GTANet Exclusive: Q&A with Rockstar Games

Now this is a Q&A that needs no introduction, but we’re going to do one anyway!

A short while ago, we popped over a few questions to Rockstar Games to see if we could get a more up-close and personal insight into GTA’s music, the new Circoloco Records and the Los Santos Tuners update. To our delight, Rockstar have kindly provided us with a little Q&A session, which they’re also happy for us to share with the rest of the community!

Suffice to say, we’re very grateful to Rockstar for being so accommodating with our questions, especially for letting us share them with you lot! To Rockstar: thank you for your support, as always.

But enough of us, feast your eyes on their answers below, and be sure to read on to the end for a little teaser of what’s in store for GTA Online in 2021, and beyond…

– uNi, Kirsty & Spider-Vice

GTANet: Congrats on CircoLoco Records! Music has always been a big part of the GTA series, how do you go about picking something new to introduce into the GTA world that will stick around forever?

Rockstar Games: It’s very similar to the process we used when we first created the game – all starts with having a sense of what is right for the location of the game and the vibe of the overall world. For Grand Theft Auto V, that meant bringing that sense of contemporary LA and the music that was happening there at the time. Over time as GTA Online has grown, we’ve taken the opportunity to reflect changes in the music scene and to highlight different aspects of the city’s music scene that we loved and thought that people should hear. A good example is something like KULT FM with Julian Casablancas, which is based on a low-power radio station in Venice Beach that plays a really eclectic mix of tunes. We felt that was a great balance to the stations we had already added, and Julian was the perfect host. We hope by picking a great mix of known tunes and hidden gems, people will be able to tune in and discover new things for years.

GTANet: GTA Online must provide an endless stream of data, but regarding music, which radio stations or songs that turned out to be a hit were the biggest surprise for the team?

Rockstar Games: We’ve always been blown away by how much people love Non-Stop Pop. But we’re not just trying to fill the stations with music people know and love, we really love to turn people on to new music, and that’s really the driving force between the range of radio stations and artists we put into every game.

GTANet: Regarding Los Santos Tuners specifically, what quality of life changes, or fan requests, did you add?

Rockstar Games: As hopefully you’ve already discovered, Los Santos Tuners added quite a few requested features and updates, including the ability to “Take All” Snacks in owned Properties. Players can also choose to show/hide certain radio stations in the Radio Wheel (this is done via the Interaction Menu) to suit their musical tastes. Adding a new category of Wheels was also a popular request which made sense for us to include this time around, as well as the option to Test Drive select vehicles in the LS Car Meet before purchasing.

The feedback has been incredible with a record-breaking opening week – we couldn’t be more excited and grateful to the community for coming together to play and we’re really glad everyone is enjoying the update!

GTANet: The community challenge you have done for the heists was really interesting and engaging, would you consider doing more in the future? (Not just tied with heists)

Rockstar Games: Absolutely! We loved seeing the community come together to heist over GTA$1 Trillion during The Heist Challenge – more than 10x the original target. We’ve got a few things planned this year which we think will be really fun for the community to take part in, as well as some new activities for Halloween, and some exciting new updates beyond that.

We also wanted to take a moment to thank the entire community for continuing to support GTA Online. We’ve been humbled by the incredible response to Los Santos Tuners. We’re always checking out Crews running their own meets and generally immersing themselves in car culture, and bringing that back to GTA Online is something we’ve wanted to do for a while. With the number of players requesting that we bring a car-focused update to GTA Online, the time felt right to celebrate that side of the game. It’s always been important to us that players can get in touch and let us know the kinds of things they’d like to see in the game – we strongly encourage any and all feedback to make its way to us via the GTA Online Feedback Portal at https://www.rockstargames.com/GTAOnline/feedback

Discuss with the rest of the community on GTAForums and Twitter!

** Screenshots by uNi and Spider-Vice **