One of the pettiest arguments I’ve ever had was with my pops, who accused me of stealing his hundred-dollar HSN Belgian waffle maker. Unbeknownst to him, my mother had gifted me the waffle maker after overhearing my father rave about HSN’s upgraded version. When FedEx eventually showed up, my dad wouldn’t shut up about how it made the best waffles he’d ever tasted. A few months later, I visited and asked him to show me this illustrious iron. Plot Twist: It made the same damn waffles his old one did. BUT! It WAS a different color. I bring this up not only to make fun of my pops, but to caution that sometimes ceilings to progress exist and once you hit it, innovation slows to a trickle, and nothing but hype floods out. But, HUMANS LOVE HYPE!
There’s something that lights up our chimp brains like a damn simon when someone tells us there’s an even better version of something we already like. We always fall for it because the dumb department of our brains demands the upgrade, even when logic says it’s the same shit. That same paradox is the crux of a running joke that my wife and I have about one day purchasing the mythical ‘$6000 waffle maker,’ a stupid rumored and coveted item I once heard about in a meme.
THE WAFFLE IRON REVIEW.
'If you were thinking this is too expensive, you've obviously never eaten a waffle from a $6000 waffle iron. A word of warning: this is not just a nice waffle iron. It is a decadent luxury that will slowly make you realize that nothing else in your life can live up to its standards. I am left alone with nothing but the world's most premium waffles, but it's a sacrifice that I would eagerly make again in an instant. This product represents the absolute pinnacle of refined taste.’
Listen, I have enough self-control to not fuck up my funds balling out on a waffle maker, but, I've thought about that thing more than I should. What does a $6000 waffle taste like? I've been eating waffles my whole life, what could I be missing? I've watched them evolve from Eggos to artisan sourdough nonsense to TikTok girlies losing their shit for bubble waffles like they rediscovered fire. However, I think at some point, we reached the ceiling of waffle technology, and instead we kept adding hype to mask the fact that we've been eating the same shit for eons.
That revelation brings me here today, fully prepared to commit gaming blasphemy when I say: Grand Theft Auto VI will be Rockstar's $6000 waffle maker - expensive, hyped, and fundamentally the same thing you already own. A 'product that represents the absolute pinnacle of refined taste.' But instead of six thousand dollars, GTA holds a billion dollars worth of hype behind it, insisting it will set a new pinnacle of progress. Despite everything at stake, I know at its core GTA has hit its ceiling because MindsEye, the latest failed GTA clone, revealed what Rockstar's hype has been hiding: the quintessential gameplay loop is just cooked wet grain in a grid.
Off rip, let me come clean. I like Grand Theft Auto a whole lot and I’ve been a fan since their initial release back in 1997. Most of my formative gaming memories come from my older brother and I hatching elaborate schemes to fool our parents into buying them for us on launch. GTA was a staple on every console I ever encountered, but that devotion never stopped me from hoping something would come for its crown. Call it hating, but every gamer feels this way because we know competition combats complacency.
The problem? Nobody can touch GTA. Not because the games are perfect, but because Rockstar built an empire on being the “bad boys of gaming.” The ones who made Hot Coffee a national scandal, turned lawyers into content farms, and had Fox News convinced your nephew was training to be a mass murderer. Rockstar looked good doing it, and that reputation became armor. Any game that tried to compete got branded with the dreaded “GTA Clone” label - the gaming industry’s mark of the beast. Crackdown, Saints Row, Sleeping Dogs - hell, even Lego City Undercover got called a GTA clone, and that fucking game was made for babies (no offense to all the babies in my audience, goo-goo). If you can drive a car and commit minor property damage, you’re a GTA clone. The worst part? As gamers, we never stopped using that terminology. Nobody calls games Doom-clones anymore - we call them “boomer shooters.” Nobody calls platformers “Mario clones.” So why the fuck does GTA get to do the marking? Because they’re the champions of this sandbox shit..
Rockstar knew GTA could slack off because you’d always come crawling back when the bad boy texted at 2am asking for $59.99. And we’d reply ‘omg, omw daddy’ with our credit card already out. Gamers spent years praying in their mind palaces that someone would dethrone GTA, hell, they practically lit candles for CD ProjektRed and Cyberpunk 2077 like it was a religious savior. Then it launched looking like a Philips CD-I game having a stroke, and their prayers went unanswered. Eventually, Cyberpunk grew into something great, but CDPR was never trying to fight Rockstar for the throne - we were just wishing that they would.
At the top, Rockstar saw the writing on the wall and learned from one of their internal “bad boys” that taking GTA online was the only option for total domination. If they could drip-feed you a new car or heist every few months, you’d stop demanding innovation and become a Pavlov’s dog for hype, mouth watering and agape for a re-colored sports car. For all of this to work, GTA Online had to run like a slot machine: swipe card, receive dopamine, repeat until bankrupt. So like spraying Febreze on dirty laundry, GTA V masked its transformation from a game into a money printing machine.
All the while, this gave them time to build anticipation for GTA VI. But the man who architected GTA Online’s money printer was staring down termination. Leslie “the Benz” Benzies - the guy who taught Rockstar how to sell hype over innovation - found himself kicked out the door with a grudge and a game idea. Forget blackjack and hookers - Benzies was building ‘Everywhere,’ a Roblox-style game engine wrapped around it’s debut game, MindsEye: a dystopian sci-fi action game, basically the dreams of GTA and Cyberpunk. Gamers rejoiced at having something better than a promise - one of Rockstar’s own was ready to take on the king, and for a moment they thought God was listening.
