Grand Theft Auto 3 had such a huge impact on gaming that it essentially created a genre of its own. Since then, Grand Theft Auto’s presence in gaming has only gotten bigger and its domination of the genre has remained uncontested. A few competitors have sought to challenge the GTA series. So far, none have succeeded, with most failing to survive the attempt. Other games, meanwhile, have not sought to challenge GTA’s dominance but have nonetheless taken heavy inspiration from the GTA games and created experiences that are recognisably GTA in style yet different enough not to be seen as direct competitors.
Yet games in the style of GTA do exist: The Simpsons: Hit and Run, True Crime, Watch Dogs, Sleeping Dogs, and Mafia to name a few. What’s interesting is that as popular and competitive as this genre is, it does not have a proper name. A quick look at GTA V’s categorisation on Steam will tell you that GTA is an ‘action adventure’ game. This label, however, is so vague and covers so many different types of games that it is almost useless.
The most common names given to this genre are ‘GTA-like’ and ‘GTA Clone’, both of which exclude GTA from its own genre by referring only to its likenesses and ‘clones’. This label assumes GTA’s permanent dominance of and superiority within the genre.
Surely we can think of a better name, one that includes both the GTA series and all games we would recognise as being in the same genre while excluding games that share similar features to GTA but which are clearly of another genre.
To name a genre we must define it, and to define it we must determine what distinguishes it from other genres.
One of GTA’s defining features is its open-world settings. GTA 1 and 2 featured 2-dimensional open worlds for players to drive around in. GTA 3 revolutionised gaming by being one of the first games to take the open world into 3 dimensions, though Driver technically did it first a year earlier. In every game of the series, an open world has been a core component of the GTA experience.
So do the GTA games belong in the ‘open-world genre’?
Unfortunately, like ‘action-adventure’, this label is too broad. It may encompass every GTA game, but it includes The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed, and No Man’s Sky. None of these are GTA clones.
So what else defines GTA? Well, there’s the name itself: Grand Theft Auto. GTA is about committing crimes. In fact, the freedom to commit crimes is one of its biggest draws and sources of controversy (same thing, really). So would a label like ‘open world crime simulator’ be suitable?
If our task is to name the genre in which GTA and its so-called clones are a part of (which we are) then this label doesn’t work. Some GTA clones, like LA Noire, have you solving crimes. Others, like The Simpsons: Hit and Run, allow you to commit crimes and evade the police but aren’t centred around criminal acts primarily.
It seems that to find a name that encompasses GTA and all its clones, we must determine what a GTA clone even is. It’s easy to identify features that GTA has, but it is so not easy to say what it and all its clones have in common and what makes them different from every other type of game out there.
So what do all GTA clones have in common?
Driving comes to mind. But again some games make this difficult.
You might call games like Spider-Man, Infamous, and Destroy All Humans GTA-like. They all take place in open worlds, and they all feature cities with cars that drive around. I would not consider any of these games to be true GTA clones, though, because none of them feature driving as a core mechanic. So they may not be GTA clones, but their inclusion of cities filled with moving cars does put them at the boundary of the genre.
So are we getting close? Are an open world and driving mechanics all you need to make a GTA clone?
Well, once again, it’s complicated.
Games like Burnout: Paradise and The Crew consist of both open worlds and driving mechanics, yet I doubt many people would call these games GTA clones. They obviously belong to the racing genre; the entire point of these games is to race. GTA clones certainly feature racing but racing isn’t the core purpose of their existence. They focus largely on other activities, both in and outside cars.
So it seems the GTA genre doesn’t just involve driving in an open world–it must also give players non-racing related objectives and allow players to do things outside their cars, even if, as in The Simpsons: Hit and Run, the on-foot gameplay is rather limited.
One thing all the GTA clones we’ve mentioned have in common is that they take place in contemporary times. But I would not consider a modern setting to be essential to the GTA clone genre. It’s easy to imagine a game like GTA V having its modern aesthetic swapped for something else–sci-fi, alien, alternate history, steampunk, cartoon–and still be recognised as a GTA clone. In fact, considering how much sci-fi nonsense infests GTA Online these days, GTA Online’s setting feels more sci-fi than contemporary anyway.
To summarise, it seems that the GTA clone genre is defined by the inclusion of three things:
- An open world.
- Driving mechanics.
- On-foot mechanics.
This definition is broad enough to include a wide variety of games but also specific enough to exclude most open-world and action-adventure titles.
What name, then, (other than GTA clone), would best encompass these elements?
- The open world run ‘n drives? Awful.
- Open world walkie drivies? Ridiculous.
- Open sims? Lame.
- Grand autos? Kill me.
Okay, coming up with good names is hard. Brainstorming only seems to lead me down a path of increasingly stupid joke-names.
Maybe ‘GTA clone’ and ‘GTA-like’ really are the best we can do. I suppose ‘GTA-like’ is the best of the two. The word ‘clone’ has negative connotations whereas the word ‘like’ could, I suppose, be seen as a compliment. There is the ‘roguelike’ genre after all–apparently named after some game called ‘Rouge’–and most people seem fine with that. And then of course there’s the Souls-like genre.
But let’s not give up yet.
An acronym like MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) might work. Let’s try it.
- RADS (Run And Drive Sim)? Terrible.
- GRAD (Grand Run And Drive)? Still terrible.
- DARS (Drive And Run Sandbox)? Sounds like a disease.
