Without further ado, let’s get started.

JUMPING INTO WATER

What’s our first instinct when we first see a body of water in a video game, however big or small? Whether that’s to check whether or not the main character can swim, or to dive underwater to collect hidden treasures, or to hunt aquatic beasts and animals, or just because the water just looks that damn good, when we see water, we all get that uncontrollable urge to jump in and splash about.

This is not because of it’s fabulously successful and lucrative online mode though. While GTA Online has served as much more than just the cherry on top that most probably expected it to be, people generally hadn’t bought these games for online experiences. Gamers generally buy Grand Theft Auto to experience a massive, enthralling trip into organized crime with gritty, realistic characters and unparalleled freedom to unfold the story the way they see fit.

GTA 5 has arguably satisfied that particular need for gamers more than any other entry to the series and perhaps more than any other game, as evidenced by the massive, unprecedented profits that the game has raked in over the years since its release that are well into the billions. Out of all of the benchmarks that the fifth entry in the Grand Theft Auto series has broken, one of the more intriguing ones is the amount of online content that the game offers. Rockstar is no stranger to online modes that offer a fair amount of fun and longevity, but GTA 5’s online mode is an entirely different beast altogether.

In microtransactions, and microtransactions alone, GTA 5 has pulled in over 500 million dollars. The success of the ever-growing online mode for the game is not too surprising to those who have been playing it for a while, as they have seen the beefy list of options grow steadily with new content being added on a regular basis for a long time now. There’s no two ways about it; GTA Online is an incredibly successful endeavour in it’s own right, and due to this the amount of players engaging with it continue to fuel its expansion with their multiple purchases.

One question that seems to be inevitably barreling towards us, however, is whether or not Rockstar is losing sight of the essence of Grand Theft Auto at this point. It is a question that many are starting to ask, and understandably so. It’s true that the online modes are wildly popular and successful, and of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with Rockstar continuing to support it, but what is just as true is that many fans of the franchise are in fact single-player offline gamers, who have by now exhausted most if not all of what Los Santos has to offer, and are understandably starting to wonder about the next major entry.

After all, GTA 5 did come out in 2013, which is over a whopping 5 years ago. Granted, this is also roughly the same amount of time we had to wait between GTA 4 and 5, but even then, by 2011 we at least knew that GTA 5 was coming. Which was just 3 years after the launch of 4, so if Rockstar had any interest in sticking to that timeline, we would have had at least some sort of official word on Grand Theft Auto 6 by 2016 or so.

But here we are in 2019 without so much as a peep about another game. You could say that Rockstar is just focusing on Red Dead Online right now, but that doesn’t really explain the absence of 6 being on the way. Remember, Rockstar put Red Dead Redemption out in 2010, between GTA 4 and 5, and surely was working on both for a fair amount of time, so either Rockstar has lost the ability to multitask since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, which is stupefyingly unlikely, or they are purposefully holding off on a new game in the franchise. This is counter to what GTA players have grown to expect from the series up to this point, and does add some fuel to the suspicion that perhaps Rockstar is indeed more interested in squeezing more money out of the current iteration for several more years.

Another noteworthy about-face for the attitude that Rockstar seems to have about it’s flagship series is the lack of offline DLC expansions to the main game. For a game that has been out for this long and seen this much success to not have gotten any major offline expansion to the stories of the characters is pretty weird. In fact, Rockstar has gone so far as to officially clarify that they are intentionally focusing on GTA Online because of how well it has exceeded their expectations, and that single-player DLC for the game was neither “possible nor necessary”.

Great news for fans of the online mode, not so great for everyone else. There are many possible reasons for this, and to be fair the fact that the console generation changed right after the initial launch of the game, forcing Rockstar to devote a fair amount of resources to immediately get next-gen versions of the game running, potentially setting other plans back, is worth considering. But at the end of the day what we are seeing here is a focus on microtransactions and online content, which until recent years would never be associated with Grand Theft Auto games this heavily.

Is Rockstar truly changing how they view GTA? Are they no longer interested in supporting single-player experiences with that particular franchise? The suspicions that GTA is headed for an online future don’t seem to be as concrete as some may think, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have merit. It’s hard to imagine any developer turning away all of the money that can be made with microtransactions, which basically have no overhead compared to what they bring in when comparing that to the cost and benefit of adding stories and offline content.

