the big thing
Grand Theft Auto V was released in September of 2013, and in the nine years since we’ve seen two full console cycles and endless shifts in how games are sold and monetized. GTA VI does not exist yet though it is actively in development, but gamers have still been getting a stream of updates over the years through the Grand Theft Auto Online network.
This week, Rockstar debuted GTA+, a paid monthly subscription that basically gives users a stipend of GTA bucks and access to exclusive items. Subscription gaming has been embraced by plenty of other big games, Battle Passes are the monetization path du jour that top games are chasing. Now, this isn’t a gaming newsletter so why should you care?
What makes Grand Theft Auto V unique among its peers is just how mind-boggling the success of this title has been. It’s raked in billions of dollars over the past decade and is one of the most financially successful creative works ever made. Beyond the financial success, it’s also one of the most influential gaming titles ever. And while stealing cars, going on rampages and fleeing cops doesn’t seem like the most ground-breaking gameplay, the way that the title pushed forward the idea of in-game scale trumped every title before it.
If you think I’m taking this towards another metaverse hot take, you are correct. My question is at what point does a game become so real that it isn’t fun anymore? Gamers are probably about to find out.
Compared to other subscription titles, GTA truly feels like an alternate reality. The entire premise of the game is based around a satirical America where violence is dialed to 11 and users are encouraged to bask in it. Over the past nine years, that satire has found ways to juice the capitalism it skewers with GTA Online giving users more to buy with their in-game wealth than weapons and ammunition.
Moving past building out an ambitious gaming world eventually meant moving past higher fidelity graphics into building a higher fidelity in-game economy. For now this simply means in-game funny money that’s distributed by Rockstar but has real world value in that you can lose something you spent real money on, but I have few doubts that the logical end of what Rockstar is doing is a network of crypto token and NFT assets.
More sophisticated in-game economies are super interesting, but I think it’s undeniable that they also remove so much of the escapism that video games offer today. The fact is that crypto is going to fundamentally change MMOs one day and gamers can fight these shifts but there’s a certain inevitability to publishers chasing the money. But when the in-game currencies and items have real-world value, will stealing them be an actual crime?
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