My ongoing disillusionment with R* games lately has peaked over their record deja vu in re-releasing of GTA5. Yong Yea was the latest YTer to flog the fan boi disenfranchisement with R* lately.
But to be fair, a lot of the credit for the fan base PR fallout must go to Take Two, R*s ultra facist, demonic, sue happy publisher. Especially since Tw@t Two appears poised to surpass the Exceptional As.$h._@ts Guiness Book Records for corporate toxicity and fan base exploitation.
Seriously. Just when you thought no other AAA dev could stoop any lower than Bugthesda milking the TES franchise dry with Skyrim, along comes R*....
The almighty help anyone mental enough to lampoon or satire GTA franchise decaying state of affairs. Because Tw@t Two has grown hyper sensitive to all the PR fallout it has justly earned to date. And while I'm not against a publisher/dev making money for shareholders, I draw a line on a billionaire AAA publisher--with vast legal resources at its disposal--throwing its weight around in bullying the fan base.
As a result of Tw@t Two's increasing micromanagmenet of it's flagship GTA franchise (which has earned them industry breaking billions to date) R* as a dev has experienced a seismic changing of the guard. An ominous portend for those of us single player vets, who grew up on high quality single player GTA. Long before it became a console centric MMO cash cow.
And thanks to Tw@t Two's corporate heavy handed meddling, R* has lost the essence of their dev team. This is 15+ year vets who were visionary/innovative geniuses (likes of an orignal founder Leslie Benzies). And diabolically infamous execs (likes of Jeronimo Barrera VP Production). Despite the criminal freak show Barerra was, he (like Benzies) was actually paramount to R*s prolific production of all franchise titles that got released in 2000 - 2008. From Max Payne, LA Norie, to Bully, to all legacy GTA II - GTA IV games. Now with the departures of these senior (and junior veteran) personnel, the future of the #SavePlayer1 is in grave doubt. As once consumer friendly AAA devs the likes of Bugthesda are no longer hiding the fact they've drank the Kool Aid. And bartered their souls to the Gods of Wall Street.
But there appears to be a tiny sliver of hope left on the horizon. When Benzies departed R*, he bascially took a small remnant of old school devs with him. Founded an Indie company called Build a Rocket Boy Games. And is currently working on a new open world, space themed game callea Everywhere.
BUILD A ROCKET BOY
www.buildarocketboy.com
So remaining cautiously optimistic for future. If successful, this new franchise could become an industry disruptor. Finally provide a serious challenger to likes of Bugthesda's Starfield. And possibly even the Fallout franchise. And so would present a potential market threat to AAA franchises like GTA as well. Something which didn't go unnoticed by Tw@t Two. But thankfully, Tw@t failed in its attempts with their ongoing legal shennigans to legally bully Benzies and his company into submission. The way they've gotten away with censoring, #CancelCulturing the fanbase, and negative mainstream/social media coverage to date.
So here's to hoping Leslie Benzies can pull off this maveric sci-fi gambit. No trailers, documentation, or any type of social media PR on the game as yet. Which is a sound strategy to date. Only release something when you've got something of substance. And work your ass off completing/improving on, or expanding the concept. Hello Games and recently CDPR have had to learn that lesson the extremely painful way.
Anyhow, bookmarking Leslie's company site. Watching their tw@t and other social media feeds for the holiday season. With luck, we just might get a short teaser trailer as a Christmas present
/end of single player vet gamer rant>