GTA 6 Confirmed | Hacker News Reader

GTA 6 Confirmed

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Direct link to the source as it seems to be missing from the article: https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1489617718009606150

> Many of you have been asking about a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series.

> With every new project, our goal is always to significantly move beyond what we've previously delivered. We're pleased to confirm that active development for the next entry in the series is underway.

Next one after that: https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1489617781347831812

> We look forward to sharing more as soon as we are ready, so please stay tuned to the Rockstar Newswire for official details.

> On behalf of our entire team, we thank you all for your support and cannot wait to step into the future with you!

One of the big open questions now is the ability to mod GTA6 (or whatever the next major installment is called).

Nopixel[0], a roleplay-focused modded GTAV server built on the FiveM framework[1], has absolutely exploded in popularity during the past year. Many of the most popular streamers on Twitch are active on this server. Cumulative live viewership of these streamers is in the tens or hundreds of thousands at any one time. Looking at the top live GTAV streamers[2], almost all are playing on Nopixel or some similar GTARP server.

Rockstar is notorious for being hostile to modders. Since Nopixel has become such a phenomenon recently (and a huge cash cow for streamers and streaming platforms) there is a lot of talk among the GTARP community about GTA6. There's speculation about whether Rockstar will continue to turn a blind eye to modders, lock down their software even more, try to go after modders legally, release their own competing RP platform or something else.

As an aside, I'm somewhat surprised I've never read any discussion about Nopixel on HN before. I started by watching one popular streamer try it a year ago and gradually began watching several Nopixel-only streamers when I get the chance. It's goofy and rough around the edges, but there are wildly creative and entertaining people involved. It feels like I've been watching a novel form of entertainment emerge in the course of a year. In a certain sense, it feels more like the "metaverse" than any thing I've seen recently advertised as such.

[0] https://nopixel.fandom.com/wiki/NoPixel_Community

[1] https://fivem.net/

[2] https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Grand%20Theft%20Auto%20...

edit: clarified that Nopixel is a server built on the FiveM framework

Goofy roleplay metaverse sounds a lot cooler than cartoonified realworld self metaverse

Lots of it is goofy. Some of it is wildly deep too. As a police officer you have shifts, tickets to give out, tons of paperwork, break time, arresting, booking, interrogating, rules for shoot outs, you learn all the codes for “officer down”, “robbery in progress”, etc, certifications to get for driving various vehicles, you have to learn every street by heart to participate in chases because you have to constantly use call signs and say “he’s going north on broadway, now east on lake ave”, promotions and pay scales, radio operation and dispatch…absolutely insane imo, a completely new level of role playing.

It's been discussed here before, but you've conflated NoPixel, a server with the most famous community, with FiveM, the mod framework that NoPixel uses.

If there is a GTA6 online, which there will be of course, then they would be very stupid to not build in all the functionality used on RP servers today. The worry is that they will overly focus on mechanics and economy which somewhat work against role playing. If they have a way for players to be cops or EMS or mechanics or car salesmen or shopkeepers then they're set.

Does FiveM allow players to be sex workers? Just curious.

I know that within the GTARP communities there are sex workers, but I don't know to what extent FiveM enables this.

FiveM is just a multiplayer server implementation with a modding framework built in. It's base functionality is pretty basic, and doesn't support players being sex workers or having jobs in general. There are mods out there that add that feature though.

You are right, FiveM is absolutely worth mentioning separately as it seems to underpin most modded servers. I'm aware of the distinction and I wasn't attempting to downplay the work people put into the FiveM framework or non-Nopixel servers. My apologies to any FiveM devs if my comment came off that way.

The reason I call out Nopixel specifically is that server' recent prominence and popularity may affect Rockstar's plan for GTA6. For better or for worse, the Nopixel brand has moved GTAV modding towards the mainstream and that has the potential to affect all future modding.

I'm pretty much in agreement with your predictions and concerns about RP in GTA6, I think this is a widely shared view. In addition to your concern about mechanics overriding RP, I would also say that (from my view) RP seems to be most successful when mod devs and admins are closely integrated with the community and able to tweak/add content to prevent things getting stale. It's very hard to see how that could happen with Rockstar administering RP servers.

It's doable, FiveM have accomplished it, even.

I used to host dedicated game servers back in the day when that was a thing you did. Most servers had custom variables set for all sorts of stuff: health, gravity, respawn time, etc. All of these sorts of settings exist in GTA, and Cyberpunk, and Halo, and so on. It's up to the developers to expose them.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me, and likely you, that Rockstar could charge to host a private server, provide admins with all the knobs and levers they could dream of, and even provide access to scripting and resource primitives that modders will figure out how to access anyways. But they probably won't.

If they were really smart, they'd just buy FiveM, and have GTA6 ship with paid modding support.

>a roleplay-focused GTAV mod

My girlfriend currently is addicted to GTAV role play. GTAV RP is huge and very popular with women it seems.

That and Dead by Daylight.

Need to take a look at it.

But regarding GTARP: I've never seen so many female players in one game. On some servers it's roughly 50/50 split between men and women. (Most servers have the rule that you need to play a character of the same sex you have in the real world).

I believe GTARP is The Sims on Crack (or Cocaine or whatever the gangs are trading there).

