This GTA6 leak has been a firm reminder that a lot of people seem to have little to no practical concept of what goes into making a lot of things they enjoy.
The fact that somebody leaked all this stuff is unfortunate on its own (it benefits nobody but the leaker looking to garner some clout), but watching people nitpick and criticize a product that is still obviously still deep in development and years from being ready for public consumption has been unreal.
So, so true. Also, one more bad thing is seeing commenters siding with the leaker because…. I don’t know…because the company is taking some time to make a truly great game and successor to GTA5? (already one of the best) Why be mean and hatefull towards the victim? Even if it is a company? I mean, they ARE making a game we want, that even in deep develpoment looks effing amazing, and you side with the one that attacked them, the one that could actually make the making of that game we are all waiting for, harder to be made?… Read more »
After a decade of GTA:O getting all of the attention updated and a big ol’ middle finger for GTA5, RDR2, RD:O players and the completely half-assed GTA:Definitely Badly Done Trilogy remaster I’m not sympathetic at all
I’m also aware that “Half Done” in programming speak usually means “We just started”
Kaiten, I’ve seen this sentiment a number of places over the past week, and I find it rather curious. A huge swath of the gaming community seems always at the ready to rail on games that offer post-launch DLC, and pine for the days when games were simply released “completely finished”. And I would argue that GTA5 and RDR2 were huge, excellent games that more than earned their price tag in content. So while I certainly understand the feeling of “I love this thing and would like more of it,” how do you reconcile that translating to a feeling of… Read more »
It’s my personal gripe that you see a decade of development and improvement put into an analog of an offline game but none of that development attention given to the foundation – GTA5 and RDR2 in particular stuck out since I’m more geared towards the single player experience. GTAV was a nice sandbox, but practically empty compared to, for example, San Andreas or even GTAIV – it was a world they could have added much more to without even needing to add DLC Storylines but they didn’t – and didn’t even repatriate any cool things from GTA:O into the main… Read more »
But that’s just general disappointment that they didn’t do more for a game you liked. Is it a “giant middle finger” every time anyone doesn’t give you what you want? I can’t imagine that’s how you view the world, so why take it so personally here? You may (rightfully) feel like the GTA5 world had plenty of room for growth… but they delivered a game with a story that lasted 30+ hours minimum, which is perfectly reasonable for any full-priced single player game. Just because you see room for growth doesn’t mean it launched incomplete. They included a multiplayer mode… Read more »
Then what’s the point of Rockstar – a developer who is known for traditionally delivering interesting and interactive worlds to play around in changing to delivering worlds that are merely set dressing for the main story and devoid of much else? I expect that from 2K Games’ Mafia series – the world is only there for the atmosphere, hell Mafia 3 is terrible outside of the main story missions. I understand – and recognize the sea change but I don’t appreciate it – especially when they show they’re willing to do so much more with the world if and only… Read more »
Yes, they built the city for their story to live inside. You can still play around in it. The city is a sandbox, after all. And it served dual purpose. They also used that same city they built for the larger, ongoing sandbox, the online portion. Which is exactly what you describe wanting, you just don’t want to do it with other people. That’s your prerogative, but it’s clearly been the right business decision for them. No other GTA game has had the shelf life that GTA5 has had… and its entirely due to the multiplayer aspect. Even if they… Read more »
Well, creating launch DLC is pretty shitty. It’s literally taking resources away from the core game to make something they want to sell for more money because product segmentation allows that.
Making new content to sell after the game is complete and launched is another story.