- HARG (Hit And Run Game)? That’s probably my best idea yet, though it would obviously never catch on except as a meme. It’s pretty funny though. Harg!!
Okay, I clearly lack the creativity needed to think of a good genre name. Maybe I better latch onto someone else’s idea. That’s a good way to make up for one’s lack of talent.
Okay, I think I found a good quote.
In 2004, the lead developer of Saints Row said in an interview with Gamespot that he wanted to ‘expand on the urban sandbox genre’*. He uses the name ‘urban sandbox’ so offhandedly, yet it might be the best name anyone could come up with. It’s certainly better than anything I could think of.
Within the word ‘sandbox’ you have the idea of a variety of on-foot mechanics in an open-world setting. Implicit in the word ‘urban’ is the idea of driving, because urban settings are where cars are, allegedly.
This idea of urban centricity is in line with all the GTA-likes we’ve mentioned. This doesn’t mean GTA and GTA-likes can’t have rural areas. Both San Andreas and GTA V have large countryside regions. But these regions are treated as peripheral to the urban areas where the majority of the content is and where most of the gameplay happens.
So is ‘urban sandbox’ the best term to replace the term ‘GTA-like’? Maybe. A few games I can mention pose a slight complication.
The first and most obvious GTA-likes that don’t fit this definition are Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. The key difference here is that the Red Dead Redemption games replace cars with horses and most of the gameplay happens in rural areas.
We can easily consider horse riding to be a form of driving, a horse to be just another kind of vehicle, one which may even make an appearance in a future GTA game. But it will be hard to call Red Dead Redemption an urban sandbox when it clearly isn’t. And yet the RDR and GTA series are extremely similar and made by the same developer.
So we must either throw out the use of ‘urban sandbox’ and think of another label that would include Red Dead Redemption, or we could consider Red Dead Redemption to be in a genre of its own, one that is similar to the urban sandbox genre but different because of its setting.
I think the latter option is best. Setting is hugely important not only to GTA and RDR but to all GTA-likes. The settings of these games–not just their open-worldedness–is what gives them their character. That’s why Vice City and GTA 3 feel so different, despite the fact that, on a gameplay level, Vice City is practically just a glorified expansion pack of GTA 3 (which is what it was originally supposed to be, believe it or not).
So even though the GTA and RDR series are so similar graphically and mechanically, the distinction between urban and rural is, I think, enough to merit them being considered as occupying two separate yet similar genres.
We could say Red Dead Redemption belongs in the ‘rural sandbox’ genre alongside games like Far Cry. ‘Western sandbox’ may be more specific, though that would exclude Far Cry and make the genre very small indeed.
So the term ‘urban sandbox’ still stands. But wait, I still have a couple more complicating games to mention.
The Mercenaries and Just Cause series both feature open worlds. They both involve a lot of driving and on-foot gameplay. Both are set in modern times, and they both feature urban areas. Are we to consider them urban sandboxes? Because I don’t think many people would. Nor would I, to be honest.
So why not? In case you don’t know, the Mercenaries and Just Cause games have you playing as a soldier running and driving around big maps shooting at enemies and blowing up vehicles and buildings. The Mercenaries games have a military theme whereas the Just Cause games go for a more wacky super-agent sort of theme. They both take clear inspiration from the Grand Theft Auto series but they feel so different that I wouldn’t put them in the same genre. They’re close, but not quite there.
Neither series seems to centre on urban environments; they both have an equal balance of urban and rural areas, with plenty of outposts and military bases outside the towns and cities. A lot of time is spent in urban areas–but a lot of time is spent in rural areas too. I also wouldn’t classify military bases and remote industrial areas as exactly ‘urban’ as they lack a civilian presence and the aesthetic of the civilian world.
The most blatant distinguishing factor is that both games heavily feature destruction, allowing you to level almost every building in either game. This is obviously not something you can do in any GTA game, nor are we likely to have such an option any time soon. It is probable that a future GTA game will include destructible environments; I just can’t imagine any GTA taking destruction to the same level as Mercenaries or Just Cause.
But destruction isn’t the only issue here. Even if you put destructible environments aside, you still have games like Ghost Recon: Breakpoint that feature open worlds without fully destructible environments. Would you say Ghost Recon is GTA-like?
Once again, it seems as if setting is the distinguishing factor. Military settings–defined by their emphasis on military-grade weapons, vehicles, enemies, plots, and aesthetics–distinguish games like Mercenaries, Just Cause, and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint from the urban sandbox genre just as rural western settings distinguish the Red Dead Redemption series.
Destruction-heavy games are often referred to as ‘sandboxes’. ‘Military sandbox’ would be fitting, then, if we want to be consistent with the noun-sandbox naming construction. Whatever genre they could be said to belong to, it’s safe to say they are not urban sandboxes in the sense of being GTA-likes.
So there we have it. After far too many words I have finally figured out what to call the GTA-like genre. From now on, I will retire my use of GTA clone and GTA-like and start using the term ‘urban sandbox’ instead (or HARG if I’m short on time ;P).
*I’m not sure anymore where this quote came from or who said it. I wrote the first draft of this post a while ago and didn’t save the source. I’ve spent way too long searching for it. iAsk.AI tells me it was said by David L. Davis in an interview with Gamespot but it refuses to link me to the article and Google for some reason can’t find it. How I found that quote in the first place I have no idea. Just a lucky search, I guess.
**I wrote this post before my GTA 4 vs GTA 5 driving physics essay. That’s why I use the term ‘urban sandbox’ in that one, despite publishing that essay four days ago.