Will GTA VI dissapoint?

 

With a recent leak it would seem that Grand Theft Auto VI might, if we are to believe what is an unverified espousing of finances which I would take with an extreme grain of salt given the popularity of the brand in question and it's penchant for drumming up fake attention, have cost 2 billion to develop. Now I question that figure merely because I heard something in the ball-park of 3 billion. But the point is, we're looking at one of the most expensively developed pieces of art in history- actually, upon saying that I'm reflecting on whether I need to be so conservative about that statement. And considering the most expensive movie to make doesn't even cross the budget of the original Destiny game, I actually think that GTA VI might be the single most expensive product ever produced in the world of art- wow, that is quite the legacy to live to, is it not? I wonder how they'll fair.

Rockstar really is that studio at the end of the day. The people who's job it is to stab at the rump of the industry when its getting a little complacent in order to jar it forward. They don't always drag the industry forward by dragging the bar further than it has ever been on all accounts, sometimes there are games that are prettier or play sharper, but Rockstar always set the floor. Their general rising of the tide means that whatever their games achieve generally becomes the limited-barrier to entry that every single proceeding AAA game is expected to hit- Which itself can be a jarring shift for those around them. And thus, as vangaurds of expectation, Grand Theft Auto is expected to change the world and stun the audience just a little bit with every new game. Especially when that game has taken more than a decade to come into fruition!

After all, that has been the single longest stretch of time that any previous Rockstar game has taken- to such a degree that even the producers have acknowledged that issue and the general need to cut down on development time for future games. (Which opens the door for AI development taking the place of actual development jobs but that's a whole other kettle of fish right now.) But what is really the reason for games that have bigger budgets and bigger studios taking longer and becoming more expensive? Well that's actually a complex mixture of factors. There's the general rule that the scaling of teams makes development slower as every avenue of development needs to be taking into account, the rising of the tide which pushes expectations for the trend-setters to be the best they can possibly be at all times. And, of course, the bottlenecking of improvement. 

Back in the day, when you needed to up the quality of  a game's visuals the goal was very clear- to reach ever closer to fidelity. Make a game look more realistic, create more convincing faces that can emote better, separate fingers so they can be used in cutscenes, match skin tones better, achieve more realistic lighting and reflections. But we've been scratching at the ceiling of that particular pursuit for a couple of generations right now. There isn't much further to go and revelations that do happen don't feel as stark as they used to. The same goes for gameplay innovations. We've pretty much figured out how to make an action adventure game feel good. How to make shooting feel responsive. Rockstar alone have a decent formula on how to make open worlds pop off and feel alive. What else is there to really innovate upon?

It's within that train of thought we find ourselves locked in the recent thought experiment of "will people be disappointed by Grand Theft Auto VI". To which the answer is yes, there are always idiots who expect the game to be exactly like their ill-formed wet dreams of a perfect game and whine when it isn't, comparing the product to a half-digested orgasmic fantasy they assume they are entitled to for whatever reason- that has been a thing since the dawn of ego. What I'm really asking is if real people, with functioning frontal cortex's, find the offering enough of a step forward to justify this extended development window- can those ten years truly show on the face of the product once we get it? Or at the former developers right on the money?

In particular the former studio developer in question, Obbe Vermeji, seems to believe that there's a good chance GTA VI will feel similar enough to GTA V not to illicit that feeling of overwhelming 'newness' that people are searching for and- yeah, I can definitely see that. Red Dead Redemption 2 did benefit from a very different way of playing to previous Rockstar games but was due to a rather drastic shift in design philosophy that not everyone was a fan of when it was all said and done. I'll always prefer a game that tries something new and different rather than a sequel that attempts to hit all the same beats as the last game- but some people just want that same meal they already enjoyed again. Only this time wrapped up in a different package- and that ultimately leads to a conflict wherein you won't make everyone happy. It's just a matter of what will make the most people happy.

The further question I've seen brought up is whether or not the recent news about the budget of the game is proof that Grand Theft Auto is too big to experiment. Remember that many of gaming's biggest properties are shackled by their budget which precludes the promotion of anything that isn't proven to be a success- is that what will effect GTA? Although I think that particular possibility disregards the reality of Grand Theft Auto as a brand. Rockstar don't follow brand trends. Rockstar have never needed to follow Brand Trends. They are the trend. Whatever they make people will flock too- their experiments become the industry standard simply for having been made. For Rockstar alone, I don't think they need to worry about daring to be different. If they want to have a yoga minigame, but god they'll put one in!

Whatever happens, Grand Theft Auto VI is going to a cultural touchstone- that's already set in stone. Rockstar could sink the entire GDP of a small nation into developing this game (and according to these leaks- they actually have already trounced eighteen of the smallest worldwide GDP's already) and it would still cause a profit. At this point they just need to maintain their position at the top of the pack- and I just hope it's proven they can still do that with traditional sales and not by whoring out the online service. In that light, such transient properties as 'disappointment' and 'revolution on the brand' are meaningless in the face of a capitalistic machine that simply cannot be stopped. As cheery and happy as that sounds.

Can we have DLC next time Rockstar?

 A plea of desperation

Rockstar games are the biggest game developers in the known world in terms of marketing. Those guys are so in charge of their presence and being that I'll bet there are entities mining away in the mines under Maat Mons on Venus just biting the bloody stumps of their thumbs in anticipation for the next Grand Theft Auto; because that's how well know they are! Of course, when you've built yourself up to that degree there is a certain level of prestige and mystery that needs to be with held for fear of breaking the illusion. That was why they maintained a strict ruling on anyone who so much as touched their demos when they still used to do industry events, it's why they crack down on modders and any former devs who simply want to talk about their experiences online, and it's probably why we'll never get the chance to effect their policy with feedback.

Fan feedback feels like such a win in our modern age of design, like one of the actual advantages of our interconnected age. Whereas once upon a time all we had was the cold hard data of waxing and waning sales figures to inform our creation, now we can hear it from the horses mouth why they hated our products, and then proceed to tell them how wrong they are because astronauts weren't bored on the moon so you shouldn't be bored to trudge across identical landscapes in Starfield, ya dick! I mean sure, on one hand a creator should away be loyal to what makes the product better over what makes an audience feel satisfied, but if there can be a happy medium somewhere along the way that I'm not going to shed any tears, now am I? But that is not the case in the Rockstar household, it would seem.

Over in Rockstar land, they very much want you to know that the buck stops squarely with them in every single regard. If you don't like the way that they utterly refuse to make PC versions of their games on launch, well that's too bad because you're going to wait for a year after every major release for a port. No, they will never take that feedback aboard and start to build the necessary resources and teams to handle such simultaneous ports- because you asked for that and if they did it then that would mean they are listening to feedback. Nothing is worse in the Rockstar ear, than the feedback of your players. People want to tell you how much they love you? Gush about their adoration for the product you made? Disgusting! Hunt them down and sue them to Oblivion, the scum! Rockstar will never be satiated until everyone who has ever played one of their games represents their fandom slowly by the evacuation of their entire bank accounts into the company's personal coffers.

Or at least, that is the only reason I can assume why Rockstar never once acquiesced to the overwhelming fan calling for DLC content to be added to Grand Theft Auto V single player. After Red Dead Redemption enjoyed a second stab at life with Undead Nightmare, proving that Rockstar are still capable of surprising their audience- people expected something similar for Grand Theft Auto V. Only it would be easier for Grand Theft Auto V, wouldn't it? There would be no need to 're rerelease a new version of the game' like they did with Undead Nightmare, splitting up their fanbase in the process. This was the age of DLC! They could throw anything our way as a downloadable packet and we would for sure swallow that up like the greedy little gremlins we are- we love GTA. Everyone does! 

And now here we are, more than ten years later, learning from a leak from two Septembers ago how every single proposition for DLC was shot down in the planning stages before ever even being considered for single player production. I mean everything! A North Yankton prequel area expansion? Dead in the waters. An actual real Liberty City expansion- (Yes, they actually considered bringing GTA IV's map into the GTA V world!) murdered in the cradle. Hell, there was even the idea to throw us a bone with some assassination contracts, additions to Franklin's minor side activity, also scrapped in everything but the source code. Why did Rockstar forsake its fans like this? Simple- Grand Theft Auto Online.

Like the gift that keeps on giving, Grand Theft Auto Online is the money printing ecosystem that swallowed all of Rockstar's efforts and interests over the lifespan of Grand Theft Auto V. Not a serious consideration could be afforded any single player's way when more cars, businesses, car parks, heists, clothing, guns, planes, boats, yachts and everything besides had to be fed into the online grinder just to keep players playing and spending year after year. That Single Player DLC nicknamed 'Agent Trevor'? Pretty wacky- why don't we just gut that and stick it in as Money-gated Online content instead? Thus became the fate of everything Grand Theft Auto.