I don’t even mind post-release DLC or, what was it – Season Passes – it’s all the same game in that case. But when GTAV came out, and the first few years of all this cool new stuff they were developing for GTA:O – which was still considered to be somewhat part-and-parcel of GTAV because you couldn’t just buy it separately there was sort of an expectation of “Oh cool! So some of this stuff is going to be added to the main game too, right??” I hope that going forward Rockstar markets and sells their Online experiences separately at… Read more »
You want them to sell their online portion separately at launch? Are you really thinking that through? It’s the same city, the same overall assets. Can you imagine the outrage if they said “Ok, it’s $60 for the single player game, and then you can pay us another $60 to play in the same sandbox, but with other people.” That’s even worse than carving out content to sell as launch DLC. This suggestion solves zero problems aside from eliminating your erroneous assumption that you were going to get stuff in single player XD It doesn’t somehow automatically guarantee they’re going… Read more »
Tim that’s exactly what they ended up doing – you can buy GTA:O and RD:O separate from the main games now. It would create a clear delineation between the Single Player “Experience” and the “MMORPG” – Even on the consoles. And upon release of GTA:O it was “Kind of an Add-On to the main game” a “Multiplayer Mode” similar to what we saw in GTAIV which was just game-types and matches, not a dedicated perpetual and separately developed ongoing “world”. It’s just been a decade of us now being used to that sort of thing that people have forgotten what… Read more »
I knew that this year (year nine out of ten of the game’s life cycle) they made GTAO a separate download specifically for a new wave of consoles (no doubt in order to keep the entry barrier to their cash cow as low as possible). I thought it was a free thing, but I guess not (I was there at the beginning of GTAO, when it was a janky mess, but I’ve played nothing of whatever it has become in the years since, to be clear). Does that represent a fundamental shift in the way they intend to market GTA… Read more »
The Latter – I mentioned in a different reply that I wouldn’t mind so much if it was clearly meant to be a separate experience altogether rather than what had started out as a tacked-on but still quite neat and extra Multiplayer mode. Set boundaries and expectations, make it clear that development on one doesn’t mean development on the other. This is where RockStar really had disappointed – interviews and talks with the company never clarified as such, they just framed the lack of further development on the game as “It sort of just happened” (me, an eternal cynic –… Read more »
Okay, so I have one last hypothetical analogy to pose. I presume you’re aware that I do multiple different ongoing “threads” with my comic (Analog and D-Pad, Starcaster, One Shots, etc). It’s also pretty common for readers to hold opinions about what they thing the “main” thread is, and all others are “filler.” Let’s imagine that five years from now I haven’t done any more Console War pages. Maybe I had writers block and couldn’t find anything more to say. Maybe I was looking at the site traffic and saw that it was content that engaged the audience the least… Read more »
So, for one thing Tim, I’ve been Reading CAD since…let me check the archives…at least 2006 – maybe to loop that into the discussion, you clearly had a reboot of the series between then and now for various stated and – potentially unstated personal reasons – in fact you announced as much to us here: https://cad-comic.com/upcoming-reboot/ Were readers such as I somewhat upset? I certainly miss some of the old continuity and characters, but – and this is the important part: you told us it was going to happen and you gave us a reason – no middle finger intended… Read more »
The difference with the reboot though is that I did decide to end one thing, and start a new thing. It was a conscious choice I made, and that could articulate for you. With my hypothetical, it wasn’t so much a decision to stop, as it was a course of events that lead to no more being produced. With no conscious decision to stop, I wouldn’t have made a post saying “no more Console War” because I may have been thinking “It’s not over, I’ll get back to it someday”. Likewise I wouldn’t have wanted to say “Yes, there will… Read more »
And now that I think of it… what about GTA5 on PC? Even if R* has fallen short of after-launch support, I imagine the modding community has more than pulled their weight re: adding new cars and stuff to single player, no?
I can weigh in on that. The modding community has more or less been pulling their weight (though I have seen some discourse about some of the deeper mods being locked behind patreons, which violates Rockstar’s EULA), but Rockstar (Or rather their owner Take Two) has been fighting them tooth-and-nail to prevent it the whole time. The supposed goal is preventing hacking in online, but anyone who’s played Online on PC can tell you it’s done nothing of the sort. Their actual goal is to prevent the implementation of content from Online into single player. People have done this, namely,… Read more »
Why are you bothering to argue when you’re clearly not willing to understand his point of view? Kaiten gave his opinion, and you asked to him to elaborate because you claimed to want to know how people could think that way. I think he’s done a brilliant job at explaining it, but rather than nod in understanding, you’ve instead resorted to using logical fallacies in order to prove why his way of thinking is wrong and you’re right. Either take a moment to truly understand his point of view and where he’s coming from. Or just leave him be. You’re… Read more »
I’m attempting to understand his point of view, which is why I’m engaging in discussion with him. Discussion which has thus far been civil, so why do you care if we debate back and forth? Chances are neither of us are going to simply “agree,” but we’re both capable of deciding for ourselves when the discussion has reached its conclusion and there’s nothing more to be gained. In the meantime, I’m not stressed out, I’m curious. If Kaiten is not stressed out, then chatting about this does no harm, even if we ultimately don’t agree.
