In a recent interview with Kinda Funny Games, former Rockstar Games director, producer, and writer Lazlow Jones shared insights into how humor and authenticity are woven into Rockstar's games, setting them apart from other studios.
GTA Veteran Discusses Comedy and Authenticity in Game Design
Satire Just Wouldn't Make Sense in Other Games
Lazlow Jones, former Rockstar Games director, producer, and writer, stated in a recent interview that Rockstar's games, particularly the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, are naturally funny because each game satirizes a specific location and time.
Speaking to Kinda Funny Games, he explained, "I think it helps that each of those games was meant to satirize a specific location and time," Jones said. He noted that other games might struggle with incorporating satire because "it wouldn't make a ton of sense in them."
Jones also discussed Rockstar's approach to creating worlds filled with interactions for players, such as Easter eggs and miscellaneous activities. "You sort of forget that 'I'm supposed to be doing a mission, I ended up in the casino for an hour,'" he said. Much like how a person would get distracted spotting a casino while on an errand run.
The interview also touched on the lengths Rockstar goes to achieve authenticity in their games. Jones reminisced about traveling to various locations to capture specific accents and languages accurately. For Red Dead Redemption 2, this involved visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, to record with Native American communities and traveling to New Orleans to work with Creole individuals. "Those accents you just can't get right with New York, LA actors," he explained.
This process can be dated back to 2004's GTA: San Andreas, where Rockstar recruited real gang members to provide voiceover work. "We showed them the scripts," Jones recalled in the interview, "and they were like 'we wouldn't say that, we wouldn't say that, we'd say this.'" He eventually told the voiceover artists to "say what you would say," to put authenticity into the output. "One of the things I'm really proud of is the authenticity that we would go for," Jones said.
Jones previously detailed Rockstar's process for GTA 5 in a 2013 interview, describing sessions where scripts were often discarded in favor of more realistic dialogue. "There’s a lot of sessions that we would have where we would just throw the script on the floor and be like, this thing we wrote is irrelevant, let’s just work out something real."
Before leaving Rockstar Games to join co-founder Dan Houser at Absurd Ventures, Jones played a significant role in the company, overseeing in-game creative audio and video content. His work on the various in-game GTA radio stations remains iconic. While Jones is no longer at Rockstar, anticipation for GTA 6 continues to build, with a release planned for 2025.
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GTA veteran says other games struggle to be funny as comedy doesn't make a lot of sense in them,
but it works for Rockstar because each entry tries to satirize a specific location and time
Rockstar went to the streets for its gangster dialogue in ‘Grand Theft Auto V’
