GTA 5 is a near-flawless game that continues to sit atop sales lists years after release. Thanks to the company’s focus on GTA Online, players have had countless reasons to come back and play the successful online game mode. However, what about those who want more single-player content?
In an interview with Game Informer, Imran Sarwar, the director of design at Rockstar, said the studio loves single-player gaming, plans to support it in the future, and says the timing around GTA V just didn’t work out for more single-player DLC.
“No, it was not really a conscious decision, it’s just what happened,” Sarwar told Game Informer about the lack of story-driven DLC content. “We would love to do more single-player add-ons for games in the future. As a company we love single-player more than anything, and believe in it absolutely – for storytelling and a sense of immersion in a world, multiplayer games don’t rival single-player games.”
If Rockstar loves this type of content so much, why was GTA V left out in the cold? Sarwar says it’s because Rockstar was essentially developing three games at once. “With GTA V, the single-player game was absolutely massive and very, very complete. It was three games in one,” he said. “The next-gen versions took a year of everyone’s time to get right, then the online component had a lot of potential, but to come close to realizing that potential also sucked up a lot of resources. And then there are other games – in particular Red Dead Redemption II.”
Despite the lack of DLC for GTA V, don’t think Rockstar has abandoned the concept entirely. “We did not feel single-player expansions were either possible or necessary, but we may well do them for future projects,” Sarwar said. “At Rockstar, we will always have bandwidth issues because we are perfectionists and to make huge complex games takes a lot of time and resources. Not everything is always possible, but we still love single-player open-world games more than anything. I don’t think you could make a game like GTA V if you did not like single-player games and trying to expand their possibilities!”
The rest of the interview is a must-read if you have any interests in GTA Online. There’s plenty of interesting details about what goes into a GTA Online expansion and Sarwar’s favorite creations from the community. However, the most interesting bit relating to GTA Online involves Sarwar’s plans for the online mode once Red Dead Redemption II releases alongside Red Dead Online.
“We don’t yet have a fixed end point in mind, but the rollout of updates may change a little in order to encourage players to try Red Dead Redemption II when it launches,” Sarwar said about updates to GTA Online. “It would be great to have players splitting time between two incredible worlds, but we shall see how things evolve. One of the enjoyable things about working on a project like this is that you can iterate quickly, and change and evolve plans fairly quickly too, so we don’t have to be as clear in our plans as with other projects.”
So what do you think? Are you glad Rockstar continues to make new content for GTA Online? Would you have rather seen a single-player DLC release? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
