Former GTA lead Obbe Vermeij has explained why he thinks you don't see many games challenging the series for its city-based open world crown.
Now that Watch Dogs is rumored to be dead and buried, the reception to Saints Row's 2022 reboot probably demolishing any chance of the series coming back in a meaningful way, and Square Enix continuing to hate bangers by not greenlighting Sleeping Dogs 2, the GTA-style open-world genre is almost a thing of the past. And sure, something like Cyberpunk 2077 does scratch the itch of the city-based open world, but that's an RPG as opposed to a pure sandbox like GTA. But despite the lack of contenders GTA veteran Vermeij reckons there's still space for it.
"I would actually say there's an opportunity because it really is just GTA and everybody else has given up," Vermeij, who served as technical director at Rockstar for almost 14 years, explains in an interview with Gameshub. "I think from a business point of view it is tricky now but the games are so spaced out and I don't know if they're going to do another Red Dead Redemption after GTA 6 but there is going to be at least an eight year gap."
Vermeij explains that "if you have a city game release in the middle of it then maybe you could set it in the future or maybe it could be set in Moscow or whatever. I would say that's an opportunity." However, he reckons "everybody's kind of terrified of going against GTA."
Plus there's the fact that a GTA-style open world is going to be a big investment that may not pay off. "Starting a new franchise is so difficult. That's what Leslie [Benzies, the former Rockstar president who founded MindsEye studio Build a Rocket Boy] kind of bumped up against," Vermeij adds. "People don't know your game and it's very easy for people to just walk away from it if there's the slightest thing wrong with it."
