Grand Theft Auto 6’s trailer plays it safe, Video Games Industry Memo, 07/12/2023
How the games industry's back-alley punk band became stadium filling dad rockers
GTA 6 trailer marks an end to its risk taking era
Fortnite’s big bang brings rocket cars, Lego and Eminem to the platform
Buy Inkle’s new game A Highland Song OR ELSE
Ok, it’s a bloody huge newsletter this week so I’m going to rapidly say cheers, thanks and a hearty ‘hurrah’ to all who submitted a Game of the Year suggestion.
I’ve received so many that I’ve been forced to split my one off newsletter into two pieces that’ll go out on the 14th and 21st December respectively.
BUT this does mean this is the last full-fat VGIM of the year, which means I’m thinking all about new year plans.
If you’d like to pitch me interesting people to chat to, cool events to attend or gossip to share ahead of 2024, hit me up via my Substack email.
And if you’ve enjoyed reading the first issues of VGIM and would like to show your appreciation, please consider sharing it by hitting the button below.
Right, on with the final big read for the year. BRACE, BRACE.
The big read - Grand Theft Auto 6’s trailer plays it safe
The trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 arrived a little earlier than expected this week.
Just before the clock chimed midnight on Monday 4th December, Rockstar dropped their plans to, erm, drop the game’s trailer the following day to counter a disappointingly late in the day leak.
But the chaos of dealing with a last minute change of plans was arguably more interesting than the trailer itself.
Rockstar’s visually stunning reveal of its next generation crime caper has undoubtedly dazzled and captivated audiences across the world, with its vistas of Vice City and lashings of Tom Petty helping the trailer accrue over a hundred million views in a scarcely believable 48 hour period.
Yet for all its panache, GTA 6’s trailer was marked by something else: its predictability. Amidst the noise of the unexpected launch, my WhatsApp was flashing with messages from industry insiders and watchers asking why the trailer for a new Grand Theft Auto - of all the game brands in the world - felt remarkably safe.
The answer, I think, is that the context around the game and the wider industry has changed significantly since it first joy-rode onto the scene.
GTA was once the series that thumbed its nose at the world around it, shaping the industry’s agenda through its combination of rebellious spirit, media-baiting content and captivating play.
But over the course of three decades, GTA stopped being the independent outsider and became the ‘too big to fail’ franchise at the heart of the global games industry: changing the nature of the series, and the wider sector, forever.
Clifford the Big Red Flog
Despite the hype around its latest iteration, it’s important to remember that Grand Theft Auto was a far from guaranteed success story when it launched in 1997.
In an interview with BBC Scotland last year, Colin MacDonald - formerly of GTA’s original creator DMA Design, currently the purveyor of the UK games industry’s best jobs data and all round lovely man - said that the company was unsure it would succeed due to an initial lack of direction and bugginess in its early builds.
When the game did launch, however, the 2D open world crime ‘em up had managed to clarify its bargain to players in a way that gave it a distinctive position in the market.
Grand Theft Auto posited that three things were true: that games could be for ‘adults’; that those games could have ‘adult’ themes within them; that letting players engage in ‘adult’ (read: illegal) activities in video games could be properly fun. All they needed for the game’s launch - with the bugginess dissipated and the fun of the core game turned up to a Spinal Tappish 11 - was someone to sell the vision.
Enter Max Clifford. The notorious publicist turbo-charged GTA’s proposition, with the grey-haired goon leaning into the team’s mission statement - and controversy baiting tone - like a motorcyclist tackling a hairpin turn.
The 1997 release profited from moral panic, engendered in no small part by Clifford feeding grisly stories to the country’s delightful tabloid press and concerned learned members of the House of Lords, selling three million copies in the process.
In doing so, it established a curious symbiotic relationship between the series and the media that embedded the game as the industry’s bad boy.
GTA’s willingness to push the boundaries of what was considered acceptable within video games (both under DMA Design and then the now ubiquitous Rockstar label) was rewarded by media, pressure groups and politicians who provided its excellent open world games with acres of free publicity for the ‘sick filth’ contained within.
Grand Theft Auto 4 attracted ire for allowing players to drive drunk. GTA: San Andreas was criticised for serving up hot coffee via a sex mini game that never officially made it into the final title. GTA 5, meanwhile, grabbed its share of the headlines by featuring an unskippable torture scene where you can *ahem* delight in waterboarding someone.
It was shocking, controversial and subversive. It changed perceptions of the industry and even the policy landscape around it, especially with its knock on impact on age ratings. Most importantly though, it was deeply effective for selling the series - leading to it shipping over 410m copies across multiple generations.
