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I think the Grand Theft Auto games only take place in America (except GTA London) because Grand Theft Auto is a spoof of American culture, yes? That is what I heard. I don't play video games as much as I used to (partially because it got boring after playing for about two hours and partially because I have other entertainment to use).

Or its just lazy game design.
Most games are set in America or the main protagonist is American.
Because MURICA!!!

it's most likely more to do with selling the games globally, as for good or ill American pop-culture is a global infection, hence a lot the references and homages are easy to spot, ie Vice City is essentially Scarface, San Andreas is a 'gangsta' tale and so on

Most of the radio talk shows in GTA are basically comedies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ValentineGames wrote:
Or its just lazy game design.
Most games are set in America or the main protagonist is American.
Because MURICA!!!

Rockstar North (up in England) does most of the writing, designing and so on for Grand Theft Auto. So I would not think so.

Aside from undeniable status of the US as a popular culture titan:

USA is the only country so awash with guns that you can easily obtain military grade firearms with an IQ below 70.

GTA:NZ for example, your most dangerous weapons would probably be bad language or a pamphlet on functional gun control laws. Nice to live in but terrible for a game about crime.

 MarsNZ wrote:

GTA:NZ for example, your most dangerous weapons would probably be bad language or a pamphlet on functional gun control laws. Nice to live in but terrible for a game about crime.

Huh, I figured you guys would be swimming in LotR weapon replicas.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:

GTA:NZ for example, your most dangerous weapons would probably be bad language or a pamphlet on functional gun control laws. Nice to live in but terrible for a game about crime.

Huh, I figured you guys would be swimming in LotR weapon replicas.

Nah, all the hobbits took them to Isengard.

 MarsNZ wrote:
Aside from undeniable status of the US as a popular culture titan:

USA is the only country so awash with guns that you can easily obtain military grade firearms with an IQ below 70.

Not legally. I presume by "military grade" you're referring to things like assault rifles, which in real life would require a federal permit that is difficult to obtain (said permit is required for any weapon that fires more than one shot per trigger pull). Yes, it's not that hard to get some guns in much of the US, though it varies heavily from state to state (California recently passed a law that requires background checks for ammunition purchases, and makes it illegal to purchase ammunition out of state if you bring that ammunition back to California). But a lot of the weaponry in the GTA games is still effectively illegal for the American average citizen to own.

Note - please don't use the above comments as a springboard to start a debate on gun control issues in the US.


As for my own opinion on the game setting -

The games rely heavily on mobster and gangster mythology. Depictions of those in popular media are frequently set in the US. Additionally, the unique blending of cultures in the US means that you can have a number of culturally different organized crime groups come together to provide a mix of allies and antagonists that you couldn't get anywhere else in the world. Sure, Rockstar could do a GTA game set in Russia, focusing on Russian organized crime. But they wouldn't be able to do things like add a motorcycle gang or a Haitian gang as antagonists. Doing that would likely cause unacceptable breaks from reality when people saw that part of the setting. Putting the games in the US allows Rockstar the greatest degree of freedom in deciding which organizations are featured in each game.

Eumerin wrote:
The games rely heavily on mobster and gangster mythology. Depictions of those in popular media are frequently set in the US. Additionally, the unique blending of cultures in the US means that you can have a number of culturally different organized crime groups come together to provide a mix of allies and antagonists that you couldn't get anywhere else in the world. Sure, Rockstar could do a GTA game set in Russia, focusing on Russian organized crime. But they wouldn't be able to do things like add a motorcycle gang or a Haitian gang as antagonists. Doing that would likely cause unacceptable breaks from reality when people saw that part of the setting. Putting the games in the US allows Rockstar the greatest degree of freedom in deciding which organizations are featured in each game.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Reality and Hollywood/pop culture make it look sensible to have all those criminal organisations working in one place. Liberty City has italian, russian, chinese and irish mafias, biker gangs, even some jamaican mob and all these guys don't really look out of place. There aren't that many famous cities in the world where you can get that feel, so Rockstar has basically been sticking to New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

GTA isn't a spoof. It's a satire.

More than that it's what I call relentless satire. Everything is a comment on something. For every two clever things there's one where they belabour the point soooo much. It gets exhausting some times.

Personally I don't feel that GTA would really lend itself well to other settings like, say, the Assassin's Creed games do. I mean, GTA: Adelaide probably wouldn't work as you'd be on the other side of the city in 10 seconds flat.

Onething123456 wrote:
Most of the radio talk shows in GTA are basically comedies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ValentineGames wrote:
Or its just lazy game design.
Most games are set in America or the main protagonist is American.
Because MURICA!!!