And that sucks because, to be honest, the Grand Theft Auto online experience sucks. The community is non-existent, everything is a tremendous time and money sink with no tangible feeling of progression, everyone drives around in the same supercars or flying rocket-firing hover bikes- I just don't want to engage with it. Grand Theft Auto games have so much single player appeal for people to mess around with years after the main story is done and dusted, but that doesn't make nearly as much money as the GTA Online does- and therefore it isn't even an entity in Rockstar's consideration. But god's above, can I have a little bit of love come GTA VI?

It is ridiculous that Rockstar's audiences have to fight for attention with one another just to get a little bit of support! Red Dead Redemption 2 Online wasn't popular enough and so got scrapped barely two years into it's life cycle, which naturally means the single player isn't deserving of any content either. Don't let that happen for GTA VI! I'm not even asking for an Undead Nightmare, at the very least I'd be happy if their newer online vehicles made it into the base game the way that Grand Theft Auto V refused to let happen under pain of death. I'll take the smallest scrap of the smallest morsel just to prove that I, as a player, am not totally forgotten in Rockstar's eyes. Pretty please! 

Lessons in leaking

 

There has been a shifting of the balance of video game news since the turn of the century. The power is no longer in the hands of the creators, nor the marketers who own them, but now in the grimy paws of the hackers and leakers and people driven not by passions but something baser and impossible to explain. Is it clout? The potential for profit? The desire to prove oneself as having worth? Or maybe just the spurred desire to watch all the world crumble for your fun and profit? Whatever the situation, we've seen much in the way of projects, in the gaming world, having their debutes marred by early releases, unfinished glimpses and just recently in a turn that feels pretty unprecedented- a complete early game build that people have ran off with and, much as I insinuated, have already managed to get playable. But not everyone is really built to be a victim in this world.

Nintendo are a company renowned for their zero tolerance policy on anything regarding their owned properties, as though they see themselves as the Disney of gaming and must impart similarly draconian measures upon the world. Woe be those who fall under the Nintendo hammer for the crime of, loving their games enough to make a totally original game set within their worlds- yes they've gone after unique fan-made Pokémon games before. They will come down on people with the wrath of the gods if they are caught using ROMS or porting a game to the PC even though Nintendo will never try to cater to that market as long as they live- and we've even heard stories that Nintendo get upset when people play their games totally legitimately but not in the fashion the developers wanted. Let the story of the Nuzlocke challenge which was vetoed by Nintendo never be forgotten. They also hate mods, because of course.

But another company with such a reputation has been the big boys of the development world themselves: Rockstar Games. All the way back during the days when they still visited E3, (we're talking pre 2004) Rockstar suffered the brunt of a leak thanks to engaging with the convention and entrusting one of their builds with said staff. The leak ended up revealing content that was never intended to make it to the final game, but which ended up causing much controversy and getting Rockstar in trouble with certain advisory boards for pushing the boundaries of sexual content. Boundaries, I remind you, that they never actually intended to push in the final game because the whole minigame was just a test build which was ultimately scrapped for whatever reason. Since that moment, like a supervillain origin story, Rockstar became a lot more serious about how they maintained their data.

Rockstar had themselves one of the most profitable franchises in entertainment media, and they realised with that kind of acclaim came a lot of jealous eagerness to step on their image. Rockstar became recluses, locking themselves out from the public discourse of convention shows and gaming news outlets correspondence. They refused to let outsiders in to see what they were working on or even to know about their development practices in even the most abstract sense. Marketing, when deemed absolutely necessary, was handled with the secrecy of a CIA operation. Materials went out earmarked, investigators were on standby if any piece of information went errant, and I can only assume they had secret contracts with black van kidnapping crews just in case they ever needed to go that far. The way we hear former Rockstar executives tell it, they got scary with how they handled the mythos of their company- correctly assuming that premium reputation was tied in with the success they enjoyed so liberally.

Somewhere along the line that bulletproof reputation got lost and disseminated. They grew complacent. Pliable. And then- boom, Grand Theft Auto Six gets leaked. A game that has yet to be officially announced, and certainly hadn't been revealed- was open for the public. And sure, there had been some narrative leaks a few years earlier. We heard details about probable scenarios and characters- but it's easy to brush that aside as idle speculation. Just like when I saw someone summarise the first 3 chapters of Assassin's Creed 3 in the reveal trailer the day that game was announced, they were absolutely right- but I still shrugged it off and the spoiler didn't ruin anything on the day. But when you see hordes of gameplay footage featuring the new playable female protagonist, and the recognisable locales of Vice City, and some of the new mechanics which haven't been officially announced yet and so I won't mention them- that's a bit harder to brush off.

The responsible party, led by a severely autistic hacker armed with an Amazon fire stick, a Hotel TV and a Mobile phone managed to make off with indisputable proof of Grand Theft Auto 6's existence which he spread liberally around the Internet. And no, before you ask- I have no idea how he manged to pull that off with the tools mentioned. (I assume he is a wizard.) Seeing as how I know so much about the lad, however, you can probably predict that the hack did not go so well for him. Whatever grand ideas he had about clout and infamy will unfortunately have to go brushed aside as the lad is served up to the legal system after being hunted down in no time flat. But not by Rockstar's elite recovery team. It seems this leak caught them entirely by surprise, law enforcement had to get involved. The spotless Rockstar doublet got itself tarnished.

Of course, the police did not need to look very far in order to find the hacker, considering he was already in their custody. The kid was already on bail and in Police Protection for the hacking of Nvidia and BT, he did this hack in his free time, which is about the worst time to perform a follow-up you could pick. Originally details on this case made it seem like the prep was on the fast track to a slap on the wrist, but considering the details, as well as the aggrieved party in question- that possibility vanished quick. As of now the boy has been sentenced to life within a Hospital Prison, after being deemed remorseless and dangerous, essentially cutting short all potential the kid had of being covertly recruited by M16 like in the movies... or, maybe providing the perfect cover to discreetly slip him out of the public eye and into M16! (Oh, I may have stumbled onto a fresh conspiracy!)

All this goes to show you that on the otherside of things, there really is nothing at all to be gained from leaking. Even the tiny scraps of attention are often vastly outweighed by the crippling punishments, if not the vast amount of anger you stir up. Remember the amount of disgrace thrown at the guy who leaked the audio of the Cyberpunk 2077 closed doors demo? Now, do you remember his name? Google barely does. And yet we come back here time and time again. So the moral of this little lesson? Don't mess with these big scary companies who care more about asserting their authority than the little people they step on to do it. If they're willing to squeeze their own fans just for liking their games a little too much, just think what they'll do to you!

Generative AI

 

As the world of technology continues to unfurl like a snake around the world, waiting for it's moment to constrict and strangle the last vestibules of life and personality out of us- the question of what AI is capable of and where it should be used is popping up in every other conversation, it feels like. On one hand we have new stories based on 'It's a Wonderful Life', being read out by the, now long dead, star of that movie over Apps- and on the other we have crappy AI generated 'Art' being spewed out by the hundreds of dozens ever other second. And trust me, I actually a follow a bunch of different art boards on a handful of different websites- they're all regularly indurate with so much AI art that the smart ones add filters to cut through all of them. And they're recognisable as AI at a mere glance, it's insanity to think anyone really expects to go wool-pulling with them.

But generative AI has become so much more prevalent across the Internet then you're probably comfortable with. Afterall, just look at your average browser, at your average search engine- how many have AI features slotted where you never asked for them? Bing has a whole AI delivery program thrown into it's algorithm that presumably is Microsoft's latest attempt to appear competitive to Google, Opera seems to partner up with a new AI integration service every other Tuesday- (the App tab is starting to get cluttered) and there's even talk of AI being employed in order to replace text-fill boxes- which would be like an assassination attempt to the casual SEO studying audience. All and all, it feels like the AI revolution has intentions to stay, whether we like it or not. And I'm veering more towards 'not' the more I stick around.

Because at the end of the day, I'm never as satisfied with a piece of AI delivered content as I am with handcrafted stuff, and I'm going to use Video Game as an example piece. Take Starfield, for example. That game has more unique locations than Skyrim and Fallout 4- and yet both Skyrim and Fallout 4 have comparable active player counts to the recently released Starfield. Why? Because the AI systems that allows Starfield to populate it's dozens of worlds fails to create interesting play experiences, whereas the smaller but handcrafted worlds of Skyrim and Fallout 4 deliver comprehensive, if limited, chances for play. Now Minecraft also has an AI that decides what populates it's world, and that game eclipses anything Bethesda has ever put out. But the difference is those algorithms have been relentless finetuned for more than a decade, they're brimming with content. Starfield's generative AI is young and stupid and barren- and boring.

