4. It's Become The Kind Of Thing GTA Used To Mock... In GTA V!
Rockstar
GTA's scattergun approach to satire isn't to everyone's tastes, but it does get a hit occasionally. GTA V takes aim at literally everything, including the games industry and a few specific targets contained within, the most notable being Farmville.
There's a radio ad in GTA V about a game called DigiFarm. It parodies the kind of mobile game that became a regular but controversial sight during the 2010s - the ones that included predatory microtransactions and pay-to-win models and made headlines for influencing vulnerable players to spend unwisely.
Listen to that ad while playing GTA Online today, and it hits WAY differently.
GTA Online is the exact kind of game Rockstar were mocking back in 2013. It's pay to win, players are pressured into investing in new content every time they log on, and the only alternative is a tedious grind. The Dark Knight's "die a hero" meme has never felt so apt.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
