're like, how it's playing first passed. The designer's responsible for running a MOCAP dock. The document just details all the shots, sort of standardized as opposed like a scripts. You put the temp dialogue in and screenshots the very detailed description of what props are needed and where the actor walks. There's kind of grid that matches to the MOCAP stage. It's a big detailed dock on what they need to shoot. Then we do a read through with the writers, read through with the animation people and go over it. Make sure it runs on the same page, make sure everyone understand it. Once we get out set like every minute costs a lot of money and so we got to get our eggs in a row. Then we scheduled a shoot, and we try to get as much shot as possible based on the content we're trying to get done that week. Cool . Certainly, it probably changed a lot from when you first started even on Red Dead One. Yes. I mean, from last scheme of this game, most everything's MOCAP this main of the [inaudible] the level of qualities is you can tell the difference. But yes, it's a different. Basically, designers are spending a lot more time thinking about animation than ever before. Last game it was, think about like five percent of your work is worrying about animation in this game probably, 50% maybe more. Everyone's so animation driven. You're working with the animators, you're talking with them, you're looking at animations up. In games a little more complex and cut scene. Cut scene, you just pretty much start to cut scene and let it play. But in game, any point it has to break out, has to react to you the player be interrupted. They could pump them, shoot them, talk to them. So, it has to be incredibly reactive, and custom performance structurally reacting to you is pretty challenging. So, there's a lot of imaging of animations now. How big is Rockstar San Diego? Like how many people are there? I think we're on to 250, is a pretty good guess, we're pretty much full again. We've kind of expanded and got some our space, but we're pretty close to being full-on. Red Dead Redemption 2 started here, but like most games near the end every studios working at. So, we have a studio in the Scotland, studio in Toronto, studio in New England, and then the headquarters is in New York. I mean, now we have a studio in India. So, all those studios we are going together to make this game. So, you said you're about full now, how often do people come in and come out at Rockstar specifically? How often do you have new hires? Well, we are basically hiring at almost all at Red Dead. At least, multiple years of trying to hire and just the multiplayer teams into a hire forever. Multiplayer has a hard time finding people. I guess that's like a tip. If you really want to break in, Multiplayer always needs help, because people gravitate toward single-player and they don't have programming experience doing networking code. So, if you have that ability, it's a lot easier to get the a position. But, yes. I mean, we spent a lot of time hiring. It feels like maybe five percent of, once you got past the initial process and we actually got your resume in front of us, and we did the phone interview, I know like five to 20% I think would pass through. There's a lot of interviewing just not a ton of hiring. But right now, the multiplayer team I think is still hiring, but we're not quite sure what's an extra samplers, we're at a standstill, but in a matter of a few months we might be ramping up again. So when did you feel was the best time to start of reaching out to other companies? As far as like time of the year? What time of the year? I mean, it's going to be definitely be different [inaudible] the company. It's hard to know what's going on internally with any given company, any giving time. So, I'm only saying it's bad effective reaching out if they're not hiring, you just have to keep at it. If they're not hiring and they're not interested they'll don't even look at resume or put to the side and you'll just have to ping them again the next year, but there's really no specific time of year that does better than any other time. What kind of demand is there for writers or narrative design at Rockstar? Well, we have basic three writers. They've all been with the company for I think it's 13, 14, 15 years. So, it's not exactly a position that's open or will be open. Something that will really be a hard spot to get into because they're just so established and they're self. Between the three of them, they basically write everything, so it's a tough one for, at least, for Rockstar. Other questions anywhere? So, how does Rockstar's teams go about designing a landscapes and environment? I know you work on open world interactions and stuff, but does your team also do sort of the landscape and the layout of the world? Well, the design team will more like, we do this house, this family lives here. We need the house to fit their vibe, which I use storytelling if you are as well. So, we have a homestead where there's like a alcoholic father and his son. So, a house needs to fit that. So, the father's bedroom is a mess, alcohol bottles destroyed. The son's room is really neat and tidy. So, we kind of work on that level. Like we need a homestead in this general area, and this is the vibe. Then we'll kind of area back and forth and get the home right. As far as the actual landscape goes, that's something we've done really early on when the general story sort of coming together, where the areas of place we're going to move to do. So, it's not really as design-driven, it's more like done by our team and our director. Our directions handles a lot of that. When it comes to design-driven stuff its more simpler. Like we have a mission here, we need a necking hideout in this area because there's not enough stuff to do. So you might work with [inaudible] hideout is area on that. So it feels like it flows well and it's fun for combat, but that's the main design art interaction generally. What's your day-to-day tasks, I guess? Maybe not now, but out there in development? Maybe some of the MSU hire guys that came into your team, what do they do on a day-to-day? So, yes. That also changes based on where you are on the project,. But Chase, who is on my team, who's a very recent MSU grad he is in early on a lot it's the scripting, so he's using our sole propriety scripting language. When he joins, he got these are your 15 random events that you own now, and they're in various state of completion. Some of them he had to do from scratch, some of them are first task. So he's responsible for those 15 pieces of content. Then each milestone, I'll sit down with him and we'll talk about these four or five random events that at least needs to be taken to second pass, and this is the checklist. So, this is what the second pass is, and sort of working through that checklist and gain the content. Working on, iterating it, proving it, add many things to it. So, every week I'll pry, sit at his desk once or twice to see how the progress is going, to play the content. Near the end of the week, I'll either sign off on it say, "Okay, cool, this second pass. We can move on or this isn't quite ready yet, we need to keep working on it," and we'll kind of iterate through most of the content in that way. That's sort of the initial start of the project, is just scripting work, getting content to first, second pass, and then his job