THE SPY
The Spy has never
been less fungible.
e’re now 2 0% of the way
through the ’20s, and
already some of the
decade’s defining trends
are starting to emerge. If
you ask The Spy, the
main question of the era
is now: what happens
when a civilisation that
became too online during the period it was collectively
locked indoors has to reemerge and face the outside
world? I’m sure it was fun and exciting being horny
when you were stuck inside with nothing to do all day
except post about the Castlevania cartoon, but now you
have to actually look your boss in the eye.
A new culture war is forming. On one side is a group
of people who have spent thousands of dollars on a URL
to a monkey jpg. On the other, it’s furries. They are
battling for the very soul of Discord. It’s easy to dismiss
this all as confusing and stupid, because it is. But that
doesn’t mean it’s not also important. When all is said
and done, all we can really hope for is that the dystopian
layer of augmented reality social hangouts and
workplaces we’ll all be forced to use
isn’t owned by Mark Zuckerberg.
In times like this, there’s comfort
in instead looking back at the familiar
and unchallenging. By which The Spy
means there’s another round of GTA
rumours to tackle.
In an episode of the Rolling Stone
Music Now podcast, Snoop Doggteased an upcoming collaboration between Dr Dre – who
The Spy knows you didn’t forget – and Rockstar. “I do
know he’s in the studio,” Dogg said. “I do know he’s
making great fucking music. And some of his music is
connected to the GTA game that’s coming out. So I think
that will be the way that his music will be released,
through the GTA videogame.”LEAK TRADING
This, naturally, sparked rumours and speculations about
GTA VI, because everything sparks rumours and
speculation about GTA VI. “GTA VI just got LEAKED,”
shouted one YouTuber, unbothered by the fact that it
didn’t. “GTA VI just got some major news” barks a
website, even thought that didn’t happen. Sure, Snoop
did use the words “the GTA game that’s coming out”,
implying a future release. But consider: Snoop Dogg – a
50-year-old man – is not familiar with content cycles and
marketing doublespeak that underpins the live service
era. The Spy would suggest that this release could simply
be an update for GTA Online.
That, at least, would go some way to explaining Dre’s
appearance in the Cayo Perico heist, one of the most
baffling cameos of our age. In a cutscene during one of
the heist’s prep missions, he arrives at an airport, gets a
call saying his phone full of unreleased music has been
stolen, and promptly leaves. There is no explanation for
any of this, and, if The Spy can take a moment to offer
some acting critique, his vocal delivery is so blandly
expressionless that it’s impossible to tell whether this is
some big tease for a future event. But it would certainly
be in the spirit of GTA Online to both tease a future
update in-game, and to do it in such a hamfisted way
that nobody realises what is happening.
Perhaps The Spy can take heart in the fact that we’re
all facing the challenges of this era –
whether we’re dropping absurd
amounts of cash on an ugly,
procedurally generated lion avatar, or
we’re Dr Dre trying to navigate the
post-Fortnite world of videogame
cross-media promotion. We’re all just
muddling our way through. Spy out.
The Spy(^1)
A gamesmagazine on sale in
December? It can only mean one
thing: theGame of the Year awards. 2011
features a pretty good slateof winners:
there’s Battlefield 3 , Portal 2 , Total War:
Shogun 2, League of Legends,and Deus
Ex: Human Revolutionamong them.And
the Gameof the Year prize-winner itself?
It was Skyrim, of course. Wait, when did
we review Skyrim?
(^3)
Enough looking back:this issue also
offeredup our picksfor thePC
games to watch in the year to come, 2012,
including Grand Theft Auto V, Dishonored,
Bioshock Infinite, Guild Wars 2, Dota 2,
and Mass Effect 3. But don’t think our
powers of prediction were quiteso
flawless: we alsogive shout outs to
Hitman: Absolutionand, er,Aliens:
Colonial Marines. Can’t win ’em all.
(^2)
Ah, it was
alsoin this
issue. TomFrancis
devotessix pages
to The Elder
Scrolls, awardingit
94%.Maybe that’s
why Bethesda
hasn’t stopped
rereleasing it.
ISSUE
235, January 2012
ON THE COVER
Star Wars: The Old
Republic
IN CINEMAS
Puss in Boots
W
This month in... 2011AN UPCOMINGCOLLABORATIONBETWEEN DR DREAND ROCKSTARNEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT
BUT WHOWATCHES THE SPY?