Of course, that's not going to stop aspiring developers from looking over their shoulder at the hot-new AI advancement, and in fact the big man at Take2 himself was recently waxing lyrical about the possibility of Ai in the development room. In the age of speculation and guess work, this has of course led to rampant speculation about the role AI plays in the NPC interaction in Grand Theft Auto VI- none of which has had any sort of confirmation as every one of us is just grasping at phantoms and straws right now. Personally I think development of Grand Theft Auto VI long predates the AI boom, and it would be insane for Rockstar to start developing a new AI system for their NPCs from scratch mid-way through development- that's the kind of mistake that destined-for-failure projects make. So I don't think we'll be seeing AI in the game- but what if we were?

Speculation guesses that an AI powered NPC system in a Rockstar game could equip the populations of the cities to naturally react to the actions of the player. One provided example was the ability to strike up a conversation with a nobody, have them mention having a baby and then being invited back to their place to see the aforementioned baby. Now I have to be honest- that is the dumbest implementation of AI I could imagine. First off, NPCs already react to what players do in Rockstar games, they don't need advanced AI systems to freak out when you point a gun at them, or dive out the way when your car comes barrelling up the sidewalk. Secondly- why in the hell would I strike up a conversation to see someone's baby in a GTA game? This isn't the Sims! And thirdly, when in the hell would Rockstar grow insane enough to put a baby in a GTA game? That is a recipe for disaster, you know how sensitive Americans get!

More interestingly would be the potential for AI to do exactly what Bethesda wants it to do- fill in the spaces of worlds they're not equipped to fill by hand. If we were ever to have a Grand Theft Auto game wherein every building was enterable, I figure it would be with this sort of technology. Office spaces could be filled with handcrafted cubicles and supplies by an AI, mansions would have their luxury items, hovels would be covered in cheap trash. The trick will be teaching AI how to generate natural feeling world design practices, such as telling stories through intelligent and thoughtful placement. Both concepts that any AI, short of beating the Turning Test, is conceptually incapable of. Such a shame. More evidence that it just isn't really there yet- and doesn't really appear to be making much in the way of headroom either, what with the impending risk of model collapse as input data becomes more corrupted.

The cherry atop the cake? All of these AI tools are down right cancer to the climate, with GPU being practically factory pressed in order to spit out all the demands from them. The US is busy trying to squeeze Nvidia into not providing China with decent 40-series chips, meanwhile no-one appears to care about the stupid level of E-Waste these giant AI run data-farms are spouting out on the daily, right in the midst of a climate crisis- which is exactly the time when you don't need something like this to start popping off around the world. Generative AI may be the future but if things keep up at this rate, that future might just be an oxymoron lack of itself. If that makes any remote sense. So what is there really to do?

Shout, scream, run from it- all the same, AI arrives. There really is no putting this particular genie back in the bottle and it seems we're just going to have to wait until that all annoying honeymoon period ends and everyone starts to slowly realise this is either too expensive or too limited to do literally everything in their daily lives that they are too lazy to do. Until then expect more stories about lawyers who let AI do all their research and ended up conjuring completely fabricated precedent cases to quote, real content-filled websites becoming steadily overrun with AI powered content farms and people who don't know any better throwing everything into the AI train only to find out it's actually heading right for them to run them over. (Elon.) Them's just the breaks with the Artificial developements.

Promises kept

 Promises made

The other day I penned a blog talking about the rigorous betrayal of promises broken upon the altar of lies. The consequences, the lingering stink of breaking oaths. The inevitable drunken festering of staring eyes, and pointing fingers that inevitably blossom next- the poppy harvest of composting dreams. But what if I just throw that on it's head and talk about the total opposite. Promises kept. "Why, that's got to be the font of endless positivity, right?" Well, well, my hopeless optimistic friend, you might think that but I counter- what about a threat? That's a promise too, is it not? And a threat kept is a danger realised. Do we celebrate merely for the prophesized reaching fruition? Of course not, we scream and panic and cry and woe the day that Paramount ever decided it was going to be their turn to spit on the institution we call video game TV shows.

Halo is indeed going to be receiving it's season 2. As little as we all want to accept it, there's not a dang thing any one of us can do. The show created by a team of people who actively laughed at the source material and believed themselves to be such an 'heightened' form of creator that they could rewrite the very basic essence of everything the games were- they've got themselves a sequel. So now our helmet-less, rebel-rousing, sexual war crime committing, Master Chief can disgrace the name of his position once more with a narrative deeply confused about what Halo was originally about. It's space military fiction with a touch of space fantasy rubbed on top. (A lot more space fantasy as 343 took over, but I was told we had time before the story went down the Halo 4 pit.) Now they have got themselves a new showrunner, but if that will lead to any improvements I don't know. The show already put itself in a bizarre trajectory and even being teased with an actual Halo installation for once isn't enough to wash all that gunk out of mouths. But hey, they promised a season 2- and here we are.   

You know who else was a fan of making promises? CDPR. They made quiet a few in the lead up to Cyberpunk, albeit many in implication. Afterall, they didn't technically say there would be significant choice and consequence throughout the game, they just presented a level with tons of it and coined that ignoble get-out-jail-free-card "And that's just one mission!" They've made great strides since then living up to the spirit of the advertisements. Still it's quite astounding it took several years after launch for an actual crime system to be implemented into a game that had a line of adverts that literally led with "In Night City; what makes you a criminal?" Two years of post-game support, apparently. But on the otherside of all that we can actually say that the promises kept, or rather 'made up for' have gone a significant way to repairing CDPR's quite tarnished reputation and image.

Still is there any boon quite as fundamentally effective, quite as world breaking, as the decision to actually add in the missing train stations to the world? Because that very first shot we ever saw of the game running 'in engine' was of the Monorail rolling above Night City. It's exclusion kind of felt like a slap across the face. Bringing it back after all these years kind of feels like that final moment of truce being declared before the first villain of the anime arc turns around and embraces the protagonist. Enemies to Friends. You know how it goes. There's apparently some work also thrown into making the bike handling a little better and throwing in Romance-partner hang-out sessions- but who cares about that when I can ride above the denizens of brokeville and laugh at that lowly ineptitude compared to my high flying ways! Grovel for me, ants- GROVEL!

Where was I? Oh yeah: Grand Theft Auto VI. Now that game isn't out yet, so the only promises we can talk about is the promise that Rockstar has made to the industry in general by warrant of it's station. You see, for all of their painful backwards overprotectiveness regarding past developers sharing stories and hunting down harmless fan-made mods for their single player games- Rockstar are trying to maintain this magical image of theirs. This image of the 'mysterious big developer' who comes by generationally to totally rewrite whatever direction the industry is currently heading in and remind them what a true superstar is. Because as big as the games industry has become, as overwhelmingly popular as some of the best games of all time are- no one else in gaming is pulling 100 million Youtube views in 48 hours. It just doesn't happen unless you're Rockstar.

As much as it's becoming hip for Right Wing Social Media creeps to virtue signal about being unable to stand the franchise because of it's flagrant romanisation of violence against the police- (yes, that's real. Elon said he couldn't bare to shoot a cop in GTA V and now they're all conjuring up falsehoods about virtual blue-live solidarity.) the truth is that Grand Theft Auto is one of those culture phenoms that shapes culture in a variety of ways. Everything that exists about Grand Theft Auto VI seems to indicate that Rockstar have once again upheld their unwritten bargain with society itself, to ride as it's zeitgeist with every new entry. Whether or not the actual game itself is fun or a mismatched hodgepodge of openworld cliches butting heads in a desperate attempt to appear 'innovative'- well, we have couple of painful waiting years to find out. But as of so far- in marketing alone the company have done their part.

And do you wanna know who else kept their promise this year? Square Enix- in their promise to make that atrocious looking NFT 'game' they peddled during the height of that short lived trend- 'Symbiogenesis'. Remember that mess? After the crypto market fell off a cliff and every NFT market was systematically arrested for being various levels of illegally scammy- one would expect outstanding NFT projects to be quietly swept under the rug and all marketing to become gaslighted phantoms of a bygone era. But not Symbiogenesis- oh no! Not only is Square still making the project, but they've already started releasing some to the Etherium chain. And to put some icing atop the cake- to match their soulless and impressively bland art style, according to 'Decrypt.Co.' they've even been named as though entirely by an AI. We're talking NFT characters with names like 'Condiment', 'Wart', 'Egg', 'Starvation' and... 'Cockscomb'? Hmm... got brave with that last one, did they? So if you were wondering whether or not Square were interested in putting effort into this revolutionary, industry redefining concept of theirs... umm, no. They're not. Good day.

A promise made is a vow. And sometimes we don't really want to see what happens on the otherside of that proclamation. In some ways the yearning to see the fruition is itself the meat of the meal- as though purpose is defined by the struggle to achieve it. But given how that sounds like the sort of drivel that spikey haired, Welsh-dubbed, JRPG protagonists would wax-poetic over just before climbing up the last staircase to kill god- or worse, something that Kojima would say on his Tw-X account, I'm choosing to spit in the face of that. A journey unfulfilled is a waste of the single most precious commodity this life gives us- time; and those that can't reconcile the thrill of an escalator taken in place of a arduous hike might as well be philistines waving their fists at the construction of the Library of Alexandria, wishing we'd all just go back to the age of purely spoken knowledge. Or whatever the Philistines were moany about, I can't be bothered to look it up.

