Video game Everywhere crams the ambition of GTA inside a Roblox competitor
On the outskirts of Edinburgh, the beautiful, historic Scottish capital, is the port town of Leith. And clinging to the edge of Leith — surrounded by towering dockyards, huge new developments of apartment blocks, and a tangle of fenced-off roadworks as the tracks of a new tram system are laid — is a building that used to be a casino. Inside, another kind of construction project is taking place. The man who used to get Grand Theft Auto games made is realizing his own vision of gaming’s future.
The man is Leslie Benzies, once Rockstar Games’ production supremo at its core Rockstar North studio in Edinburgh. With the Houser brothers, Dan and Sam, he formed a triumvirate that led development of the GTA games up to the initial versions of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto Online. Then, after a dramatic and acrimonious split with the Housers, which ended with Benzies suing Rockstar for what he claimed were unpaid royalties, he set up this new studio, now called Build A Rocket Boy.
In Leith, as well as in ancillary studios in Budapest and Montpellier, Build A Rocket Boy is making an ambitious, open-ended online world called Everywhere. This, it turns out, is a kind of futuristic, casual massively multiplayer game with shooting and racing elements. But it also comes with game-making tools that, Benzies hopes, will turn it into the next Roblox: not just a game, but a platform in its own right, where players can build and publish their own user-generated content.
That’s not all Build A Rocket Boy is building, though. The surprise is that the studio is also making MindsEye, which it describes as “an original triple-A action-adventure game.” MindsEye has realistic visuals, performance-captured cutscenes, a near-future
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