Grand Theft Auto is about people in hardship wanting to improve their lives – a bit like Big Issue

I grew up in Vice City. At least it feels like I did. It was released as I ended high school and headed to university, suddenly at liberty to play video games for as long as I wanted.

Sunshine-saturated Vice City – Grand Theft Auto’s version of Miami – was as real to me as anywhere else I’d visited. And it was extra exhilarating to think the thrilling world emanated from a bland office: the game’s developers Rockstar North were based in Edinburgh, near a Frankie & Benny’s my family would go to on special occasions.

I skipped a couple of GTA games until 2020-21 when taking a trip to the San Andreas of GTA V during lockdown was some sort of salvation. You could take a trip down to Del Perro Pier to ride the roller coaster, practise yoga by your pool or mostly just ‘borrow’ cars and listen to the radio, exploring the vast island setting at a time I spent nearly two years without being able to travel to the actual seaside.

Grand Theft Auto VI will be released next week. This isn’t just a new game, it’s the launch of what will be the biggest media title ever produced, eclipsing the $10+ billion the previous game grossed. Many people (even among our team, naming no names) have already booked time off around the release, with an estimated 1.5 million Americans expected to skip work or pull a sickie on 19 November, resulting in a projected $1 billion loss of economic productivity in the US that day. But that figure is dwarfed by the expected $3.2-$5.2bn the
game is expected to gross in its first week alone.

Over the years, reports about the game have tended to attack the supposed sensationalising of violence, glorification of crime and dodgy representation of women and minorities. 

These accusations tend to come from people who clearly haven’t played the games, which are predominantly intelligent satirisations of consumerist culture and corporate greed. Rockstar North themselves may not be immune to some of the bad habits of big business, with employees protesting the firing of unionised employees outside their offices in Edinburgh, London and Paris last year.

Read more:

• Grand Theft Hamlet: Why these unemployed actors staged a Shakespeare play inside a video game
• Why we need a video game about homelessness
• Top 5 books about video games by trailblazing author Jeanne Thornton

At their core, the games are about people experiencing hardship wanting to improve their lives, grabbing any opportunities they can to improve their circumstances. So thematically, in parallel with Big Issue. If only a Big Issue Vice City existed to give people an alternative means of earning income… In that imaginary magazine, it would explore, like we have in this edition, what the franchise has had to say about homelessness, housing, poverty and justice. What can we learn about it in a virtual world that we can keep in mind and apply to our own?

I’m looking forward to returning to an upgraded Vice City where you can reportedly do things like lift weights at the gym, go to nightclubs, refuel cars, change those cars and clothes to evade police and enter more buildings on the map than ever before.

The next iteration of the game in another decade or so could be so lifelike that it amounts to… being almost like life. If you don’t want to wait that long, remember you can already go outside, enter buildings and find out that non-playable characters are already fully interactive. 

Smile at someone, find a friend to do yoga or ride a roller coaster with. Buy a magazine from an actual person!

That’s a way to overtake technology. It’s becoming so advanced so quickly, the only upgrade left available to us will be to re-engage with reality.

Steven MacKenzie is editor of Big Issue. Read more from our archive.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.

You can also support online:
Subscribe to the magazine or support our work with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.

Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.