GTA VI Trailer 1

 It happened.

You don't need me to tell you judging from the 56 million views that the trailer was sitting at after the first 12 hours. The majority of which (42 million) came from the very first hour that this thing was out despite the fact that the trailer was due a 9 am reveal the very next day. Turns out someone leaked a 720p garbled version on Twitter which incensed Rockstar enough to drop their pristine 4k masterpiece edition early and make sure everyone saw it like that. Because Rockstar already went through the song-and-dance of people seeing the game in it's unfinished build state and remarking 'The textures look ugly!' and 'assets are being recycled'- as though they were looking at the finished thing. Long live the immortal moron who said, with his chest out, something to the avail of 'visuals are usually the first thing finished in game development'; a bigger load of barnacles on the Internet is rarely seen. But with all that behind us we can bask in the truly incredible visual treat which is Grand Theft Auto VI; the game that is coming out in over a year. Goddamn.

And of course the trailer has blown up the entire world for being one of the finest looking products ever to be made in this little medium of ours. So it should be. Rumours have it, and these are rumours from a time of great leakage which simultaneously opens up the possibility of proof whilst providing a vast potentiality for lies, that the budget for this game is between the ranges of 1-2 billion. Which would make it easily the most expensive game ever made and probably the most expensive entertainment product overall. But when you think about it, that kind of does make sense. Grand Theft Auto grosses about a billion a year when you add up everything, so if Rockstar want this to do one better it only makes sense that you'll throw a big chunk of those earnings into getting everything to it's top most. Graphics, sound, physics, animation- hey, maybe we'll even get an improvement to shooting- wouldn't that be a nice gift under the old Christmas tree?

And of course if anyone needed the confirmation we got that too; the leaks were absolutely truthful and indeed we shall be playing Lucia, the very first real female protagonist in a Grand Theft Auto game, and presumably also her boyfriend Jacob. Lucia looks stunningly realistic, and just plain stunning in a few shots, and Jacob looks kind of like a younger and less rugged Arthur Morgan. (I can't be the only one who notices that.) There's very little to go on this Bonnie and Clyde duo so far but I can't wait until the personality led trailers start dropping and the world can begin to get invested in the lives of these characters before they turn on each other in the third act and have to face off. Which, I can't say for sure that's going to happen- but this is GTA, and the basis of the story is Bonnie and Clyde- what else possibly could happen?

So far the king of the footage has been the world of Vice City (and surrounding settlements) itself and indeed, things have changed a lot since 2002. Florida Man is a main character in the circus that is virtual social media- lovingly recreated to depict the TikTok generation and the alligator wrestling populace in one mish mash of chaos. It would seem that interaction with Social Media is going to be a sticking point, at least from what we can see so far, so some speculate this might take over from the simulated TV stations and online news sites from previous games. Which makes a lot of sense. Why read about your exploits on the news when you can see a post of the store robbery you just committed filmed by a random bystander? There's so many prime opportunities for Rockstar to insert immersion points within everything we've seen already!

The biggest eye opener has been the return of believability. From the creator to the consumer. In that I mean according to the fine, and very critical, folks over at Digital Foundry- the insane beauty of these graphics are indicative of the running product and not just pre-processed exaggerations. They have a giant report on the footage detailing the existence of minuscule hair artefacts that would be easily swept away in a pre-render or if it were running on a suped-up 'trailer computer'- and there's even apparently proof it isn't running natively 4k but at 2k- much more achievable on the modern generation of consoles it's designed to run on. Rockstar have never been ones to pull the bait and switch on us, but if there was ever a time to doubt it was here- with a game that looks so stunning that even with lightly stylised characters people are calling it better looking than real life. But apparently it's true to life, as insane as that is to consider.

Such magic probably shouldn't be a surprise, however, given with that insane budget it makes sense that the team don't need to rely on other cheat-sheets to good looking graphics that the rest of the industry follows. Those costly techniques with their heavy limitations and performance hits. Rockstar are innovating and reinventing the wheel from scratch- they've put together simulator technology so complex that outside professionals can't even compare it to anything else on the market. As the biggest piece of entertainment media- Grand Theft Auto 6 is in the business of making the rest of the world sit down and show them how it's done. It's incredible because most other developers suffer those diminishing returns of being the 'industry leaders'. Ubisoft briefly told every other company exactly what style of game they would be copying for the next two years with Far Cry 3- but they slipped into the 'catch-up' role shortly afterwards and have been stuck there ever since. Rockstar have never played catch-up. They've always redefined the limits of the games industry. And it looks like once again, even just technically, they've rocked up with lessons to teach.

I only wish the game weren't so damned far away! 2025 is a lifetime from today, and I'll just bet it's going to be late 2025. If it were in the early months, they would have bragged about it! Just the other day we saw that comment thread on 'Tw-X' wherein Kojima lamented the loss of the vast wait between announcement and launch- characteristically romanticising the period of dreamlike anticipation fuelling the wonder of dreams. We stopped liking that because the expectations they built were always underwhelmed by the (Ubisoft) product. (Okay it's not just Ubisoft who disappointed. But they seemed to do it consistently. Still do, actually.) But it seems he wasn't talking to us but destiny itself, because here comes Rockstar lining up their two year wait mere days afterwards. Is this why Kojima got black-listed at Konami? For being annoyingly right about the near future? (No, I know the real reason. I just find it funny to think of him as the 'Kassandra' of the gaming world.)

So here we rot in our inequity. Forlorn and disgraced. Knowing of a brighter, stunning world of unimaginable debauchery, violence and corrupting freedom- but being unable to grasp it. Like toddlers reaching our stubby arms between the bars of our playpen, enraptured by the golden wonder of the summer streaks through the window blinds. Years it will take. Years! Honestly, I would have preferred if they'd never showed us what we could be playing, at least until it was a little bit closer. What the hell am I supposed to do now, Rockstar? Move to Miami and steal cars to replicate the experience? Because when I do exactly that, you best know I'm going to blame you when the Florida-man hunting media comes fishing for my story! You know, provided the police don't immediately open fire the second they see a mixed-race kid in a stolen car. Or near a parked car. Or at all. You know what? Maybe I won't go to Miami. 

Okay; GTA VI prediction time!

 The Florida man, cometh!

GTA VI should focus on being more progressive?

A respectful rebuttal.

Grand Theft Auto is one of those old school scapegoats for violence portrayed in media ever since the day of it's top-down conception. Afterall, it was a game about stealing cars, committing crimes and making money; clearly the devil was inside that machine just desperate to corrupt the innocent souls who fed themselves to it! The waves of moral panic always come and go in vast tides that fissile away once the world becomes more familiar with this strange new 'corrupting' topic and common sense seeps back on deck; but the panic always leaves it's mark. Evil Dead may not have been banned for being an evil video nasty that would turn you into an axe murderer; before that was revealed to be ridiculous; but that panic still led to English ratings boards to dictate who could watch movies, and that movie has a stigma atop it in certain circles. Rock Music absorbed so much moral panic in the 50's that divisions grew off of classic rock to embrace the accusations of Satanism and purposefully feed into the counter culture. So was it the same with Grand Theft Auto?

Throughout the years that special brand of criminality and chaotic carnage which Grand Theft Auto offered has withered from it's place of exclusivity. In fact, these days there are game franchises out there which would make late 90's parents faint on the spot if they knew about them. Imagine if parents found out that Mortal Kombat has only gotten bloodier and more anatomically accurate in it's years! (And imagine if they heard the fact that the team studied actual dead bodies to research one of their games. That's a fact that even I find a bit beyond the pale.) But still that target which was originally affixed around GTA specifically marks that game as the whipping boy whenever video games are the targets of the latest moral outcry. Luckily we're no longer quite the hot newness, now that Social Media and Tik Tok has the media's attention; but brows still frown our way when people remember we exist.

And as far as poster children go; Grand Theft Auto is an actual stellar example of the industry for people on the outside looking in. Perhaps a bit too clean, when we remember the absolute deluge of sub par boring wastes of games that flood our industry most of the time. (Hmm? No, I never even said the words 'Gotham Knights'; why ever would you bring that game up...) GTA is a franchise that is always on the forefront of ambition, of gameplay or world forming innovation and of sheer brilliant spectacle. It's what they're known for. Well, that and being the giant sticky magnet in the middle of the industry to which all the filth and accusations are attracted; like moths to the world's most explosive night-light. If there's any issue someone has with the general gaming market, chances are they'll have an example about it they can use GTA to demonstrate.