Having worked on video games, sometimes they are borked by design, budget, quality of devs and qc, or monetizing stupidity. In one case, that could have made a friend’s company a lot of money, it was legal (the inability of many big stakeholders to figure out how to jointly monetize a fantastic product). Mismanagement of talent and workloads at game studios can also destroy a game with potential. Sometimes studios push something out because they are running out of money, patience, or further ability to improve the product substantially. All of those things can see even a GA release lead… Read more »
Oddly enough, I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about people complaining about the state of the game, but haven’t seen many actual complaints about the game.
Same
the complaints may be for things that immediately get the complaints removed and the complainers cancelled then.
I find one positive aspect from this whole ordeal: They are working on it.
After a decade and three console generations of GTAV, seeing definitively them actually working on it, was some what a relief. One thing is them announcing it, but not hearing anything since gave the impression that they dropped it. Like how I feel about Elder Scrolls 6.
In June they said it was still in pre-production, going to take at least 5 to 10 years.
It’s going to happen, they made way too much money with Skyrim not to go for number 6, but…
But they’ve also been skating by on re-releasing Skyrim on everything up to and including your damn toaster oven and Todd is already making SpaceFarce look like a joke with the long talks about “Dreams” and “Visions” and “Player Engagement” but little actual in-game footage that hadn’t been carefully manufactured?
That’s entertainment business for the last 20 years: no new ideas, you milk a good cow untill it’s dry, then sell the meat and then the bones and then you go nostalgia seeking and sell the picture of how it was a nice looking cow if there’s someone buying (reboots). See the various Marvel and DC universe movies.
I guess with TES they are at the bones stage.
TBF, they kind of hit their limit with Skyrim, I think. Long-time fans were complaining about how more and more bare-bones the games were, compared to Morrowind or even Oblivion. New fans were eating it up. I cannot see another title coming out in a few years that would’ve pleased everyone. I mean, heck, I see what they did with Fallout. Constant innovation and iteration is hard. If you strike it out of the park, coming out with another game of similar quality again and again just doesn’t cut mustard. At least, if Assassin’s Creed or Zelda have taught me… Read more »
Actually it was a trip going back to Morrowind, Arena and Daggerfall – even Oblivion after Skyrim and seeing they have more depth to them it’s like.
Wait, I could climb things willy nilly? Why did they take away the neat perks from getting better at skills in Oblivion like running on water and just shove them into a Perk Tree? Why simplify it to just Stamina/Health/Mana? Man Enchanting and Potion Making used to be interesting
What was alchemy like in Arena and Daggerfall? Because it didn’t really change too much from Morrowind to Skyrim (Though skyrim removed the items that influenced the potions, which could have been considered good or bad depending on how you percieved how OP those items made the potions at high skill)
Ah in Daggerfall it was very basic “One Effect Per Potion, and you had to have a rough idea of what you were making” Morrowind introduced the multiple effects system with the different Potion Making tools to improve good/reduce bad effects, etc – Oblivion builds on it by adding poisons as well which was neat , Skyrim by dint of removing stats and a large amount of spells and effects is what made it “Less Interesting” IMO Arguably Enchanting in Skyrim was more OP than potion making ever was in Morrowind or Oblivion – Just fortify the crap out of… Read more »
I’m gonna hang this at work as a reminder to everyone that complains about my changes after I’ve said that I’m half done.
Unpopular opinion coming through: The company behind GTA is evil and thus GTA is irrelevant.
Does your mom know you escaped from the basement and are running rampant again?
