I did not intend to become an Internet businessman, but while other writers were doing the five-knuckle shuffle to pics of McLarens I studied the blade. And, by “the blade” I mean programmatic advertising. I sort of understand it now. Maybe. One thing I know is that the peak of rates for display ads every year is usually right around the last two weeks of November. Ergo, if I could have the highest traffic any day I’d probably pick November 19th. Other than a nationwide internet blackout or a Walton Goggins-heavy new season of Justified, I can’t imagine what could get people from reading posts on this website on November 19th.
Oh, wait, I just thought of a thing.
Those unrepentant assholes at Rockstar Games, after spending a few trillions dollars and what feels like 40 years making a sequel to Grand Theft Auto V, are going to release their little game on that exact day. How am I supposed to run a website? How am I supposed to feed my children?
Look at the extended preview for Grand Theft Auto VI posted yesterday (link here, note it’s very violent):
This is just a little gameplay preview and it’s about as long as an episode of Frasier. It’s been up for less than a day and it’s already clocked more than 8.9 million views. It’s not even that exciting at first. It’s just two people walking around a dope house getting shot at.
They don’t even drive a car until like 12 minutes in!
We are so boned.
Here’s what Ashley Wong from The Wall Street Journal wrote on LinkedIn:
The last GTA game came out in 2013, so the demand is now sky-high. When I first heard that people were requesting time off from work to play GTA6, I figured it would just be a handful of die-hard fans. Instead, I found scores of people who already have a few days to a few weeks of vacation time blocked off.
Many of the fans I spoke to fell in love with the franchise as teenagers. It’s been so long since GTA5 came out that now they’re fully grown adults with disposable income and the freedom to set their own schedules. One gamer I spoke with is taking off 10 days from work. Others are meal-prepping and waking up at 1 a.m. to start the game, all to maximize gameplay and minimize distractions. Even the U.S. Army is taking advantage of the hype to motivate soldiers.
The US Army is letting soldiers have time off if they’re willing to re-enlist. It’s basically The Entertainment from Infinite Jest, except real and not a metaphor. And it also probably takes longer to finish.
Just look at the cars! They play at least one Phil Collins song! They pull at least one Die Hard! They go full Nakitomi Plaza!
That’s basically a Blackwing, right? That’s so cool.
The last large, world-building game I finished (and may ever finish) was GTA V, which came out before my daughter was born. I started it, got busy, and put it aside. As soon as I knew a kiddo was on the way I quickly began to grind through it to the finish. It’s taken so long for a new one to come out my kid can vote.
Well, she can vote in the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. It’s been a while.
Now I’m starting to realize that we might not even have everyone here to write it, let alone read it. Maybe Griffin? He’s young, no kids, so if he calls in sick I will not believe him. Mercedes? Married, but young. Thomas. Absolutely no way Thomas shows.
David has a young kid, he’s not playing that game in front of Delmar. Jason is maybe the wild card, as I wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow managed to get it running on one of his Apple IIs.
Maybe I’ll just put up pages from my novel that week.
Look forward to Booktopian, everyone…
Top photo: Rockstar Games
Please tell me your book is a Mack Hardigraw mystery.
Unless my Saturday’s get changed, I’ll probably be at work on the 19th, so I’ll stop by the website at some point, and probably multiple times after since I re-visit pages when I’m extra bored at work.
If I get that Saturday off, then there’s a .1% I might visit, as I’ll take a 4-day weekend and spend it between GTA VI and a little bit of Forza Horizon 6.
Well, as the best car simulator ever – the only reason Rockstar hasve not completely killed everything else is because they persist in not making the game steering wheel compatible – maybe you should write about it on that day to boost your ads, no?
The car dynamics are absolutely second to none, and the driving is more car-specific and more intuitive than Sega Rally – and that’s saying.
I have never played a single second of Grand Theft Auto, and have no interest in starting.
I’ll be here.
I played a bunch of GTA3 and Vice City when I bought my original Xbox but not sure I ever finished any of the quests/stories/whatever they were called. I mostly ran around crashing and shooting.
I bought some kind of plug-in card thing that you could download completed games onto so you could have every car, weapon etc. Eventually I moved on. I have an Xbox One now but use it for streaming apps, can’t remember the last game I played.
My wife and I are both taking PTO on the 19th to play it. She was never into gaming until we moved in together and I was replaying the GTA 5 campaign. Now she plays GTA online way more than I do.
Perhaps a hot take, but I think that Rockstar games are just kinda bad, or at least the ones they created themselves are bad, which is to say Max Payne 3 was good since they didn’t make the first 2. But GTAIV was a slog, V was a slog, I finished both and then foolishly thought maybe RDR2 would be better… nope, even bigger slog.
