Grand Theft Auto VI

Great, looks like GTA VI is on the way, eventually;

https://www.gamesradar.com/au/gta-6-release-date-news-trailers-map-gameplay-rumours/

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/g...rumors-mapping-the-path-to-grand-theft-auto-6





JSmith

 

if GTA5 does well on series and PS5 prepare to wait another 5 years for this.

 

Very exciting regarding the timeline and game play! Every 60s and 70s child's dream game!

 

Oh yes bring that sexy GTA goodness

 

Check this chick out...insane, she's got that run movement down pat

https://www.facebook.com/supercarblondie/posts/601277211359758

Bring on GTA6 Although have a feeling it's a long way off yet.

 

Thanks for the timely reminder to play GTA5, another addition to the pile of shame.

 

HAHAHA I literally lolled! She has crapped those spray on pants!

 

and in truly unsurprising fashion, "gamers" are complaining that GTA 6 leaked footage... wait for it... Looks unfinished.



Allegedly, the leaker has the GTA5 and 6 source code. Big if true.
https://dotesports.com/general/news...ed-gta-6-graphics-are-misplaced-and-heres-why

 

i said this elsewhere but years ago before gaming got too corporate we used to be treated to early footage of in development games, now people are fucking stupid and can't seperate what a finished product looks like.

then irony of all ironies they buy unfinished games in advance.

the industry/consumers are trash.

also fuck R*, i haven't been genuinely excited about a GTA game for a decade because well that was when the last one came out.

 

I just read on a tiktok vid a friend shared that the hacker sold the gta v source code for $100k..dunno if true or not?

 

Devil's advocate: in the "good old days" beta footage appeared, and months later you got the game. Now, beta footage appears, and years (decades?) later, you get the game.

You want games with hundreds of hours of content in sprawling worlds with complex AI? Well that will be exponentially harder for diminishing returns, kids.

I keep saying - Triple A gaming isn't sustainable. "Angry gamers" need to get over that.

And this cements the point above. Rockstar are still in business, still making money, and still haven't been bought out. Why? Because this is what it takes to win the Triple-A gaming game.

If we want a better games industry, we need to give up on Triple-A games. You simply cannot release GTA5/6 style games every 3 years.

 

Boring Brandon made a great video and addressed this point along with others - not everything he says in this video is accurate but that buy now release over time mentality has been normalised by consumers and publishers.

 

Yep...

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...es-looking-to-negotiate-a-deal-with-rockstar/



JSmith

 

I mean, all I ever hear from game BUYERS is that everything is half baked and sucks, and yet this seems to be ALL games.

And then all we hear from game MAKERS is that they're working insane hours, constantly under crunch time, dealing with abuse from their corporate overlords.

It almost sounds like making huge games is just infeasible and financially unsustainable.

I say again: if we want the games industry to get better, we just simply need to give up on Triple-A gaming. It's too big, too difficult, and if literally the best minds in the industry can't get it right, I think we need to stop assuming that it can ever succeed.

This is about the point where someone tells me of some ultra niche edge case unicorn developer who got it right one time for one game (and probably got bought out or went broke months later anyway). Pointing out a single exception to an industry-wide problem doesn't disprove the problem.

Every gaming forum/social-media site on planet Earth seems to be filled full of people who can point out all the sins of the games industry, with exactly none of them working in the games industry. I challenge all of them to prove everyone wrong by turning to professional video game development, and showing the world how it's done. Clearly if it can be done better, you can print money, because you'd be the only one doing it right.

 

the point he's making is a bit more succinct than that which is why i linked to it. I linked rather than regurgitated because i'm lazy.

*edit* he specifically mentions the challenges of making games and it's not as easy as people think and spends a fair amount of time repeating this point.

 

https://gofile.io/d/wjxdw0 take 2 can take a knee

 

There are quite a lot of individuals who are currently working or have worked in the games industry that exist in those communities. Its the reason for the vast array or mods which enrich games with content that is better than what was released or adds to what was missing.

If you chat with them on discord they will all say roughly the same thing. Quality takes time and artists are under the crunch to get things done fast so corners are cut.