How does that logic work? GTA V is a hugely successful game that has influenced tons of other games, has made the company hundreds of millions of dollars, there’s been rumblings of a TV-show and/or a movie and all that and… one, single aspect of the company somehow erases all of that? No, that logic makes absolutely not a lick of sense and you should be ashamed of spouting such things publicly. Also, just to pre-empt any accusations: no, I don’t play GTA, any of them, I have no interest in any of them, and I don’t like the company’s… Read more »
Well, humans are stupid. Gamers are humans. QED
Woah. Was this written for me, specifically? (no, obviously not lol). I am dealing with this *exact* scenario with my irl house, right now. People are all the same, I guess. Maybe people really need to stop thinking that the first thing that pops into their heads is the only correct answer, and society needs to start reminding people to at least attempt cordial communication before insisting their monkey-brain shower-thoughts are the equivalent to God’s Gift to Humanity. Please, don’t come over to my in-progress project and be angry that it’s not done, when I told you it’s not done.… Read more »
I love this, all of this. And it’s just further proof that people don’t appreciate what goes into stuff, not just the look and the graphics, but all the other little systems that have to grow up together. All the best games have this story to them, from conception to release, where everything is hanged , tweaked constantly.. nothing is just ‘ done’, especially in this day and age with patching, and it’s a painstaking process. All the off-feeling stuff, things that dont mesh, or games that feel like there’s two different things mashed together and don’t quite interlock? that’s… Read more »
Depends a bit of what critics is about; gameplay loop would be valid critics as its wont be most likely changed in further production (since dev would need to start over)
why is this downvoted? it’s true
Because the whining online is about the visuals of the leaks, not the gameplay.
True.
Unrelated to the topic: Where is your avatar from? It looks very “Joe England’s Zebragirl” but I can’t quite place it.
I drew it myself about 20 years ago and have been using it as an avatar on a lot of sites ever since. It wasn’t based on anything, I just wanted to draw an angry face
Even if I were to agree that gameplay doesn’t evolve over the course of development (it definitely can, though we’re talking about GTA here; I think we pretty much know what to expect from the core gameplay regardless), that doesn’t necessarily make mid-development critique by the masses useful. It’s near impossible to create art by committee that makes everyone happy. The reason is we (and by “we” I mean the general public) cannot agree on anything. I have, on a number of occasions, tried to solicit the temperature of my audience on a thing I was making, and when I… Read more »
Honestly, the way you presented it in the comic is perfect.
Too many people jump on the clueless-yet-entitled crazy train these days. Internet anonymity making people worse has given way to people _crusading_ with their awful hot-takes and armchair quarterbacking.
Everytime a data leak of that caliber happens I’m weirdly disappointed it didn’t hit SONY. Imagine if the design documents and the OS source codes for their consoles got published for the world to see.
And what would you do with the source-code? Even if it was leaked, it’d still be fully copyrighted and you couldn’t legally use it for anything at all — no alternative OSes for the consoles, no homebrew, no nothing.
The PS4 SDK was leaked some time ago and….oh, there are no interesting projects based on it, because that would not be legal as the SDK is still Sony’s copyrighted property regardless of whether it was leaked or not.
Plus, unlike the Cell CPU in PS3, PS4 is almost like a generic PC with no really useful properties.
Might be my limited understanding of programming at work here. Obviously you can’t copy SONY’s code to build an emulator, since they have the property rights. But you should be able to write a completely original code based on the inner workings of said leaked code. But in the end, all my antipathy towards SONY stems from the gigantic amounts of salt I accumulated due to the fact that I had to borrow a PS4 to play Bloodborne, which is without hyperbole the only PS4 exclusive I wanted to play. And even the PS4 pro was so catastrophically slow and… Read more »
Yes, if you did it properly via clean room reverse engineering ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design ), but that is an excruciatingly slow process and a massive amount of work. Besides that, the source-code still wouldn’t help you at all in emulating any of the hardware, for example.
I’ll make the argument that so many people don’t understand how game development works BECAUSE it’s always kept hidden from the public. If people were routinely exposed to in-progress development they might have a better understanding of the process.