Any roles for gender fluid?

I guess it depends on the server. I know of one trans woman who had no problem playing a female character on the server my GF plays on. She was just accepted by the community.

But as this is mostly role play I don't see why gender fluidity should be a problem.

> Rockstar is notorious for being hostile to modders.

I wonder why. Mods have been a part of GTA for so long. Why can't they just embrace it?

Microtransactions do not fit well with some kinds of mods as it could enable players to access new content not in the company control.

Mods are great for players and the most dedicated fans, thou.

Harder to monetize and control

   >>>  It feels like I've been watching a novel form of entertainment emerge

Had the same sentiment. Meta merger of Hollywood and Vinewood incoming, that is: some streamers are becoming improvising actors, some dialogues might be pre-scripted and rehearsed today.

NoPixel, and GTARP in general are fundamentally flawed because they enforce game design objectives through community rules instead of through game design itself. It works ok for streaming, because you have a small group of paid actors who mostly follow the rules, but try actually playing it and you realize everything quickly dissolves into a shitshow of petty meta-arguments.

The rules try to foster an environment where players act in a somewhat realistic manner, valuing their own life, yet the game design acts in completely opposed to this; get killed and you respawn at the nearest hospital without consequences just like in single-player.

An example; some characters were holding a funeral for another character. (consensus among the players had emerged that this death was 'real', as opposed to just being a normal 'respawn'). Some popular streamer turned up and suicide-bombed the funeral for laughs, sending bodies flying in every direction. The next hour is spent on meta-debates about if this suicide-bomb attack was canonical, only canonical for the bomber, or should be ignored and considered as never having occurred. The whole shitshow could have been avoided if the game design was in service to the server's objectives, e.g. when you die your character is perma-dead, instead of leaving that determination up to interpretation of the server's rules.

It doesn’t say gt6 confirmed. It says there’s another GTA game in the works, it could be gta /San Andreas VR for oculus which is already confirmed.

That being said it’s probably GTA6. I’m hyped.

I’m surprised they don’t make an MMO or free to play game already. Don’t those make more money?

Yeah I do think that it's pretty implied heavily that it is indeed a 'mainline' entry in the series

I mean the industry has a consistent history of bait & switch (or straight up lying) so I am not holding my breath.

Half-Life: Alyx has entered the chat.

People were upset about that?

A traditional "Half-Life 3" was never going to live up to the hype, the only hope for the series was something offering new experiences - and a game becoming the poster child for VR gaming seems pretty successful.

People don't want "Half-Life 3". They want "Game-that-makes-me-feel-like-half-life-did". A standard M+Kb FPS isn't gonna do that anymore, they're well, standard.

> People don't want "Half-Life 3". They want "Game-that-makes-me-feel-like-half-life-did". A standard M+Kb FPS isn't gonna do that anymore, they're well, standard.

I disagree. Sure there are tons of FPS games out there, 95% are multiplier focused and have minimal to zero story, and it was the story that people remember from the Half-Laife series IMO.

Alyx was/is fantastic and really shows what it takes to make a VR game, everything game system wise "just works" and feels natural (on an Index at least), and the story was fine. Sure it's not HL3 but it's a good game in the HL universe.

I think the problem with HL3 is that no matter what they deliver large chunks of people will be disappointed and Valve have zero need to release anything ever again so there is no pressure to even try.

You may be right. I've never played Half Life, but am currently playing through the MCC largely for the story.

They definitely missed the boat on releasing it though, or maybe <wishfulthinking>they're holding it and Portal 3 as Linux exclusives for when M$ steps too far</wishfulthinking>

Are you kidding? Half Life 3 could still be a huge hit with a decent script and a modern engine. Not everything has to advance the state of the art.

The Mandalorian doesn't do anything new. It puts you back in the Star Wars universe of the late 1970's, with a compelling set of characters, environments, and scripts to match. That's all a new Half Life (or Portal) game would have to do.

Agreed, but the elephant in the room is that Mandalorian is so popular with millennials + similar age groups because of the massive amounts of fan service in the show. It's not particularly fantastic writing or plot development.

I would not want to have a HL3 that relied on "DAE Glados? DAE Team Fortress Hats?", and I really, really respect Valve for not doing that.

I might be the exception here but I've really enjoyed The Mandolorian despite not liking the films.

While it's set in the SW universe and has lots of references I probably don't notice them over obvious things like major characters showing up. For me it's a perfectly fine show, nothing groundbreaking but definitely above average.

yes, that is the official gaben explanation for hl3. I really doubt the original plan in 2007 was to wait indefinitely for some sufficiently cool new tech, but whatever.

it doesn't really explain why hl2:ep3 never happened, despite having a mature engine to develop against. I think people would be a lot less upset if a "standard m+kb" ep3 that didn't end on such a cliffhanger had been released sometime around 2010.

I definitely agree that it's a retconned explanation, but it also makes sense for where we are now in the games industry.

I'm in my early 20's, and have never played HL. I suspect that's not super nonstandard.

So I agree. It should've been released, but they missed the boat, and now we all have to live with it.

It will be a live service game named GTA without suffix so they can milk it longer.