changes once we start shooting MOCAP. Then his job's about getting them all [inaudible] shots, coordinating with all the other departments. I mean, designers here are almost are little mini producers. They're responsible for getting the art that they need, the [inaudible] they need to gain the right, you're getting tap lines we're integrating the dialogue that they need, getting wherever coats work they need. The effect team, they service also for being all that stuff together to give their piece a content done and get it onscreen. So, there's a lot of coordination between the other departments. But in the middle, animation becomes a big deal, getting the stuff shot, getting the stuff hooked up. Then near the end, it's all about all those little pieces he wants to add, to add polish the new code support, a new bit of [inaudible] that's going to make this scene look better. So, day-to-day he has a lot of scripting and then kind of discuss the iteration, constantly making it just a bit better each and every day. Can you talk maybe just a little bit more about project management? That's something that's sort of hard to simulate here when they're working on a five-week project something like that, but you know, when somebody's going into a big multi-year production with 250 people or more. From the point of view of an individual, what is it like to step into that? Are you doing scrum daily stand-ups and that sort of thing? Are you using software to track tasks and issues, and what sort of hierarchy structure and that sort of thing? Yes, we do have like a bug tracking software that's incredibly helpful. The more to the end of the project, all the bugs that come in with videos and output to help you produce and help you fix it, but in the early days as many tasks would be in your Bugstar. But overall team early on we used to have a, we need to have 100 events, we need to have 10 home robberies, we need to have 10 shop robberies, 10 bounty hunter mission. So you've got whole bits of all the content that we need, and then we start working out with through it each milestone. There's a overall plan, but the plan tends to be milestone by milestone because things, of [inaudible] things aren't working if things change or the priorities shifts, so each milestone we kind of evaluate where we are and what we want to work on next. It sort of need to prove certain things work, like we need to take one home robbery all the way to near the [inaudible] to see if this is working well and this is going to work and then we have that bar that all the rest of them have to hit, and then we see where the bar is. So, the milestone plan is generally, the individual team lead will figure out what the milestone plan should be, and all the leads combine those plans together and that becomes milestone plan that's gone over and coordinated with. Then throughout the milestone progress is reviewed and things are, they think that we can contain of the list that [inaudible] done or things like get added that are now more important, but you start building the game piece by piece. Yes, it's was a long project, but you could see the bonds there. Within the first couple of years the game's sort of there. It might not be [inaudible] super fun yet, but the basic first passes there, so you can get a sense of the world, you get a sense for the ride, you get a sense for the density. So then, once you have most things in place, then your going to start polishing and taking things up to a higher level. Cool. Any parting words that you want to leave the students, Steve? Go buy Red Dead Redemption 2, please. Go buy it and plug it, yes. So, well thanks so much for taking the time, I really appreciate it, and [inaudible]. No problem. Yes. Can I ask one question? Oh, yes. I guess one last quick question. So, I'm assuming there's a programming men. Which classes specifically do you know that would help with that? I know you said 3D sort of thing, would that be like linear algebra or? Yes. Linear algebra for sure is a big help. There was a CSE class, I mean a CST [inaudible] was huge. There was a CSE, I don't know what number it was, but it moved past just brute-force techniques. It started talking about how do you do things well. Most of the early programming classes doesn't matter how you come up with solutions as long as this lab works and the program runs, you pass. But start to think about good design principles for code. There's a pretty good book, I don't know if I have it around, design principles book where it talks about things to avoid, things to gravitate towards, just specific rules that you can apply to scripting or to programming, and those things come in handy when you're talking about a seven-year projects. When you trying to build the script base, do it really solid early on so that by the end, it's going to hold up. If you do some of these simple stuff like throughout your code having hard code variables, instead of having constant defined variables at the top of your script that you can easily tune, had to go through all your script to change that number, things like that go a long way when you're trying to develop games of this size. So, classes that focus more about doing things the right way versus just doing things in general. How about you mentioned some soft skills like passion and that sort of thing, and when you're hiring, how much of soft skills come into it that you're looking at being somebody you might be working with for the next eight years? Yes. You want to get a sense for that individual, so we take them out to lunch and try to get to know them a little bit, see what their interests are. It does feel now like a family at Rockstar especially my team, we're really close, we hang out, we have fun together, makes every day a lot more fun when you're going working with your friends and working on stuff that you love it's a good work environment. Generally, a lot of people I got fit in with that, you don't want people that are sociopaths or if you're a friendly person and you're a nice person you get along with people, that goes a long way to fitting into the team and being a part of a big team. Positivity is big too, like when you work on a game this long it's hard not to for people to- someone just kinds of gets cut, it upsets them and they get angry, so It's important to find a positive angle on this stuff and have the teams generally stay positive, and that a positive workplace it also helps a lot when you're working together. So on interview you don't shit talk a bunch of games and say, "My class sucked, and my things sucked, and I hate this, and I hate that." Talk about what you liked. If you do say something's bad, you better have a good way of how you'd make it better. Cool. Yes, we had a talk from Iron Galaxy last week and the CEO came actually and that was one of the things he said. Make sure that, I can't remember how he put it, but it was like. Like, if your going to shit talk something you better have a good reason why and a way to improve, something like that. Yes, and just don't shit on the industry. If there's a game you don't like and you're not going to play why shit talk it? There's 100 other games to play. Unless, it's "Silent Man" then you can talk trash. Exactly. So, yes. Once again thanks so much for taking the time really, really appreciate it. I hope everybody here appreciates it. Maybe give Steve a little round of applause.
