But why do people actually love GTA so much?

Gaming News But why do people actually love GTA so much?

What if we shared some numbers with you that would make your head spin? Grand Theft Auto V grossed $1 billion in three days, achieved an absolutely brilliant 97/100 rating on review aggregator Metacritic, and has sold 185 million copies since its release. Its budget: $265 million, enough to rival certain Hollywood blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Today it has collected 7.7 billion, almost three times more than the film Avatar, a score that secures it license as a pop culture monument. But why do people love these games so much? If we think about the reasons for GTA’s success, We could start by citing the dazzling longevity of the saga, which has existed since 1997. While the first two parts were a great success, the cards are redistributed in the third part and offer a more intense experience than ever before between action, driving and narrative. There were many games that were comparable to the same stores and had more refined graphics or more advanced gameplay, but Grand Theft Auto knew how to offer atmospheres like no other, soundtracks in the zeitgeist that only the Houser brothers could create themselves and frankly offering organic spaces. And then there’s that biting humor we recognize from the license, its semi-fictional depiction of iconic places and of course all the violence of its content, which has earned it a pleasant controversy. Let’s also mention the numerous collaborations with public figures, from Samuel L. Jackson to Tyler the Creator, which allow GTA to anchor itself in reality and eclipse Fortnite’s current partnerships.

But what makes Grand Theft Auto so special that it becomes a work for the ages is thisThe small, fairly mundane activities he proposes between two major heists allow the player to truly anchor themselves in this very tangible universe. This is a point made by Polygon co-founder Chris Plante in 2013:

The result of the mix of the mundane and the spectacular is a faster-paced action game full of unintended but welcome context. You don’t just murder a CEO, you murder him and invest in his rival company’s stock. You don’t just escape the police on another side street. You escape the police by going through the gates of the neighboring golf course where you once played a game for two.

The freedom to interpret

In 2008, The New York Times described GTA as a work “violent, clever, blasphemous, endearing, offensive, insidious, richly textured and utterly captivating cultural satire disguised as entertainment.”. He finds in Niko Bellic, the experienced protagonist of the Balkan Wars and former human trafficker on the Adriatic, a perfectly nuanced antihero who goes down in a cheerful procession of caricatured and politically incorrect crooks. ““Grand Theft Auto IV” is such a charming and insightful look at modern America that it almost has to come from somewhere else“, the article continues. In this context, brothers Dan and Sam Houser are British expatriates who have settled in New York.

In Grand Theft Auto, no one escapes criticism, from the evil gangs to the high authorities of a Liberty City that smells so good of New York and whose main streets you can roam to the rhythm of the sounds of Fat Joe, Lil Wayne and Iggy Pop. For some people, It’s the freedom of action in these vast spaces that made Grand Theft Auto famous. Who has never launched an episode of driving license one day without much conviction and with the sole aim of strolling through the streets, stealing two or three luxury limousines and embarking on a completely pointless chase under the sound of police sirens, just a handful of minutes? Logically, Rockstar has been using the online mode of its gem for ten years to consistently make spectacular profits. But in GTA there is also freedom of interpretation

In a way, the game challenges the player to decide for themselves who is serious and what is satirical. Should these seedy, terrible, broken characters with rare hints of humanity be taken at face value or as caricatures? Well, let the player decide… Freedom of action is one of the most important principles of GTA design, and we also want to create a latitude in interpretation, even a little ambiguity in who is good and who is bad or maybe , who is bad and who is worse… On the other hand, the game presents a vision of America that is clearly satirical but compulsive, and perhaps that is what defines our relationship with America. We are obsessed with America and as Brits we have a particularly complex relationship with American culture.

The controversy that is good

Controversy is ultimately the livelihood of GTA. The first Grand Theft Auto, an unloved project from publisher BMG Interactive, is the result of the work of the studio DMA Design, which abandoned the strange little characters of its platform game Lemmings to dedicate itself to an action title that invites carjacking and killing members of a enemy gang or even whoever you want. A proposal that was far from being to the taste of Baron Campbell de Croy, who addressed the House of Lords on May 20, 1997 to warn them of the threat posed by video games to England’s young darlings. Actually a blessing for advertising star Max Clifford – whose clients include Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali – sponsored by BMG Interactive. The man is betting on fueling the controversy to make conservatives joke. An anecdote that Sam Houser told David Kushner for his book Jacked: The Unofficial History of GTA

“We will whisper to good people that it might be a good thing for them to denounce how scandalous this game is and criticize it,” Clifford said. “I’d put these rumors in the ear of one of the lords and say this there. ‘He developed this game in Scotland, which is absolutely despicable, and then in just three months you’ll be making headlines.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah , why not…” but everything he said became reality.

The technology doesn’t lack cheekiness, it seems downright cheeky to some, but it works. Shortly before, Clifford had managed to revive the career of comedian Freddie Starr by spreading a terrible rumor that made the front pages of the tabloids: ““Freddy Starr ate my hamster”. It’s hard to say whether the man would have performed miracles today, as his success was quickly marred by a conviction for eight counts of sexual assault on minors. However, the GTA license copes very well without it. Over the course of the controversies, the Hot Coffee mod and new releases, it has become a real success machine that we like to compare to a Scorsese film, which also only comes out about once a decade. The first trailer for GTA 6, released in December, easily surpasses the 148 million markit. His new portrayal of Vice City, shown in scenes taken from real news, sparked numerous reactions online, particularly regarding the hypersexualization of women. Two camps are forming: those who see only the usual satire that Rockstar skillfully portrayed, and those who scream exaggeration. Either way, GTA will likely once again be the biggest cultural phenomenon of the next decade.