I suspect it's a mobile GTA game designed to create a sense of FOMO and using microtransactions to scratch that itch, eventually relying on a small number of "whales" to support the game.

Last time Blizzard tried that with a big IP they got booed at the event and online.

Only because it was a hyped announcement where everyone expected the next big Diablo, not a mobile game.

Which is exactly what Rockstar will have when they unveil the next GTA.

"the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series" is definitely a next major version

Wouldnt mind a side step like GTA London. But, since it is Vice City o'clock, I'm stoked just for the soundtrack.

At least Wikipedia counts GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas as "main series", leaving the possibility of a game that is new but not called GTA 6.

But I agree that it doesn't sound like San Andreas VR or something like that.

I hope they saw what happened with the "Diablo sequel".

> I’m surprised they don’t make an MMO or free to play game already. Don’t those make more money?

GTA Online is F2P in every way apart from its bundling with a retail single-player game. It's a full-on live service offering with events and an economy built on in-game currency that can be purchased as IAPs.

Many speculate that GTA Online's success is the primary reason Rockstar hasn't focused on a new single-player GTA for most of a decade.

Yeah, I'm glad they've announced GTA6 - I find the GTA online stuff boring/uninteresting. I was worried because it was such a cash cow and relatively easy/cheap to work on that we may never get another high quality story.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was really great, I wonder what they'll do for GTA6.

Hopefully optimize some of it so that it's playable on a reasonably affordable GPU within the next 10 years

Plot twist: there will be no affordable GPUs in the next 10 years.

Paperclip maximizer goes brrrr

I don't know if to downvote you for the funny reference or to downvote you for the dark implications those "paperclip maximizers" have in real life :-(

PC gaming will be banned for not being energy efficient. /s

Assuming the game will be out on PC within the next 10 years.

A Playstation / Xbox is pretty affordable.

It saddens me that this is what is now considered "f2p".

I’m sorry but I disagree. It’s literally not F2P. Saying it’s F2P in every way other than having to purchase it is pretty silly, no?

GTA online is the reason there was no GTA 6 yet. It’s just making too much money to care.

This makes me rather sad, as someone who typically doesn't play "online."

GTA used to have a lot of 'interim releases' or what have you, that were like their own game based on the same engine.

Ballad of Gay Tony, Lost and the Damned, etc.

Just look at the release history on the wiki[1]. They were churning out releases of some type nearly every year, then nothing since 2013. That's what these microtransactions and IAP online lead to :(.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto

A major Grand Theft Auto release is these days rare (in fact, a new game from R* is rare). R* truly pushes the boundaries and gets the most out of the generation of console platforms it is running on. The incredible attention to detail is frankly astonishing if you compare it to other games. Each installment brings something new not only to the franchise, but also to gaming in general. E.g., GTA 4 brought Bullet physics with Euphoria's natural motion engine in action in 2008. The latter wasn't just a tool/library they can simply import into the engine: it had to be customized and blended into the game engine itself (engineers from the company behind Euphoria were brought in-house to integrate it). In addition, the amazing dynamic vehicle damage.. It was way ahead of its time [1]. AFAIK, they hire quite a lot of PhDs in comparison to other game companies, likely because they care about research/innovation, and (of course) can afford it too. Whenever you have time, have a look at one of their GDC talks [2] [3]. Even the in-house tooling is quite advanced.

[1] How vehicle damage was implemented (Erwin Coumans, creator of Bullet physics who also helped R* develop the physics of GTA, shared this email from R* North): https://pybullet.org/Bullet/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=16852#p16...

[2] "The Sound of Grand Theft Auto V": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4GuM15QOFE&ab_channel=GDC

[3] "Environment Design as Spatial Cinematography: Theory and Practice": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L27Qb20AYmc&ab_channel=GDC

GTA 5 is the best-selling entertainment product in history, eclipsing any medium. According to a new report by MarketWatch, GTA 5 sold over 90 million copies and generated over $6 billion in revenue since its initial release(as of April 2018).

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/gta-5-now-profitable-ent...

Fortnite generates 5 billion a year.

Pretty good for a game that's free to play.

"Free to play" == FOMO on skins. I wish games went back to a $60 one-time purchase with maybe a DLC bundle if it's successful, like Dark Souls or Skyrim.

There are still plenty of games like that.

I don't know how you maintain a game like Fortnite (or GTAIV) with just a $60 one time purchase. I can't help but look at Overwatch - a great game - that was effectively abandoned because the original team heavily discouraged monetization.

Maybe you don't, and that's ok.

Or you do something like most MMO's and do a subscription. I would (generally) rather pay an honest subscription then have free players be subsidized by MTX.

> Or you do something like most MMO's and do a subscription. I would (generally) rather pay an honest subscription then have free players be subsidized by MTX.

What's the difference between paying $10/month and buying a $20 skin every 2 months?

I'm rarely willing to pay for subscriptions. In fact, the only games I've paid a subscription for are WoW and FF14.

But I also very very rarely buy skins. I used to play a lot of Overwatch and spent $0 on skins and loot boxes. I've played countless matches in League of Legends (There used to be a way to see how many matches you've played, but I can't find it), and spent ~$50 in skins.

If either of them were a monthly charge, both would have received $0 from me.

