Red Dead Redemption lead multiplayer designer Kris Roberts once tried enjoying his much-needed compensated time off. The 2010 open-world game's demanding pre-launch period put him in "an amnesiac state" of sleep deprivation, and he was starting to get irritable with his bosses at Rockstar. But then he got assigned jury duty, and then Red Dead's multiplayer bugs started to show themselves, and any hopes for going to bed on time were replaced with cold panic.
"Sort of like the punchline," Roberts tells Kiwi Talkz in a new interview, which you can watch below. "I was on jury in a criminal case, where somebody was potentially going to go to prison when we shipped. And, I don't know if you were aware or whatever, but when Red Dead shipped, multiplayer was broken. Just absolutely broken." Members of the Rockstar New England team – he credits someone named Jeremy, likely programmer Jeremy Tudisco – helped him patch it up, but not before he was made to have a few 3AM sessions spent staring at the American frontier gone wild.
