Red Dead Redemption 2 – Rockstar missing the mark

With the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 approaching fast, the first reviews have been coming out. Already we can see that it is going to be a success for Take-Two’s label Rockstar Games and another stage in an incredible run of quality and popularity that Rockstar games have had since it was founded in 1998. Dan and Sam Houser, the founders of Rockstar, have created some of the best pieces of IP around, namely Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Red Dead Redemption (RDR). The first GTA produced by Rockstar was released in 1998 and has lasted over 4 generations of consoles. Red Dead, launched in 2004, is already another strong repeatable franchise with a loyal following. For both of these franchises while the original concept stays the same, the attention to detail and gameplay is state of the art.

Althought they probably don’t remember me, I went to to the same school as the Houser brothers (and Terence Donovan another Rockstar founder member) in the late 80s. None of the original founders showed any signs of being star game producers in the making, the school syllabus was heavy on Latin and Ancient Greek and not the Wild West or immersive fictional dystopian cities.

Fast forward a decade or so and Take-Two’s (TTWO) stock has performed very well amongst its peers. Today (1 October 2018) it’s up 193% in the Nikeforos portfolio since the portfolio’s inception in 2016. TTWO has a proper (if haphazard) buyback program and the shares are up far more than Activision (113%) and EA sports (53%) over the same time period.

But here is the rub – one of the things I take from the launch of RDR2 is the unfulfilled potential of Rockstar’s latest offerings.

For all Rockstar’s titles the plot is the same: kill, rob or lose. Which is pretty standard for the whole branch. More interestingly the demographics for Rockstar are the same for all their games: predominantly white, male, anglo, hetero – approximately 10% of the population.Add that to a supporting cast of every stereotype going.  GTA V is exclusively a world of crack ho’s, gangstas with attitude, latino drug dealers, white power nationalists and Italian mobsters. You name it, the boxes are ticked again and again, there is no sign that RDR2 is going to break that trend.

Yes, GTA V (2012) features an African American (hetero & male) lead character which is a step in the right direction but not a very large one, especially as RDR took a step backwards with a white only protagonist despite being released 5 years later.

Its 2018 and while there are non-white and non-male characters in Red Dead Redemption, they are not playable. With the current development cycle it will be 2022 at the earliest before the first playable female character, and well into the next century before a Native American can blast their way through the wild west….

Ubisoft’s are 5 years ahead of Rockstar, with this month’s release of Assassin’s Creed giving Kassandra shared top billing with Alexios (with no armoured bikinis in sight!)

Why is that a problem? It’s not about political correctness, it’s about business and legacy. With 2.1 billion gamers in the world, that’s 1.6 billion non-white, non-male, non-hetero, under 18 gamers who are pretty much ignored by Rockstar’s franchises. Of course all types of people can and do play, but the target group is unnecessarily narrow. That’s a shame for the creators as well as the owners of Rockstar’s franchises GTA and RDR – as the incredible gameplay and aesthetics of the worlds they create are not part of more people’s lives.

Telling a story for 1.6 billion more people than they do today should be tantalising to the Housers even if they have made enough money for themselves.  If they could match the appeal of GTA and RDR2 to a wider age group and demographic as Epic or even Ubisoft are attempting, then the numbers could be amazing:

– the average Fortnite player (78million of them)  spends $58 on the game, and will continue to spend that year on year. As a result e-sports, streaming revenue, and follow-on sales will continue to snowball its profitability. 

– Red Dead Redemption 2 costs a very similar $60, but will only reach around 15m players, that $60 is a one-off spend and even with add-ons will tail and die when the next version is released in 3-5 years time.

– Rockstar’s 2012 release, GTA 5, with a longer history and broader demographic sold 90m units generating $6billion in sales.

As a shareholder of TTWO the temptation would be to see what would happen if, for the next GTA (in 2020?), Rockstar widened their horizons creatively, for example more diverse lead characters and more diverse locations, this could increase sales from $6bn to $10bn, it would also be a great risk reducer when the whole business model is looking at an evolutionary step-change based on Fortnite’s success.

Let me know what you think about diversity in games! If you have any insights about Rockstar’s diversity thinking, let me know!

/Richard