I'd rather play a game where free players are subsidized by frivolous microtransactions that don't affect gameplay, instead of having a much smaller playerbase.

> Overwatch - a great game - that was effectively abandoned because the original team heavily discouraged monetization.

I don't believe it's the team. Blizzard has a track record of abandoning perfectly good games (although I'll grant Overwatch was uniquely difficult to monetize).

SC2 is a great game, too. They even dabbled in paid story DLC with Nova's mission pack, which was cool, but then they fell back to only developing co-op commanders for people to grind co-op content with instead of making more cool story DLC. And they've even stopped making co-op commanders now (people probably got tired of grinding through the same handful of scenarios).

Diablo 3 had one (desperately needed) expansion and one class DLC, but since then have cycled through a carousel of "seasonal" content, with only cosmetics and some mechanical adjustments, no new gear.

Basically, they have these games that absolutely could be platforms for more ("healthy") things to sell and at the same time prolong the lifetime of their games, but for whatever reason they don't sustain investment in them. My hypothesis is it's because Hearthstone is better from a strict ROI perspective, but I don't know that for sure.

> I don't know how you maintain a game like Fortnite (or GTAIV) with just a $60 one time purchase.

Games like Hollow Knight or Minecraft that are one-time-purchases sustained further development through market saturation. Every free DLC increased the value proposition for people who hadn't purchased yet. In traditional marketing, you'd sell your game for X, realizing there's an audience out there that will only buy at X-10 (or whatever), so after you sell at X for a while you apply a discount to reach that audience too. What Minecraft and Hollow Knight have done is sort of the inverse of that (in addition to traditional discounts, at least in the case of Hollow Knight): increasing the value for the price so if the base game at $20 is a questionable deal, the base game + free DLC at $20 draws in people who were on the fence before. Even though the DLC is free, the company still makes money on it.

That said, those games don't incur server costs for the company. Once server costs get involved, people want higher ROI to offset them.

>Games like Hollow Knight or Minecraft

What's unique about Hollow Knight or Minecraft is that they are either 2D, or low detail enough where they can be reasonably maintained by a small team.

A game like GTA or Overwatch could have voice actors, motion cap, animation teams, detailed 3D models, maintained servers, in-game events; the list goes on, it's not just server costs. My point is, it's unreasonable to think that something like that can be maintained by a $20 DLC, and worst still DLC is only enjoyed by a small portion of the player base.

I'm completely fine with that kind of business model. It's better than microtransactions that make the game pay to win. Plus anyone that just wants to play because the gameplay is fun can.

> I'm completely fine with that kind of business model. It's better than microtransactions that make the game pay to win.

That's a low bar to compare to. Pay to win is simply not a game anymore. It's just paid gratification.

There are plenty of games like that if you're willing to avoid AAA games. Hollow Knight was $20 and they released multiple significant DLCs for free. Minecraft is $20 and keeps getting new content pretty regularly.

It did that for one year, though it’s total accumulated is probably still easily over 6 billion.

At the end of September 2021 the number of sold copies was 155 million.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/03/take-twos-bookings-grow-3...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_g...

Minecraft is number 1. I'm surprised GTA V beats Tetris though, pretty wild.

This table is outdated, Genshin Impact reported $2.1B from Play Store and App Store alone.

I don't know who's "number 1" but deadalus is talking about revenue, while the page you linked seems to be about copies sold. GTA seems more expensive to buy than Minecraft so you might both be right but about different things.

That wouldn't be gta 5 either, but best-selling means copies sold, not profit.

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_vid...

I don't think minecraft has microtransactions though. I don't think a quarter billion sales is $6 billion.

You can't buy in game money with minecraft and it initially sold for 12 dollars. GTA5 gets almost full price across each platform coupled with in game purchases. Sure, minecraft sold more licenses, but I have no doubts GTA5 is the cash cow here.

I don't understand the draw. It was on Game Pass recently so I downloaded it and I got through the first one or two missions and I just didn't get any enjoyment out of it at all. For context, my favorite games are open world RPGs like Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

GTA has a satirical take on American culture told through a rags to riches story of a criminal. It’s humorous, filled with exaggerated characters, action packed, and tells the familiar Scarface-like story.

Is it just me getting older or does that humorous exaggeration really get less enjoyable every time they move the quality of the of the cityscape simulation backdrop up a notch?

The dark exaggerated story might somehow create a world where it is ok to, I don't know, shoot your way through that casino for robbing the vault or whatever, yet at the same time completely fail to construct a similar excuse for all the things the player character does to non-story NPCs. In the crude worlds of earlier GTA that was limited to the radical things like carjacking and all that pedestrian killing, but those were so crass that they defined that dark world. With increased fidelity however, it extends to a very long tail of bad behavior like blocking the bike lane with the getaway car. And for those subtle things, the excuse of "dark, humorous, twisted" just doesn't work out. It might, if the subtle things were the focus of the game (e.g. in a port of the mechanisms of untitled goose game from annoying waterfowl to annoying socker mom suv) but in a GTA they cannot be more than backdrop.

So much material for new cutting American satire I can't wait to see what they do with it.

The problem with the current iteration of America is that satire is not obvious. Many things that would previously have been considered satire have actually happened in real life (the four seasons lawn and garden incident could have come directly out of an SNL skit).

