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{"text":[[{"start":6.35,"text":"Stop all the TikToks, cut off the iPhone, prevent the vlog from barking with a juicy meme. A lot of us are going to be very distracted for a while, and we don’t want any distractions."}],[{"start":17.5,"text":"Normal life, you may be aware, is to take a global pause while 2026 serves up the diversion we all so ravenously, ruinously crave. Hours, weeks, maybe centuries of collective time will be lost to an entertainment behemoth. "}],[{"start":34.1,"text":"The Fifa World Cup? No, though it does make a handy benchmark. Enormous global audiences, 39 days of thrills, 104 matches and the lure of football’s easy-access stakeholderhood look unassailable. But, in the longer term, the tournament may prove a gravitational speck compared with the time-bending, galaxy-consuming black hole created by Grand Theft Auto VI. "}],[{"start":60.45,"text":"I am now 51 and, upon consultation with my closest gamer contemporaries, we have agreed that every one of those years has been spent subconsciously waiting for GTA6 to exist. The game, essentially a crime-themed everything simulator, promises to be the culmination of an industrial history as nuanced and complex as it has been crowd-pleasing, controversial and fun. "}],[{"start":84.75,"text":"But it may prove to be something even more valuable in the escapism and distraction stakes: an engrossing, compellingly detailed “real world” in which the real real world can only minimally interfere. It will do its best, of course: no instalment of the GTA series has escaped (justifiable) criticism for sexism and the celebration of violence. This version seems determined to take on the far deadlier minefield of long-term relationships."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
Online debate about how many days one should take as holiday around the launch is already frenetic
"}],[{"start":112.25,"text":"The third GTA6 trailer is expected to drop any day now, hence the renewed surge in both excitement and conversation. Assuming Take-Two keeps its promise and launches GTA6 in mid-November, that is when the global distraction event truly begins. Online debate about how many days one should take as holiday around the launch, or when best to fake a timely bout of “GTA flu” is already frenetic. "}],[{"start":138.4,"text":"Slightly premature perhaps, but in fact, the GTA6 teeth have already been bared. Take-Two’s normally fearless industry rivals are nervously laying down a wide commercial no man’s land around GTA6’s launch date by accelerating or delaying their own releases to leave November empty. Families, friends, employers and governments might consider a similar strategy to accommodate the non-availability of what could quickly be tens of millions of people consumed by the need to play this as soon as it’s out. "}],[{"start":167.6,"text":"So how overblown is all this? Well, for now at least, the hype doesn’t feel at all empty. Set in a fictionalised Florida, GTA6 may have cost more than $1bn to make and will be, by general consensus, the biggest entertainment product in history. Even the trailers have broken YouTube records for views: the casually beatific use of the Pointer Sisters’ “Hot Together” in one of them marking the gilt edge on the invitation to inhabit that world."}],[{"start":194.75,"text":"The technical hyperbole also seems well justified. GTA6’s direct predecessors have each come with a progressively deeper and more seductive invitation to disappear into their worlds. The game’s previous instalment, launched way back in 2013 and having now sold more than 220mn copies, sanctified the power of games to convey narrative, reward devotion and sustain long-term communities. Well over a decade since its launch there are, in any given week, millions of players still pootering, pillaging and pistol-whipping around GTA5’s fictionalised Los Angeles."}],[{"start":229.35,"text":"Those 13 years of pent-up demand loom over the GTA6 launch. Industry analysts say it is plausible to imagine the game selling 30mn copies (creating a player population equivalent to that of Australia) in the first few months."}],[{"start":244.04999999999998,"text":"Some may be tempted to dismiss the importance of all this: gaming, after all, has been huge, global and mainstream for a long time, so its grandest lessons are already widely absorbed. Still, GTA6 may have the power to surprise. If the game performs as well (or likely better) than its predecessors, a meaningful percentage of the global population will soon be choosing the embrace of a single, unifying experience in a fragmenting, polarising world."}],[{"start":274,"text":"Around World Cups in particular, football talks an exceptionally good game of global unity and shared experience. It has raw numbers and practised narrative to give that heavyweight plausibility. But it is also provably and permanently vulnerable to the real world, and to its nasty habit of allowing only brief distraction. A fake Florida, bristling with gangsters and violence, meanwhile, offers years of peace."}],[{"start":299.05,"text":"Leo Lewis is the FT’s Tokyo bureau chief"}],[{"start":302.85,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":320.15,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781331165_4105.mp3"}