To be sure, we’ll have to wait and see how Grand Theft Auto 6 turns out. Surely some clues as to where Rockstar is headed was in Red Dead Redemption 2, but to be totally sure where Rockstar wants to take GTA, we’ll have to see what they do with it. GTA 6 is coming, it’s just a question of when. If they choose to focus on online content with the next game primarily, surely the essence of what makes those games great will be gone to some degree.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

The narrative that single player games are dead, or close to dying, driven out by the success of multiplayer and games as a service style games, has been pretty pervasive for a while now. For some reason, it is a myth that has continued to persist, in spite of the success of games like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, The Witcher, Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and of course, GTA5.

That kind of selective consideration of the market is not something that Take 2, the parent company of Rockstar, the folks who bring us GTA and Red Dead, wants to engage in. Speaking to GamesBeat, Take-Two Interactive CEO Straus Zelnick said that single player games are nowhere close to being “dead”.

“Historically, in entertainment, people take positions like that, but there are also people saying that it won’t work if it’s not a free-to-play battle royale,” he said “People really are saying that, and not even tongue-in-cheek. I don’t buy that. Single-player, in my opinion, is not dead, not even close. Companies that feel like they’ll just avoid the hard work of building a story and characters and go right to where the money is in multiplayer, I don’t think that’s going to work. I’d be surprised.”

I think Zelnick does have a leg to stand on here- while GTA Online is a multiplayer sensation, which has contributed to its long term success, its multiplayer is rooted in the context built up by the single player campaign, which is extraordinarily high quality to begin with. And the enduring success of games from his companies, and companies such as Nintendo, Sony, Bethesda, and CD Projekt RED, should only serve to reinforce his point further.

HBO’s newest flagship hit appears to be Westworld, the new cyberpunk western that’s winning rave acclaim from just about everybody. It appears as though Westworld may just be successful enough to give HBO another consistent hit once Game of Thrones finishes a couple of years from now. And, given the creators’ comments about the inspirations for this game, it also seems that HBO, in that case, would owe a debt to video games.

Speaking at New York Comic Con, creator Jonathan Nolan likened the show, and its exploration of how different players behave in virtual worlds, with their own sets of rules, to what players do in GTA and Bioware games. “My wife is the world’s most boring Grand Theft Auto player,” he said to the audience on this topic, according to Polygon.

Of course, Westworld will probably have ended up exploring themes like this in far more depth than any video game by the end of its first season. But hey, the nexus of the idea lies in video games, and that’s not something that can ever be taken away.

Today, Grand Theft Auto is one of gaming’s biggest series, marked by the kind of free-form and emergent gameplay that it offers players, as well as the really dramatic and engrossing stories it tells. Apparently, though, the story about the game’s creation is as dramatic as GTA’s stories themselves.

BBC certainly thinks so, because it will be making a 90 minute long live action drama chronicling the creation of Grand Theft Auto. It will be released under their ‘Make It Digital Programming,’ which is trying to generate interest in technology among young people with a series of documentaries and programming targeted at them.

And of course, what with GTA being a British game series (something that is easy to forget given its focus and emphasis on American culture, society, and pop culture), it makes sense for them to cover it too.

We don’t yet know when the drama will air, but when it does, we will let you know. Stay tuned.

Source.

Apparently, a fake press release was posted that confirmed the release of a brand new GTA: San Andreas 2, which would be coming some time next year, and would be set in the same version of San Andreas as San Andreas itself was, following the original characters on more of their misadventures throughout the west coast state.

The ‘press release’ apparently confirmed multiple big name celebrities working on the game to provide voice talent (including Kevin Hart, Larenz Tate, and Mike Epps), as well as the return of the roleplaying features that have so far been exclusive only to the original San Andreas game.

All of this is false. There is (obviously) no new GTA: San Andreas 2 coming out next year. Frankly, I am surprised that any of you actually even fell for it, given how long Rockstar takes on making a new game, and how they have so far resisted the temptation to follow up any of their games with direct sequels. I understand that San Andreas was the peak of GTA, and many of us want to go back (and no, the HD re-release on Xbox Live does not count, and GTA V certainly does not count), but could we… please, maybe think more about stuff?

