The Worth of the GTA Franchise 128
GameDailyBiz has a piece analyzing the value of the Grand Theft Auto Franchise for developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Entertainment. At something like $900 Million over the next five years, the franchise is almost 80% of Take-Two's market value. From the article: " ... While it's hard to blame Take-Two for its reliance on a blockbuster franchise, eventually gamers are likely to tire of the GTA formula, or the games will no longer feel fresh when placed side-by-side with titles that perhaps improve on that formula. To be fair, Take-Two has made attempts to diversify itself through acquisitions and new IP, but the publisher's value right now is heavily dependent upon GTA and that could be a double-edged sword for potential suitors, or investors in general. "
GTA rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think GTA is getting watered down (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GTA rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what makes GTA fun is that it is leaps and bounds ahead of other real life simulators. If you take something that engrossing and then replace "kill all the hatians" and "shoot up the mafia mansion" with "find my fish" and "deliver this block of wood to the next town" quests, it'll quickly dull
Franchises are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, iD seems to be barrelling along just fine on the strength of the same game. Epic is doing Gears of War but that's probably the first non-Unreal game to come out of them in the past 8 years. (To be fair, both of these companies, to my knowledge, derive or derived income by licensing their game engine).
McDonald's seems to be doing OK only selling hamburgers.
Take Two's reliance on a blockbuster franchise is only bad if having one bad game can crumble their company. If they can publish a GTA game that sells only "OK" (say, 1 million copies) and still run the business profitably, then they're fine. Otherwise, they're a bloated company with few cash reserves. GTA is not the problem in that case.
Re:GTA rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GTA rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
The wonderful thing about GTA3 and onward is that in addition to a good game, the game world is a fun *toy* to just mess about with. I got obsessed in GTA-SA with capturing gang turf. There was dozens of ways to pick a fight with rival gangs and execute the assault (landing a helicopter on some homies was a good one).
Franchises are OK to a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Same thing with GTA...GTA 3 was fun, Vice City was *really* fun, SA was neither here nor there for me. Besides, where can they go with it?
I went nuts with Unreal Tournament, even designing some levels, but UT3 and 4 didn't impress (why they take away the *best* weapon in the game (snipers rifle) is beyond me). I still play the original UT because it "felt right". Years after the fact and I'm still haunting the halls of CTF-November.
The only franchises that I've seen work over time are the "story"-type ones of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and the like. If Doom had a story (I mean a *real* story, a la Half-Life) I might be interested to see "what happens next", but they didn't do that.
Sadly, the one true franchise that relies on a continuous story, Shenmue, doesn't seem like it'll see the light of day.
People will come back for more if there's a reason to come back for more. In the age of OpenGL-based desktops, dual core processors, gigabytes of ram, SLI video cards, etc. etc., graphics are no longer the "more" and any franchise that doesn't see that is doomed.
Re:GTA rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think GTA is getting watered down (Score:5, Insightful)
GTA:SA Sucked!!!!
I loved the series up to that point, but then the first mission on GTA:SA began.
You go through a way-to-long series of really boring cut-scenes (which sadky lack the humor of the preivious two games), and then you find yourself running from a rival drive-by game by riding a bicycle.
Let's stop right there for a moment.
The whole thing that made GTA so beautiful was the open-ended nature of it. If you wanted to take the "obvious" path to complete a mission, you could, but it encouraged lateral thinking.
Classic example: In GTA-III, there's a mission where you are "supposed" to use a sniper rifle to assasinate a rival mob boss as he leaves his favorite restaurant. While there are a couple of vantage points from which you can pull this off, you can also steal a big vehicle (like a bus), go to HIS HOME, block the entry to his garage, and you lob grenades at his entire entourage while they try to pound their way through the driveway.
Back to San Andreas.
So, I'm on this mission where I gotta follow the other kids in my gang on a sad-looking bike, when I decide to say "screw this" and boost a car.
The moment I step off the bike, I can't continue the mission! The little nav guide I was following fanishes, and an urgent "GET BACK ON THE BIKE" message flashes on the screen. To use any means of transport, other than the crappy bike I stole, is forbidden.
Lame, lame, lame.
It's especially lame when you consider that riding little bicycles is BORING. They are slow to begin with, and waaaay slower when you try to take a hill. (Getting off the bike and walking it up is not an option, even though it would sometimes be faster.)
Then, if you want to be able to use these gay-ass bikes with any utility at all, or even if you want to run more than twenty paces or so without grabbing your knees and vomiting, you have to go to a gym and work out!
Who the hell thought it would be fun to play a weight-training simulator???
GTA used to be about being a clever, cold-blooded, hardened mafia goon who would joyride in hot cars and often had to McGuyver his way out of tight scrapes. That was the game I fell in love with.