But as it climbed to new heights, the series increasingly encountered a tension: how could it retain its snook-cocking sensibilities as it moved from the underground to the mainstream?
The answer is that it couldn’t for a simple reason. While the Grand Theft Auto franchise is big, GTA 5 - the last mainline release in the series launched in 2013 - is a hulking, clunking commercial and cultural leviathan that has towered over the industry. And maintaining that level of success is now a non-negotiable for the series.
Tame the beast.
GTA 5 is undoubtedly one of the most important games of all time. It is the second biggest game ever, single-handedly shipping enough copies to put it ahead (or on par) with the number of units shipped by entire franchises like Assassin’s Creed or Resident Evil.
It became the first game to do $1bn business in its opening weekend, establishing it as the biggest entertainment property of all time in the process. Its long term success - supported by its wildly popular GTA Online mode - has led to the game generating nearly $8bn across the course of a decade.
And to round it all off, GTA 5 has smashed its way into mainstream culture. It is shorthand for video games in wider society. It influences popular song lyrics. Comedians recreate the game on TV for laughs. People have even tried to perform Hamlet in the damn thing.
In this context, GTA 6 is more than a sequel to Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two Interactive; it’s a multi-billion dollar succession plan. And although it will undoubtedly make enough cash to delight implausibly rich fictional characters like Scrooge McDuck, Smaug or Jeffrey Bezos, anything other than another decade defining success will, astonishingly, register as a tad disappointing.
This matters because it explains why the game is taking a comparatively safety first approach to marketing itself. Aside from some priced in snark and controversy, GTA can’t afford to be seen as anything other than an obvious Day 1 purchase - especially in a more muscular and competitive modern games landscape.
GTA 5 faced similar pressures, but its offer of a major triple A console game with an online multiplayer mode in the dying days of the seventh generation of devices allowed it to command a comparatively quieter landscape. This both set it up for long term dominance of the next generation and left it room to be a little riskier (hello to GTA' 5’s third protagonist Trevor).
GTA 6 launches into a different world. Triple A titles aren’t just competing with other Triple A titles; they’re battling major free-to-play ever-present multiplayer games or platforms like Roblox, Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite with huge entrenched player bases that they won’t want to let go of.
In this context, GTA 6 needs to ensure its appeal is as wide as possible and ties back to the open ended delight of GTA 5’s money printing GTA Online mode - hence why its first trailer focuses on the open to interpretation potential of its world rather than overtly controversial story beats.
Trussed up
But beyond tactically selling games, taking a comparatively safe approach to marketing the new release also helps address the cultural quandary GTA faces around its wider narrative.
The game’s often distasteful, but undoubtedly entertaining, subversion worked in a world where the industry was young, concerns about the medium ran rampant and the franchise itself was seen as a growing part of that. The world, though, changed.
The moral panic around game content in regards to violence dissipated as a result of the evolution of age rating systems and the lack of evidence around harm - shifting concerns away from most of GTA’s schtick towards areas like in-game monetisation (which, admittedly, GTA still didn’t escape from).
The idea that ‘games can be for adults’ has shifted from revolutionary concept to known wisdom, with the average age of players in the UK hitting a comfortable mid 30s in that period of time.
And the concept of GTA as the edgy outsider has been utterly demolished as a result of GTA 5’s multi-billion dollar success, putting it the heart of a $27bn market cap business and propelling it to such prominence that a former British Prime Minister (albeit an historically crap one) cited it as an example of the UK video games industry’s trade and soft power potential.
As a result, Rockstar can’t sell the subversive narrative of old because it doesn’t fit the game, it’s business or the industry any more.
So instead, GTA has been repositioned as a blockbuster. It’s big. It’s entertaining. It’s astonishingly well made. But it also must be, necessarily, safe to justify both the investment into it and its changed position in the landscape - shifting the tone of the series, and the story that’s being told around it, for good.
The Rolling Stones of video games
I think it’s important for me to say here that I’m not criticising Rockstar for this decision. It was, undoubtedly, the right move and one that has served the story-telling ambitions of the modern studio well, as anyone fortunate enough to experience Red Dead Redemption 2’s story will know.
But the thing about blockbusters is that they’re sold and enjoyed because of their predicability. You want them to be ‘capital F’ Fun, hit reassuringly familiar beats and maybe gently tweak your whiskers a bit - not punch you in the face.
And while I’m looking forward to GTA 6, the launch trailer felt like the moment where the game’s deliciously sludgy history was eclipsed by modern necessity.
