Is A "GTA Killer" Even Possible At This Point?

Every now and then games marginally similar to GTA are hyped up as "GTA Killers" — games that will allegedly surpass Rockstar's masterpiece in quality, popularity, or both. Sometimes they have a lot in common with Grand Theft Auto, like in the case of Mafia 3. While other times they're entirely different but happen to have an open world and yet they're still compared to one another.

A few days ago, we posted a piece on how Ghost Recon: Wildlands was often being compared to GTA 5, and many readers astutely pointed out that the two have practically nothing beyond being open world third-person shooters in common. They were absolutely right. So why on earth were reviewers and journos drawing the comparisons?

(Naturally reviewers and journalists sneak GTA 5 into articles about other games simply because it's usually a hot keyword, but that's beside the point.)

Simple, really. GTA 5's insane popularity and success mean it has become the thing to beat. Eclipsing the achievement of this game would be the non plus ultra of success in this industry and is likely the wet dream of every developer out there (except the ones in it for the creative accomplishment, of course).

However, the question arises — is it even possible at this point to match, let alone one-up the success of GTA 5? Is it even possible in the current state of the industry to create a GTA Killer? Now, before we delve into this, let's lay down some ground rules. The point of a "something-killer" is that it must be similar enough to the "something" in question to be a competitor in the same field.

As such, a free-to-play MMO or a modern military shooter wouldn't be classified as a GTA Killer even if it outdid it in terms of popularity. So, let's work with an open-world third-person action adventure game with a roughly contemporary setting, though near-past and near-future both work. For example, here are some previous releases that were hyped as GTA Killers, but failed: Watch Dogs, Watch Dogs 2, Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row IV and Mafia 3.

First, let's look at what it was that made GTA 5 so successful in the first place, since the hypothetical GTA killer needs to nail these motions as well. We've written up storms about this in the past, but here's the abridged version: nearly 10 years of fame, mainstream popularity, staggered release across many platforms and major marketing.