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GTA Online After Hours Tale of Us
MIxing it up … Tale of Us in GTA Online After Hours
MIxing it up … Tale of Us in GTA Online After Hours

How Grand Theft Auto created a virtual underground clubbing scene

This article is more than 5 years old

Avatars of real-life DJs curate – and create – cool music and players have ownership of their nightclubs in the latest After Hours update, which puts GTA at the heart of pop culture

In 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the first record you hear on a car radio is Billie Jean, no matter what you drive. Unseen code binds this piece of music to an important point in time and the experience of being behind the wheel. When I first got my driving licence, I recreated the moment in my crappy Vauxhall Astra, so strong was the association. In video games such as GTA, as in real life, music and memories are closely interlinked.

Sixteen years since Vice City, Rockstar Games has taken in-game musical experiences further in GTA Online, the immensely popular web version of its famous (and infamous) series. The latest After Hours immortalises four real-life DJs in the most successful entertainment product ever made; nearly 100 million people have bought Grand Theft Auto V, according to Rockstar’s latest figures, and millions of them play online. Now playing in GTA Online’s virtual clubs are Solomun’s pulsing crowd pleasers, Dixon powdery synthesisers, Tale of Us’s sweeping basslines and the Black Madonna’s infectious groove. Each act is debuting new music in nightclubs spread across Grand Theft Auto V’s satirical Los Angeles, Los Santos.

Rock DJ … avatars of four real-life DJs in GTA Online After Hours

To appreciate how intravenous music is to Rockstar, you have to go back to Sam and Dan Houser, founders of the studio and co-creators of GTA. Before creating a video game empire, both began careers at Sony Music. In fact, many of the developer’s senior staff followed similar paths, including its director of music, Ivan Pavlovich, who has worked with Rockstar since the 1990s. He and his colleagues are tastemakers for GTA’s millions of players, curating sounds for each new title they produce.

“We probably research music more than anybody else,” Pavlovich tells me. One radio station might have 20 songs in the final game, but he estimates Rockstar licensed around 1,500 tracks when developing GTA V; just a quarter of those would make the final cut. “We have listened to, researched and discussed thousands as a group. The record labels and publishers will tell you, we license way more music than we use.”

Growing up in a Chicagoan suburb, radio stations such as WBMX, WGCI and WNUR-FM – Northwestern University’s student station – were formative for Pavlovich. He remembers Liquid Liquid’s Optimo being played on the car stereo, and walking down the street in fifth grade while his neighbour, Sean Morant (“so fucking cool, man”), blasted Rush’s Tom Sawyer out of the local record store. In 1996, Pavlovich founded his own deep house label, Guidance Recordings, a few years before his transition into video games.

“I had a friend who was an A&R [artist and repertoire] in the UK and he was always interested in Chicago house and Detroit techno,” Pavlovich says. “He disappeared for a while and then I got a phone call: ‘Hey man, been doing this thing called Rockstar Games, would you like to do a soundtrack?’ I saw the potential of these games, how amazing they are, how you could still make an impact on people musically, but through a different avenue.”

Electro-techno mixes … DJ Dixon in After Hours

Compiling the music for GTA is a massive undertaking. Pavlovich tells me the team are constantly searching for, listening to and talking about new artists. They go to shows together, they discuss new discoveries; even Sam Houser is involved in music brainstorms from early on. “People come to Rockstar and play our games to discover new music,” Pavlovich says. “We’ve definitely contributed to artists’ careers and there’s a sense of pride there. We have a platform and we are able to introduce artists to a much bigger audience. It comes back to our collective taste and passion for music. We want to find new artists, or show people old songs that they may not have heard.”

With After Hours, Rockstar has created a new way of debuting material – on a platform with tens of millions of listeners, encapsulating both studio and live recordings, where players have ownership of their own nightclub. For the Black Madonna, real name Marea Stamper, the effects have been immediate. “I [knew] that it would change things,” she tells me, “but I wasn’t prepared for how much. Or how much communication I would get from the fans. By far, out of any big major project I’ve ever done, the fans for this have been by far the best. There’s been an influx of new people, particularly those who might not have a scene in their hometown; for them being able to [see music] virtually is a huge deal.”

