One of the original developers of 2006’s Saints Row has professed his admiration for Rockstar Games.
Stockman was recently interviewed by ESports Insider about all things Saints Row. Of course, he could not avoid any questions about their franchise’s closest competitor, Grand Theft Auto.
What’s The Story Between The ‘Grand Theft Auto clone’ Saints Row?
The first Saints Row was released by Volition in 2006. That was nearly a decade since the first top-down Grand Theft Auto on the PlayStation. It’s also five years after the industry changing Grand Theft Auto III.
Saints Row was one of the first so-called Grand Theft Auto clones, debuting on the Xbox 360 a good two years before Grand Theft Auto IV.
Saints Row would never reach Grand Theft Auto’s success. However, it was arguably the most successful among its peers.
Other games like The Getaway and True Crime: Streets of LA are largely forgotten today. Saints Row became a fixture during the 7th and 8th console generations.
Unfortunately, that ended because of the failure of the 2022 Saints Row reboot.
Who Is Christopher A. Stockman?
Stockman didn’t stick around for the whole history of the rise and fall of Saints Row. In fact, he was really only there for the original 2006 game.
Stockman was design director for Volition. But his career dates back to the 1990s, and he jumped around several studios, from EA, Infogrames, Novalogic, and Activision.
Today Stockman heads his own game studio, VR company Bit Planet Games. Interestingly, he had a lot of things to say about the now gigantic progenitor of urban setting open-world games, Rockstar Games.
What Stockman Thinks of Rockstar Games
Stockman said this:
I think it’s just Rockstar. They’ve never failed.
I remember back in the days when they’d release that ping pong game (Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis) just to test their animation system before they launched GTA IV. If you just look back into the history of Rockstar products, they’ve never missed. I have a hard time believing they’ll miss this time. They’ve spent forever and so much money.
I almost think they would just rather not release it and just keep pumping out GTA: Online content because that doesn’t seem to be letting up.
I think it’s going to do amazingly well. GTA: Online 2 or whatever it’s going to be called will be another 10-year gravy train.
They’re a one-release-every-five-years type of company. That’s crazy. But they seem to have the magic.
They’re kind of the only players in town for this type of game or this type of genre for the big, old, epic games.