Sometimes that is totally warranted. The modern trend of games to try and artificially elongate themselves beyond the scope of their fun and potential to try and suck time out of players forever is demonstrated very well by GTA Online. As is the greed of modern live services and the absolute fall-off for quality of services. GTA Online has done just about everything bad that an online game can do beyond shutting itself down prematurely; to me it makes for a fine demonstration. Although they've yet to tie in lootboxes and battlepas- wait, no they actually did introduce a Battlepass recently; how could I be so silly to forget!? But then there are times when I have to wonder if the person voicing their issues has actually taken the time to play the franchise they're critiquing; or if they have generalised industry gripes that they decided to try and blindly embody in Grand Theft Auto without really slotting things together in their heads first.

I'm talking, of course, about a recent article I read entitled something to the tune of "GTA Six needs to focus more on being Progressive and less on being an Edge Lord." And that made me frown, it really did. Because out of all the plethora of adjectives and pig-nouns I'd use to the Grand Theft Auto series over it's polymorphic history; never once would I land on the label 'Edge Lord'. And that's led me to address exactly what that term even means, what it means to be 'progressive', and whether or not Grand Theft Auto really does have a path of change required ahead of it in order to improve into the future. And we can start down this train with a definition: What exactly is an 'edge lord'? Simply; an 'Edge Lord' is someone who intentionally attempts to be distasteful and offensive for the sole purpose of making themselves look rebellious and non-conformist towards the standards of moral decency; which by extension is commonly understood to be 'cool'. That, in broad strokes, is an edge lord. But is that GTA?

I've said it before, but the heart of Grand Theft Auto is satire. Mockery through exaggerations and mocking depictions that are designed to point at loud aspects of American or just modern culture and invite the player to laugh along with them. That is why so many of the characters are larger-than-life, why every single company imbued in the world is a play upon a real world company, typically with a pun. Criminal life is the lens through which the narrative is shone, but criminality is not the extent of the parody; it flys left and right to the point where everyone, even the player character and the person playing as them, are targets. But is it ever mean-spirted or punching down? That really depends on your ability to compartmentalise entertainment and differentiate between the real world and that of fiction; a divide that is becoming more and more blurry in today's age.

Having just played through the Grand Theft Auto IV trilogy (the original, I feel the need to say because Rockstar are inevitably working on remakes as we speak) I can highlight one aspect of those games that some people who think ill of GTA might take Umbridge with; the use of slurs. Pretty much every slur you can think of, save the N-word with the hard R, (I think, there might have been one in The Lost and Damned. That one was about Bikers, afterall) is uttered throughout GTA VI, and if you divorce every such swear from their context it can absolutely feel like Rockstar are trying to be provocative for the sake of humour. But context is important. Observe the people who speak like that, who they are and how the game presents them, and you'll notice a couple of things. Firstly, that the people who act that way are never the sympathetic characters we're supposed to like, (except for Yusuf Amir; but he's just terrible misguided and out-of-touch) and they're all the butt of the joke.

So why do they speak like that? Typically because it's a decently accurate depiction of the sort of nomenclature and attitude typical of that snippet of culture. Are wiseguy mobsters going to be pointedly racially insensitive? Of course they are, their entire criminal structure is based on racial superiority! Bikers being racist? Their movement is seeped in white supremacy. Homophobia? Ran rampant throughout the 2000's; that's just how people talked. In fact, TBOGT was actually praised at the time for perhaps the first depiction of a major gay character in gaming who acted like a real person who happened to be gay; and Tony is a perhaps one of the funniest characters in the entire GTA franchise; his lines are all gold. Does that sound like the attitude of edgelords who are trying to be mindlessly provocative, or satire artists who are trying to depict a world for you to experience?

I have a lot of problems with the way that Rockstar handle themselves in the real world, but when it comes to the games the team have surprisingly been more mature than many others in the space. Saints Row prided itself on edge lord behaviour (to a modest degree) so much it became a part of it's identity until the reboot sucked all the life out of the property. Watch_Dogs lacks the conviction to really address any topic of the world's it creates with anything tougher than kiddy-gloves- resulting in consistently limp narratives. Grand Theft Auto of the modern age is loud and eccentric, but also clever and occasionally touches on pathos and darker themes therein. Grand Theft Auto VI shouldn't pull back from the sardonic depictions of criminals, it should broaden their net to leave nobody out of the introspective eye.

GTA 6 Wishlist

Thinking about the future

So Grand Theft Auto Six is very real at this point in time. As much as I love to contend the facts, there's not really much I can do there after I've sat back and watched an hour of the thing in it's development state. And as the game is apparently less than two years away, with Rockstar rather empathetically affirming that the recent leaks haven't hurt the development process, (I don't believe that in the slightest; but pop-off R*) now is the time to start wondering about what this game might actually contain now that we know for certain they haven't suddenly switched gears to make this a series about an Alien invasion or something. You might think that's a bit of a strange assumption to make, but the Saints Row Reboot proved that anything can happen to our beloved franchises if we lose sight of them for more than a second.

When it comes to really asking what it is that a Grand Theft Auto game can do for you, there can be something of a natural difficulty which arises when you ask those sorts  questions; thanks to the plain fact that Grand Theft Auto is often the golden boy example of the game's industry. The shining beacon. The star on the horizon. What I'm trying to say is, that which Grand Theft Auto Six launches with will become the standard for what open world games need to be in order to not be considered 'dated' from that point onwards. (Something with the Saints Row developers clearly didn't get the memo on.) So GTA 6's many upcoming features are going to be above and beyond my scope to imagine what an open world game can be, and if it doesn't manage that it's going to fail to live up to Rockstar's own legacy. I have to believe they'd only make this game if they were confident they would surpass their last one. Rockstar doesn't spin wheels, they're not Ubisoft. Still, there are a few areas I would like for them to focus in even if I can't possibly imagine the extent to which that focus will expand.

The first is RPG elements running in the back of the game. Now this is actually something of a strange ask coming from me because I typically despise 'RPG light' elements being sprinkled over action adventure games so they can pretend they cater to the role playing crowd. (Looking at you Assassin's Creed!) But ever since San Andreas I've been unable to imagine my open world crime adventurers without the reinforcement of background stats being improved as I play and grow throughout the game. San Andreas had a few different types of stats; some that would indicate your familiarity with certain weaponry and cars and thus unlock special ways of using them (including dual wielding at mastery level) and other stats that were designed to fluctuate through the days and weeks like the players fat levels and muscle definition. Red Dead Redemption 2 improved on this greatly as it fit into their more grounded and slower paced style of open world gameplay, and even GTA V touched on these stats in more of a surface level sort of way.

What I want is for these stats to be a bit more meaningful and noticeable for the player, in a manner similar to what Cyberpunk was purposing back when they were still in the business of weaving dreams. I would love a system wherein simple repetitive animations such as reloading and drawing your weapon, improved in their efficiency and professionalism with the more you grow in that particular skill. I believe the modern CODs actually do something like that with their quick reload perks. Rather than speed up the animation, they have the player take an experienced gun handler's shortcut by manually unlocking the barrel of an emptied pistol. That type of 'detail-in-the-minute' is a lot easier to justify in a first-person locked war game than it is for a third person open world one; but we've already seen the amount of incredible detail that the Rockstar people are putting into the interiors of cars so maybe we can swing a little of that intricate love into the second most commonly partaken in GTA activity. (Do we drive more often than shoot? I don't know about that in hindsight...)

I also would like to see something of an improvement to the side activities available to the player. GTA V didn't really have a great deal of stuff in the way of races (at least not in offline) and the businesses were a total afterthought of development. It's strange because the 3D era of GTA nailed businesses so well with how they were handled in Vice City and San Andreas. (Apart from the way that they are essential to progression in Vice City; that shouldn't have been the case.) In particular my single favourite business mode in any GTA game, which was shockingly absent from GTA V, is the car dealer missions wherein you have to track down cars of a certain make and model in your own time and bring them back to a certain location for cash prizes and special unique cars. I love it because it encourages you to really learn the different districts and what sort of vehicles spawn in certain sectors of the city so that you can appreciate the amount of detail the world builders but into the socio-economic make-up of their game worlds.

Vice City had some mini-mission threads tied into their businesses too, which might have been where a few of them crossed that line from 'fun side activity' into a bit of a chore; so if GTA VI could find a balance that would be ideal. Although by that same merit I wonder if the concept of setting roots and investing in businesses makes any sense with this Bonnie and Clyde dynamic? Honestly at face value this seems more akin to the Red Dead style of narrative set-up where you're in this character driven cage, dragged across a personal story in which the enrichment of the player isn't glorified as some end state victory position, because really all you're doing is spinning wheels waiting for the inevitable karmic justice that is heading your way. I wouldn't be surprised (although I would be slightly annoyed) if GTA VI is structured somewhat similarly to Red Dead Redemption 2; wherein you get shepherded across the map as stick-ups go bad and you're forced into a corner you can't get of without some grand ultimatum. I don't know how 'businesses meta games' slot into that gameplay set-up.