 

It's always management and bean counters (who would be under pressure from board/investors) - they facilitate innovation whilst simultaneously crippling it. Sure I'm not a game dev specifically but I suffer what I imagine are largely the same problems game devs would. I'm extremely passionate, I know my stuff, I want to produce a market leading product and I have the ability to - but I need more time, more people, more money. Go away and just let me work on my thing for a few months rather than pestering me daily about 'metrics' and 'team progress updates' (said pestering being passed through from top down). Eventually more people, more money get given once early deadlines are missed by miles. By which time, more serious deadlines are approaching, and work slows even more as you onboard people. Regardless, work long hours with similarly passionate colleagues pouring your heart and soul into something then some pelican announces 'can you just rush a minimum viable product to meet this ridiculous deadline, don't bother with all those extra quality items or anything not 100% needed to deliver the bare minimum'

Anyway there's my rant, lol

 

It's not financially unsustainable when gamers are stupid and keep falling for the same marketing tricks, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars in pre-orders at companies.

Why would any company go down the path of actually releasing a completed game when they can release it 2 years earlier broken and then get a skeleton crew to complete it while the community showers them with praise for "fixing it". No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk, every EA Sports game ever made, almost everything Ubisoft make these days, it's just a never ending list of broken games being bought in the millions while the community whines about it before handing their money over again for the next shiny marketing campaign.

Imagine if buying a car worked like this. You order the car, then it gets dumped in your driveway with a missing steering wheel, two of the tyres are busted, you don't have a backseat, there's no starter motor, no windows, the fuel tank is missing and when you open the hood of the car it's actually got a lawnmower engine, but you can buy a new skin for it.

 

Unfortunately making a car is nothing like making a game. The design and manufacturing processes are nothing alike, the size of the teams nothing alike, the randomness and variability of physics simulation and AI in software is nothing like building a physical mechanical device, and cars retail for tens of thousands of dollars while gamers spit blood when asked to pay $100 for a new game.

A better analogy is the software development process behind autonomous vehicles - that's where you see more similarities in the challenges of complex software design, physical and AI processing, etc. Given that the industry has seen several multi-billion (and more recently trillion) dollar companies investing billions of dollars per year into research for the better part of two decades and we still haven't seen mass adoption, that shows you how complex it is.

So lets use that analogy instead - you want video games to be at the same standard as autonomous vehicles. So that means decades of research and no products released because they're not 100% ready. Cool.

Triple-A gaming is not sustainable without cutting corners and relying on "whales" to repeat-fund you while the next phase of your development takes thousands of humans 7+ years. Poorly analogising it to unrelated industries doesn't help this problem at all.

As an audience, we are part of this problem. Video games are cheaper today than ever before - yes, really. Here's my original boxed copy of Starwing (PAL version of Star Fox) from 1993, complete with $134.95 price tag:



That was 1993. According to the RBA inflation calculator that would cost $264.53 today. Is anyone in this thread willing to pay that for games? Hell no. I don't think anyone here would even pay the not-adjusted-for-inflation sticker price of $135 for a modern game!

Starfox/Starwing was developed by Argonaut Games PLC, and at peak had 285 staff grand total across all hardware and software groups. Meanwhile titles like GTA now have staff numbers in the THOUSANDS. Starwing/Starfox took 11 months (not even a whole year) to develop from scratch, including the custom 3D chip on board. GTA games take closer to a decade.

We pay FAR LESS for games today, and they are FAR MORE complicated than ever. This model is not sustainable.

Rant and rave about "lazy devs" all you like. Rant and rave about how unfair it is to the poor consumer all you like. Triple A games are a positively insane business, and the realities of successfully (i.e.: profitably) surviving that industry are so far beyond the comprehension of most people.

If you don't like any of this, you have one solution - don't pay money for it. If you think a product isn't up to snuff, don't buy in to it. You've seen what happened with GTA V, you've seen what happened with RDR 2. If anyone in this thread is spewing venom at Rockstar and then goes on to purchase and play GTA 6, they need their head checked. If you have a fundamental problem with the perpetuation of problems in Triple A gaming, stop funding Triple A gaming.