Hello and welcome back you degenerates! This week we have been absolutely blessed by the holy trinity Trout, Mr. Hugo, and KittenAdoption. They run Tektonic RP, a GTA private server focused on role play. I have logged a solid amount of hours on my character Max Morgan, and have had a BLAST. Obviously it takes an insane amount of time, effort, and skill to run a server that is this smooth and cohesive while simultaneously maintaining a community that have nothing but love for each other. Fortunately for us, this week we get to learn all about it! As always, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future content, and enjoy!
Firstly, I wanted to thank these three beautiful goons that gave me the time and did this interview. They are STUPIDELY busy working on this server around the clock. They have been nothing but supportive of Bronze League, so I ask you to do the same for them. I have linked all sorts of things Tektonic related down below. So PLEASE, if you have even an inkling of interest I ask you to check them out and join their Discord!
Secondly, there are some terms in this article that you may not be acquainted with, so here is a little key:
GTA RP= Grand Theft Auto Role Play
FiveM = multiplayer modification framework for GTA V, allowing you to play on customized dedicated servers
SeriousRP = Being in-character basically means that you would roleplay how your CHARACTER would react to a situation, not how you yourself would react
OOC = Out Of Character
pay-to-win = having a system to use real life currency to help your in-game character
city = in-character term for a specific GTARP server
NoPixel = #1 GTARP server in terms of popularity
Now let’s get to it!
As a general introduction, tell us about how you found yourselves to be managing a GTA Role Play (RP) server?
It’s a really funny story actually. We were playing in another server dealing with the general shitlording and nonsense associated with most public servers, and the idea came across my mind that this is something that we could reasonably achieve with my skillset and the other’s experience with RP. We knew that we could do better than this server, and it was a VERY popular one. So queue Trout developing for 3 or more months straight, self sleep depriving, and essentially revenge fixing a bunch of bugs we had dealt with for more than a year on and off. It was the perfect storm really, we had everything we needed to ensure our success, we just had to put in thousands of hours of development, planning, and execution to make it happen. At the beginning, we thought it was a literal pipe dream to have a full server and to be managing server load and scaling issues from the beginning stages where it was the three of us begging people to come test with us. (see image below for us literally begging our friends to help)
We’ve seen 0 players online, mass exodus, and near PR crises (Trout almost accidentally nuking the database) along the way, but in the end I think this thing has become something a hell of a lot larger than any of us could have guessed or imagined.
What is it about GTA Role Play that keeps bringing people back?
At its core, humans are social creatures. FiveM has provided a way for GTA V players to sort of reappropriate the game world in a way that's conducive to genuine social interaction rather than shooting on site and general toxicity. GTARP is not a versus game, more equated to improv than competitive eSports, where people essentially are bouncing off of each other to make each other laugh and have a good time. While we are SeriousRP, that certainly does not mean the goal is “serious” interactions in the way that it may come across. At the end of the day, it’s about having fun, having a laugh, and getting immersed in a world that you normally wouldn’t be able to experience. For some people, it’s the grind that keeps them hooked, but we really try to facilitate a place where people are sticking around for reasons more than just a virtual paycheck or to buy a car/house in the city.
What are some of the more difficult social issues you guys have to deal with? How do you handle a community so large?
Some people are toxic, plain and simple. We collectively deal with a lot of crap on a daily basis. Everything from outwardly racist or bigoted comments to veiled toxicity and OOC salt. We have seen it all already, and there’s really not much that is surprising to us in terms of the really negative side of the social issues. I’d say one of the more manageable social issues pertains to clashing personalities or disagreements between players. We’re a generally tight knit community, so when there is beef or disagreement between players it sticks out like a sore thumb and often ends up seeping into #main-chat in Discord. Sticking firmly to our rules has been key to managing a community of what is now 1600 people. It’s definitely a challenge to keep the peace among that many people, so we have been expanding our Support and Moderation teams more recently to keep up with the growing playerbase! The important part here is just scaling up alongside the growth of the community as best as we can.
When it comes to financials, how do you guys feel about managing something like this?
Financials are an interesting topic because it was pretty irrelevant until about a month ago. After our last huge growth spike, it is nice to have the capital to be looking forward to, and I’ve finally been able to begin compensating some of the folks who have put their hard work into what we have created. It was really never about money, and we’ve been very careful to keep things from being pay-to-win in any way, even down to disallowing people to flip their donor cars for more in-game cash. That being said, we are fairly comfortable managing our finances and allocating funds to things that need to be done. At the very beginning we were all just throwing money at this thing and hoping that it would help in some way, between CFX server boosts to move us up on the server browser and for a select few paid resources that really set us apart from your run of the mill ESX server. The fact that it’s become self sustaining is still shocking to all of us, and I’m just glad we don’t have to keep shoveling our own money into it at this point.
During the pandemic, do you think GTA RP has created an outlet for people to still be able to connect with one another?
Overwhelmingly yes. I think anyone that doesn’t think this is true doesn’t really understand the scope of the interactions people can have in a city like this. There have been weddings, funerals, birthday parties, businesses opening and closing, and things like accidents that change the direction of a characters life. Factors like these allow citizens to really invest their time and get immersed in the city. The people they frequently interact with aren’t just other players, they are their friends. Sometimes the agenda for the day has a large scale event where you might see 80% of the city, sometimes you spend the afternoon sipping beers on the beach and shooting the shit with your buddy, sometimes there’s a bank heist!
Conveniently, Tektonic was conceived in May of 2020, only 2 months into the COVID pandemic. I think this was a large factor to our success in a time where most of the world was looking for a way to connect with not only their friends, but any people in general. FiveM and specifically GTARP gives a platform for players to be whatever they want, and it also provides an escape from the stress of the news in the real world when all you want to do is have a few laughs with some people, bonding over a game you all enjoy.
How do you think the Tektonic server compares to one like NoPixel?
In many ways I think our goal has always been to rival servers like NoPixel. Obviously the main difference here is that NoPixel has been established for years and we are in our first year running so far. That being said, I think we have blown away a lot of other servers in terms of trajectory in a relatively short amount of time. Thinking back to when we first began, it was hard for us to imagine being at the scale we are at now, and I think we have made it a really long way in a pretty small window of time. Someday soon I think we will rival the big servers like that in terms of quality and scale. I’m almost half-heartedly hoping for a new GTA so that we can be pioneers in a new platform since we were just on time for the party on FiveM with the rise of popularity due to NoPixel 3.0.
Thank you all for taking the time to read through this weeks GTA RP discussion! I wanted to thank Trout, Mr. Hugo, and KittenAdoption again for being responsive and supportive. Make sure to check them out! An awesome place to learn more info about what they have going on here is to check out their Discord!
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