And finally I would like for some of that 'evolving world' goodness that GTA Online has enjoyed for so very long to touch upon the single player game. I'm not asking for any expansive content packs because I know there's literally nothing in it for Rockstar to supply an un-monetised offline mode with new content, all I'm asking for is literal table scraps. All I want is for the many new vehicles and guns that are inevitably going to be added into the online mode to also find their way integrated in vehicle and weapon spawn lists of the base game. That's hardly asking for much of anything at all and it would really go a long way to making the base GTA experience feel fresher for longer as the streets begin to change over the years. I know why they might be discouraged from doing something like that, because they're worried people might not want to pursue their shiny new cars if they can simply just pick one up on offline, but I Reverse Uno Card that by saying those who don't know if they want a new car in the online space can test it out in the single player and be more inclined to hunt after it by grinding in the online mode! This really would be the solve all for making everyone happy!

When I refer to all of this as my 'wishlist' I'm being very literal with that. These aren't requests, but wishes I throw into the air in the hopes they come true. Not just because I'm a literal nobody on the Internet that no body would listen to, but because as we've discovered the game is already hot in development and no company with head on straight like Rockstar is going to be adding features at this point. (Who do you think they are? Cloud Imperium Games?) Still, I think logic might just lead the creative heads at Rockstar to come to similar ideas as me between their truly revolutionary sparks of genius, and I just they could wiggle in enough room in their development schedules to satisfy these smaller elements of the GTA package alongside the industry changing gimmick that's going to win them all the awards. I mean heck, this entire setting was spawned from fan service; can't we ask for a side of fan fulfilment ontop of that? 

GTA 6 Leaked... really...

This sucks...

Well screw me. I did not expect to wake up yesterday and learn that the single biggest leak in video game history had occurred just hours before I opened my eyes. I reach back and try to compare this with leaks in the past and all I can think of for comparison is Fallout 4, for which a whole number of small bit clips leaked, but this is something else entirely. Grand Theft Auto is a monolith, and a secretive one, to the point where even when we're told that GTA 6 is in active development, we all fully expected to wait several more years before getting so much as a trailer. Now we've have so much more literally shoved atop of us to the detriment of every fan out there. I say detriment because the size of this leak is huge. Apocalyptically big. I'm talking 90+ videos of in-engine footage alongside, allegedly, the source code. Whenever we get a sizeable leak there's an immediate question about whether or not this is going to effect the development process. Let me tell your right now; this leak already had destroyed GTA 6's. The hacker in question might be trying to make a deal with Rockstar to return his ill gotten gains, but the damage is done- development will be set back by months if we're increadibly lucky. If that Source Code gets sold off like he's threatening; that's going to be years.

So I guess this means we can officially kiss Grand Theft Auto Six goodbye as it's probably not coming until the tailend of this generation all because some hacker thought they'd make a quick buck off the team's hard work. Thank you for nothing, unnamed hacker man. Of course this leak is going to be devastating to the Rockstar team and all that, but if you've been around here long enough you'll likely have picked up on the fact that I'm pretty terminally apathetic. I recognise that I should feel bad for them, and compel myself to act like I do, but my real frustration is with how this is going to effect me. I genuinely imagined playing GTA 6 sometime before 2025, now that's looking like a pipe dream and I am fuming. But you want to know what makes me even more pissed; the fact that the leaks have confirmed this game is everything I hoped it wouldn't be.

Yo; spoilers ahead: dip from this entire blog if you don't want to know anything about Grand Theft Auto 6. So first off I, insanely, need to preface this by saying I'm not looking at the quality of the graphics and bemoaning their ruggedness, because this is clearly early test footage. I was actually fairly surprised about how many decent looking textures the game had before remembering that a lot of them were recycled placeholders from GTA V and that Rockstar is a big enough company where they can be texturing and system building simultaneously. (Hence why the protagonists have faces.) I shouldn't need to say that, but apparently there's some utter geniuses there out on the Internet who are upset about the graphical fidelity of a snippet of leaked test footage. Which is just... I don't even know if professional help can stitch your brain back together if you're that far gone...

So what are my issues? Namely that those leaks from a few months back (the 'rumours' I discussed) were all entirely accurate. And yes, that does mean that some of my disgruntlement is informed by the fact that I rather vehemently denounced and 'debunked' those rumours with what I assumed to be very sound logic at the time. I may have even thrown out a "I'll eat my shoes!" which is going to be quite a feat because my boots are steel-capped. (Yet still surprisingly comfy.) But the other half of my ire comes from the fact I didn't want any of these leaks to be true, because they pointed to probably the most boring sounding direction a new Grand Theft Auto could possibly have gone in! Actually, no the most boring direction would have been if this was set in Liberty City again. At least they didn't do that. That might have killed me off.

Miami. It's set in bloody Miami. Whereas the original Vice City worked so well because Miami was the cocaine capital of America during that 80's time period, I struggle to see what purpose that city's return serves aside from fan service; for those fans who don't quite understand the significance of a Grand Theft Auto setting. Every game is set exactly where it needs to be to exemplify the many satirical stances that game intends to take on the social climate of time period they're riffing. The Gangster-rap dominance of the 1990's bought GTA to their own version of LA, San Andreas, the financial crisis fed on by Wall Street bought GTA back to Liberty City for GTA IV, and the silicon-dream Hollywood glitz of LA bought GTA to Los Santos for GTA V. What are they exploring this time? The bizarre reputation of the deep south alongside the increasingly volatile politicisation of everything in America? Fine targets, if they are, but why do they need to be Miami specific? Honestly; I just wanted to see somewhere wholly new from GTA.

Oh, and the stick-up Bonnie and Clyde couple? They're canon too. Somehow, after two straight games focused on protagonists who specialise in stealing stuff, Rockstar decided that third time is the charm with this new game. Haven't we tired this theme out already? To be fair, these seem to be the single lowest stakes protagonists out of the Van Der Linde Gang and the Townley Terrors (That's what I'm calling the GTA V crew; I think it's got a ring to it.) So we are evolving; only backwards. Oh and the couple protags? Been there, done that. I wonder if the game is going to pit the two of them against each other so that they have to fight to the death at the end? (A Way Out/Splinter Cell: Conviction Co-oP) Or maybe they'll just be emotionally split due to a moral clash that has the two of them at odds until they're forced to come together in order to worm their way out from under the boot of some overarching villain. (Literally the Michael/Trevor dynamic from GTA V!) All of these concepts just seemed to pedestrian, and I expected so much more out of Rockstar. Maybe I expected too much, that's fair. But damn if this set-up fails to get me excited on paper; the marketing team are going to have to put together one blinder of a trailer to turn me around. (If we ever get a trailer after those leaks.)

Rockstar have reacted in typical fashion to bring down the leaks, but either by bad providence or design, the leak itself happened on a Sunday when nobody was working, meaning the leaks had an entire day to spread around the Internet. At this point people are going to be picking through and analysing these leaks no matter what Rockstar want to do about it from a legal standpoint unless they intend to access Arsenal Gear to rewrite the internet's flow of data; they're screwed. And I understand how pissed this is all probably making them. No one wants to show off their unfinished work. Although on the otherhand, personally I find it really interesting to see a huge production mega game like this in such an early stage of production and testing just because we can get a glimpse of the process which these types of big budget games go through. Whenever you get a development documentary you always see the games when they're looking polished with already finished textures plastered over late-test animations, but this is raw; so much so that there's loads of placeholder assets such as Trevor Phillip voice lines over some NPCs (Upon further inspection; I think that's actually the VO of the new male protagonist. He sounds a lot like Trevor when he gets angry).  It's a glimpse into the design process we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Still, I would have preferred to actually see the game itself pop up in front of me so I can play the damn thing, but this is going to fly in the face of that and screw it up for everyone; so thanks very much mister hacker man. or hacker boy, if the alleged facts about this case hold up any merits. The worst part about this whole thing? We didn't even learn anything that revolutionary about the game. I mean, we know the main character's names now, and where the game is going to be set, but we don't know what Rockstar is going to bring to the table to revolutionise this entry, where the story is going to go, or how this is going to push forward the open world genre. We have a few stolen clips of video that are nowhere near worth the extra 12 months they're going to put onto development, so all-in-all; what a crappy gift to wake up to. It must be Christmas in Britain all over again.

GTA Metaverse!

