Grand Theft OUTFRONT: The Cultural Significance of Video Game Billboards

Have you seen the new trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI?
After its predecessor raked in $8.9 billion in revenue over eleven years (SOURCE: Take-Two), it would be little exaggeration to say that the next entry in the Rockstar Games franchise is the most highly anticipated video game of all time. The first trailer, released last December, broke YouTube’s record as the most-viewed trailer of all time in just 13 hours (SOURCE: Forbes).
Here at Brand Central Station, we’re as excited for the game as anyone. Maybe more so… 
…because if history is any indicator, you just might see some of our real-life OUTFRONT PRIME canvases represented in the game.  I like this one better if the yellow indicates choose one
…because if you look closely at the latest trailer, you’ll see a loving recreation of one of our iconic OUTFRONT PRIME canvases.
After all, GTA VI is set in Vice City, a satirical version of Miami, where our billboards, wallscapes, and transit media reach 98% of the region’s population each week (SOURCE: Geopath). And it wouldn’t be the first time that OUTFRONT PRIME assets ended up in a GTA game. In fact, Grand Theft Auto V faithfully recreated quite a few of our Los Angeles billboards and wallscapes across Los Santos, the City of Angels’ fictional stand-in. 

Take for example this one alongside “Eclipse Boulevard” in “West Vinewood.” It’s based on The Hills, a very real (and recently expanded) wallscape at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Doheny Road.

The game also immortalized The Sunset Turn and the unorthodox, portrait-oriented Sunrise above, which greet motorists driving west on Sunset from Hollywood.

The Beverly Center is also represented in the game – albeit before its $500 million 2018 renovation (and before we converted its canvases to digital).

But perhaps our favorite GTA OOH is this ad on the Hookah Palace in downtown Los Santos – which Angelenos will instantly recognize as the Hotel Figueroa. It’s home to our Downtown Trio wallscape, which – in a delightful bit of meta – once actually advertised the game it’s featured in! Upon GTA V’s release, Rockstar commissioned a hand-painted mural with each of the game’s main characters across the three towers of the historic hotel. Games in the Fallout and Final Fantasy franchises have also been advertised on the unmissable 125-foot-high, 105-foot-wide canvas.

In total, GTA V contains approximately 550 billboards, mostly bulletins and posters, some even with extensions and other embellishments. Someone at Rockstar clearly did their homework. But they didn’t just include our billboards because a fictionalized Los Angeles wouldn’t look right without them – but also because out of home advertising is a powerful device for storytelling, worldbuilding, and cultural commentary. Advertising offers a window into what people buy, and to paraphrase Brillat-Savarin, tell me what you buy and I’ll tell you what you are. John Wills, Director of American Studies at the University of Kent, put it this way:

This in-game “billboard” American Dream is one consisting mostly of fast food and dieting, lawyers and realtors, credit and debt associations, coffee and donuts, plastic surgery, and reality television. Everything is “for sale” and eminently consumable… Billboards satirize the American way of life, both in its aspirations and its limitations.

Just as Grand Theft Auto uses OOH to make its world come alive, so too can an OUTFRONT campaign bring your brand to life and tell your story. Interested? Let’s play.

Links to third-party content are not endorsed by OUTFRONT Media.