GTA V - The Hipster Scene

What makes a great scene in video games?

GTA V is the single of the highest-grossing entertainment property of all time. In total, it’s raked in nearly $9 billion in revenue and hit its first billion in revenue three days after its release. ALL of Star Wars—movies, TV shows, merchandise, video games, and books—has only grossed $7 billion.

So even if you don’t play video games, it’s worth understanding what’s going on with Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar Games in general. It’s a cultural phenomenon.

I’m going to break down a great scene from GTA V that not only stands out on its own but also shows a technique Rockstar uses to enable powerful and deep storytelling in games. Play and story are two ancient subsystems that don’t always get along, and you certainly don’t need a story to have a great game. What’s the story of Checkers or Chess? But Rockstar has found a secret for combining the two elegantly and powerfully.

How the Writing in GTA Works

I have it from a person who worked at Rockstar that they write their games this way:

1. They pick a genre.

2. They research the genre exhaustively and note every kind of story, scene, and trope they can find.

3. Then, they put all of them into a game.

Grand Theft Auto is a crime game. And even though the key mechanic is stealing vehicles and driving, within that, you get to play every kind of crime story imaginable, all within the context of a satisfying larger story arc.

It isn’t role-playing exactly, because you have no choice about the ultimate direction of the story. Some will complain that the Red Dead Redemption games allow you to play good or bad actions, offering some slight gameplay variations based on your moral standing. That is true, but my point is that the ultimate conclusion doesn’t completely change based on what you do. GTA V has three unique endings involving a major choice, but it doesn’t change the story, not really. Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2 have basically one ending.

This kind of fatalism flies in the face of what a game is fundamentally supposed to do. In games, your choices are supposed to matter. So on one level, these games shouldn’t work. Name a game where your choices don’t matter, and I’ll say it’s a game you likely dislike.

War is not a very good game for this reason. Neither is Tic Tac Toe, Chutes and Ladders, or Keno. Even slot machines, though often addictive, aren’t considered “good” games by this standard—they rely on a variable reward mechanism.

And I think that’s part of what’s going on with the way Rockstar makes games like GTA V. If you play the gameplay portion well, you are rewarded with a cutscene—a bit of story. But that’s not the only reason they work. Rockstar has a unique way of delivering stories, and the lack of choice about the ending actually enhances the stories they tell.

The Secret in the Ending

Rockstar writes tragedies. These are stories about bad people doing bad things, yet you come to like those characters and enjoy the things they do anyway. I’m not gonna lie—GTA V gets dark and weird. For sure, you will carelessly and callously run over and kill hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people over the course of playing the game from start to finish. I don’t have a moral panic about this—it’s a game that’s often funny and a lot of fun, especially in its most violent moments.

An Aside About Violence and Video Games

As someone who has played games and had unfortunate experiences with real violence, my personal opinion is that there is no link between violent games and societal violence. The data seems to support that.

Let’s look at the U.S. murder rate since 1960.

Now, here are the sales of game consoles.

I’m not seeing a strong correlation between video game adoption and murders. And, as disturbing as the recent spike in murder rates may be, it’s not driven by console sales.

Inevitability as the Feature of a Tragic Story

The fact that you can’t change the ending in a Rockstar game makes it better. Tragedy is high art, and for all the explosions, silliness, and over-the-top violence, these games work as tragedy—a tragedy the player is complicit in. In Red Dead Redemption 2, the player has many moments where they want a better life for the main character, Arthur Morgan. Some of the missions were so over the top, I found myself fishing just to take a break from, say, murdering the entire police force of New Orleans.

But here’s the thing: I could have given Arthur a happy ending anytime I wanted. I didn’t have to keep playing missions and moving the story forward. I could have just ridden off into the open world and gone fishing, hunting, or gathering side missions and collectibles. I could have plopped him down in a quiet, pretty corner of the world and left him. But I didn’t.

