Welcome to the first edition of GTANet’s Chatterbox, our new interview series where hosts uNi, Spider-Vice and Kirsty sit down and get personal with notable people from the GTANet and Rockstar Games community. From the well-loved to the unknown, Chatterbox is all-inclusive.

And where better for Chatterbox to begin than with Vinewood_Motors, aka Josh. Community streamer, big time fan of Rockstar Games and lover of cheap pizza, he’s just an all-round nice guy; it was no question to us that he topped our list!

Now, let’s get our tongues a’ wagging.

GTANet: Lets start by getting you introduced to GTANet. How did you get started in the R* community? How did you come up with your username? I’m sure you’ve played older games before, so did you have a previous alias or were you just a lurker before?

Vinewood_Motors: It all started in 2014 really. I noticed on Instagram people taking amazing snaps, mainly of vehicles. I decided to create my own snap (this was before the editor was a thing) and upload it via my personal account, I tagged a few Snapmatic users in the picture. One guy noticed the snap and re-posted it and it gain a lot of attention, So I decided “I’ll give this a go”. I then needed a name. I knew Vinewood was a well known location in Los Santos and I knew I would be taking pictures of cars so that’s where motors came in. After around 6 months under the name Vinewood Motors, Rockstar noticed me and started to repost and retweet my content (first picture they shared), then the R* streams started to happen, which heavily influenced myself to start streaming. I have a similar kind of style to the Rockstar streams in which I love to get involved with other community members and invite them to playlists. I’ve played all the GTA games, I vaguely remember the first GTA, driving around an Ambulance running people down. I never knew about the GTA / R* community before 2014, but I’m glad to say I’m apart of it now.

GTANet: Have you met community members IRL? How was the experience?

Vinewood_Motors: Yes, I’ve met so many community members it’s too hard to list them all! I’ve travelled around the UK & Europe meeting people and we try to meet up at least once a year, last time we met was in February for Gameblast2020 and we’re trying to get something organised for everyone who was involved in that for a December meet up! It’s always great to meet people from the community and it’s not really awkward because we all have something in common, GTA!

GTANet: How was your trip to Liberty City, bet it was amazing experiencing that city in person! Also, did you enjoy the R* NYC offices? How was it meeting the CMs?

Vinewood_Motors: Oh man New York is somewhere I’ve always dreamed of going. It was a surprise and I only had 3 months before I flew out. I knew my way around to some extent because of the amount of hours I put into GTA IV! I was taking pictures of everything and referencing it back to GTA IV. When I mentioned to Rockstar I’m flying over they was super awesome about it and said okay we can meet on this day and then we’ll go out have some food and drink. Anyway I arrived up to the HQ and all the confidence I built up just disappeared for a short time, Klang came up to us gave us a hug and we went into the lift and up top I met Bangers, Tex and another community manager. We talked for a while, I saw the stream room, & the awesome social club neon light. They gave me and my wife a ton of Rockstar merch, after that we headed back down to the iconic Rockstar Games Logo and got some snaps. There was some business men with suitcases in front of the Logo and I just asked them to move them because I needed to get that shot. We headed over to an Italian restaurant where we had food and drink, and let me tell you now they don’t measure the spirits, I was borderline drunk. They insisted on buying me drink after drink, it got to the point where I said if you buy me another I’m going to start asking questions I’m not allowed to ask, we laughed about it. There was an awesome live act on, we ate meatballs and had Pizza. They’re honestly the nicest people I’ve met, so if they’re reading this, you the real MVPs and I’ll be back soon to host a livestream in that now dusty stream room of yours! 

GTANet: From the ones you own, what is your favourite R* collector’s item? And the one you really need to have next?

Vinewood_Motors: That’s such a tough question! I think the GTA1V licence plate is my favourite as I used to collect US plates, I really want the N1KO plate next and start the Kubrick collection.

GTANet: How was your experience with the 24 hour stream? What did you learn to improve next time?

Vinewood_Motors: The 24 hour Gameblast event was something else! There was so much planning and stress for such a long time, but it finally paid off. I was contacting gaming related companies explaining what we was doing and it was great that they could help us. My plan was to do 24 hour of Los Santos again, but the team wanted to mix it up a bit and it actually worked out. We had an anonymous $1,000 donation drop during the stream when Klang joined us and I was so shocked, it was unreal! My main worry is that next time we aren’t going to do anywhere near as well as last time, but as long as we raise enough money to help one person I see that as an absolute win! Also i want to mention the team;

The team at my house;
The co-host Stephen AKA @MyNameisFuzz he made the effort of coming down even though the trains were cancelled and he had to find a car, get insured for the weekend AND drive down from Glasgow to Manchester which I know cost him an absolute fortune in the end!
Jack AKA @Knabenots he brought up two monitors which we desperately needed and had to get 3 trains from Watford to get here which was all last minute! He was running my Twitter account and covering the stream when I took breaks! This charity meant a lot to him. 

The team who joined for the entire 24 hours via party chat;
Jamie Lee AKA @Jibs1990 she helped me rewrite up the JustGiving page and supported me I needed it.
Adam AKA @HitMark10 he kept donating so we reach 100s marks

The GTA team (12 hours);
Alex AKA @Alex_ane90 & her crew @SecretShadowz_ helped us and supported the stream/event, and her friend @Horizon94_  sorted out the @PixelBarLeeds where our stream was live behind the bar!
Baz aka @Digital_nothing  provided the playlist we which played and created some of the jobs included, as well as @FreddyLosSantos having some races included too!
@HutxyShaAk who sent me some awesome fan-made Rockstar Merch to giveaway!

The Twitch Mods;
@Thegtagodfather & @Ka_Wouter

Finally;
The @Specialeffect  / @Gameblast team drove to my house and I was able to interview them during the stream!

GTANet: Will you be doing another Gameblast event in the future? Next time we will try and support it from the start, we realised we got in a bit late in race!

Vinewood_Motors: Yes, we’re going to be doing it on the 27th of February (4am) next year and get the ball rolling around November / December! It would be great to have the support again from you guys! 

GTANet: That’s great news! We’ll pencil that into the diary, you’ve definitely got GTANet’s support. What is your current streaming schedule so the community knows when to tune in?

Vinewood_Motors: Awesome, thank you so much! I stream every Wednesday and Sunday at 8pm UK.

GTANet: Great stuff. And last but not least, since the topic is on everybody’s lips at the moment, what would be your dream location for the next GTA? do you have any specific wishes or expectations for it?

Vinewood_Motors: I’ve not even thought about my dream location. Vice City is seemly the talking point at the moment, if its there I would be happy with that. I don’t have a dream location as such because we’ve had GTA 3 and GTA IV which are both in my favourite City. However lets venture a bit up north, lets see a GTA in maybe Settle + Vancouver.

GTANet: We enjoy your streams a lot as they are very community based. Let us know if you need any help future any charity streams or related R* community projects, we would love to help you out with those.

Thanks again for participating in this interview Josh, all the best from the GTANet team!

Vinewood_Motors: Thanks, that nice to hear! I appreciate the support guys, honestly I do!
Thanks for the opportunity!
Cheers,
Josh

Follow Vinewood_Motors on Twitch and Twitter !