Grand Theft Auto 6 probably won’t be that important

“Is that an intentionally provocative headline?” you ask? Er, I guess. What’s more provocative to me personally, and the reason I wanted to write this, is the ugly idea that some games are more universally important than others. That some values about what makes a game good or bad are more correct than others. That if you like certain games, you are in some way a better person than if you don’t, and vice versa.

This idea provokes a strong sense in me to yell “DISAGREE!” at the top of my lungs, which can make it awkward when I’m on BlueSky at a Dunkin’ Donuts waiting for my water coffee to be served up, and I suddenly stumble upon a headline that says something like “GTA6 will make 1 billion dollars in the first two hours it’s on sale: Everyone alive will buy it and love it,” only to see nearly every comment in response to the headline parrot that ludicrous claim. That kind of absolute thinking in what people should and shouldn’t enjoy, that tendency to categorize people in groups of “good ones” and “bad ones” based on what they do with their leisure and personal time, is how a lot of people get converted to facism. Start by dehumanizing people by saying they are “less than normal” or more directly, “weird” or “deviant” for just harmlessly doing their thing, and before you know it you’re putting them in “rehabilitation camps for homosexuals” or “…for the unhoused” or for “…for illegal aliens” or the like. 

But when the foundation for fascism rears its familiar, ugly head in the games industry, our mainstream culture still tends to laugh it off. During Gamergate, when women, minorities, and weirdos were targeted en masse for being maybe secret friends with each other, and of course for talking about games that were made for and by women, minorities, and weirdos, it sometimes seemed like those outside the industry treated the phenomenon like a curiosity. Like a riot at a doily convention. Games Journalism? And ethics therein? Who do these dorks think they are?

But video games can be important. Having a child has shown me that can be especially true for people who are still growing up. I’ve seen games help my older son get over his fears, build his confidence, consider issues of ethics and morality, be inspired to get into art/game design, and of course, connect with his friends. This level of influence, positive or negative, that games can have on a person is constantly in flux. Right now, my kid is at an age where Pokémon and Minecraft resonate a lot more than Metal Gear Solid or Street Fighter might. As he gets older, and he enters a stage of life where he’s less interested in giant interactive catalogs, and is more excited about challenging himself to master something, he may become more interested in learning more complicated, reflex dependent game mechanics.

EARNED RESPECT

The relationships in the game matter a lot too. He just got sucked into a new-ish title called Gloomy Eyes, a kid-friendly horror game about a living kid named Nena and a zombie kid named Gloomy, learning to get over their fear of each other as they find parallels between their different traumas and find a true connection. There are also parallels here between the game and the social life of a fifth grader, but he doesn’t see this consciously, not does he have to. When I asked him why he likes the game, he said “I like that the zombie is gross but cool, and the girl is not bad I guess, but her uncle is so scary it made me fart.”

 “I love it”. 

If the publishers of the game are reading this, I formally dare you to put that review on the back of the box. Anything less would be, in a word, cowardly. 

Regardless of the viability of my son’s game review quotes, I think there is a good chance that the particular creative choices that made Gloomy Eyes what it is – the art direction, the puzzle design, the animation, the story, the music – and how they all come together, are going to be something he thinks about for a long time. He’ll feel something from it for a long time, too. It’s helping him to make sense of his world, categorizing people as either “Nena types” or a “Gloomy types”. When he has an issue in life that he can’t easily solution for, he may look back on the problems he solved in Gloomy Eyes. Using a combination of perseverance and experimentation, he managed to solve (almost) all of them on his own. I hope he takes that same approach to real life problems that he faces in the future.

THE NEXT ONE

All that I just said? That’s what makes a video game important. And no one I know seems to think GTA6 will do anything in those arenas that aren’t already present in popular games (including GTA5/GTA Online) that are already available. There are rumors that GTA6 will have an online mode that takes after Fortnite’s ever-evolving seasons structure, with celebrity cameos and cross-cultural promotions with brands like The Boys and Hamburger Helper. But for my money, drawing upon a vast catalog of other people’s original ideas and fusing them into the sixth entry of a series that, at is core, still just a run-of-the-mill sociopath simulator, isn’t all that different from using a prompt like “Give Daffy Duck a huge dick and make him run for president as Walter White” into some AI slop generator.