It’s Black Friday today! You know what that means, I am sure- it means loads of companies offer some great stuff for some even better prices! And Rockstar is no different- for Black Friday, it will be allowing players the chance to stock up on some cool Red Dead and Grand Theft Auto themed paraphernalia.

This stuff ranges from a GTA themed hoodie, to even a GTA sleeping bag, that you can give little Jimmy to take with him on camping trips and on sleepovers. There really is a lot of stuff on sale, and you are bound to find something or the other that suits your liking there.

You have a lot of time to spend a lot of money, and especially if you live outside the US, you also have a lot of incentive to spend that money- if you purchase over $50 in orders will also qualify for international shipping, with the sale ending at 11:59pm EST on December 1st, 2014.

They say you can’t fix something that was fundamentally broken. But what if the game wasn’t broken, but just old. Can it be fixed? Well judging by this, the answer’s no. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas recently made the jump to the Xbox 360 in celebration of it’s 10th anniversary and with that celebration it’s received a few upgrades.

The classic sandbox game has received a boost in resolution, bumping it up to 720p, the woeful draw distance has been improved which (while an improvement) doesn’t exactly do the game any favours. There’s also a bundle of new achievements being added to the game as well as 11 secret achievements. So keep your eyes open for the inevitable Easter eggs.

Although, the game is most likely just as fun as you and I remember and it’s also available on the Xbox Games Store for $3.74! So if you have some spare change knocking about and you feel like doing something nostalgic, you know the deal.

Rockstar may rely on its flagship Grand Theft Auto franchise more than it relies on anything else, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t branch out to try other, different games and experimentations with new IP. Apart from Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar has also dabbled with games as varied as Red Dead, Max Payne, Bully, Manhunt, The Warriors, State of Emergency, and Table Tennis.

It seems that dabbling with new IP is something ingrained into the very structure of the company, as during a presentation to investors on Thursday, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said 50 percent of the company’s efforts should always be focused on the creation of brand-new franchises.

“We love putting out titles where we’ve got history, and they’re really, really big titles. Because they’re safe and they’re predictable and you know you can generate a lot of cash flow from them,” Slatoff said. “At the same time, to ignore the opportunity of creating new IP, to not dedicate a substantial portion of your resources towards developing new IP, is the kiss of death for creative franchises.

“Because forbid, one of your core IP starts to deteriorate over time, then you’re in real trouble. So how do we actually manage that to avoid that deterioration or fatigue? One is don’t come out with stuff every year,” he added.

“Unless it’s a sports title where you do come out every year. But in general, your big, core franchises; big releases every year that are hyped up as big releases is not a great way to–it may be a great way to monetize the near-term cash flow but not to make sure that franchise exists for the long-run. That’s a very important piece of it; it needs some breathing room.”

Take Two’s approach to games and the AAA model, then, sounds completely contrary to that adopted by other big name publishers such as EA, Activision, and Ubisoft. But maybe that is why Take Two’s properties have such a long life, and why a new GTA entry in 2013 can inspire so much excitement, nearly 20 years after the first game released. Maybe Take Two is on to something here.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series has always been known for one thing above all else- the stunningly authentic recreations of real life locations within the games, with a unique Rockstar flavor and twist. From Liberty City in its various incarnations (which is based on New York City) to Los Santos in its, Rockstar Games always creates real locations within its Grand Theft Auto games.

The key to that, Rockstar North Art Director Aaron Garbut says, is not trying to recreate the actual thing 1:1, but instead playing with it a little.

“I’d never want to rebuild a city. I think that would be a lot less satisfying both for us to build and for the player to play. In a lot of ways, it would be less convincing, too. At least that’s how I rationalise it to myself,” Garbut explained, “we take the feel of a city, the one we get through visiting and through experiencing it our whole lives through media, and build that. We compress, we edit, we emphasise certain things and we end up with something that in some ways, I think, feels more like the popular perception of the place than the actual city. Only because the popular perception isn’t the real city, if that makes sense.”

So basically, they take the existing city as a framework, and then build up from there, and it is an approach that works very well.

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