As Grand Theft Auto 6 slowly begins to emerge on the horizon like a portent of civilizational doom, and players endlessly speculate about what to expect from its multiplayer component, I find myself thinking back to what I consider to be the golden age of GTA Online – the late 2010s and early 2020s. Even back then, years after its release, endless post-launch updates adding science fiction weapons and flying supercars had long since robbed the multiplayer component of its crime sandbox of any claim to realism. Not when you could watch the hapless LSPD going up against players armed with Tron bikes and ray guns.
Perhaps this was why the playerbase ended up stumbling upon the perfect absurdist parody in response to this eternal escalation, one that would forever change the face of one of the largest online games in history.
Aliens among us
The "Alien Gang War," as it would come to be known, was not particularly complex at first. Such things never are. Teams of players would pile into panel vans, all dressed in neon green bodysuits, before driving around town until they found a suitable target based on… Well, it was never entirely clear, but comic timing was probably the most significant element.
This article is part of our Countdown to GTA 6. Every week we'll be bringing you the latest on Grand Theft Auto 6, dipping back into the world of GTA Online, and celebrating the legacy of the wider series.
With their prey decided, the van would come to a screeching halt, and between three and three thousand goons in cheap Halloween costumes would pile out and attack the offender with baseball bats and pool cues, before leaping back into their getaway car and squealing away.
Juvenile? Sure. Bullying? Maybe a little. But on a visual level it was always hilarious, a bunch of neon green mascots enacting frenetic street justice with broken bottles and hammers, ignoring the fact that there were actual ray guns and lasers available in GTA Online. Even players with heavy-duty firepower were generally taken aback by the sheer number of martians sprinting at them, and it only took a single whiffle bat to the skull to knock a target down and allow the rest of the crew to promptly beat them into the tarmac.
This all went on for months as a kind of background story, never really becoming too significant, but then the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic kicked in and things started to change.
As we all remember, lockdown forced many onto their computers for the hope of any sort of social life. This influx of people supercharged the extra-terrestrial conflict, driving Gang War participants well into the millions, and the community ended up producing a counter-force to the growing green menace: the Purple Aliens.
This led to all kinds of Green versus Purple skirmishes, with the former generally standing for chaos in all forms, while the purples usually just tried to obstruct them wherever possible. It was an obviously unwinnable conflict that was still deeply entertaining, even if the Green team reliably had about three times the numbers. Plus it didn't help that a lot of people seemed slightly uncertain what was even going on, but didn't see why that should stop them from getting involved.
And two factions were only the start of it all. Now other players would introduce themselves as human defenders of Earth, out to slaughter both sides, or war reporters documenting events from the peripheries, claiming the role of tritagonists in an ever-developing science fiction saga that had already put Rebel Moon to shame.
Beam me up, knock 'em down
The Green vs Purple conflict was exactly what GTA needed back then...
Eventually the lack of a clear end goal or victory state for either side meant that it just petered out, but some players still try to bring back the Alien Wars from time to time, or simply fly the flag for their chosen team by digging out the bodysuit and battering a few people on a Sunday afternoon.
Me included! I'll admit I'm not above the occasional couple of hours spent in spandex while jumping people in dark alleyways, or as I sometimes think of it, "the mean meme green team bean and flee the scene scheme".
But what I hope is that this phenomenon – or something like it – re-emerges in GTA6, especially if it can happen organically without Rockstar's meddling and oversight. In many ways the Green vs Purple conflict was exactly what GTA needed back then, stripping back all the cloying, monetized elements and focusing on consequence-free fuckabouts with very little barrier to entry.
Meanwhile, such a thing never really could get a foothold in Red Dead Online, which ended up being the sensible, well-behaved sibling, less interested in wacky chaos than taciturn hat-tipping and herb gathering. If GTA 6 Online reels me in, it's because it'll have provided that same sort of playground for violent, team-building nonsense that its predecessor did.
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