Crimes on the blockchain 

Grand Theft Auto is the biggest franchise in gaming. Probably. I'm willing to bet it's at least up there, although depending on how you choose to independently measure scale and size I'll willing to bet you could land on just about any game being the biggest. GTA has the biggest recognition value by market trends, in that whatever strives it makes will quickly become industry standard. COD probably makes the most sales due to how often it comes out. Earth 2 has the most loyal numbskulls who desperately sink their life savings in the hopes that Earth 2 is going to be a game that anyone even knows about when it drops. So I'm happy suggesting that Rockstar have quite some pull in whatever it is they want to do with the direction of their game and the grounds they want to cross. Heck, you could say that GTA: Online has single handed changed the trajectory of the Ubisoft games as all of them have attempted to copy what that game did since 'Black Flag'. (To hardly comparable success)

As such it makes sense that if you're a scrappy up and comer with the 'new way of doing things' that you want to become the standard across the industry, it makes total sense that you'd be ecstatic that Rockstar's seminal crime franchise was supporting it too. Ecstatic enough to distend and distort the news in front of you into reading whatever fashion best supports the ideals that you support. I mean we've all been there haven't we? When the words in front of us say one thing to us and something else to the person next to us? It's common human nature to try and bring everything into line with our world view, which is the reason why I don't necessarily blame the crypto bros for reading the recent GTA 6 supposed leaks (Which I do not take for gospel, mind; I still find their timing suspect) regarding the rewards of some missions and thinking they've finally found their golden boy in GTA.

But first, what is it that Cryptobros have to do with gaming? Well for some reason, presumably because of the size of gaming as an entertainment model, dozens of crypto products get their start nowadays by promising to revolutionise gaming by introducing blockchain integration into their new game which is going to revolutionise the world. Whether that's through some sort of vapid NFT marketplace, or Play-to-Earn economy or just another stupid bloody 'landsale'. It's the corruption of the art of gaming into some sort of vaguely disguised investment model where the little people stumble over themselves believing there's some sort of path to financial success and the early adopters and creators make the big bucks off their sweat and tears. It's cynical and largely antithetical to a lot of the current drives of gaming, not least in the way it ties real-world economics into the fake world of games. But where does GTA 6 fit into all of this?

Well one of the leaks that followed the recent 'blowout', aside from the female protagonist and the Bonny and Clyde style antics, was a bit about the economy of the game. Somehow, without being able to detail the narrative or any actual missions, our leaker was able to provide details on the reward of some missions, (one of the reasons I'm calling all of these leaks suspect) namely that some would reward the character with Cryptocurrency. Of course, that set off a spark in the eyes of the Moonbros reading such an article, and I can only assume they immediately clicked off the covering article they were reading the second they finished reading those words, as that's the only way they could miss the qualifying statement that most articles have directly following that: how it's referring to an 'in-game' cryptocurrency, not a real world one.

Which makes sense, doesn't it? Grand Theft Auto has always based itself in a facsimile of the real world that emulates the fads and trends of the day to turn them into jokes because that's always been the beating heart of the GTA franchise; one of a big joke. The amount of articles I've seen recently of people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about claiming 'GTA needs to grow up' boggles the mind. I figure they must have just played Red Dead, fallen for the epic tale of a family of robbers falling apart and gone "Huh, you know if GTA didn't have all those jokes then it would be just as emotional as this" No it wouldn't. Because that isn't GTA's mission statement. It's a funhouse mirror placed up to whatever generation they're aiming at in order to make fun of hyper inflated versions of today's issues; and I wouldn't be surprised if this whole 'GTA needs to grow up' diatribe doesn't end up in the spotlights.

Crypto currency and their many financial woes is big news for the much struggling investors desperate for it to take off so that their financial investments can mean something. That's a joke that's already writing itself, of course Rockstar are going to jump on that bandwagon to get their own shots in! GTA V had the heavily underutilised Stock Market feature which allowed you to day trade, I can imagine Crypto will function within the game much the same as that, only probably with at least one mission where your exchange gets hacked and you lose a big chunk of the crypto you had saved up, were I to speculate. Those believing that GTA 6 was going to become a metaverse haven for them and theirs were straight dreaming, there's no money for Rockstar in alienating most of their fans with a scheme that most of them don't understand and those that do are actively hostile towards. Which is the problem with WEB3 in a nutshell; they're always trying to land the plane before the airport has started construction, and end up crashing into a fiery mess because of it.

However that doesn't mean that this representation isn't going to good for the Crypto space, because it absolutely will be. (providing the leaks are true, which I don't believe that they are but this concept seems plausible enough to probably end up in the next GTA anyway.) Even if Rockstar throws in Cryptocurrencies literally just to make fun of them and what they represent, their very inclusion in a video game of that magnitude will invariably do wonders to legitimise crypto and introduce it to some people who don't care enough to research on their own. Reputation might take a hit, but those are foundations to build upon. Do I find that encouraging? Not particularly; I can't see a single benefit from Crypto in the modern age and when the platform becomes bigger I can only see it being defanged into nothing more than a pumped up version of normal finance; similar to how Streaming services are steadily becoming traditional TV.

So no, sorry to disappoint all the Cryptoheads out there, GTA 6 won't be the amazing posterboy of Metaverse madness that all of you want it so desperately to be. You'll just have to clash your brains together to make your own terrible crypto game with pay-to-win garbage leaking out of the rafters and a nonsensical gameplay loop that sounds mindnumbingly boring to anyone who isn't profiteering directly off of it. In fact, I'd argue that Moonbros should probably just hit up Peter Molyneux and ask him to make their DeFi game; he tends to be pretty experienced in putting together scams for his audience. (Ever since he got that 'lifetime acheivements' reward and suffered a midlife crisis, it's just been downhill ever since.) Oh wait, he's already on his own NFT grift. Better luck next time.

The GTA 6 Rumours

 The incorruptible

There no such thing as a secret in today's world, it would seem. Either because of the hot-hands of ISPs, the blabbing lips of store providers, or the loose tongues of actual developers; every single snippet of information around this Internet-focused world is privy to the eyes of someone they weren't mean for. And that is why there will perhaps never be a coming game release that will be a total surprise to the in-tuned fan out there, because for some reason every team has that one intern who's just begging for that 'rush' feeling when they break their NDA and betray the trust of their temporary supervisors and hardworking colleagues. Am I happy about such a state of the industry for giving me more to talk about? No, not in the slightest. I really wish that teams themselves were more communicative with the audience about where they were at and the things they were doing instead. But alas, that seems to be an impossibility and thus the stolen snippets of misheard rumours is all we have to sustain ourselves.

Such is the case with Grand Theft Auto Six, a game which was recently announced to absolutely be in development and has since elicited very strong opinions by just about everyone with a keyboard. "The five lessons that GTA 6 must learn from GTA 5, and 5 more it should forget about!", "Rockstar needs to bring out a different type of game before making GTA 6", "If Rockstar doesn't make it's entire cast of characters into Overwatch-style toons, it will fail!" and so on and so forth. I can be opinionated, no doubt; but I'd never presume to definitively cast my casual opining as the do-or-die bible upon a development studio who have regularly established themselves as the most definitive in the world. And to address specifically the one I saw most recently; Rockstar have tried to make other non free-roam games before, and people just laugh in their face for it. To this day I think Max Payne 3 was a brilliant game with some of the best multiplayer modes ever devised, but I'm the minority voice.

Though with a game as massive as Grand Theft Auto it's hard to take any leak as anything more than a cry for attention, many people seem to have taking it as unshakeable fact that GTA 6 will feature a female protagonist so let's start there. Yes, perhaps in direct response to many of the disparaging reviews that GTA 5 received for it's portrayal of female characters, six might just be sticking at least one front and centre. Apparently she will be one of a pair that travel around in a Bonnie & Clyde style relationship, and already I'm doubting these rumour due to how predictable they make the story. First of all; robbing themed narrative? Haven't we literally just done that? It's exactly what GTA V was about, the most major arcs of GTA Online focused, and the framing device for the gang drama of Red Dead Redemption 2; are Rockstar really going to focus on that for a fourth time? Secondly, Bonnie & Clyde crime duo? Hasn't 'It Takes Two' beaten Rockstar to the punch there? 'Oh, I wonder if the final mission is going to pit the partners against each other?'.

Long story short, I think that particular rumour is bunk; but the idea of a female protagonist does intrigue me. For no other reason than I expected it of Red Dead Redemption 2 and was a little bit let down. If Rockstar are making such a big change to their model based on responses by critics, I wonder if they'll also be willing to add individual reactivity depending on the character being played as. Such as maybe making it a tendency for police to respond less aggressively for non-violent crimes committed by the female protagonist, letting players get away with being a bit more of a public nuisance until they start getting out the guns. At the very least I expect that such a direction would not forget the inherently sardonic themes of the GTA franchise, which is part of the reason why an emotionally charged narrative beat is always a secondary objective next to opportunities for satire. (Which is another reason why I think the 'Bonnie & Clyde' idea works better for another Red Dead than a GTA.)

