Rockstar dropped twenty-six minutes of Grand Theft Auto VI on Netflix Thursday, then dumped the same reel onto YouTube for everyone who refused to log into a streaming service to watch a video game.
Gaming is incredibly weird in how segmented it is, with entire ecosystems of tens of millions of gamers, separated from others, that do not cross-pollinate at all.
I have been gaming for 40+ years with hundreds of games owned and thousands upon thousands of hours played.
I played GTA III for a few hours 25+ years ago. It was... OK I guess? The last Madden I played was on a friend's Sega Genesis. I've never touched FIFA, Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Destiny, Overwatch, Call of Duty, Roblox, God of War, DOTA, Counter Strike, Pokemon, Dark Souls of any variety/number, and many, many other HUGE properties.
My point is this: in the vast majority of cases, you either play these types of games or you don't. Most people who play these games ONLY play these games. I once worked with a guy who' only bought and played two games a year: Madden and Call of Duty. I had a friend of a friend who spent actual years of his life on World of Warcraft.
I don't understand these people. Chances are, if you're reading this, you don't understand these people either. I don't understand how GTA VI has already made billions any more than I understand how the Avatar movies made billions too.
You aren't going to stop these people buying GTA VI no matter how many outrage videos you watch or "Rockstar is doomed" articles you read. By the same token, they're not going to stop me playing Castlevania, Wasteland, X-COM, Witcher, Baldur's Gate, New Vegas, Octopath Traveller, Fire Emblem, and Metroid Prime.
For once, I'm saying, "let the normies win."
Fighting this is like standing on the shore and demanding the tide to stop rolling in.
EDIT: I don't mean to crap on things like Dark Souls, or whatever someone's favorite thing is, just pointing out how fractured the gaming archipelago can be. I tend to come off a little strong.
I dunno, it feels like many entertainment mediums are like this. Lots won't watch horror movies, others hate drama. Some people read Fellowship of the Rings, others read the biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Some people listen to Queen, others listen to Bach.
Most tend to like a smattering of this and that, but everyone has a preference they'd stick to given the choice.
Who's reading Nora Roberts books, watching the Avatar Movies, listening to Taylor Swift, voting on American Idol, driving PT Cruisers, eating hamburgers on glazed donuts, gas station sushi, labubu dolls, Kevin Hart, reality TV, Baywatch, 72 childhood vaccinations, Hummel figures, the "comedian" Gallagher, and the 'artists" who takes creepy baby pictures, paint flowers-as-vaginas, and dress up weiner dogs in business suits and leisure wear.
WHO'S SUPPORTING THIS CRAP?
Segmentation is one thing, but these major cultural touchstones feel less like the world as I understand it, and more like artifacts from another reality, a reality where there are actually people who think Ghostbusters 2016 was funny.
I'm trying man, I really am, but I feel like the narrator in an HP Lovecraft story where the entire world is one great, alien unknown of cosmic dread and insanity.
The matter of beauty(best case)/lewdness(worse case) was always going to morph into a trojan horsegirl with big DDs. It's even easier to see that now, and a lot of the people are so desperate or such big shills that they'll all things that aren't even that sexy, let alone beautiful as the hotness.
There's gonna be a lot more dead cat bouncing and skinsuiting.
Still gotta wonder how the tail, not the woman kind, will be on this GTA.
It's unclear too what the numbers of people who have "culture war fatigue" actually are.
Regardless of how this plays out, lotta youtubers and so on are gonna get the burger money out of this mess.
GTA5 makes over half-a-billion a year a decade after release, mostly thanks to microtransactions for GTA Online. Unless they've gone total on-rails cinematic story here with no online, we'll see the same here.
Unless you want to call GTA Online its own game, but it was entangled with GTA5 so I suspect they'll need to migrate something somewhere or launch a new service. Not that it wouldn't make its money back.
We'll have to see if, and how much, GTA6 cannibalizes the audience for GTA 5's and GTA Online.
What grinds my gears more than the onscreen widgets and doo-dads is when the game REFUSES to shut up about what you SHOULD be doing.
"OK, Stephanie, yeah I heard you. Can you leave me alone for two minutes to just look at and appreciate the background some people spent months coding?"
Well, you swore in the article. That makes this a red-letter day!