GTA:SA is about being a mush-mouthed, scrawny, out-of-shape, dead-broke loser thug who needs to do hours of pilates just to pedal a sissy-bar bike up a resivior embankment. Put up with hours and hours of this crap, and you don't get to infiltrate the mob or yakuza or anything nearly that cool... no, you get gain cred with a bunch of california street hoodlums. Yay.
Their games are moving in the wrong direction. The game has become more rigid, less fun, and more reliant on cut-scenes to pad out a game with very little replay value. If this trend continues, their "franchise" will be worth less than that of Duke Nukem.
IMHO, YMMV, yadda yadda yadda
Opposite Problem... Not enough of games... (Score:3, Insightful)
When I play a game, I have to develop a whole new skill set. Each game has it's own physics, rules, key-configurations, etc.
Most of the games I enjoy, I could play them for years without getting bored, so long as someone kept developing new content. My favorite games are GTA series, or Morrowind, or games with big open worlds and lots of content. But if a FPS had a subscription services where I could purchase new levels each week (and especially if it was all part of some continuing story), it would take an extremly long time to get bored.
And I think a lot of people agree with me. Look at MMPOGs... people like them because of the human interaction of course... but people also like them because the game content never runs out (once you complete the quests, you can play meta-games such as guild politics, trading for profit, and there will also be expansions coming along)
Re:I think GTA is getting watered down (Score:1, Insightful)
O RLY? Funny, last time I played, you do end up infiltrating the mob. Plus working with the Triads, some crazy hippy dude, and even a handful of missions for some mysterious CIA agent, etc.. All of which are a far cry from 'mush mouthed street hoodlums.' Either we played a different game, or you got bored and gave up before passing the first tenth or so of the game.
Or, you're just a troll.
Re:I think GTA is getting watered down (Score:3, Insightful)
+ Bigger
+ CJ could swim and climb over walls. (and parachute) Swimming stopped boats from being deathtraps. Knee-high hedges no longer stopped you from running away when getting your ass kicked.
+ FPS style aiming (combined with auto aim). You could move while being ready to shoot at any moment.
- Working out and eating. Nice idea to be able to customise your character, but was there any advantage to being morbidly obese or really scrawny? I just went to the gym for a few days to max out CJ's muscle mass. Running and eating a salad every few days did the rest.
- No roads were even close to being somewhat straight routes from one city to the next. You always had to drive these serpentine roads or just drive off a cliff and hope you land on your wheels.
- Missions with stupid car usage limitations. Yeah, it's not realistic to drive 120 mph for two blocks in your brother's car, roll it and just steal another car, but this is GTA! Come on, cars are extremely expendable! If you want to have those kinds of limitations, make it easy to drive at "normal speed."
- Okay, so you can get some gang members to follow you, but as soon as you do, there are no more rival gang members anywhere. It's way easier to get gang wars when going solo.
- Camera is still pretty shitty in tight spots on foot.
Re:I think GTA is getting watered down (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. To those who played San Andreas more than an hour, here's how this post sounds:
Re:GTA rocks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually I knew well what I'm talkin about since I'm doing a video too (to be released around when the next GTA comes out), and that's pretty much all I'm doing in GTA.
Was what what the game was designed to do? Was it really meant to be such a great stunting game? I doubt it, and that's what's cool about GTA, you can find it uses that the game wasn't designed for, and that you might call open-ended
Am I the only one who still likes GTA? (Score:1, Insightful)
At any rate, Vice City was a huge improvement on GTA3 - the way you could purchase property and generate income. Money actually meant something in this game and so mugging someone on the street or holding up the pizza joint actually helped you to progress through. As per usual, the story was well-scripted and well-acted, which is more than I can say for 90% of the other mainstream games that are released. And maybe it's just cuz I like mafia movies, but it felt really cool to start out as a 'thug' and work your way up to becoming this mafia boss overlord. Damn, I might hafta play through vice city again
San Andreas took it to the next level by making the map like 3x larger than Vice City. They also added turf wars and (best of all) stats for your character. Now it was hardly an RPG, but you still improved as you played the game - your fitness level and firing accuracy and driving ability all increased with more experience. They also introduced girlfriends, which despite the hot coffee scandal, were a neat addition to the game - just another facet you could spend time on if you wanted to complete the entire thing. Again, it was well written and well performed, which again, if you've played any other mainstream releases, you'll know is a rarity unto itself.
So I dunno, maybe it's my latent criminal tendencies, but I love the GTA series...I have since the very first one. As long as they continue to improve it at the rate they're going, I'd happily play another dozen. I agree that if it had stayed at the quality level of GTA3 I probably would have tired long ago, but they've gone leaps and bounds between 3 and SA. For those who say they couldn't play more than 15 minutes of Vice City or San Andreas because it was 'more of the same,' I gotta say that you didn't really give it a chance to get into the story. Of course the first few missions are always the same, it's the way you introduce new players into the GTA world.
Different strokes I guess, but I'll gladly play some more GTA...might even get a PSP just for Liberty City stories when I start to see used ones for sale.