Rockstar North (up in England) does most of the writing, designing and so on for Grand Theft Auto. So I would not think so.

Are you riffing on the whole "Americans don't know geography" thing? Because Rockstar North is in Scotland...

yeah but explaining that whole British/English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish (and Cornish) thing to colonials is too much bother

Rockstar North is over in Scotland, is what I mean.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
yeah but explaining that whole British/English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish (and Cornish) thing to colonials is too much bother

To be fair, explaining it to most English people is too much bother as well

One other thing worth noting that didn't occur to me when I made my earlier post in this thread -

There's already a Grand Theft Auto-style game set in Hong Kong. It's a more serious game, and there's a lot more focus on melee fighting (though there are still guns), but it's an open world game that has a lot of the same mechanics as the GTA games (from III onward). That game is Sleeping Dogs. And the organized crime focus in that game is set *exclusively* on the local triads (specifically, two of the three that are mentioned to be present on the island). Foreigners make occasional appearances. But they're only visitors or small-time operators. The Triads run the show in that game. And players would have found it absurd if foreign organized crime groups showed up as actual power groups within the organized crime structure of the island. From what I understand, the game sold decently, but didn't do well enough to justify a sequel.

The triads that play prominent roles in the game are the Sun On Yee (based on the real-life Sun Yee On), and the 18K. A third triad is mentioned, but never appears in the game (I don't remember their name off of the top of my head). There was an attempt to turn the setting into an on-line game called Triad Wars, but it was cancelled two years ago while still in beta. A movie's been mentioned, though I don't know the status of it.


Probably also worth noting is the long-running Yakuza series (seven games to date; the most recent three are a prequel to the very first game, and rereleases of the first two games updated for the PS4). In that series, you play a Japanese gangster (the same one in all seven games). It's open world, though (based on Yakuza 0, which is the only one I've played) quite a bit different from Grand Theft Auto and Sleeping Dogs. For instance, there's no driving in Yakuza 0. If you see a car, then it's either parked, or in a cutscene. And you can't run around beating up random passersby like you can in GTA and Sleeping Dogs.

Sleeping Dogs is an incredible game, mixing a wonderful martial arts system with very arcade-y shooting (as to not annoy you with needless requirements for pinpoint accuracy on console controls) with a great city, fantastic music, tons of missions and a nice story.

Plus eating a pork bun makes you a whole man!!!

But it's not a satire like GTA. GTA would have to take the piss out of things, and whilst it could do that with British pop-culture, they might miss the mark with Chinese pop-culture (with elements of English culture left over) like in Hong Kong.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Sleeping Dogs is an incredible game, mixing a wonderful martial arts system with very arcade-y shooting (as to not annoy you with needless requirements for pinpoint accuracy on console controls) with a great city, fantastic music, tons of missions and a nice story.

Plus eating a pork bun makes you a whole man!!!

But it's not a satire like GTA. GTA would have to take the piss out of things, and whilst it could do that with British pop-culture, they might miss the mark with Chinese pop-culture (with elements of English culture left over) like in Hong Kong.

Yeah. The primary differences between Sleeping Dogs and GTA are -

1.) The setting, which was the point of this whole thread. GTA is set in a fictionalized US. Sleeping Dogs is set in Hong Kong.
2.) The combat. Sleeping Dogs has a much heavier melee focus, and includes martial arts gameplay (think of it as "Arkham-lite combat"). Guns aren't even available for the early part of the game, and they're never as common as they are in GTA. You can also engage in "environmental takedowns" by doing things like throwing enemies into dumpsters, impaling them on a swordfish, or shoving their head into a spinning fan. Just because there aren't any nekkid women doesn't mean that the game is safe for kids (that doesn't mean that sexual elements aren't present; while we never directly see examples of it, one of the triad red poles is explicitly stated to be forcing women into porn and prostitution, and the protagonist can visit one of the many female "masseuses" that are scattered around the city).
3.) The tone. GTA satirizes everything. Sleeping Dogs is quite serious. That doesn't mean that they don't have fun with the setting. One of the DLCs is clearly inspired by movies like "Enter the Dragon". And humor pops up from time to time (for instance, the insults that the protagonist's old martial arts instructor yells at his students as they get beaten in practice sparring sessions are pretty funny). But if Sleeping Dogs had a train, it wouldn't be named "The Brown Streak" (which was the name of the train line in San Andreas).

The Definitive Edition (which includes all of the content DLC, along with better graphics resolution than the original release) has been marked down to $4.50US on all three platforms as part of the various holiday season sales (it's ordinarly $30).