Another big rumour, which due to it's nature can slot right alongside that female heroine idea, regards not what the game is set to hold, but rather that which it once did during the planning stages. Apparently we were once looking at a project designed to be bigger and better than GTA V in every way shape and form, boasting 3 explorable cities and 4 protagonists. That was until Rockstar realised how much development time that would take away from GTA Online and decided it was better to feed that talentless cash cow than try to expand their limits. A lot of outlets are covering this as a quality versus quantity dynamic but I don't really know if there's enough information in this leak to be able to land on that issue. The implication is that Rockstar literally just got their teams together and went "Lets do the Death Star but bigger", but I don't think we've ever really seen Rockstar to go the Ubisoft/Force Awakens route when it comes to their games before, so I have to question either the validity of this leak or the prominence of this 'original idea'. (What was it; a footnote during the initial planning sessions?)

As the game currently exists, in the eyes of these rumours, there is a much paired back vision of the world that will have less than 4 protagonists and 3 cities. Which sounds all well and good and people can clap themselves on the back in the knowledge that Rockstar are going to make a good game rather than a big one because 'big project = bad'. If I were some sort of conspiracy theorist, however, I may offer the fact that this 'leak' actually revealed nothing at all and just said the game was going to be a ludicrously big idea and now is going to be a slightly smaller idea, essentially propagating a rumour that can persist on the strength of a disprovable negative. I'm not saying that this and other rumours around GTA 6 are a bunch of crock, but I will note the uptick of suppositions as to the development of GTA 6 have only really started piling up in the time since the development was officially announced rather than before when only the crackpots were waving their hands talking about it. Certainly makes for thought food.

In fact, this just in; my exclusive sources tell me that GTA 6 is going to be an MMO hybrid game with a cops-and-robbers inspiration to essentially make it a spiritual successor to APB, which in itself was designed as a GTA spiritual successor. Except, oh no; I just heard that they scrapped that idea for being crap and now are committing to something less crap. My source couldn't tell me what that new plan was, despite being very specific on the, now-defunct, previous details. You see my issue here? Right now the only true fact we can all say without a shadow of a doubt is that GTA 6 will facilitate the sequel to GTA Online. And, regrettably, that is likely going to see the only post-game support that GTA 6 ever receives in it's life cycle. Thank you, live-service culture, for making the single player into nothing more than chopped meat in the eyes of Rockstar.

Now obviously the rumours are not going to stop chugging anytime soon; there's significant clout to be made playing Nostradamus and guessing as to what way the Rockstar stars will align, but I urge perhaps not paying the utmost attention to it. For one point the development team at Rockstar will be more than happy to show off their work when it's ready to be seen, and jumping the gun isn't going to unveil any unspoken truth of the universe; but just let us into the unfinished works of a not-done game. The Grand Theft Auto Six I want is the game which is going to be the finished product Rockstar has consistently delivered to their impeccable standards. Standards that tend not to last the second the thing is shunted out of the womb, but for those few months until they abandon us, Rockstar are the greatest hosts a single player game lover could ask for.

GTA 6?

 I don't buy it

Hark do mine ears lie? Surely they must because how else could we be subjected to that most impossible of news ringing again soundly from the rafters? With industry insiders now being conjured from out of the woodworks, confirming these most unbelievable of words. Words that claim Rockstar are actively in development of Grand Theft Auto 6 and are approaching basic development milestones already. People seem to be decently happy with a 2025 estimation, which seems insane given that I was fully expecting the next GTA to come out... well never. It has been close to nine years since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V, it'll be twelve once 6 comes, if these estimations pan out according to plan. All logic should dictate that we're actually late for our sequel but... well this is Rockstar and this is GTA. Going the next generation without any new release seemed much more than plausible.

So what is so crazy, what do I find so hard to wrap my head around? It's the risk, honestly; the risk that Rockstar are opening themselves up to might be par the course for any enterprising company worth it's salt but most of those risky, deal-cutting, small times aren't seeing the kind of numbers that Rockstar do. Rockstar rake in near to a billion in yearly annual profit, despite not even being a company that does yearly releases, all because of the live service model that GTA Online adopted which Rockstar seized like a cow and milked it bone dry. To even considering making a sequel to GTA V, even acknowledging that this sequel will have GTA Online 2 attached, is introducing risk that I'd imagine most skittish investors to find totally unacceptable. Because here's the thing, GTA Online is growing in profits, by maintaining the status quo Rockstar could keep the gravy train rolling in indefinitely and simply shut away the outside world, just like Facebook did until it lost it's active users for the first time in the platform's history recently. (Guess the Herman Cain Award is really paying in dividends, huh.)

But a GTA 6? That threatens all that. Picture this, GTA 6 comes out with a brand new Online mode and it sucks. Momentum is kicked back to basics, Rockstar have to build up it's online audience and win back trust in the game over a process that could take years in order to stabilise profits near what they would have been if they had simply done nothing. Or what if it's good, but Rockstar has a hard time migrating the audience from one game to the other (The players having spent literal years with their legacy toons and items from GTA V) so that revenue potentials are halved. Sure they'll still make some money out of GTA Online Mk1, but without active development and content being put into that old game those returns are going to dry up and wham, Rockstar are making a fraction of what they do today. There's so many ways this could tip one milligram in the wrong direction and scuff up a good thing for Rockstar investors everywhere; it's so delicate I'm shocked the investors aren't actively picketing the development studios as we speak to halt their potential downturn. (If I were in their shoes, I'd certainly consider it.)

Now realistically, Rockstar had to move on eventually. GTA V may have been inexplicably healthy after all of these years but nothing lasts forever and you want to always be palming the next triumph in your pocket, but honestly I expected Rockstar to wait until Online was actually receiving diminishing returns before making this move. I suppose in their eyes they're looking at this as an opportunity to go off on a high note and smoothly transition from this plateau to a whole new mountain range so that the ascension can continue unabated. Also there is something inherently British about no wanting to drag things out past their prime. (Pretending they haven't done that with GTA V proper for a while now.) For the sake of reputation and dignity it's best to take the old lame dog out back and put it out of it's misery. I just don't understand how Rockstar came to that conclusion. But let's assume that we do believe the story that GTA 6 is in active development...

Where is it going to be set? The answer seems obvious; GTA IV was set in Liberty City for the hundredth time, 5 bought us to San Andreas so it seems almost natural that VI would bring us around to Vice City again, but somehow I'm not sure. You see Rockstar never pick a setting just because it'll be cool, they pick places with something modern and relevant to mock and a lot of opportunity for satirical subtext. In 2013 LA made for a perfect parody point because of the place that Hollywood was in for the time and there's probably a whole other game's worth of commentary content still there from all the years since, and Miami was iconic during the 80's (for being the cocaine capital among other things) which is why it seemed like such a no-brainer for the original Vice City to be set during that time. But modern day Miami? What has that been known for recently? Which isn't to say that I don't think Vice City is in the running, but I don't think it will be bought to life in the way that people expect.

When fans think of a return to Vice City they're reminiscing all of the gaudy style, the hit-pink neon lights cut with baby-blue accents, All-day night clubs with classic 80's jams and that constant aura of a party atmosphere that has far outstayed it's welcome. But that isn't really Miami anymore, at least not from the outside perspective. (Actually, Miami has been embracing that side of themselves in recent tourism marketing, but I'm talking literally the past couple of years. It's not deeply ingrained in their culture or anything.) But do you know what is more in the vein of today, what is more relevant to the now and makes easy ground for mockery? The absurdity of the wider state of Florida. Due to the laws around publishing legal proceedings being lax, Florida has fostered a reputation in the infomation age of being home to all the insanity of America. (Or at least a lightning rod for it.) Crocodile sightings, bath salt attacks, crazy drunken benders ending in destruction; all of these examples and so much more plaster the reputation of Florida and paints the impression that the entire state is the wasted little brother of America proper. And just tell me that doesn't make prime Rockstar fodder!

A modern Vice City would need focus on the surrounding environment too, such as adapting the marshes of the Everglades or depicting the rampant nightmare-scape of Florida's The Villages old-folks homes. Amplifying and profiting off the untamed bizarreness of a State so prolific that the term 'Florida man' is now used as short-hand for 'nutcase'. There would be opportunity for exercising some of that recent wilderness design expertise the world design team has left over from Red Dead, and maybe they'll even go the extra mile of including another city too, to highlight diversity in the types of city maps they can produce. (I don't know what other city they'd make though.) Of course, the place where they set the game is mostly irrelevant, Rockstar are going to want to impress by pushing forward the genre (something they mentioned in the announcement post) and who knows what form that's going to take- we might as well be making bets on the amount of average rainfall over the summer in Warsaw; it's all guesswork.

Whatever the case may be, and provided we take everything we've heard at total face value, then I suppose it's time to rejoice: Grand Theft Auto 6 will be a reality! What with how everything has moved in the industry, and how certain developers who shall not be named tried and failed to supplant Rockstar's hold on this genre, I cannot wait to have my general gaming expectations totally overshadowed and rewritten before my very eyes. Last time Rockstar revealed their game with that initial GTA V trailer I remember having something of a panic attack which required me to run around the block in order to calm down, so I'm hoping for a more tamer reaction this time now that I'm... nearly a decade older... Wow, I am going to dead before GTA X. Wild.