If selling GTA in the 1990s and early 2000s was about making enough noise to pack out back-alley gig venues, Rockstar knows that selling GTA 6 is about getting bums on seats on a global stadium arena tour night-after-night.
Yes, the game will likely adopt a performatively anarchic posture and play some of its controversial content based hits to delight its enthused fans and assembled media (who are already happily singing along to its tune). But everyone watching knows that the context has changed and the older tracks are quietly being crossed off the setlist.
Of course, none of this will stop the juggernaut. GTA 6 is already expected to perform so well that the entire industry is dancing to its tune, seeking opportunities to exploit the hype and preparing to dash for cover when the beast emerges from its cave in 2025.
It does, though, represents the end of an era. GTA’s transition from subversive presence to necessary blockbuster is done.
And while I will definitely be buying GTA 6 arrives, I’ll make sure to pick up some entertainingly subversive indie games alongside it to mark, in my own small way, the passing of the franchise’s peculiarly anarchic approach to conquering the industry.
News in brief
Big Bang-tastic: Epic announced a trio of new experiences for Fortnite this week including a Lego themed survival game, a Rocket League racing game and a Harmonix powered music title that featured a real Slim Shady in it. It’s almost like Epic is building some sort of…what do they call it…metaverse? nahhhhhhhh.
Not too Cleverly does it: Ukie has come out swinging against changes to the country’s immigration policy, claiming that new measures - such as increasing the minimum salary threshold for overseas workers to qualify for visas by £10k - could negatively impact 12% of the workforce. It’s a stupid policy and I’m glad to see the industry confidently oppose it.
Sisyphus keeps pushing boulder: Leon Xiao has provided an update on loot box regulation around the world. While it is undoubtedly a useful summary of the state of play and differences of opinions amongst regulators, it’s also an unwelcome reminder that bickering about them has now gone on for roughly as long as the Second World War did.
Cheats prosper: Cheating is on the up in Destiny 2 after Bungie’s decision to make a large chunk of its internal security team redundant during a recent round of lay-offs. Given that a flood of online safety regulation is landing on the desks of games businesses in 2024, I’d generally recommend not laying off the people who make trust, safety and security actually possible.
Jingle sells: This year’s Jingle Jam is off to a cracking start, raising over £1.5m at the time of writing for a dozen brilliant charities. Pop over to the website to find out more about the causes the Jam is backing and consider making a donation lest VGIM decree you to be Scrooge-like.
Job seekers
Brett Claxton, formally at Heaven and SocialChain, is hunting for a new marketing or social media role…Gabriella Persson is looking to make the most of her extensive background in brand marketing and partnerships and is ready to relocate for the right business…Simon Sparks, an experienced people manager and coach, is looking for a VP of People role…Antony Adler is looking to bring his B2B PR games experience to bear for a lucky new employer…Silvia Gaetano was tipped as one to watch by my social media followers for community management and social media skills…Matthew Addis is seeking a new home for his influencer marketing management expertise after a stint at Creative Assembly…
Robin McGovern is seeking a new audio role having previously been a lead at Frontier Developments…Harriet Morris brings experience from Frontier, Secret Mode and Sumo Digital to the table for anyone seeking a content creator…Joe Pring is hunting for a Staff Writer or Account Executive role…Rachael Rose is looking for a new producer role having previously worked with Bithell Games, PlayStation and Lucid Games…and Dan Emmerson rounds the list off, offering a range of 2D and 3D art skills for your games business…
Events and conferences
The Game Awards, Los Angeles - today, omg much excite
Pocket Gamer Connects (20% off), London - 22nd-23rd January 2024
D.I.C.E. Summit, Las Vegas - 13th-15th February 2024
Game Developers Conference, San Francisco - 18th-22nd March 2024
London Games Festival, London - 9th-25th April 2024
Games of the week
A Highland Song: Latest game from masterful indie dev Inkle releases and must be bought by all VGIM readers immediately.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora: A new FPS based on my fifth favourite James Cameron film ties off the blockbuster games for the year.
The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria: It’s a game set in the world of Lord of the Rings *cheers*. But it’s a survival game *boos*.
Before you go…
We all have bad days at work. But what happens when a delivery driver mixes up his fruit delivery with a series of packages intended for a scientist beset by bandicoot problems?
Comedian Ed Night offers thoughtful, and completely serious, advice on his Substack, The God Mic.
Video Games Industry Memo is written by George Osborn, a video games industry expert who devoted himself to a life of goodliness after a crime filled sojourn in Los Santos.
Give him tips about forthcoming available job roles, events and games - or ask if he’s free to work with you in 2024 - by dropping him an email here.