’Everywhere’ spent years in development hell, promising revolutionary user-generated content, but players demanded a tangible product that demonstrated the engine’s capability. Thus, MindsEye finally launched in June 2025 as the proof of concept - the premium experience that would show everyone what Benzies was capable of without Rockstar’s leash. The result? A 28 Metacritic score - the worst-rated game of 2025 - and a month-long layoff of 300 talented devs. But before we all dig another grave for a GTA Clone, let’s evaluate what MindsEye actually revealed in their failure.
MindsEye holds a mirror to Rockstar and forces them to stare at a monster of their own imitation. Nothing made this more evident than the comparisons between MindsEye and GTA’s gameplay loop. For a game that touts itself as the standard for nonlinearity gameplay, every Grand Theft Auto mission sure issues the same stale-ass structure: drive to location, shoot enemies, maybe chase someone, drive away. However, Rockstar hides this monotony from you with the production value that would turn James Cameron into a crybaby. Sweeping camera angles during car rides, wisecracking sidekicks making dated pop culture references over the phone, elaborate cutscenes that make you forget you just spent 10 minutes driving across the map to drive another 10 mins while an npc explains how to use the stock market. Players have openly admitted they’d rather spend copious amounts of money on flying motorcycles that shoot enemies for you just so they can scroll TikTok while the game plays itself. If the gameplay loop got people out here choosing to watch kinetic sand cutting videos rather than engage, then it might be time to reevaluate your Heat-inspired digital Skinner box.
Don’t get it twisted, MindsEye has the exact same mission structure. Drive to location, shoot enemies behind chest-high walls, (Once you’ve played an action game after 2007, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Cliff Bleszinski to death with your bare hands), listen to diegetic radio chatter about content you can’t access yet, drive to next location. The difference? While GTA doesn’t trust you to play the game, MindsEye isn’t interested in you sticking around long enough to finish the story, so it gives you even fewer options. If a Rockstar mission lets you choose between three scripted approaches to the same shootout, MindsEye gives you one hallway and a timer. If GTA hides the rails with a sweeping helicopter shot and a cutscene, MindsEye just... doesn’t. The gameplay IS the cutscene, except someone forgot to hire the cinematographer and instead said ‘fuck it bro, you know what to do here, we gave you the gun already.’ MindsEye isn’t concerned with the cinematic flair to distract you from the fact you’re doing the same thing you did in the last mission, and the mission before that, because realistically you weren’t supposed to be here, you were supposed to be playing ‘Everywhere.’
The secret is MindsEye was never meant to be the real game. It was a beta test for ‘Everywhere’, the real product - just like GTA V was a beta test for GTA Online. Leslie invented this playbook at Rockstar: sell them a $60 game, then hook them into the platform that prints money forever. Build the hype around the premium experience, then pivot to the service that never ends. Leslie tried to pull the exact same heist with MindsEye and Everywhere, except he forgot one thing - that Rockstar leash included a billion dollars worth of hype to make a beta test feel like a finished product. Instead, Leslie only had a pitchdeck and a prayer. But in failure, he revealed Rockstar’s ultimate plan: GTA VI being a $70 early access game for GTA VI Online, the machine that will print cash for the next decade while you refinance the crib to drop real money on shark cards for a ‘Vice City exclusive pink helicopter.’
Let’s not pretend that Rockstar hasn’t spent years building the anticipation, delaying the release until hype has reached religious fervor and making you so desperate you’d pre-order a jpeg of the cover art. But strip away the billion-dollar marketing campaign and the cinematic trailers, and you’re left with railroaded missions, chest-high wall gallery shootouts, and dialogue ripped straight from those annoying ass Guy Ritchie movies your dad loves. Simply put, Rockstar is about to SLAM DUNK Leslie at his own game twice: once by exiling him in 2016, and again by perfecting the exact strategy he taught them. Let’s be clear: GTA VI isn’t going to revolutionize shit, it can barely keep a release date. The difference? Rockstar has a billi’ to spend making sure you can’t see the strings while they reel you into their next money printer, GTA VI: aka the $6000 waffle maker of innovation.
Some of you are already typing ‘So what? Fuck you man, I like GTA and I’m buying it no matter what your bitch ass thinks. It’s game of the year, go play your stupid low-poly PS1 story games.’ Fair. Do that. I’m buying it too. None of this means you shouldn’t play GTA VI. It just means you should see it for what it actually is. The hype will be deafening. The trailers will be immaculate. Your timeline will be flooded with people calling it the greatest game ever made before they’ve even booted it up, like that shit isn’t gonna take 8 hours to install.
I penned this piece to remind us that while we’re handing over our $70, we can at least acknowledge that we’re paying a premium price for the same product in a shinier package. And maybe we can stop rewarding a decade of stagnation with game-of-the-year proclamations before the main menu hits the screen. Remove the hype from our eyes, and we all realize the emperor’s new clothes are the same ‘Cool Story Babe’ shirt he had on since 2013. You’re gonna buy GTA VI anyway. So am I. But at least let’s stop pretending we can’t see what we’re really paying for: banality.
In the end, MindsEye at least did us one favor: it ripped off Rockstar’s formula so poorly, and in doing so, put a spotlight on what that formula actually is. Maybe Everywhere could’ve been something better. Probably not. As for Leslie? I’m not sorry he lost, he invented the scam, tried to run it himself, and ate shit for it. What I am sorry about is all the developers at Build a Rocket Boy who got laid off because their CEO thought he could simply sell hype. They deserved better. We deserve better, and no matter what my dad says, his HSN waffle maker produces the same tasting waffles. Love you, Pops, but you got finessed by the home shopping network. What a bozo.
Yall can all nominate me for hater of the year, imma go back to playing my low-poly ps1 story games. Love all yall. Stay Silly. - BPM++ (Yes, That’s two pluses)
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