Stars in our eyes

Lots of people are suffering from GTA4 hype-fatigue, and it's easy to understand why. The marketing machine is clearly in overdrive when you see Kotaku's Brian Crecente on ABC World News, X-Play's Adam Sessler talking to Geraldo Rivera on Fox, and GTA4 feature stories on NPR's Morning Edition, Day To Day, and All Things Considered - all on the same day. The buzz is loud, repetitive, overkill...and I'm lovin' every minute of it.

Some smart bloggers like Mitch Krpata have suggested we ought to be concerned about the "culture of hype" that's such a big part of the gaming community. Others like Ben Fritz at Variety raise concerns about "exclusive reviews" bestowed on outlets that have promotional deals with the publisher.

These are reasonable concerns, and I take them seriously. But at the same time, I've been joyfully riding this GTA4 hype train for months now, and I'll be a little sorry when it finally ends. Of course, it helps that the game appears to deliver all that Rockstar promised, but even if it didn't, I still would have enjoyed this crazy carnival.

More than anything Rockstar, IGN or other commercial outlets did to promote the game, GTA4 hype was driven primarily by the gaming community on hundreds of forums, chat rooms, blogs, fan sites, and any other viral social venue you can think of. In the build-up to GTA4, all Rockstar really needed to do was release the occasional trailer or screenshot. We took care of the rest.

We did it because GTA4 belongs to us. It's our game, and we chat, speculate, and argue about it like it's a new house we're all about to move into. We want it to be perfect - everything we expect from a GTA game, plus more - and our landlord Rockstar has been very good to us in the past. We've been watching them build this house for years, and they're finally ready to hand us the key to the front door. Hell yes, we're excited. Who wouldn't be?

I think we should hold onto the GTA/Halo/Final Fantasy/Metal Gear/Zelda next-installment pandemonium phenomenon for as long as we can because, inevitably, it will eventually disappear.

There was a time when movie audiences behaved this way. Big premieres once drew legions of fans, celebrities, and media swarming the entrance of the theater - cameras snapping, limousines depositing VIPs. Even in small towns, big movies like Gone With the Wind or Ben-Hur were often celebrated with special costume parties, promotional giveaways, and other festivities. My mother still owns a special commemorative plate she received at the premiere of Cleopatra in Upper Sandusky Ohio.

No one feels this way about Hollywood anymore. They don't need us, and we don't feel any sense of belonging to what they do. The old movie-magazines are gone and so are the fan clubs and big premieres. It's hard to take Hollywood seriously anymore when it tries to depict itself as the enchanted land of dreams. We still love movies, but most of the old magic is gone. Hollywood is a business, and we know it. So are video games, of course, but can you think of a single movie studio that elicits the emotional attachment from its customers Nintendo enjoys?

I was talking to a friend the other day about GTA4. We were imagining what online multiplayer would be like and reminiscing about previous GTA games. I'm fairly certain we had stars in our eyes. I hope they don't disappear any time soon.

Comments

[Denis]

Considering the celebration of the day of my birth, Christmas, and various other holidays get no rise out of me anymore, I relish the release of certain games, books, films, et cetera. I know for myself, personally, the anticipation and speculation is half the fun.

[Anias]

Great article, Micheal. At a certain point all the hype can be overwhelming, but it's also fun to be at the center of cultural awareness occasionally. I've been noticing that most of the stories I've heard about GTA4 aren't the ridiculous "lock your kids away and bolt the doors" reports that have typically characterized media coverage of the GTA series. It seems to me we may be turning the corner...though I still hear and read stuff from media types who are obviously clueless about video games.

Also, not sure why, but I've enjoyed the GTA4 hype run-up to release much more than I did Halo 3. By the time that game came out, I didn't want to hear or see another word about it.

[Ben Abraham]

Oh NO! Michael, you've become one of /THEM/!!! A member of 'The Enthusiast Press'. Soon you'll be descending into a downward spiral of enslavement to the corporate tyranny of the Worldwide Publisher until you get to the same point at Gamespot did and enjoy a little bit of 'Cash for Comment'. Oh how the mighty have fallen...