I drove Arthur to his end for my own enjoyment. And the fact that the ending was tragic is a great model for how tragedy works. All an alcoholic has to do is stop drinking. All Michael Corleone had to do to avoid the family business was to walk away. But they can’t. And neither can we.

Now, you can say that’s an exaggeration, that I’m taking a video game too seriously—and that’s fine—but you can’t say the effect on the player is achievable in any other medium. That makes it truly remarkable. And even if that aesthetic effect doesn’t work for you, it hasn’t been fully explored yet, and we haven’t seen it at its best.

Imagine someone who loved theater seeing their first silent picture. They’d have endless criticisms of the infant medium, and they’d be right. But that’s not the point. It’s like picking a fight with a baby crocodile and concluding that crocodiles aren’t tough. The crocodile you fought wasn’t tough, but you’ve fundamentally misunderstood crocodiles. Only when something matures can you truly evaluate it.

Video games as a medium are still very young. They also take longer to make, so the medium inherently takes more time to mature. It’s a synthetic medium, incorporating drama, music, and sound, as in film, plus more. The more choices available, the greater the combinatorial explosion, making it harder to explore and refine what works.

I’m excited by video games as an art form because I think we’re just scratching the surface.

Rockstar’s Genius Technique

In most video games, players hit the “skip cutscene” button immediately. They’re there for the gameplay, and story bits feel like they’re getting in the way. Sometimes this is because the writing isn’t very good. No particular slam on video games here—writing a great scene is hard, after all.

Games have what developers call a core game loop: the repeated cycle of actions that lead to progression. In Tetris, for example, pieces drop from the top, you turn and fit them to clear space, and eventually, you lose. That’s the loop.

GTA V’s core mechanic is driving. You spend a lot of time driving across the city, and it’s very fun. After five games, Rockstar has perfected the experience of driving, jumping, and crashing vehicles.

Rockstar adds story through scenes where characters talk in a vehicle, keeping players engaged in the core loop while enhancing it with narrative. Some scenes in RDR2 allow you to skip horseback conversations, perhaps because riding a horse is inherently less thrilling than tearing through L.A. on a motorcycle.

The other notable point is that these scenes are low-cost to produce: voice talent is relatively inexpensive compared to motion capture or animation, making additional dialogue cost-effective.

The Hipster Scene — It’s not the Absence of Taste,

It’s not the absence of taste, it’s the opposite of taste.

In GTA V, you play three characters with interlinking stories—Michael, Trevor, and Franklin. Sometimes the game requires you to switch characters to progress the story, but most of the time, you can play as whoever you want—something unique to video games.

This scene is between Michael and Trevor. They’re both criminals—Michael, the professional, and Trevor, the chaotic wild card. Trevor has upended Michael’s life and has generally been a thorn in his side. Here, Michael gets a bit of psychological revenge.

Michael De Santa: You... are a hipster!
Trevor Philips: What?
Michael De Santa: You're a hipster.
Trevor Philips: I hate hipsters.
Michael De Santa: Classic hipster denial.
Trevor Philips: I abhor hipsters. I eat them for fun!
Michael De Santa: Hipsters love saying they hate hipsters.
Trevor Philips: Well, I really fing do!
Michael De Santa: Self-hatred. Common hipster affliction.
Trevor Philips: Only because I'm living out here away from the Bean Machines and the bankers?
Michael De Santa: You're gentrifying. Soon, the skinny jeans will show up, then the skinny lattes, and then the bankers. And you'll be somewhere else, starting the cycle all over again. Maybe you're not a classic hipster, but you’re what the hipsters aspire to be. You, Trevor, are the proto-hipster.
Trevor Philips: I don't know what you're talking about. I don't agree with what you're saying. You're talking bullshit. And you're trying to wind me up. But I'm very, very angry, and I want this conversation to stop right away.
Michael De Santa: Hipster.
Trevor Philips: F you! F you, Michael! Say it again!
Michael De Santa: I've made my point. I'm not a sadist.