A reader thinks they know why there are so few triple-A video games set in the modern world and worries that the situation might never change.
GameCentral ran a very interesting article recently about why there are so few GTA clones nowadays, which is not something I had really thought about before. There used to be a lot – the recent resurgence of interest in the PlayStation 2’s The Getaway was a fun bit of nostalgia – but now there are basically none, even though open world games are more common than ever.
I’m not a big fan of GTA though, so this was really only of passing interest to me, until I read further and got to the point about there being very few games of any kind set in the modern day, real world. Basically, there’s just Call Of Duty, then sports and simulation games… and that’s it.
There’re outliers like Life Is Strange, and a lot of indie games, but in terms of big budget mainstream games they’re extremely rare. None of the top titles at the moment are set in the real world, and even ones we used to see fairly often, like Far Cry and Watch Dogs, are becoming increasingly rare. I find this very interesting and very strange.
The first assumption is that it must be cheaper to make fantasy worlds, but I really don’t see how. As GC points out, you have to invent a fantasy world from scratch and make a new one again for each franchise. Make a photorealistic city and you can copy and paste that into any real world setting you like, with minimal changes.
You don’t have to make up monsters or background lore with a modern day game or come up with weird weapons and vehicles. You don’t even have to get real world licences to make things look realistic, because GTA doesn’t bother with that and you know Rockstar could easily afford it if they thought it was important.
One of the main reasons this seems so strange to me is that modern video games are often obsessed with being seen as serious and ‘grounded’ (oh how I hate that phrase) and yet it’s always in the context of a fantasy world. Final Fantasy 16 is perhaps the most extreme example of this with, its miserable Game of Throne style world, which is vastly less interesting to explore than the whimsical strangeness of Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
If you’re so obsessed with telling a serious and plausible story, why don’t you just set it in the real world? It’s not as if that stops you from having any action. Does Call Of Duty not have action? If you want to look at movies you don’t even have to be super serious like Heat, because something like James Bond or Mission: Impossible (okay, maybe not the last one) are still far more realistic and ‘grounded’ than 99% of video games.
The question of why publishers don’t make more GTA clones basically comes down to the expense and the fact that Rockstar has a stranglehold on the market, which is fair enough. But why does that mean no real-world games or crime thrillers at all?
Sadly, I think the reasons are more pathetic than even GC realised. I think it’s because there’s no one else to copy and because there are no old franchises that do that, that you can be a part of. Video games, just like movies, are all based on nostalgia and existing properties nowadays. Publishers would rather remake a game for the third time than create a brand new one.
But most older games, especially ones going back decades, aren’t set in the real world and so that fact never changes. But even if someone was brave enough to make something new, they’d at least like to copy something else that’s popular. They can’t do that with GTA though and so that leaves… Pay Day?
It’s a real shame and all the worst because there’s no obvious way out of the rut. For all of the industry’s talk about appealing to a more modern, adult audience most video games are still living in a fantasy world. When Silent Hill 2 is one of the most grounded and realistic games of the year you know that something isn’t quite right.
By reader Orion
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