The market goes where the players go who did not want the single player expansions of GTA V
Continuing to think about the market as if it were stuck twenty years ago no longer makes much sense: publishers go where players go, whether they like it or not.
Usually we talk about the market only for personal tastes , as if our needs should become the model for everyone’s needs, making many discussions self-referential and out of focus with respect to reality. Today, what has been known for a long time has been reiterated: the single player expansions of GTA 5 have been definitively shelved due to the success of GTA Online . For some, it’s a shame, but there’s little point in complaining, because it was inevitable that it would happen.
If we want to give another “fault” to GTA Online, there is also that of having extended the development times of GTA 6. If it hadn’t been there, Rockstar probably would have created a less ambitious chapter, but quicker to develop (always relative to a series like GTA, obviously).
There are no victims, nor executioners
The point is that by drawing certain conclusions we would be following a wrong pattern, dictated by a series of basic prejudices that arise from a now outdated way of understanding video games . GTA Online has not killed anything and has not led to the cancellation of any expansions.
The market goes where the players go who did not want the single player expansions of GTA V
GTA Online: San Andreas Mercenaries – The trailer for the new update
It is the players who have done it by pouring in millions into the online mode of GTA 5, which has become the main one of the experience, so much so that it has received hundreds of updates, absorbing all the support efforts of the developers. Or rather, let’s say it better: not even the players have killed anything . They have simply found the entertainment they were looking for in GTA Online, they have rewarded Rockstar Game with billions of dollars in revenue and the development studio has adapted to what the numbers asked of it.
Years ago I wrote a commentary on those who believed that investments in free-to-play and live services would also benefit traditional games, which was a pious illusion . Success only feeds itself. Time has proven me right, that is, the new economic models of video games have done nothing but occupy part of the space that was of the traditional model, in terms of investments, sending it into crisis.
Continuing to look for victims and executioners in what is a purely economic issue makes no sense and only creates a bile swamp from which nothing good can emerge. The market goes where the interest of players goes, understood in their broadest sense, and there is no doubt that, with the strengthening of internet networks and the development of increasingly accessible online games, trends have emerged that were previously not possible, widening the circle of the gaming population in unexpected directions.
Many simply see video games as ways to interact with their peers. Many kids meet up after school to play this or that game. Others join communities and stay there for years. Still others decide with friends what to play by choosing from games that have a cooperative mode and are accessible to everyone.
In other words, technological development has allowed social interactions to become central to the experience of the medium and these have created a market. The big publishers, who are never brave, let’s remember, have chased the market, as they did before when it was made for the majority of single player games, simply because that was all there was.
So, the GTA 5 expansions weren’t cancelled because of GTA Online. The gaming audience simply told Rockstar Games loud and clear that they wanted it to invest in GTA Online, and the software house adapted.