Or Joe going on about leg hair glowing golden in the sun and kids stroking it so it lays down.

Truth is much stranger than fiction these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-A4VrEUyyI

GTA 5 came before everyone felt the need to be offended though. It’s almost like we live in a satire reality already.

That claim about GTA n-1 is almost as old as GTA

Not really, GTA5 came out in 2013, PC culture was culminating in 2010, but peaked in 2016.

Before, it was mainly concerned parents (think of the children!)

Now, it's PC babies (South Park ref. that concerns the same phenomenon) complaining / cancelling

Isn't that hindsight speaking? When it comes to cultural trends, we percieve only the now and it's gradient from the past and don't really do much extrapolation or prophecy.

I don't see why it matters if it's hindsight, of course it's hindsight, I'm talking about recent history.

And I'm talking about people that were taking about recent history at the points in time when those earlier GTA were being announced/released/reviewed.

Rockstar Games track record shows couldn't give less of a shit about who they offend with the satire in their GTA series. I wouldn't worry about that.

Like the guy from gta 3 not giving a middle finger anymore in the definitive edition?

You'll get downvoted but it's true. CC is out of control and has gotten far, far worse over the past decade. It's one thing to call people out for stupid stuff and racism, it's quite another to dox them on the internet and call for their total destruction of their worth as a human being who was stupid but can probably change or be educated.

One of the defining features of GTA: Vice City was that it was set in the 80s, so the satire was through a retro/nostalgia/pop-culture lens that made it seem a little more lighthearted. If GTA VI is set there again as is rumored, I could see them setting a significant part of the game as a flashback and taking advantage of that again.

Each open world keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

I wonder how interesting it will be. Handcrafting stuff for a yet bigger world is always more difficult and time-consuming, and the difference between things to do handcrafted with care and procedurally generated busywork is night and day.

GTA IV actually reduced the map size compared to San Andreas, but they made the map more detailed. San Andreas is a whole lot of nothing in many places.

I actually enjoyed that about San Andreas. The feeling of just being out on a limb between the bottom 2 cities listening to k rock was great. Although here I’m hoping it’s vice city.

A mix of both might be interesting. Very different type of games, but I played both Factorio and Satisfactory. The procedural world of factorio make it more replayable and interesting for finding resources. The hand crafted world of satisfactory is impressive, and even more interesting to explore the first time, but less replayibility value once you know the world. If it were somehow possible to combine randomness with also a good amount of hand-crafted design, you could get the best of both worlds...

With how much money gta makes they could make a handcrafted huge world. Probably won't, but still.

It's not even the largest open world game, not by a long shot.

https://youtu.be/3TwjUk4ReZo

Meanwhile, re3 is still DMCA'd and development has stopped. I've already completed master and miami, going to play lcs next. Changing the source is half the fun! At one point, I tried to make the player ped move faster and accidentally ended up making non-player peds run stupidly wild. The police would glitch exiting their vehicle still sitting around as if they're driving. And that's just the stuff that went wrong. Being completely OP is something that did work and some missions were difficult regardless.

But if they want my money, they'll have to stop filing silly DMCA requests and open up the source at some point in the future (like ID did).

Back in 2013 I'd have laughed if someone said we won't get another GTA game in the decade. But GTA Online makes a fuckton of money so I guess they want to tap it as long as they can. And the fact that 5 never get a single player story DLC after all these years is a huge shame...

On the other hand Rockstar is incredibly hostile towards modders and what they did with the "remasters" is a joke. So I'll just torrent it, and maybe buy it if they show any change of heart.

Well remember we did get red dead redemption 2 a few years back and that one was a banger

I have mixed feelings about RDR2. The production value was top notch, but for an open-world game it was excessively linear and narrative-driven rather than gameplay-driven. The gameplay that was there was also a bit clunky/slow. People defend it as a "cowboy simulator", but all of the interesting outlaw/cowboy stuff you can do is mostly relegated to tightly orchestrated missions. I can't just ride my horse into a town and rob a bank if the story deemed it inappropriate at that time. I also didn't like that the narrative was about getting enough money to escape the law, but no matter how much I accumulated through the open-ended activities I COULD engage in, I could never move the needle unless the narrative dictated. Not simulator-ish at all.

You can kill and rob people, but only during the missions. God forbid you don’t help an old lady get home safe in a free roam!

Seriously, this karma system just made no sense.

I'd love to see a version of gta that takes place in 1960's medellin colombia. that would be wild

Oh, that sounds fun! In a similar ( only thematically) vein, I've quite enjoyed Cartel Tycoon.

GTAV with mods is probably the benchmark for games that are difficult to differentiate from reality.

I hope they don't make the same fractured-platform launch that they did on V, and fully bake the online play before releasing it.

I did recently see some short snippet of a "GTAV photorealism" mod that looked mightily impressive.

Could anyone into the scene link a "state of the art" example?

This is the most recent one I've seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_7XOMO7nJE

IMO, GTA IV 1.0.4.0 actually looks better when done properly. https://external-preview.redd.it/MjjuKj_N4Rn6jyXjZc5ikVk_N3m...

It is very easy to see if is not even close to reality: such a wet road would produce a lot of splashes and every car would be followed by a water vapor trail.

