A few days ago, videogames developer Build A Rocket Boy unveiled a lot of new information on Everywhere, its upcoming game/game development tool, and the more traditional triple-A experience MindsEye.
As part of the media coverage, Leslie Benzies, former Grand Theft Auto lead developer who led the biggest successes from GTA 3 to V, spoke to EDGE in an interview available in the latest issue of the magazine (May 2023). Benzies formally left Rockstar in early 2016, as some of you might recall. One year later, he had already founded the new company and started working on Everywhere.
It wasn’t until 2022 that we got the first leaked images and then a teaser trailer at Gamescom 2022, however. In the EDGE interview, Benzies explained:
It’s been difficult because we built a new company, a new team, and essentially two videogames at the same time. And that was probably unwise, in hindsight – but here we are, we’ve battled through it, and we do think we’ve got something quite special. So that’s why it’s taken so long.
Speaking broadly about gaming, the ex-GTA producer said videogames have become bigger than the word itself.
One thing I think about with videogames now, I always find it’s quite an underwhelming word for what they actually are. They’re so much more than that. And videogames seem to be snowballing and collecting every other industry as they go. So, you know, there’s music in there, there’s TV in there. We’re going to be banking in these places. We’re going to be educated in these places.
Benzies wouldn’t be pulled into describing Everywhere as a metaverse, anyway.
Well, you’ll need to tell me what a Metaverse is first! I don’t think that term has been terribly well defined as yet. As a loose term, there’s a lot of companies using it. But I don’t think we would want to use that term ourselves. It’s a videogame.
With Everywhere, Benzies and his team are attempting to get the attention of the generation of gamers that grew up playing Minecraft and Roblox. Their project aims to allow the creation of much more complex game worlds and high-fidelity visuals thanks to the Unreal Engine backend (version 5.1). On the other hand, the purpose of MindsEye will be to showcase the potential of the tool, as any assets or code made by Build a Rocket Boy for their official experiences will eventually be shared with the community.
It’s an incredibly ambitious endeavor, to be sure. Everywhere will be released later this year (likely in early access or something of the sort) on PC, with other formats coming later.