The thing we know for sure that GTA6 is going to do is making one of the leads is a woman, allowing the series to finally catch up to the original Tomb Raider from 1996. Or even the original Grand Theft Auto 1 from 1997, which also allowed you to play as a woman. Maybe this new woman lead will even get to pay people to have sex with her and then kill them to take the money she just gave them for the sex, just like the men do in prior GTA games? Ehh, I guess that’s nice. But the chances are of the game doing something truly unique in relation to prior games in the franchise, feels extremely low.  

And yet, like I griped about, people are already saying it’s going to be the most important game of the generation, that it’s going to make billions of dollars, that everyone is going to play it and love it. Why? The answers aren’t uniform. Some say it’s pure brand recognition. Others say it’s because of the unprecedented amount of money going into the game, allowing for 100% realistic twerking physics and irreverent, chatty NPC dialogue fitting for the very best of failed Comedy Central late night scripted programming, and an even bigger world to do things that you could do in real life, but would rather not bother.

GONNA NEED A BIGGER ASS

As for me, the only thing I think that makes GTA6 important are the people that are going to play GTA6. People will use it to create their own incredible stories, and engage with other people online in-game that will change the way they see themselves and others forever. It’s going to be a super well-made sandbox that the people, not the developers, will choose to make great. 

Again though, nothing tells me so far that the size of the game, and it’s metaphorical-but-meaningless, aggressively show off ass shaking, will make it “better” at being an online playground than GTA Online is. In short, the twerking may have more realistic fat jiggle physics, and the ass may be bigger, but it’s still just an ass. But because so many people have decided that asses, and GTA games, matter (or worse, they are afraid to say that they don’t really matter but are trying to fit in), everyone of a certain age will buy it and play it anyway. And since so many people will play it, those amazing experiences with the game will happen. So, in that way, I agree GTA6 is too big to fail. 

And that’s great! But just as I love to talk to my son about why the games he plays (and the YouTube videos he watches, the songs he listens to, etc.) affect him the way they do, I want to talk with him, and apparently you, my internet children, about why it’s OK for you all to see GTA6 as a totally unimportant piece of tap water entertainment. If it’s OK for people who only sort of like the hit fighting game Killer Instinct to say “Killer Instinct Gold is pretty much just Killer Instinct 2 again, except it says “Gold” on the box now” then people shouldn’t be afraid to collectively shrug about the next GTA game if they want to.

SUCKING OXYGEN

The key, I think, to helping people to get over that fear, is to cement the idea in people’s minds that the importance of a game is always about personal connection to the work, and is therefore always subjective. Just because the industry at large says GTA6 is important to the business of games doesn’t mean it will be important to individual people who play games. You don’t have to give into group think. You can train yourself to notice when FOMO and/or the urge to “look like someone who likes the right kinds of games” sets in, and to reject that feeling. Because that feeling can lead you to play games you don’t really care about, robbing you of the opportunity to play a game that you would have gotten more out of in that. And on a more practical level, it can rob you of your time and money. One of those things is something you can never get back, and the other one is heading in that direction more and more every day. 

To recap the obvious, just like the big game websites often do, GTA6 will make a lot of money. It will be very well-made. It will suck up the oxygen in the industry for at least a few months. If it were the exact same game, but it was called “Crime Buddies”, it would end up with a fraction of the total player base. It will be an important part of the economy, and will give players an important opportunity to tell their own amazing stories. But chances are that, after the new stolen care smell has faded, it won’t be seen in the same light as GTA1, GTA3, or any other “important” game that moved the franchise, or the medium, forward as a whole.  

Like twenty years from now, when GTA7 finally comes out? By then, people won’t care much more about GTA6 than they do GTA Online. Even as it stands, most older GTA fans I know barely remember anything about GTA4 other than the “funny accents”, the full-frontal male nudity of the “Gay Tony” DLC, and actually importantly, the feeling that they had when they first played it – a feeling they are still chasing to this day, but can’t quite find ever again. 

IF GTA6 gets them there, then I’ll stand corrected. But I’m not optimistic.