So yes, textures and some lighting effects are impressive, but not even close to real thing. It would be easier to do a sunny weather.

I'm amused by that youtube link because one of the very first things you see is some vegetation clipping through some mailboxes.

For me, these types of modeling issues are the biggest things that are standing in the way of "photorealism". Another common thing you'll see in a whole bunch of video games is grass or plants that are all "waving" in the wind, but they're just playing the exact same animation, just slightly offset. It looks great when its in your peripheral vision, but as soon as you look directly at it, it becomes noticeably artificial.

Recently I've found this game (Ride 4) to be the most impressive game I've ever seen in terms of realism in this particular scenario.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3DEM6XDDTk

With the pile of cash GTA already makes them it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

or they could go Blizzard way, keep cashing in on old games, and deliver no new products

Blizzard and Bethesda are both currently known for making massive hits and then just kinda...not making a sequel within a reasonable time frame? Like, can you believe it's been over ten years since Skyrim? It was only about a five year gap between previous entries.

I really don't think it's some kind of bizarre counter-intuitive business decision, I suspect it's just wild mismanagement, a failure to take advantage of an eager audience.

I don't want annual GTA games, or Ubisoft style sequels. But 10 years is far, far too long.

>can you believe it's been over ten years since Skyrim?

Can you believe they are still cashing in on WoW and tried to make a cheap Diablo remake on mobile?

> But 10 years is far, far too long.

Well, I would be happy to accept Diablo 2 + D2 LoD + "new 6th module" in 4k.

Eve Online is still going strong and is a year older than WoW. MMORPGs can be incredibly long lived, and WoW would have had a long and bright future if it weren't for Blizzard's mismanagement.

I really wanted to enjoy Eve Online. I like the ideas behind the game, such as permanent ship loss. It meant that crafting could be profitable, unlike WoW, where throughout its entire history, it's always been more profitable to sell the materials to craft something than to craft it and sell the result.

But the execution felt boring as hell. From what I understood, late-game combat is basically rock-paper-scissors. Early-game combat is just telling your ship to maintain a specific distance and auto-firing your weapons then going AFK for a couple minutes.

This video sums up how Eve felt to me: https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8

Might want to add Square to that list on the JRPG side; they have new IP but it’s all nostalgia bait for their games from the 90s (like re-using the same battle systems, heavily derivative music and character design, etc). They’re also dropping a lot of remakes / remasters of questionable quality. Also final fantasy 15 was total trash after a decade long dev cycle; and this is after 14 was so bad as an MMO they had to destroy the world and reboot the game. We’re going on 6 years since 15 was released (and it was also a terrible game) and have heard nothing about 16 other than how much it keeps getting delayed.

FFXV was good, except for the whole train-ride thing in the second half. Good overworld, good though occasionally annoying dungeons, beautiful monsters and locales, fun gameplay. Now FFXIII was total trash.

Original GTA to GTA IV (a total of 6 titles) took 11 years. GTA V took 5 years to follow up. Now it took 9 years to even confirm GTA VI, with the release probably still years out.

The complexity of the games increasing might have something to do with that.

That's a odd thing to write on a announcement for "we're working on a new product".

they have been consistently delivering new content for GTA Online

Not a week has gone by without a news article about some 'leak' for this game over the last 10 years, yet all of it has been bullshit. Many people have built careers speculating on it.

Awesome. I'm gonna hope for a game set somewhere that isn't America this time, but I doubt they could write that (and sell said writing). That being said, I'll throw my money on whatever they make day one regardless.

It was a really long time GTA had a world featuring the outside-America-world, but I'm sure it can be done. They've done other games that features other continents before, like Max Payne 3 being in Brazil (I think).

They also made GTA London back in the day. Would be fun to revisit that.

Meh, it’s too difficult.

You need a place where life is very car focused, but also has strong gun culture, excess wealth and cops that will chase and viciously shoot you to death or just plain beat the shit out of you.

Really it’s hard to imagine a modern GTA could happen anywhere else besides America.

Weirdly it’s the combination of gun stores and crime that’s odd. Medellín came to mind but I didn’t see any gun stores there. Zurich is at the other end. Hard to imagine a crime spree.

I don't know, I think you could take some liberties with all of that and get away with it. London isn't that hard to imagine (perhaps with some of the more... liberal parts of the Netherlands thrown in), working some kind of Guy Ritchie angle. The mass appeal won't be there though.

Technically, there already was a London-based GTA game.

In American settings you don't have to take liberties, I'm sure there have been GTA style crime sprees that played out just as they would in game. GTA: America Simulator.

Based on what I've read, and what's been implied with the most recent GTA V Online expansions, it's most likely going to take place in both Vice City and missions to "Cayo Perico" (their take on Colombia) for drug trafficking missions and whatnot.

I would be cool with that as well. Vice City is after all Best City.

I always wondered how generative ML models can be used for creating big worlds like the one in GTA. Like every tree can be unique using a generative model. Has there been any development in this area?

This has been a thing for a long time, just not with generative ML models - most solutions use rule-based procedural generation. A large fraction of trees in games have been generated this way since the mid 2000s - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedTree

Trees are nice, but I'd care much more about distinct NPCs , preferably with some ML aided dialog.