Anyway, I don't think this chick is hot. Stellar Blade chick is hot. Bayonetta is hot. This one's a stereotypical Latina mid with a big butt. Some guys, apparently a lot, like that sort of detail. Some others, perhaps so used to seeing the unattractive females coming from other western devs see this and swoon.
Farming for attention is as old as the internet, especially now that you can get PAID for that attention, and those clicks. Most of these folks are so deep into the racket or took the ticket and will rarely go contrary to what their audience wants. They've become as fake as Joel Osteen, who presumably started sincere in his preaching, but was too tempted by fame and fortune to stay true.
As for GTA6, I don't buy open world games that put you into some on-rails Story Mode. The player is supposed to build the story around the template of the character they either created or are playing.
How many people do you know who talk about how awesome it was to go from the start to the end of Skyrim without going to a single point of interest? How interesting are their stories about the game?
In fact, how many people talk about how good Trevor's story arc was in GTA5? In my circles there was a lot of "Trevor was cray-cray and did this one thing... then there was this chase and I jumped out of the moving car then beat up a cop and took his car (and... and... and...) before I went to bed I was able to complete this achievement using one crazy trick!"
And games are "dumbing down" because the audience demands it. Kids don't have the attention span and adults have better things to do than die... load... repeat in games that are supposed to be cinematic. They WANT the story, but could you make it a tad interactive please? I don't condemn the crowd, it feels too much like "Get of my yard!" territory.
The innovative stuff comes from small A and AA studios (real indies, not talking MixTape or even Expedition 33 "indie" who is got choked with money relative to the indie industry as a whole thanks to investors, publishers, and government grants). That's where the sorting happens.
Unfortunately, those indie and small studios have a tendency to want more, and take the ticket (see Demiurge, Obsidian, and inXile for example) because the owners want to cash out or are tired of the business grind and just want to make games. And the snake eats its own tail...
Gaming is incredibly weird in how segmented it is, with entire ecosystems of tens of millions of gamers, separated from others, that do not cross-pollinate at all.
I have been gaming for 40+ years with hundreds of games owned and thousands upon thousands of hours played.
I played GTA III for a few hours 25+ years ago. It was... OK I guess? The last Madden I played was on a friend's Sega Genesis. I've never touched FIFA, Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Destiny, Overwatch, Call of Duty, Roblox, God of War, DOTA, Counter Strike, Pokemon, Dark Souls of any variety/number, and many, many other HUGE properties.
My point is this: in the vast majority of cases, you either play these types of games or you don't. Most people who play these games ONLY play these games. I once worked with a guy who' only bought and played two games a year: Madden and Call of Duty. I had a friend of a friend who spent actual years of his life on World of Warcraft.
I don't understand these people. Chances are, if you're reading this, you don't understand these people either. I don't understand how GTA VI has already made billions any more than I understand how the Avatar movies made billions too.
You aren't going to stop these people buying GTA VI no matter how many outrage videos you watch or "Rockstar is doomed" articles you read. By the same token, they're not going to stop me playing Castlevania, Wasteland, X-COM, Witcher, Baldur's Gate, New Vegas, Octopath Traveller, Fire Emblem, and Metroid Prime.
For once, I'm saying, "let the normies win."
Fighting this is like standing on the shore and demanding the tide to stop rolling in.
EDIT: I don't mean to crap on things like Dark Souls, or whatever someone's favorite thing is, just pointing out how fractured the gaming archipelago can be. I tend to come off a little strong.
I dunno, it feels like many entertainment mediums are like this. Lots won't watch horror movies, others hate drama. Some people read Fellowship of the Rings, others read the biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Some people listen to Queen, others listen to Bach.
Most tend to like a smattering of this and that, but everyone has a preference they'd stick to given the choice.
Different strokes for different folks.
Isn't that also weird though?
Who's reading Nora Roberts books, watching the Avatar Movies, listening to Taylor Swift, voting on American Idol, driving PT Cruisers, eating hamburgers on glazed donuts, gas station sushi, labubu dolls, Kevin Hart, reality TV, Baywatch, 72 childhood vaccinations, Hummel figures, the "comedian" Gallagher, and the 'artists" who takes creepy baby pictures, paint flowers-as-vaginas, and dress up weiner dogs in business suits and leisure wear.
WHO'S SUPPORTING THIS CRAP?
