A Grand Theft Auto Subreddit Is A Communal Art-Making Machine

Evangelical defractors of the Grand Theft Auto series, that bash it for its perceived moral sabotage, wouldn’t know what to do with the tight-knit GTA Adventures subreddit (/r/GTAA) whose members use the game in communal fashion to reenact iconic movie scenes, hold storytelling contests and partake in collaborative missions that weigh value over violence.

Their aim lives beyond the crosshairs as some of their tenets are: 1) no senseless killing of crew members (unless the occasion calls for it) 2) have fun—this is a game, after all 3) no racist abuse, gender abuse, hate speech, or threats 4) be patient and refrain from being disruptive while elaborate events are being organized.

And their communal discipline has certainly paid off. As Reddit user /u/P1zzaBagels and /r/GTAA participant explains, our “group dynamic helps immensely—without having such fun, helpful crew members, I doubt we would ever have managed to make anything.”

When recreating the cover for The Beatles’ Abbey Road, /u/P1zzaBagels enlisted fellow crewmembers as each Beatle, helping them choose the correct hair and clothes style until they eventually achieved the look.

In cases like the above, the crew tend to stick to GTA Online’s 'Crew-Only Session' “because it allows them to change clothes/hairstyles at the in-game stores if something's not quite right” while also ensuring that the action onscreen can be dictated by the group.

In more elaborate setups, like the Dark Side of the Moon recreation below, a crew has the achieve the effect under a more unwieldy deathmatch environment but one that allows for customization of vehicles and such.

So far, the /r/GTAA group has been at its best, however, when recreating iconic movie scenes. Like clips from North by Northwest:

The recreations really took off after the group was thoroughly impressed by the results of a Weekly Crew Challenge that had team reenacting famous movie scenes. Instead of keeping it a weekly affair, with timed parameters, /r/GTAA decided to keep it open-ended so that users could pursue projects at will.

Because an GTA: Online session is limited to 16 players, with one forced to serve as cameraman, recreations can only get so elaborate. Thus, some of the most elaborate setups have been recreations of Reservoir Dog’s intro and that pic of 14 Lockheed U-2 pilots making the internet rounds.

As the subreddit has grown significantly in the past two months, its crew has moved on to unexplored territory by holding its first official contest: Tell Us A Story. In it, participants competed for prizes by submitting original stories told through in-game pictures and accompanying text that, together, read a bit like a comic. Dear Anna was the contest winner.

A still from Dear Anna.

Looking ahead, the /r/GTAA posse is confident that their work will only get more ambitious as their ranks continue to grow. As /u/P1zzaBagels tells us, “I'm sure we'll continue creating lots of ideas for as long as we can! Some ideas are getting more complex, some of the imaginative minds we have on /r/GTAA are truly incredible…We're always recruiting, and always looking for suggestions or ideas.”

/r/GTAA members /u/P1zzaBagels, /u/rich29r, and /u/wheresmycokehoney were contacted in writing this piece.

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