![]() It's one thing when a leak reveals important information that would never have come to light otherwise, but that's not what this was. Leaks are harmless entertainment at best, but they're often actively harmful and counterproductive, especially when they're handled haphazardly. There's a reason those aren't talked about publicly until they're set in stone. They can also string people along or set them up for disappointment by mentioning elements which may be cut or overhauled by the time a game's properly revealed or released. But these kinds of previews are only helpful when they're couched appropriately, whereas slapdash leaks can and do hurt players as well as creators.Īs we've seen, leaks can give people the wrong idea about how a game is shaping up. I was intrigued to see the guts of the Dead Space Remake and the lovably blocky Skate playtest, for example. This is undeniably naive to say, but I like to think that even a crude understanding of production and troubleshooting can give non-devs (like me) a more useful perspective for criticism and analysis. I think it's good to learn and see how games work. I'll always want developers to share more pre-release details and insights. I'm not running defense for companies here I just want to try and correct some misconceptions to the best of my ability. You don't get that with leaks of the same material, which can make naturally messy projects look much worse off than they actually are. Devs and artists could head off incorrect assumptions and ultimately tell us way more about the game. We'd get better footage, for one, which would change how the game is perceived and let the people in the know direct the conversation. We'd be having a totally different conversation if Rockstar had released similar footage itself and framed it as a pre-alpha look at the next GTA. Whether it's a spotty report on an unannounced game, or a video of a build that doesn't represent a final game, leaks inevitably lack context. The misunderstandings around this process reiterate why these leaks are bad. ![]() To go back to the house analogy, you can have the paint ready, buckets and buckets of it, but keep it in storage until the time is right. And even after devs have decided on a style, roughed out environments, iterated on characters, and so on, those assets may not be added to the latest build for a while. Early art is typically a proof-of-concept mock-up, or a placeholder that sees huge changes later on. As many developers have explained while pointing to their own early builds, graphics are often one of the last parts of a game to be finalized, at least in terms of the build that will be shipped. You can say roughly the same thing about a game that's still in production. But you don't have to dig very deep to find ridiculous comments condemning the 'lazy devs' at Rockstar or telling them to 'fix the graphics.' It's been nine years since the release of GTA 5, so why doesn't this look way better? The irony is that if the leaked build had looked worse, just comically blocky and rough, fewer people probably would've taken it the wrong way. For starters, a non-trivial portion of the gaming population looked at the leaked GTA 6 footage and seriously assumed that this is how the final game is going to be. Quite a few reasons, actually, and the GTA 6 leak has highlighted a lot of them. It would almost be impressive if such misunderstandings weren't disconcertingly common.įor all the calls for more transparency in how video games are made, there's a reason many developers don't show builds or share details long before their games come out. It was hot, misinformed takes like this that spurred a notoriously protective industry to share some of the worst versions of their beloved projects – the amazingly ugly, brilliantly broken drafts behind the games we love. Graphics are the first thing finished in game development, don't you know. Video game development is difficult to understand at the best of times, which is perhaps why so many players took to social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit to air out some wild opinions. The GTA 6 leak, which dumped unvarnished gameplay and screenshots from a scrappy build of a game that's still deep in development, led to some truly bewildering assumptions surfacing online.
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