I’ll be here for regular Autopian, or Booktopian if that’s how it goes. Also I play on PC so I’d not be able to even if I wanted to.
I’ll be here for Jason’s tutorial on how to get GTA running on an Apple IIe. Or maybe the Commodore.
Played GTA 3 and Vice City, but it never was my thing. Biggest memories are failing that goddamned remote helicopter mission and then just driving around Vice City at night while the Psychedelic Furs’ “Ghost in You” was playing. Online gaming is not for me, GTA or Gran Turismo. Other people suck, just let me play the game.
So on Nov 19th I’ll be playing Fallout 4 on PS5, still trying to get all the new mods to play together nicely. When that gets frustrating I’ll go over to Gran Turismo, make a new livery for the engine swapped BMW 3.0 CSL and run the 30 min LeMans race. When that’s over, read all the Autopian articles and then Matt’s novel about how some goth Englishman snapped after having to drive a really, really ugly and horrible SUV-thing and terrorized (or terrorised) the nation in a Mad Max like manner in a classic Capri. The playlist for that novel is said to be amazing.
The remote helicopter mission was a fluke, and required an update or a cheat to complete in the original version. It could usually not be completed otherwise. They learned from that.
In the anniversary ported version for the newest consoles, it’s just an annoying mission, but nothing to write home about. So something has been done.
Hell yeah, sign me up for booktopian!
As an aside, I sometimes drive through the town of San Andreas, California. It’s the kind of place where the sheriff hangs out at the town limits just to catch people who didn’t realize the speed limit changed when they entered. And the sheriff also knows that them folk won’t make the effort to return for their court date to fight that ticket.
Some of us will because we are old.
8 years ago I was excited for GTA6 to come out. Now, it’s been so long I truly couldn’t care less.
I’ll probably pick it up, but it’ll have to wait until it’s:
So not for a few years.
I’m right there with you. They’ve added more and more stuff to each game and removed more and more fun every time. You know how many times I wanted to hammer the A button for six minutes to do a triathlon? None. You know how many times I wanted to set up ridiculous schemes to complete my mission but failed because I “lost the target” or wasn’t parked in the golden circle? Too many to count.
It’ll be a big healthy sandbox with the same “oh noes you’re suddenly in a gunfight quelle surprise” for $20 in 2028.
I’ll be here. I can’t play most modern games due to motion sickness. It all started with Super Mario Bros having the background moving at different speeds, but that one took a couple of hours to trigger, and a long time for me to figure out.
I downloaded GTA5 for free (legally) a couple of years ago. I managed to play for about 30 seconds before the telltale symptoms started appearing, and I had to go lay down for a couple of hours before they left. The last game I was able to mostly play was Skyrim in 3rd person mode, and eventually there came a section with the background that triggered it (but a lot slower than GTA 5 did.)
Have you had any luck with accessibility options (if you care to)? I get shut out of some games by colorblindness stuff sometimes, but motion sickness would be real rough in any 3D games.
That wasn’t the original headline was it, judging by the URL at the top of my screen:
“https://www.theautopian.com/you-fuckers-arent-going-to-read-anything-i-write-on-november-19th-are-you/”
I just don’t see the appeal and have never found GTA that fun. To me, the whole franchise is mid at best.
I played IV and V and was underwhelmed. San Andreas is still the best.
GTA 6 took too long for me. Even just a couple of years ago I probably would have got it when it came out. I played GTA IV and V extensively. Now I don’t even own a current game system. GTA 6 will not give me what I want, it can’t. I don’t want to play a new Grand Theft Auto, I want to feel the same way I did when I was playing 4 and 5 for the first time, but that is gone, a time in my life that has past.
I will be reading because no doubt there will be an immediate update that takes 15 hours to download.
Underrated comment.
As someone who hasn’t cared about GTA since Vice City, I’ll read read whatever you post. And most of the fun in Vice City were our deathmatches: my dad, brother, neighbor and I would take turns picking a hospital, putting in the weapons cheat of our choice, and seeing how many stars we could get/how long we could stay alive. At one point I stole a tank and was promptly told I won, had the controller taken away, and it was someone else’s turn to try and do the same.
I’ll read whatever you post on November 19th…because it’ll be at least another decade before Rockstar throws PC players a bone and port GTA 6 on the correct platform 😉
I’ll be here with you. Never really understood that particular game. But I also got a kick out of following traffic rules for no reason in Test Drive 4.
Not a gamer, but also an author, so I’ll be here for Booktopian.
When is this thing gonna take off? I feel like they keep teasing us with it.
Best headline.
Will it run on Windows XP?
Yay Booktopian! 😀