Cognition Dissemination: Don’t Fall for the Grand Theft Auto 6 Outrage

Grand Theft Auto 6 was destined to be a culture war minefield, considering the way in which certain internet communities react to everything. The reaction to the leaked details from this past week shows how the “fun” has only just begun.

Rockstar themselves confirmed that the game was well under development earlier this year, but details contained in a new Bloomberg piece, specifically via Jason Schreier, outlined just how far its development has progressed. The biggest detail is how the game will host the first key playable female character in the franchise, one that will focus on a Bonnie and Clyde-inspired duo in which the female character will be Latina. The game will take place in modern-day Miami-inspired location, likely in a modern incarnation of Vice City from the titularly-subtitled game for a nice little throwback.

If your brain has been so thoroughly poisoned by bad internet discussions like mine, it’s easy to figure out which part of this story the anti-Cancel Culture morons latched onto immediately. The mere idea of introducing a notable playable female character for the campaign was enough for the Worst People Online to conclude that the Grand Theft Auto franchise was embracing “wokeness.”

This, combined with the focal detail in the story about Rockstar’s quest to make the studio a more progressive and inclusive place to work in, was enough to set off explosions within right-wing social media circles and blogospheres. Rockstar took the reports about the studio being toxic to work at through its frat culture and long “crunch” work hours provided around the time of Red Dead Redemption 2’s release to heart. This naturally extended to the game’s content, with a story and themes that the report specifies won’t punch down. The overall tone, however, won’t be that different from its predecessors.

Here is helpful advice for anyone outside the right-wing sphere: Don’t fall for any of this. These people thrive on starting internet arguments for clout. They adore it when people agree with them, but similarly welcome disagreements when they’re done through quote-tweets onto timelines. The same applies to when someone links to their articles or blogs on the subject, which include ludicrous claims about how radical liberals have infiltrated companies like Rockstar to make their games “woke.” It must be a very lucrative grift if they can keep this up on a nearly-daily basis, and the last thing any well-meaning person should do is help them along while intending to dunk on them.

All their efforts will be for naught as far as affecting GTA6’s development. Rockstar’s developers got right on making this after finishing up work on RDR2 around four years ago, meaning they’re way too deep into this game to make any serious changes now. Considering just how well Grand Theft Auto V has done over time, GTA6 will be a success even if it only sells a quarter of that. Most of the millions of people who eventually play this will never read this inane online commentary, and no well-meaning person should help boost them to other unsuspecting and impressionable people.

Besides, this dumb nonsense is somewhat burying the other juicy details contained in the Bloomberg piece. The development team wanted to include large swaths of North America and South America for exploration at one point, a sign of just how ridiculously ambitious they were during the earlier stages of production. They were forced to scale this back to simply Miami (Vice City), which should be a big-enough location… to start with. The plan is to expand the scope of the in-game world over time, the details of which make this sound like a single-player live service title. This sounds great if they can maintain the quality.

There’s also a small error in other articles that have reported on this story: GTA6 won’t quite offer the first playable female character in the franchise. The first Grand Theft Auto title offered eight playable characters to choose from, including four men and four women. But the playable characters at this point were silent player avatars. The same applies to the Game Boy Color version of Grand Theft Auto II, which included four men and two women (the console version solely focused on Claude Steel). There’s also the option for players to use their own avatars in Grand Theft Auto Online. I’m not saying GTA6 won’t offer a milestone for the franchise by having the first voiced female protagonist option in the campaign of a fully-3D title, however.

The anonymous Rockstar employees Schreier talked to don’t know when the game will release, and were careful not to provide an exact timeframe. They’re hoping the base game will be ready in about two years. These games take as long to develop as Bethesda RPGs these days, considering the potential gap between this title and RDR2, and the gap between that game and GTAV. But the results should be worth it if the game turns out as good as promised. Just don’t boost any nimrods overly concerned about “wokeness” in the meantime, especially those who aren’t concerned at all and just want to gobble up that sweet and delicious clout.

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