> preferably with some ML aided dialog.

Having played AI dungeon, I don't think we're there yet.

Actually, I'd rather see some progress in housing. As in being able to go into a building, with a different unique experience each time.

But perhaps GTA is a bad fit for this kind of innovation.

You don't want every tree to be unique on a map you're going to pregenerate and ship to users. It's going to bloat the size with all the tree models.

If you're going to generate them at runtime on the other hand, you need to seed it so in a multiplayer game everyone has the same tree (in case it has a hitbox or whatever), and you don't want to risk having crappy looking trees in important locations if that's just the one where the model didn't work so well.

Procedural generation of trees has been available forever, it didn't take ML to make it work, and it's generally not been considered worthwhile

Generating worlds automatically has long been done and refined, the keyword to look for is "procedural generation". The problem is that these often end up "soulless". The way around that is usually not ML but simulating the world's history: to generate interesting terrain start with boring terrain, then simulate a couple thousand years of erosion. To generate a city start with a village, then grow it over the years. To make a forest interesting simulate trees growing and competing for light for a couple centuries. This quickly gets complex and computationally intensive, so usually you end up with human artists guiding a much simpler process instead.

There's a great talk about Procedurally Generating Manhattan for Spiderman that's worth watching and covers things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aw9uyj9MAE

If you think this is interesting, all of the Spiderman GDC talks by the various staff of Insomniac Games are S-Tier.

They used ML to upscale GTA Trilogy. That didn’t go amazing.

It wasn't Rockstar

I don't think this is true - most of the examples people cite look more like they used underpaid contractors to manually recreate storefronts and billboards with shoddy clip art and plain fonts. ML-based upscaling wouldn't replace the hot dog in the background here with a completely different style of hot dog like in this example.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/qs22ee/this_is_unforgi...

The idea that they hacked a bunch of ML models together to do that instead of just outsourcing it doesn't hold up to muster.

It has its applications in a different way, tool assisted level design.

Software suites like Houdini, which is something of an industry standard in VFX and gamedev can potentially leverage ML techniques. AFAIK the folks who make Houdini have talked in the past about using ML to improve their terrain heightmap modelling, improving the quality of the erosion etc...

The real value add with using procedural tools to automate creating parts of large worlds (eroded terrain, placement of foliage according to rules) is that it frees up artist time to focus on hand crafting individual locations and detail into the map.

There is an interesting talk from Ubisoft which talks about how they leverage tools for building their large worlds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfizT369g60 (slides: https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/gdc2018/pres...)

Do employees at game studios have to sign NDA's or something? Like "hey what are you working on at Rockstar these days?" "nothing, definitely not GTA6"

Yes, the game industry is incredibly secretive. Any hint of any news from a game studio will make headlines, and studios want to control the marketing narrative, so part of the job is learning to keep those secrets.

I bought GTA4 when it came out. First thing that happened: I had to create a Microsoft Games (or whatever) account. So I go online to do that. But I found I had to create a live.com account, with an email account as well (what the hell is live.com, and what does this have to do with Microsoft, and why do I need that to play GTA!?). All this on my painfully slow and pricy connection at the time.

I eventually figured it all out, but I vowed to never touch a Rockstar game again.

I suspect they will add some of the most impactful RP elements from the GTA 5 RP mod 'nopixel'. They could even make the entire game VR compatible.

Prior to GTA 5 coming out I would've been super-excited about this. GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA 4 were amazing releases. Why? Because they had a heavy undercurrent of satire combined with an historical aesthetic (the 70s, 80s, etc). I mean I still can't hear ELO's "Evil Woman" without thinking about GTA.

But GTA 5 for me was a soulless, awful game with horrible writing and two-dimensional main characters.

The visuals were great of course but the driving became more "realistic" in a bad way. Prior to this driving was comical, almost cartoon-y. Like you could blow up your car by having a half dozen fender bumps. Once in GTA 5 I took a bus and tried to see how far I could make it doing a loop of the island on the wrong side of the road. I completely made it without my bus blowing up. Easily. Like WTF?

This led to some comical situations like in San Andreas I'd sometimes get bored and go to Las Vegas highway interchange where you could create a massive car pileup and then blow up one car to make a giant chain reaction of explosions.

The TV and radio tracks of earlier releases were legendary. IIRC GTA 3 had repeated ads for a video game where as Pogo the Monkey you had to break into the Whitehouse and kill the president. Lazslo as a common radio personality was hilarious.

I finished the main story line of GTA 5 and have never played it again, something I couldn't say about any previous title. I just don't care about it at all. I have no nostalgia for it.

I really hope GTA 6 turns this around somehow.

I felt the same when I first played GTA 4 which already scaled down a lot of the cartoonishness. In my opinion Saints Row (especially SR3) is a better continuation of the outlandish extravagance that made the original GTA games great. Sadly after SR4 they seem to have pivoted to more constrained games that largely ditch any serious attempt at a narrative arc.

They hired top tier Hollywood writers and actors for Vice City and San Andreas, and those were the only 2 games I've played where I actually looked forward to watching the cutscenes.

GTAV they went with second rate actors and writers, and it shows.