Hehe, just kidding. I hope GTA4 delivers on its promises - we've seen many of the latest much anticipated games start out extremely well, only to receive a bit of a backlash in coming months. Notably Bioshock and Portal both received near-instant cult status on release but after the release hype wore off people felt free to openly criticise. I wish that weren't the case, and that people could be mature enough to see that you can have conflicting opinions on something as complex as Bioshock - I can love it AND hate it, and still give it a good 'review'.

Anyway, I'll get off my high horse now. ;-)

[Michael Abbott]

@Ben One of the advantages of having a "real job" is that I can't be co-opted by the corporate suits. My massive teaching salary protects me from all such temptations. ;-)

Seriously, I haven't even played GTA4 yet. I just opened the UPS box earlier this evening. So I can't say anything about the quality of the game. What I can say is that I've enjoyed the berserk effect it's had on the gaming community, and despite the silliness and overdrive hype, overall I think it's healthy and harmless fun.

@Denis Somebody needs to give you a rip-snorting birthday party! :-)

[mykalgaidin]

Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I played GTA3 because of the hype associated with it and came away very disappointed. Years later I tried San Andreas only to be presented with the same problems I had the first time I delved into this series: Controls that can be considered floaty at best and downright broken at worst, the graphics I couldn't tell if they were stylized or just downright bad, camera issues, storytelling that just didn't "do" it for me, gameplay that was supposed to be "open-ended" but only rewards one kind of behavior. I know that I might be called a heretic for daring to point out what I consider to be flaws in a supposed triumph of game design, but I think this series has gotten by on hype. I don't plan on buying this game, although I might borrow it from a friend to see if Rockstar has fixed the problems I (and probably others) had with the first few games.

Thank you, and I will now climb down off my soapbox.

[Ben Abraham]

I played GTA:SA purely because I got hooked into the black gansta speak. That was the experience for me, and when I got bored of it, similarly, I got bored of the rest of the game. I enjoyed stepping out of my whitness and playing whatsis-name... Cultural Imperialism? Probably, but I blame Rock*.

You will, naturally, give us your impressions of the game, eh, Michael? :)

[JV Andres]

I think trains will keep being ridden out of Hype station as long as they consistently reach (or come close to) their destinations. I for one have been engrossed in Liberty City for the past few days and it's quite a plunge.

@ mykalgaidin

I think part of what fuels the hype machine is the sense of ownership gamers have for their favorite franchises, which Michael mentioned in his post. Hype will deliver if developers continue to listen to their fans and address issues and problems, which I believe Rockstar has done to a great extent in the latest GTA.

The contrast to movie studios is apt because it seems like sequels, for example, are released simply because previous profits were put into a formula and the resulting answer justified its creation. Many times they don't deliver what moviegoers value because the focus was on what studios could receive from them.

[JC Barnett]

What is heartening about the massive hype is how pervasive it is, reaching into all other media not usually concerned with gaming. All this helps spread the notion that gaming is a social phenomenon that everybody enjoys and not just us geeks. It'd have been nice if it had been a more...morally clear game, but it's better than nothing!

Still waiing for my copy, dammit. Can't wait to play it.... grrr...

[David Carlton]

One thing I go back and forth on is how much I want to be playing the hot new games that everybody else is talking about and how much I think it's harmful that we're all swept along in waves of enthusiasm for new releases, at the cost of (among other things) thoughtful retrospection on games that are more than a few weeks old. I do think it's unhealthy that gaming sites spend more time talking about games that will be released six months from now than games that were released six days ago...

Of course, part of my occasional jaundice towards talk about the newest games stems from the fact that I simply don't have time to play them: I only have so much spare time, and I'm still working through last fall's must-play games. (E.g. Bioshock is sitting on my shelf unplayed.) And I'm sure that, come the summer game drought, I'll be glad that my game playing was lagging the calendar early in the year, because it means that I'll still have good new games to play. (Like GTA IV, which I am quite excited about.)