Segmentation is one thing, but these major cultural touchstones feel less like the world as I understand it, and more like artifacts from another reality, a reality where there are actually people who think Ghostbusters 2016 was funny.
I'm trying man, I really am, but I feel like the narrator in an HP Lovecraft story where the entire world is one great, alien unknown of cosmic dread and insanity.
I think I'm going to go lie down.
The matter of beauty(best case)/lewdness(worse case) was always going to morph into a trojan horsegirl with big DDs. It's even easier to see that now, and a lot of the people are so desperate or such big shills that they'll all things that aren't even that sexy, let alone beautiful as the hotness.
There's gonna be a lot more dead cat bouncing and skinsuiting.
Still gotta wonder how the tail, not the woman kind, will be on this GTA.
It's unclear too what the numbers of people who have "culture war fatigue" actually are.
Regardless of how this plays out, lotta youtubers and so on are gonna get the burger money out of this mess.
GTA5 makes over half-a-billion a year a decade after release, mostly thanks to microtransactions for GTA Online. Unless they've gone total on-rails cinematic story here with no online, we'll see the same here.
Unless you want to call GTA Online its own game, but it was entangled with GTA5 so I suspect they'll need to migrate something somewhere or launch a new service. Not that it wouldn't make its money back.
We'll have to see if, and how much, GTA6 cannibalizes the audience for GTA 5's and GTA Online.
Did they miss the obvious girl boss moments where Lucia is going up against three guys and even knocked out a man twice her size?
I would hope all prompts can be muted or shut off.
What grinds my gears more than the onscreen widgets and doo-dads is when the game REFUSES to shut up about what you SHOULD be doing.
"OK, Stephanie, yeah I heard you. Can you leave me alone for two minutes to just look at and appreciate the background some people spent months coding?"
You're describing cucksumers not gamers
Gross Trans Anus 6 will sell extremely well. People like garbage.
Trans anas is diabolical. Imagine wanting to slide your wood into that.
I'd rather not!! 🤣
Well, you swore in the article. That makes this a red-letter day!
Anyway, I don't think this chick is hot. Stellar Blade chick is hot. Bayonetta is hot. This one's a stereotypical Latina mid with a big butt. Some guys, apparently a lot, like that sort of detail. Some others, perhaps so used to seeing the unattractive females coming from other western devs see this and swoon.
Farming for attention is as old as the internet, especially now that you can get PAID for that attention, and those clicks. Most of these folks are so deep into the racket or took the ticket and will rarely go contrary to what their audience wants. They've become as fake as Joel Osteen, who presumably started sincere in his preaching, but was too tempted by fame and fortune to stay true.
As for GTA6, I don't buy open world games that put you into some on-rails Story Mode. The player is supposed to build the story around the template of the character they either created or are playing.
How many people do you know who talk about how awesome it was to go from the start to the end of Skyrim without going to a single point of interest? How interesting are their stories about the game?
In fact, how many people talk about how good Trevor's story arc was in GTA5? In my circles there was a lot of "Trevor was cray-cray and did this one thing... then there was this chase and I jumped out of the moving car then beat up a cop and took his car (and... and... and...) before I went to bed I was able to complete this achievement using one crazy trick!"
And games are "dumbing down" because the audience demands it. Kids don't have the attention span and adults have better things to do than die... load... repeat in games that are supposed to be cinematic. They WANT the story, but could you make it a tad interactive please? I don't condemn the crowd, it feels too much like "Get of my yard!" territory.
The innovative stuff comes from small A and AA studios (real indies, not talking MixTape or even Expedition 33 "indie" who is got choked with money relative to the indie industry as a whole thanks to investors, publishers, and government grants). That's where the sorting happens.
Unfortunately, those indie and small studios have a tendency to want more, and take the ticket (see Demiurge, Obsidian, and inXile for example) because the owners want to cash out or are tired of the business grind and just want to make games. And the snake eats its own tail...
I agree, I don't find that character at all attractive.
Wait, wait, wait...
They're claiming that square-faced ugly bull-dyke (Lucia) is attractive?
Whoa... how deep is that canyon into which the bar has fallen?
Sad commentary on "influencers" caving to "ugly is the new norm."
Why are you defending this? Also shouldn’t the article be about how those two guys onto care about perversion?