I’ll agree with that- it’s often very easy to underestimate the steps it takes to make a thing. I, for instance, am not super familiar with all that goes into making a song for an album. But I would still assume there’s a lot that takes place between putting pen to paper, and me hearing it on the radio. Enough that I think if someone told me “this is our first rehearsal”, I’d be able to take that into consideration.
But I do think in general people should be more informed about what goes into making stuff.
Hell, I don’t even know how much work is put into making a continuous webcomic for as long as you have, so there’s something to compare it too as well. I myself have gained a lot of respect for the animation industry over the years learning by watching my favorite animators struggle and share their experiences with their communities. I also have a huge respect webcomic artists like Tim in general who manage to keep making interesting/funny/clever/(many other feelings that doesn’t come to mind atm) comics for so long, while I mostly only have occasional dad jokes/puns (I’m not a… Read more »
Particularly when this is a leak and not an open beta or early access situation. I’m pretty certain you’d get complainers however even if what was leaked was the very first conference room meeting where they were looking at the storyboards and not one line of code had been written yet.
There’s a lot of news and footage surrounding the making of Hollywood movies, with pictures of actors in mocap suits standing in front of green screen, commentary on DVDs, etc. Enough that the average person has a vague understanding of the general process of making a movie.
However it’s not nearly the case with video games where studios try to hide everything they’re doing on the back-end and the public is never shown anything from the development process outside of concept art.
Oh, people are exposed to it nowadays via the likes of Patreon or Kickstarter. And what they’re seeing is NOT how normal game development works, but how people outside the industry think game development works and try to put that into motion.
And it fails because they had no idea.
I did enjoy watching every game developer on Twitter come out to dunk on the guy who stated: “If you knew anything about game design you’d know the visuals are the first thing done and are unlikely to change much from here.”
Some of the screenshots they posted of AAA games they’d worked on using early placeholder visuals were hilarious and made me think that I’d totally buy a DLC that gave me some of the janky pre-alpha visuals for a laugh.
First thing done, that’s a fucking laugh. I don’t even work in the industry and that still sounds like major bullshit to me. Yeah, we’ve definitely optimized the visuals long before we even know the baseline level for how much processing power the game needs just to wander the open world.
I don’t play GTA, and I don’t plan on doing so, but it is disheartening (Albeit expected) to see people pass judgement on something that’s clearly only a semblance of what it could and would become in due time.
Honestly, same. I play Kerbal Space Program, and this seems to be happening with KSP2.
As someone who helped build eight houses (part of an owner/builder program) I can attest to the accuracy of your analogy.
There’s a balancing act between seeing something going off the rails (animations for the Sonic movie that fan reactions got changed) and overreacting to something in development that’s not intended to be final. Let’s say the team working on Fallout 4 finished the settlement builder portion way in advance of the rest of the game and someone leaked footage of it. You’d have people griping about the lack of traditional RPG elements and no sweeping scale of the game. Would the backlash have been enough to get Bethesda to scrap or scale back the settlement builder? I know not everyone… Read more »
This is a very funny visual. The idea that some people genuinely believe things are made as if being loaded in like building structures in planetary annihilation just really made me laugh.
Hadn’t heard of the GTA leak before now.
Reminds me how media was covering all the “Vampire the masquerade bloodlines 2” game.
I mean C’MON!
With the anonymity of the Internet, it’s hard to figure out which commenters are literal children and which are adults etc. I’m all for the ability to speak freely, but accountability rarely exists on the Internet, so it makes it difficult to get a real picture of what isn’t just a emotional mob with pitchforks vs what is a educated comment. Not impossible, but more work.
I can get when people complain about downgrades from the slice trailers, but I don’t get why people can’t make the distinction between ‘we’re not ready to show it off yet’ and ‘we just haven’t released a trailer yet’.
If this is an pre-alpha joke, it seems devs seem to be marketing games sooner and sooner while expecting a AAA check. Eventually it will be $90 to try to inspire someone to hopefully have a dream that will spawn the need to hire a graphics design crew for a teaser.
I’m with the Penny Arcade Cartoon. I’m not watching the leaked footage.