To create the virtual club experience, Rockstar brought DJs, management teams, clubbers and studio staff into an enormous hangar to play multiple sets – basically to have a huge party while wearing motion-capture outfits. “The DJs have done an incredible job,” Pavlovich says. “The Tale of Us’s mix is completely original; Dixon does this really cool thing that you wouldn’t even expect from him, which is an electro-techno mix that has classic songs like Sharivari, to unreleased songs by Tuff City Kids; Solomun put some classics in but also found a lot of original songs from his friends. The Black Madonna is doing what she does best – mixing disco and Art of Noise with her original productions. We have four unique and special mixes.”

Original creations … the Black Madonna performing. Photograph: Aldo Paredes

Each DJ has been heavily involved beyond just writing and producing. Stamper explains how she was photographed from head to toe – clothes, tattoos, hair and more – to accurately create her GTA avatar. She then appears in missions in the game, which players complete to recruit her for their club – one of many enterprises that can earn huge sums of in-game money for their virtual criminal empires. Once players have completed the mandatory busywork of recruiting staff, finding a sound system and picking up each act from wherever they happen to be in Los Santos, the result is an atmospheric dance space, full of avatars and up to 29 other players bopping around convincingly.

Stamper’s first appearance includes a helicopter rescue, an abducted policeman and a favour she asked of Rockstar when agreeing to participate: to punch one of the cops. The studio made it happen in the game. It’s a fantastically funny moment, and she says her role in GTA Online is about more than her music.

“Representation matters,” she tells me. “It could have easily been all men. I think that is significant for the time that we are in – not just in gaming but in dance music – and to have been a part of it is the joy of my life. It is amazing to hear from young women who are finding their way, trying to become makers of games. I’m rooting for them. I want it for them.”

After Hours captures the misty claustrophobia of an underground music venue as closely as it can without the presence of real sweaty bodies and sticky floors. Every DJ’s mix was mastered twice for authenticity: once for the new Los Santos Underground radio station, and again for the in-club performances. “We paid attention to the entire environment: what the experience is like if you go to a club, if you’re hanging out with these DJs; what it feels like to be that DJ,” says Pavlovich. “Everything feels like you’re actually in the club.”

Classic sounds … Solomun in GTA Online After Hours

After Hours is not just a reaction to electronic dance music’s surging popularity among the young adults who play GTA Online – it’s been made by people who have really lived in this scene, in the queues, the front rows and on the podiums.

“Go back to [our] earliest games and you hear dance music,” Pavlovich says. “Either the soundtrack I did for Smuggler’s Run, or the Moving Shadows [radio] station in GTA III. We’re not just putting together something that we think people want. We are curating something that we’re interested in; special and unique stations, not always picking the obvious. The ambient [radio] station in GTA IV? That’s not an obvious thing for a video game, but it’s one of my favourites ... we want to introduce people to cool music. We’re curating it for people and giving them an experience. Maybe it’s better than going to Spotify or Apple, because you’re having an experience to a certain song. Just like you did growing up.”

A few days after we speak, I’m driving home, listening to the Black Madonna’s new 60-minute mix and, like Billie Jean, the music takes me back to a virtual experience: on a dance floor in a parody of big-city America. For millions of people living in parts of the world with nonexistent nightlife, it could be their first club experience.

More on this story

More on this story

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  • Can Grand Theft Auto V help your mental health? Yes, say role-players

  • How blowing up planes in Grand Theft Auto V eased me into motherhood

  • Why are people still buying Grand Theft Auto V?

  • Rockstar dismisses $150m Grand Theft Auto lawsuit as 'bizarre'

  • Grand Theft Auto producer sues publisher for $150m in unpaid royalties

  • Grand Theft Auto Online: inside the Los Santos stunt scene

  • Is it OK for a Guardian-reading leftie to play Grand Theft Auto?

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