[Angela]

Hey guys,
I'm just popping on my Kevlar before I write this post. Been playing GTA IV for a couple of days now and I have to say I'm a little stunned--at least at this early stage--that it's garnering review scores of 10 out of 10.

Also I wondered what your thoughts were on the IGN spliced video that's doing the rounds. We reported on it today at LesbianGamers.com I have to say I'm a little thrown that a huge gaming site would make a point of splicing together imagery that Fox News or similar would love to use as ammo against the gaming community.

Anyway that's a little off topic.. but yeah.. not loving GTA IV at the moment.. seems like more hype than substance, but I'll keep playing.

[L.B. Jeffries]

I can appreciate disliking hype because of the utter loss of objectivity but...like the post says, it's fun to see people excited about something. You don't want to be Scrooge on Christmas Eve, even if he has a point about getting proper work done.

In a couple of months people will have moved on to other things and then critics can start making legitimate comments about the game. Look at the 'Twilight Princess' phenomenon. Destructoid had the audacity to say it was basically just 'Ocarina of Time'. Which it is (not that most fans are bothered by that), but they made the mistake of saying it right at the release phase when people were still gushing about it. The backlash is, like Zero Punctuation's ripping on 'Smash Brothers', staggering.

Let them have their cake. There are game aplenty that need looking at anyways.

[Jason]

Hmmm. So far, I love GTA 4. Every hour at work is a tortuous one: if I'm not reading "Transmetropolitan", I'm thinking about the work I could do for Little Jacob, or what's going to happen between Niko and Dimitri. As I've said in another post on Blogger: this GTA addresses the issues I've had with past GTAs (not perfectly, but satisfactorily), and so far, I love the game. I can almost say that the hype was mostly from within, and not without.

[Michael Abbott]

This conversation has provoked me to think about what, exactly, it is that interests me so much in the GTA series. Even as I write this, I'm aware that I say it "interests" me, which is an intellectual response. I could never express affection for these games in the same I way I have for Okami or Gitaroo Man, for example.

But I do admire the GTA series, partly because of the way Rockstar's marries its gonzo up-yours attitude with a remarkably disciplined and progressive design approach. Those two things rarely go together, which suggests to me that Rockstar is really trying to construct games that are incredibly difficult to build while making it seem as if they're all sort of drunkenly throwing together a bunch of random male-fantasy world stuff without much thought. It's all very, very carefully planned and constructed, and that odd collision interests me.

The other thing, of course, is the freedom. I know many people are disturbed by the way the game provides opportunities for all kinds of unsavory or offensive behaviors. I don't pretend to be above all this, and I've gotten my share of vicarious thrills doing things I'd never do in real life. But, basically, I mostly play the games as a decent guy trying to navigate a jungle of thugs and corruption and maintain my integrity. This, to me, is the central theme of these games - getting by in a tough world that hits you whether you deserve it or not - and I find that story compelling, despite the gameplay issues several of you have mentioned in past versions of GTA.

Anyway, just a few thoughts, prompted by yours. I'm looking forward to digging into GTA4, and I'll definitely return to post with more reactions, and I hope you will too.

[OmarDa]

Interesting conversation. I think, basically, people play GTA games in one of two ways (or both). You can play it for the story and the vicarious thrill ride, or you can play it as a sandbox game, running around doing crazy sh*t. It's a brilliant combo that other games have tried to implement without success. Either way, you're going to be very busy with lots of really interesting stuff coming at you left and right. Some people don't like living in these worlds, so they're not interested in the story or the sandbox. But for those of us who do, GTA games give us more bang for our bucks than any other franchise.

[Daniel Primed]

Hey Micheal, damn, late to the party again. :(

I throughly enjoyed your post. GTA4 looks like a fantastic game and I totally agree that it is great to have such a buzz surrounding this title. I myself am completely thrilled that RockStar used this opportunity to make a game that has such a deep narrative which explores the reasonsing and pain behind violence.

This game is going to get out to a lot of people which should help spread and clarify the message that video games are a medium capable of dealing with such complex issues.

Your post helps me not feel so bad about another article that I wrote:

http://danielprimed.com/gaming/culture/its-okay-to-be-fanatical