Let’s be honest-the hype around Grand Theft Auto VI has gotten a little bit out of control. Not because it won’t be a good game (I bet it will be). But how people are discussing it…that’s where it all starts to crumble.
This isn’t excitement any more; it’s expectations at a level that very few games, if any, can reach.
A Decade-Long Wait Inflated Expectations To Unrealistic Levels. The long gap between Grand Theft Auto V and GTA VI hasn’t simply generated hype, it has artificially inflated expectations for what the game will be. Players have had over a decade to conceptualize the ultimate Grand Theft Auto game. This is a dangerous position to be in because now the game isn’t competing with other video games: it’s competing with the human imagination-a battle it’s almost guaranteed to lose.
Rockstar Games Cannot Compete With Your Imagination. Rockstar Games undoubtedly is one of the most talented developers out there, but after Red Dead Redemption 2, players’ expectations have surpassed anything remotely reasonable. People aren’t simply looking for a great game-they’re looking for perfection, and no game is immune to a harsh reception at that level of pressure.
Nostalgia Is Doing Half of the Heavy Lifting. Although returning to Vice City is a concept that excites people immensely, nostalgia is incredibly misleading. While it will feel familiar in name, the experience of playing Grand Theft Auto Vice City is tied more to what people remember playing than what the actual game was. Recreating a sense of a decades-old feeling in a modern game is far harder than it sounds.
“New” Features Aren’t Particularly Novel. The aspects that are being lauded by people at large are largely already present. Better AI, more realistic worlds, integrated social media. These are things that have been done and seen by other video games before, even if it’s possible Rockstar is doing a better job. It isn’t something groundbreaking, however.
The hype for Grand Theft Auto VI is far larger than the actual game. Grand Theft Auto VI is not being treated like a video game, it’s being treated like a world-changing event. That is almost never a recipe for success because when something has that much hype riding on it, even an excellent game could end up feeling like a disappointment for not changing the world.
There’s a risk nobody talks about: The higher the hype, the greater the fall. If Grand Theft Auto VI launches as simply ‘a very good game’ and not ‘a revolutionary title,’ players will likely have a negative reception-not because the game is bad, but because the expectations were never set realistically in the first place.
Grand Theft Auto VI will be a strong title-perhaps one of the strongest. But currently, it has a level of expectation attached to it that, to date, no other game in the medium has ever truly delivered on.
