As I'm sure is fairly obvious, I'm 101% stoked that we've reached that holy one-year mark of being in existence within the wonderfully dense world gifted to us by Rockstar; we started out as something so small, so infinitely personal that to see it stretching out and encompassing some truly amazing individuals - literally people from all over the world - is, in short, enough to leave me in utter awe. I can say with some confidence that our being an established crew with more color, creativity and community-spirit than most online groups could hope for in a lifetime is something I'll never quite get over.
  | Because let's be honest, folks, if you're reading this then you're probably picking up what I'm putting down and feeling it right where you live: communities like the All-Stars are more than just people getting together in front of a screen to shoot the shit and cause a bit of chaos together before heading off to real life. Outside of the pixels we chat, share stories, get to know one another like anyone does a new friend, only rather than meeting up for a drink every Friday we meet up every day, talk every day, make plans and laugh at inside jokes, get drunk and embarrass ourselves without the fear of horrendous photographic evidence the next day. It's kinda like university, only there's a few thousand miles separating us (and keeping us safe from Instagram)! |
We're not the only ones, either; there are other groups out there exactly like us who have genuinely taken the time to get to know the real people behind the headset. Skype calls are taken, photos are shared, phone numbers exchanged. These people, us, whoever else, we're living in a time where we don't need to be in tangible distance to one another in order to connect; yes, we've all admitted from time to time how much we'd love to be able to hang out as 'real life' friends do, but the fact that it's not a necessity and the fact that we all consider one another to mean something more than just a 'gaming buddy' is something pretty epic, at least from where I'm standing. Gaming community or not, the 'community' part is what stands out. It actually means something here.
| So maybe that's what I'm most in awe of. The success and coverage of our GTA Online crew is all well and good - pretty fucking fantastic, really - but it's everything around it that makes it so damned amazing. We're more than pixels with a commentary. |  |
I'll just get it out there: I adore the hell outta the lot of you. Let's freakin' celebrate the shit out of it, shall we?
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