Rockstar’s Publicity Department: It’s A Way Of Life [Update 1]

David Kushner from Wired magazine has a great piece on the rise and fall of Rockstar Games. The company has always had a bad boy-cum-rebel image and over the years it has only gotten more “pristine”. With their Annual General Meeting and the release of the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA4), how they handle themselves will dictate their future.

In the fiscal year following the game’s release, Take-Two’s revenue topped $1 billion. At the same time, the Rockstar brand itself was becoming cool. Rockstar promoted GTA games by plastering stickers all over the city, as if it were a band. Donovan, who ran the marketing arm of the company, helped burnish its outlaw image. While most game companies mail journalists promotional T-shirts, Rockstar’s PR schwag became the stuff of legend: A barbed-wire garrote was sent out to reviewers of Manhunt, a game about a homicidal reality TV show.

The Hot Coffee scene confirmed all of the hysterical, overblown suspicions about Grand Theft Auto. And Rockstar’s publicity department, which in the past had displayed an uncanny knack for building brand mystique, only seemed to exacerbate the outrage. “Blaming it on hackers was a colossal PR screwup,” says Corey Wade, a former senior product manager at Rockstar.

Many want to oust CEO Paul Eibeler and bring in a new board. Regardless of what happens, make sure to check out the new trailer tonight. Wired’s Game|Life blog will have updates of both the meeting and trailer throughout the day.

[update 1] New York Times is reporting who is in and who is out at Take-Two.