The other thing is that the core mechanics haven't meaningfully changed. There's only so many times I can steal a car, drive recklessly and evade the cops before the experience is played out. I don't get excited about doing the same thing again with refreshed set decorations.

it’s been 9 years since gta 5, a game which generated $6 billion in revenue for take two.

i “played” the recent matrix awakens unreal 5 tech demo and boy i really miss just driving in a huge open city.

hopefully this announcement means the new gta is not too far off so that marketing can start at some point soon (and then last for another one-two years).

> I “played” the recent matrix awakens unreal 5 tech demo and boy i really miss just driving in a huge open city.

It is visually striking and quite immersive until you start driving. Physics in games still feels really, really, far from real world physics. Even in very recently released games, physics are awful.

As an example, in Halo Infinite, all the vehicle bounce around like they are made from Styrofoam especially when you "flip" an upside down vehicle. I'm sorry but an 8k pound armored truck isn't going to act like that in the real world.

I wish game engines would put some effort into making games FEEL real more than just LOOK real.

> I wish game engines would put some effort into making games FEEL real more than just LOOK real.

“More realism” doesn’t equal “more fun to play”. Games engines are capable of realistic physics (look at the simulator and racing genres, for example), but that’s not what people want out of a game like Halo Infinite.

The point is well taken, but a lot of people on r/halo do complain about the vehicle physics, so I think there is still room for improvement even if the goal isn't mathematically precise physics.

I was thinking that GTA in Mexico or Colombia would be lit. But they keep it to the US.

As someone who is mostly ignorant about the GTA series, can someone explain why it's so popular? When GTA 3 came out, I understood the hype around a sandbox game, but now those are everywhere.

Because GTA does it better than the competition? Rockstar games are like a completely different tier in pretty much every aspect (tech, writing, immersion). Extremely well crafted worlds.

If you're interested in a GTA-like game with a really immersive world and great writing, I'd recommend Sleeping Dogs.

A criminally (ha!) underrated game with a cult fanbase.

I enjoyed it. Shame we never got a sequel. Great fun, great gameplay. I wouldn't consider it quite Rockstar tier though. :)

I was heartbroken when it was announced United Front Games are closing. It was a very sad day. Sleeping Dogs is one of my favorite games and have replayed it many times. Truly great piece of work that shows you don't need to be a GTA copy to be successful.

It was OK. Though unlike with GTA 5 I got bored with Sleeping Dogs very quickly. Same with Cyberpunk.

Trying to introspect on it I believe GTA 5 character acting is just a few orders of magnitude better.

It’s funny. It looks like a serious, gritty, violent movie, but at its heart is anarchic, puerile comedy.

It’s more like an episode of South Park than a sandbox car-crash-simulator.

GTA 5 was not exactly politically correct and I loved it for that. I hope Rockstar is able to preserve this element of the series. I'd imagine that it is probably pretty difficult nowadays.

It’s a given.

The next Red Dead is confirmed, it will make money and look amazing.

There will be another Bully.

Hell I’d even bet on another Manhunter and Table Tennis.

I just don’t get what happened to Midnight Club…

IGN’s title is somewhat misleading. Rockstar’s message doesn’t explicitly say GTA 6 anywhere.

Maybe we will get it on Stadia?

That'd be really cool. I tried Stadia when I moved countries and before I had a TV or Xbox and was completely shocked at how good it was.

GeForce Now is so much better than Stadia these days. The input lag of Stadia is much worse in general, and on GeForce Now, you can get much higher graphics settings.

Really? I have worse input lag with GFN than with Stadia, in absolutely the same conditions ( mouse+keyboard on laptop over 5GHz WiFi). And I've had a few (2-3) crashes with GFN which have wiped out my unsynchronized progress ( so the whole session), which was a bummer.

Overall both work fine though.

Great. Now we just have to wait for 6 more years at Rockstar's pace.

Please, please, please let it have native VR support. Please Rockstar.

Will it use the new Unreal Engine with all of it's enhancements?

Almost certainly not, Rockstar has their own engine.

Rockstar has their own engine called RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine).

GTA 6 was as inevitable as more Fast and Furious movies.

What about half life 3?

Do game development companies start a new project from scratch each time they come up with a new version of a game, or is it a lot of dragging and dropping old source files and copy pasting? I am guessing some things are reused but it made me wonder how these new projects are started.

Many studios maintain a game engine that is used across multiple titles. Often there is some shared code, especially for sequels, and especially when the sequels are frequently released.

There are various levels of that. You could have things damn near from scratch. You could reuse the same game engine (like Unreal). You could reuse more, where it’s mostly the same game code with new content. Civ 5 -> Alpha Centauri was like that. Then you can have expansions or DLCs that really are just additions.

I imagine (hope) this change is on the deeper side. GTA V is quite old.

Im sure every company does it differently, but i heard that Valve has repository set up in a way that trunk is latest version of source engine and then they make new branch for each game.

I am not a big gamer myself (mostly RPGs) but I distinctly remember the impression GTA IV left on me. It felt so advanced in terms of graphics and physics at the time.

GTA 6 was definitely expected - looking forward to see what they come up with in the new installment.

It's going to suck without Lazlow.

I can confirm GTA 7,8,9, etc

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