Our Nightmare Society Isn’t Ready For GTA 6’s Launch

When Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19 this year, it won't be the most important event happening in the world.

Realistically, what will top the front pages is anything involving the dire political landscape we currently live in. Who knows what wars (ongoing or unforeseeable) will be ravaging, what public health crisis the world will be spinning over, or what social upheavals will be unfolding by then?

This is the world that GTA 6 will enter: one that is vastly more volatile and unpredictable than the one we lived in even 13 years ago, when GTA 5 released. Nowadays, when a video game comes out, it's just a blip in the big picture--a speck in the vast mosaic that is the larger world. 

While that could be the case with GTA 6 as well, Rockstar's forthcoming blockbuster is an unusual beast. The world may not stop for GTA 6, but it will likely pay attention, more so than any other game release before it.

As history has shown, the mainstream media and others unplugged from gaming are largely unequipped when it comes to discussing video games and their themes and content. Video games certainly aren't the first medium accused of negatively influencing children--you can go back to the dime novels of the 19th century, comic books and rock music in the 1950s, Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, and so on. The interactive medium quickly became a common scapegoat of politicians, watchdog groups, and activist lawyers, ostensibly being the root of violent crimes and antisocial behavior amongst our youth. And that’s in part to video games, in the medium's early days, originally being marketed as experiences for adults.

"When video games first came out, they didn't tend to be marketed towards kids," said Tony Rowe, an associate professor at Drexel University who is also a game development veteran, with credits in Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and numerous LucasArts titles. "You'd see arcade games in bars, taverns, and cocktail lounges." It wasn't until the late 1970s that games were geared towards children, according to Rowe, with establishments like Chuck E. Cheese providing younger audiences with spaces to play arcade games. 

The 1970s also spawned one of the earliest public controversies about a video game, spread by a panicking media dealing with a nascent medium. Exidy's 1976 arcade game Death Race attracted negative and provocative headlines from outlets like Associated Press. Death Race had players driving a car and running over what appeared to be humanoid figures, leading to outcry from organizations like the National Safety Council. To observers, Death Race crossed a line by having players reenact violent acts.

The outrage surrounding Death Race escalated via a multi-step process, with the AP's coverage of the game's violence picked up by the National Safety Council for its own magazine, which was subsequently amplified by The New York Times and programs like The Today Show, according to Rowe.

"Video games were still pretty new in the mid-70s, and I think news reporters found something hot and interesting to grab onto," said Rowe. "The press benefited from the newness of video games and making a sensational story out of it."

By the early 1980s, games were exploding in popularity, but adults were still less versed in what video games were and how they worked.

"Part of it was this newness, this mystery of, ‘What is this thing, and what does it do to people?' Because games are entirely enchanting--they are dynamic and colorful and fun and interactive, and it was this new aesthetic form that people hadn't seen before," Rowe said. "And so, concern came up that it was why kids are skipping their homework and spending their lunch money, and then it grew from there into, ‘It's going to cause violence,' and all these sorts of threats of the boogeyman of the day."

In retrospect, the case of Death Race and the almost-viral nature of outrage surrounding it became a model for video game controversies that came after. The list is near endless, from the 1993 US Senate hearings stemming from content in Mortal Kombat and Night Trap to the blatantly misinformed 2008 Fox News segment about sexual content in Mass Effect, along with every single time then-lawyer Jack Thompson made a stir about Grand Theft Auto on the television airwaves.

It's easy to forget, but Grand Theft Auto was arguably born from controversy. DMA Design, the studio behind the first GTA game (released in 1997), hired publicist Max Clifford for the game's marketing campaign, who then leveraged the game's violent content to stir the pot for free press.

"He ended up getting the game in the ear of Lord Gordon Campbell of Croy in Parliament, and he got him to condemn GTA in the House of Lords back in 1997," Rowe said. Radio ads in the UK for the game subsequently contained Campbell's sound bite: "Is it true, as reported, that that game includes thefts of cars and joyriding, and hit-and-run accidents, and being chased by the police? And that there'll be nothing to stop children from buying it?" 

Inciting outrage isn't how Rockstar Games would market its entries in the series. Still, the release of any entry in the GTA series since 3 in 2001 has traditionally been a flashpoint for controversy and moral outrage. From the Hot Coffee mod in San Andreas to drunk driving in GTA 4, and depictions of torture in GTA V, GTA has always found ways to make the news.

But such widespread moral outrages over video games have subsided in the decade-plus since GTA V's release. Occasionally, we'll see moments like US President Donald Trump pointing the finger at video games in 2018, in the wake of mass shootings. Overall, though, video gaming has become an ubiquitous part of the larger media landscape, as rock music and comic books did before. The only game-related scandal you'll likely see in the mainstream news involves predatory practices in Roblox and the resulting concerns from legislators and parents.

"Video games as an industry is over 50 years old. I think now the adults, at least, have some familiarity with video games," Rowe said.

With how big GTA 6 will be, will it be an exception to the fading sentiment of video games as a patsy? Rockstar Games is known for its social commentary and satire, and GTA 6 will be coming in hot during what is a politically divisive time. As for how the mainstream platforms will cover and portray GTA 6 in this new sociopolitical climate, Rowe thinks it's hard to predict.

"I'm sure it will get coverage, because this is one of those games that does get coverage," Rowe said. "I think there is almost an expectation that something will be sensational or controversial, and people will be going over it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for something that might be sensational or something to call out, just because that is expected of the Grand Theft Auto games."

One thing is for certain: People receive information at a rapid pace and through various means, which gives plenty of opportunities for bad actors to spread misinformation or spark rage.

"There are possibilities of accusations and rabble rousing that have now been monetized on places like Twitter," Rowe said, "Which, if you get your blue check and you can make a bunch of people angry and respond to your posts, you'll get money. We're incentivizing this sort of, not even discourse, but just trying to stoke fear in people in a big way that we've never seen before, and with immediate results."

Rockstar has shown very little of GTA 6--the last trailer for the game was over a year ago. All we know are some character backstories and the fact that it's set in the Miami-inspired Vice City. Judging from the trailers, the game will also feature Rockstar's take on short-form video apps like TikTok, one of today's biggest platforms for producing viral content--and farming outrage.

We have no clue what kind of story beats, bloody brutality, or salacious moments await us in Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar would like you to know that the company cleaned up its frat-boy culture, but it wouldn't be a GTA game if it didn't try to push the envelope in some way. What I can say for sure is that heated discussions will take place once GTA 6 is finally in the hands of consumers. 

An uncountable number of words will be typed and exchanged about the content in the game, the issues it tackles, and how it plays, leading up to the eventual metacontextual discussions about the reactions to the game and the implications its sales performance has on the games industry. While I don’t think I'll get any text messages from older family members warning about this game after reading about it on the news, I'm already dreading the YouTube "rage bait" thumbnails, decrying that GTA 6 is "woke" for asinine reasons like starring a female protagonist (as Rowe points out, the first GTA game included four female playable characters). 

We'd like to think that we're prepared for Grand Theft Auto 6. We've had 13 years to prepare, in fact. I'm sure that people will call in sick on November 19, and gaming news outlets will have plans for the inevitable onslaught of SEO-driven content and guides relating to the game. And in the background, the games industry as a whole will wait to see if GTA 6 is the economic and cultural shot in the heart that gaming desperately needs.

As prepared as we might be to buy and play GTA 6, are we, collectively, prepared to talk about it? In today's world, outrage spreads differently, and a lot faster. You might be ready to play it, but brace for the exhausting discourse ahead.