GTA: Montpelier is looking less and less likely

(Thanks to Ombudsman reader Greg Sewart, formerly of Ziff Davis Publishing, for starting me out on this story)



Everyone who thinks the suffix for the next Grand Theft Auto game will be "Sin City" please raise your hand.



All right, now everyone who thinks it will be "San Andreas," please raise your hands.



OK, put your hands down. Now everyone who's absolutely, positively sure about their answer, please raise your hand.



Unless you are the Rockstar Games president Sam Houser, you probably shouldn't have your hand up right now. And even if you are, I wouldn't be surprised if your hand were down.



Sure, you can point to an Amazon UK page listing the "Sin City" title, as IGN did, or you can cite any number of "hints" and trademark registrations as SA-source.com did, but this doesn't mean you know what the name is going to be. Even implying that you do without an official confirmation from Rockstar or Take-Two is irresponsible.



IGN and SA-Source are certainly not alone in speculating about the next GTA title's title, but they are among the worst for grasping at straws to "confirm" their respective theories before they have any right to.



IGN perhaps deserves a special "waffling award" for first saying that the "Sin City" title was confirmed in an IGN XBox story, then modifying an IGN PS2 post to say that it was hinted at, then posting an update to the original IGN XBox post saying the whole thing was some sort of April Fool's joke, then jumping on the San Andreas bandwagon, and most recently admitting that a myriad assortment of trademark registrations mean that they really have no idea what the name will be. IGN gets some credit back for mentioning attempts to contact Rockstar in each post, but loses it all again for countless cases of baseless speculation and misleading headlines. I think an out of context quote from their final article sums it up best:



without using too much brainpower we knew that the series would continue moving from town to town, both exciting and smart.



Call me clairvoyant, but I found it pretty clear that you weren't using too much brainpower in writing those articles.



On the opposite end of the spectrum is SA-source.com, which has been unwavering in its support of the "San Andreas" title theory. Too bad this unwavering support tends to ignore crucial facts. For instance, they use the headline "Next GTA Confirmed (GTA: San Andreas) for an article that quotes a Rockstar spokesperson as saying, "It has not been named." They breathlessly report that the San Andreas trademark has been registered while neglecting to mention that almost a dozen other potential names were also registered. Then there are the countless "hints" about the San Andreas name like this one (which appears here unedited, I assure you):



In vice City there’s a Criminal Rating called 'SA Goon 1000 1004', well the obvious thing you would notice in that is that 'SA' could easily stand for 'San Andreas'. But if you look even closer, you'll notice that if you add the numbers in the rating together, you get 2004! Rockstar has already confirmed the release date of the next gta game, but this just adds an even bigger hint toward the name of the next gta game! So 'SA Goon 1000 1004' must stand for 'San Andreas Goon 2004'!



I think you guys might be looking a just a little too hard there. Put down the controller and get some sleep. Seriously.



My advice on this matter to all video game news outlets in general and these two in particular is to just hold your horses. I know everyone is excited about the prospect of another Grand Theft Auto game, but this doesn't mean you should overstate the little bits of concrete information you do have about it. Simply present the information you do have in a straightforward manner, and make it very clear that these are just pieces of a complex guessing game at this point. Be very very careful about using works like "confirmation" and "certainty," because they can come back to hurt you when it turns out you weren't so certain.