We all know what a GTA game is, what the hell is the point in watching unfinished footage that won’t tell me anything I don’t already know.
You got the timber framing up? Mate, you’re 80% done, not halfway 😉
(Especially if you believe your builder’s bills)
I’m not gonna judge a game that’s not fully complete. That’s not fair.
I will, however, laugh at TT/Rockstar, since they’re scum and deserve pain. I hope more leaks pop up just to rub more salt in the wound.
Despite what Rockstar keeps insisting, most of the leakers seem to be saying GTA6 will be out by 2024 at the very latest. These are the same people whose rumors were vindicated by this leak.
Which in the end is my main issue. This isn’t the game I want. Not in location (West Coast or bust), and not in quality. It is at best an iterative improvement over GTA5, not a new revolutionary advancement that all these years between products demands.
GTA5 was west coast. You want that again or do you mean you want it in a city that’s not LA/Riverside like SF or Seattle?
Either one, I am not picky. I just have no interest in Vice or Liberty Cities.
I want a new GTA set in London in the 1960s.
We’ve gotten to revisit Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City, all several times, and all of which made their first appearance in the original GTA.
That original GTA got not one, but two expansion packs set in London in the 1960s, so I want to see that again!
Then give me one more game set in Anywhere City from GTA 2, and I’ll finally be able to die happy.
Everyone knows the first thing that gets completed when making a web comic is the visuals. You write the story after you’ve drawn the comic.
I’m more mortified that US houses are actually built like that, no wonder they’re all gone when there’s a strong gust of wind.
Question. Why don’t Europeans build houses out of tornado proof stone?
You may use stone but to be tornado proof you would need to have walls several meters thick.
Wood is cheap. You can rebuild the house several times for the same cost as a stone house with walls that thick.
Its like judging a stew before it is cooked or even tasted.
Conversely you have all the people wanting to play Alpha builds for games. “Why can’t I move into the house yet?” when it is just a basic framework
The seems like a little less than half done knowing all the electrical and plumbing and insulating. However I’m not in the construction business so I might be very wrong.
No, you’re right. But in order for electrical, plumbing, insulation etc to be done, the house needs to be dried in first. And at that point it’s just a plain box and from the outside can look practically done, which would muddy the analogy.
I genuinely can’t blame them THAT much. I mean it is still silly, but i do believe it is in part because of modern Early Access culture. These days when a game is released in Early Access many genuinely tend to resemble the first half house. Most systems are already there and in some stage of refinement, but half the content is still missing which tend to get released over time along with polish and qol stuff. Makes sense that some average joe that only ever saw early-access titles as “in-development” falsely assume this is just how it always is…… Read more »
I refuse to even look for (or at if it happens into one of my feeds) the footage. As someone who has spent a career building software, this leak doesn’t say anything about the finished product other than “we’re actively working on it”. Cool. They said they were working on it. Now I guess we know(?) they are. Not information I needed either way. I won’t give the leaker the attention they’re looking for.
To be fair, bare frame on a foundation is nowhere near halfway. Add sheathing, roof, insulation and windows, and maybe you’re getting close. Even for cheap cookie cutter housing, interior finishing work alone is a huge part of it, and we’ve not even mentioned plumbing, electrical, ventilation…
You can have a house framed and not even be halfway through the planning.
I mean I wholeheartedly agree, but didn’t you roast AC for not having any gameplay to show this early on a few pages ago?
To be fair, Ubisoft announced a _lot_ of projects with logos and titles and nothing else to show. When Rockstar confirmed that GTA6 was being worked on, that was all they said, and the focus was on other more developed projects which did have things to show and/or details to offer. It wasn’t ‘The GTA6 press release’ with a logo and nothing else to say.
By the lack of proper foundation and the fact they are using wood for the structure instead of concrete and proper masonry, I can already tell it won’t last the first gust of wind. The same hold true for videogames: I don’t need to see the finished product to see in which direction the development is going, or on what foundation it is built.
What are you talking about? XD The foundation is obviously concrete.
Unless you’re suggesting that the whole house needs to be made out of concrete/masonry, like there aren’t millions of “windproof” stick-framed houses out there XD