As we get closer to Rockstar Games’ next major title – Grand Theft Auto 6 on November 19th – a new report has indicated that the studio was at one point working on reviving its racing game franchise – Midnight Club. In an interview with Kiwi Talkz (via Insider Gaming), former senior designer for the studio, Kris Roberts, spoke about the ultimate fate of the Midnight Club franchise, including the fact that a map was even being developed for an entry set in London.
During his tenure at Rockstar Games, Roberts had worked on the Midnight Club franchise as well as the multiplayer for the original Red Dead Redemption. As for what happened with Midnight Club, he confirmed that the studio ultimately canceled the project.
“When I [left], the core Midnight Club team continued to develop. I think they had even had some prototype cities; I kind of recall London was the one they were doing map development and stuff for. There was effort, and they were starting, and they were starting Midnight Club 5, or whatever they were going to call it, but it didn’t last, and it was canceled.” Roberts said that one of the core reasons behind the cancelation was a “non-trivial conflict” that arose between Rockstar’s New York Studio and the San Diego-based Midnight Club team. The same conflict also seemingly led to several missed milestones when 2008’s Midnight Club: Los Angeles was being developed.
The distance between both of the studios likely played a major role, especially in a time when online communication and collaboration tools weren’t as robust as they are in modern days. However, Roberts also believed that creative control may have played a major role, with the New York team noting that “you’re not GTA”, and making the Midnight Club team feel like they were working on “a red-headed stepchild project” that “never got the accolades or the reception.”
“I think that might have been the core of it, but it was also creative control,” he said. “The team in San Diego kind of…we felt, in any other studio environment, Midnight Club was a solid game.”
“The perception was we never got the accolades or the reception. The New York perspective was, ‘You’re not GTA’. When you’re the red-headed stepchild project—you know, we’re doing a good job, we’re world-class, but we’re still treated less than. It was challenging.”
The cancelation of the project would eventually lead to the entire team being dismissed. While Roberts himself was tasked with working on Rockstar’s in-house RAGE engine, many others were laid off. He said that the general feeling at the time was that “there would be no more Midnight Club and everything was going to be GTA and stuff moving forward, and that’s just the way it was going to be.”
The Midnight Club franchise started off on PS2 back in 2000 with Midnight Club: Street Racing. It would get a pair of sequels in a relatively short time frame – 2003’s Midnight Club 2 and 2005’s Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition. The franchise would then jump into the next console generation with its final game – Midnight Club: Los Angeles, which got a Complete Edition release in 2009 on PS3 and Xbox 360.
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