And, yes, don't forget to eat your pork buns. Otherwise you won't be a whole man.

There's also The Getaway, which people often (unfortunately) forget.

Eumerin wrote:

Sure, Rockstar could do a GTA game set in Russia, focusing on Russian organized crime. But they wouldn't be able to do things like add a motorcycle gang or a Haitian gang as antagonists. Doing that would likely cause unacceptable breaks from reality when people saw that part of the setting. Putting the games in the US allows Rockstar the greatest degree of freedom in deciding which organizations are featured in each game.

There are plenty of competing ethnic factions for Rockstar to use in a hypothetical "GTA: Russia", the problem is that most of the people in the West don't know what they are.

 dogma wrote:
There's also The Getaway, which people often (unfortunately) forget.

Eumerin wrote:

Sure, Rockstar could do a GTA game set in Russia, focusing on Russian organized crime. But they wouldn't be able to do things like add a motorcycle gang or a Haitian gang as antagonists. Doing that would likely cause unacceptable breaks from reality when people saw that part of the setting. Putting the games in the US allows Rockstar the greatest degree of freedom in deciding which organizations are featured in each game.

There are plenty of competing ethnic factions for Rockstar to use in a hypothetical "GTA: Russia", the problem is that most of the people in the West don't know what they are.

It's not just competing ethnic factions. The point is that you can have an incredibly diverse collection of factions in a fictional US setting, more so than anywhere else in the world. Yes, there are a lot of different ethnic groups scattered around various parts of Russia. But they generally come from parts of the former Soviet Union or neighboring countries, and as a result have certain cultural factors in common. With the US, you can draw from literally anywhere in the world. Any of those Russian ethnic groups could theoretically appear as a group in a game set in the US, and no one would complain (aside from, maybe, members of those ethnic groups). But if you put a Jamaican crime group in Russia, people are going to point to that group as a flaw in the setting.

And yes, that still applies even if you produce a news story that talks about the rising influence of Jamaican organized crime in Moscow.

Eumerin wrote:
With the US, you can draw from literally anywhere in the world. Any of those Russian ethnic groups could theoretically appear as a group in a game set in the US, and no one would complain (aside from, maybe, members of those ethnic groups). But if you put a Jamaican crime group in Russia, people are going to point to that group as a flaw in the setting.

Mongolian (or assimilated) gangs work in Russia, feels very very weird in USA.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
With the US, you can draw from literally anywhere in the world. Any of those Russian ethnic groups could theoretically appear as a group in a game set in the US, and no one would complain (aside from, maybe, members of those ethnic groups). But if you put a Jamaican crime group in Russia, people are going to point to that group as a flaw in the setting.

Mongolian (or assimilated) gangs work in Russia, feels very very weird in USA.

Only because the Mongolian stereotype outside that part of the world is "the guys who overran most of Asia and part of Europe several centuries ago. I wonder what they're doing right now?" (and for those in the know, the answer is "building a stable post-communist free country while land-locked in between Russia and China") GTA lives and breathes off of stereotypes for its gangs. Put Mongolians (or Uzbekis, etc...) in a GTA game, and most of the players wouldn't know what they were responding to.

In any event, the important thing for a GTA-style game is this - what makes the Mongolians distinct from every other ethnic organized crime group in a way that can be easily stereotyped? Sort of like how any black ethnic gang from the Caribbean in the GTA games ends every other sentence with "mon". If you're going for an international audience, and you want a GTA-style game, then the differences between the Mongolian and other Asiatic steppes gangs can't be subtle. They have to be clearly and immediately obvious through mannerisms and/or speech tics. Otherwise you're looking at something similar to Sleeping Dogs (and don't get me wrong - Sleeping Dogs is a very good game, as mentioned above; but it has a much more serious tone than GTA), albeit set in a different country.

That makes me wonder: would a GTA game work if it was set outside of the (fictional) USA? If you want a big, diverse city where it's believable to see different criminal groups fight each other, I can think of a few, like Rio de Janeiro, Manila or Marseille...

It feels like a very big reason to have the game in the US is because popular media have built that semi-fictional version of it in everyone's mind all over the world. So even if you've never been in the real place, you can catch a lot of the satire about it. I'm pretty sure if the game was set in Brazil instead, I wouldn't understand a single joke...

I'd love an updated GTA London. I think that could work.

But yeah, outside of the US there are very few cultures that are so globally familiar that players worldwide would be able to understand it, get the in-jokes, and just be able to fit in and know what's what...