For the last year or two, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of ”hypernormalization,” the way we all go through the motions as we always have because it’s the only world we’ve ever known or can conceptualize, even though the ground is actually changing. fast under our feet. It affects everything around us, from politics to technology, but I’m particularly interested in how it affects the way we perceive and talk about video games.
We’re really just going through it all, aren’t we – Aftermath
We’re locked in the belly of the machine
From hardware prices to the collapse of the AAA gaming market, along with the rise of backyard indie blockbusters and all-consuming giants like Roblox (as mass layoffs occur), video games are changing faster than we can adapt, but whether it’s the hype of Summer Games Fest, the preview -> review cycle, or the launch of new hardware, we just keep pretending that huge parts of the industry continue to operate the same way they always have.
Grand Craft Auto VI this is the culmination of it all. We’re watching the AAA machine come to life like we always knew it would: long announcement windows, trailer releases, multiple delays, leaks, pre-order bonuses. It’s a game that has a presence everywhere, where other big games won’t get in your way, where you can talk to someone at a party and know they’ll understand what you’re talking about, even if they’re not as into video games as you are.
This is Big Video Game as we’ve always known it to be Big Video Games. And it looks like the last of its kind.
Let’s take a look at the AAA video game industry as it exists in 2026 and where it’s headed. The market has turned away from any form of risk-taking in favor of an ever-shrinking list of formulaic sequels, live-service games and remakes. A God of War a game in which the main role is played by mom, not dad, until now God of War game. Promising Star wars racing game is a licensed game that is the spiritual successor to the 1999 game. Sony is promising to release more live-service games, even as live-service games are draining them of repeated gut-shots. Big this year Assassin’s Creed the release was also big in 2013 Assassin’s Creed release. Almost everything AAA does is an attempt to squeeze the last drops of blood from a fragile and depleted stone.
Guys, I don’t know if we need all these remakes.
Every game you’ve ever loved is a product of its time and a reflection of the limitations placed on its creators.
Specialty retail spaces are disappearing. Stopping the printing of games on disc will hurt player numbers by ending sharing, borrowing, and sales of used games. The touchstones we associate with AAA (and GTA) releases such as deluxe physical editions and midnight launches are now consigned to the history books. Console prices continue to rise while the people who make their games live in constant danger. Now everything is different and Grand Craft Auto VI landing right in the middle of it all feels almost perverse, as always. It’s a game and test of liberation from another era, like Dutch begging Arthur for another big score. To look past GTA release, amidst the crumbling walls and poisoned air of AAA space, it’s almost impossible to imagine any future video game being like this or doing it this way ever again.
Other traditional AAA competitors, be it shooters (Call of Duty), sports games (EA Sports FC) or names of actions (Assassin’s Creed) are outdated, old series that simply don’t capture the public’s imagination the way they once did. Many of the hits that dominate spending and headspace now come from two-person releases on Steam without marketing or simulation games on Steam. Roblox games you’ve never even heard of, but as you read this, nine million kids are playing them.
Even looking at the trajectory Grand Theft Auto in itself, things are grim. GTA III, Vice City And San Andreas all came out between 2001-2004. GTA VI will come out 13 years old after IN. If you extrapolate this increase in development time and budget, I might already be dead in the ground by then. Grand Craft Auto VII will come out, and this is provided that by that time there will be a market or a machine on which it will come out. The industry as we know it is collapsing and changing shape so quickly that it will be unrecognizable in five years, let alone 15, and so for all we know there may never be another. Grand Theft Auto. We could all just play GTA VI Onlineforever, until the seas return us and the sun disappears behind the horizon for the last time.
The video game industry doesn’t exist
Video games are not an industry, they are a medium
Please note I don’t mourning this; If cowardice has been the defining characteristic of the top brass of the AAA gaming industry for the past decade, obscenity is a close second. Fact Grand Theft Auto VI general expenses will end one billion dollars while everything else crumbles around it, it’s a shame for Rockstar, publishers Take-Two and the entire video game medium. This is Sodom and Gomorrah type crap and some could be forgiven for thinking that maybe God is right to destroy this gaming sector.
And perhaps, in the broadest sense of the history textbook, this is for the best! If we’re in the midst of the most tumultuous period for video games since the early 1980s, we’re not going to rebel forever. At some point we will turn into something moresomething beyond what we know now, and when that happens, can you really see a world where exorbitantly expensive consoles and dumb executives still run the AAA industry the way we know they still desperately cling to it? Where games are promoted, produced and sold the same as they were during the Bush era, and the only thing that matters is the result of the next quarter? Of course not. The madness we are currently experiencing, with layoffs occurring weekly and prices and budgets spiraling out of control, simply cannot continue.
If Grand Craft Auto VI turns out to be the last great blockbuster of its time, then its appearance may at least bring us closer to its end and the beginning of something new.