Why am I crying because of a damn video game commercial?

polygon.com:

I woke up this morning thinking I would be a normal, composed adult. Instead, I find myself crumpled over my keyboard, misty-eyed, compulsively texting friends I haven’t spoken to in years about a trailer for a football video game.

Is this how my parents felt when they watched coffee commercials in the ’90s? Am I having a midlife crisis? Maybe!

That won’t stop me from turning inward and answering a question I haven’t been able to shake since breakfast. Why is the trailer for EA Sports College Football 25 so effective? I don’t have one definitive answer, but I do have three guesses:

This trailer had to be excellent. A lot has changed since NCAA Football 14 paused the series over a decade ago. The willingness of the NCAA (and Electronic Arts, as a partner) to exploit unpaid college athletes became a common and effective talking point across popular culture, from episodes of South Park to congressional hearings. EA’s other football series, Madden, theoretically well positioned with the exclusive rights to make NFL simulation video games, became a shadow of its past inventive self. And the reputation of EA — following years of creative misfires and studio mismanagement — now stands somewhere between the DMV and the dentist.

The EA marketing team wasn’t going to let this rare, ultra-positive opportunity — bringing back a long-requested series, involving college athletes — go to waste.

They borrowed from the best. Something about this trailer felt uncannily familiar, but it took a few viewings to pin that something down. It’s this: EA used the Grand Theft Auto trailer template. Quite literally. Take a moment to watch the College Football 25 trailer alongside the trailer for GTA 6, embedded above.

When Rockstar announces a new GTA game, its goal isn’t to show the experience of playing the game, but to produce the bubbly brain chemical feeling of being in the studio’s latest open world. GTA reveal trailers are, in the most skeletal form, montages of locals expressing