Rockstar Games’ best-sellingGrand Theft Autoseries wasn’t often accused of political sensitivity during its legendary run from the late 1990s through the early 2010s.
In fact,parents and activistsdenounced the franchise for exposing children to a seedy world of sex, violence, crude humor, and wanton crime.Elon Muskevenclaimedthat he couldn’t get into the last installment,GTA V, because he was mortified to play as a character who shoots police officers.
But times (and moral panics) change. In the 13 years that fans have waited forGrand Theft Auto VI—finally out onNovember 19—the American right-wing grievance machine has drifted from fears of impressionable kids turning to a life of larceny to concerns that they will grow up “woke.” And despite knowing very little about the forthcoming game, the agitators of the latter movement have decided it must amount to a stealth campaign to poison the youth with depictions of gender equality, LGBTQ acceptance, and racial diversity. (Rockstar did not immediately return a request for comment.)
Since the height of Gamergate in 2014, an angst-ridden subset of male gamers havemaintained a paranoid vigilagainst what they see as the creeping influence of women and LGBTQ developers in the gaming world. Between the feverish anticipation forGTA VIand the various delays of its release date, they’ve had ample opportunity to foment apreemptive backlashto what is sure to be a massive hit, not unlike thefailed furorover supposedly “woke” elements of Christopher Nolan’sThe Odyssey.
“GTA 6 is a humiliation ritual for all male gamers,” an X user with the handle @Wokenessisevilcomplainedon Tuesday, sharing a clip of the game’s two lead characters, Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, who are in a relationship that evolves based on the player’s choices. In the scene, Lucia, the series’ first mandatory female protagonist, asks Jason to pick an outfit for her and expresses mild annoyance when he seems more or less indifferent to the options she presents.
It’s an exchange that could have been lifted from any sitcom of the past 50 years, yet it seems to have fueled a reactionary narrative about the game’s male protagonist being subjugated to a nefarious feminist agenda. Another X user recentlyclaimed, contrary to the clip’s bog-standard depiction of a heterosexual couple, that Jason has a “gay vibe,” since no straight man would know what sequins are or use the word “cocktails,” as he does in the clip.
“The script is definitely written by a woman who has no clue what a man thinks or how he talks,” they wrote. “Jason is written as a caricature, much like what a delusional woman thinks a ‘man’ should be.”
Similarly, a gaming YouTuber seethed that Rockstar was appealing to women and gay men by showing Jason shirtless in another scene. “Gone are the days of edgy based masculine GTA games,” hewroteon X. “I could be wrong but right now it’s looking like it will be a woke fest.”
While multipleleaksand a 27-minute “extended look” preview on Netflix have revealed key details of the game, and Rockstar creativesdeclared their intentto realistically portray the diversity of the Miami-inspired setting and bring a fleshed-out female character into the spotlight, would-be detractors are still straining a bit for reasons to pronounce it dead on arrival. One YouTuber has convinced himself that it will subliminally brainwash players with “bisexual lighting.”
