Lazlow Jones, the host of the Chatterbox FM radio station in 2001’s seminal Grand Theft Auto 3, has many tales to inform about his 19-year stretch at Rockstar. However this one is correct up there with the best.
Talking to IGN as a part of an interview discussing new growth studio Absurd Ventures, which he co-founded with fellow Rockstar legend Dan Houser in 2020, Jones recalled the “bizarre second” when one GTA fan took the blockbuster online game just a little too significantly.
GTA followers will know the Epsilon Program nicely. It’s a non secular cult whose followers are often called Epsilonists. In trademark Rockstar style, Houser and Jones designed the Epsilon Program to satirize the likes of Scientology, full with a modern-day messiah fronting a behind-the-scenes pyramid scheme.
Rockstar created a pretend Epsilon Program web site to market San Andreas again in 2004, and it was in that sport that the digital faith made its debut as a cult based by a con-man referred to as Cris Formage. Lazlow Jones even interviews him on his in-game radio present.
Rockstar went on to add extra and extra to the Epsilon Program over the years, fleshing it out with the launch of every GTA sport. The Epsilon Program all the time was an on the nostril satire, and, for most individuals, a transparent parody. However not for everybody.
Throughout the growth of GTA 5, Jones acquired a disturbing cellphone name from a ‘fan.’ They’d left a message on his work cellphone. Taking the name, Jones heard a lady introduce herself as representing the followers of the Epsilon Program. These had been GTA gamers who had gone by way of all the video games in the collection in search of morsels of latest data on the faith, and had fashioned a real-life group.
“We’re dying to know extra,” she stated.
Was this individual simply an over-enthusiastic fan who needed to know extra about the Epsilon Program as a part of a cool group Easter egg hunt? Apparently not.
“She was primarily saying that they had been worshipers of this pretend faith that we had give you,” Lazlow Jones advised IGN.
Jones headed straight into Dan Houser’s workplace in Rockstar’s New York headquarters to inform him about “this loopy voicemail I bought.”
“My second thought was, we should always really simply give you a pretend faith and get actually, actually wealthy on the backs of individuals looking for which means in life!” he joked.
Jones and Houser weren’t delay by the thriller caller, although. They doubled down on the Epsilon Program for GTA 5, creating numerous missions and cutscenes that revolved round the pretend faith. They even wrote a bible referred to as the Epsilon Tract and break up it up into items that had been scattered throughout the sport world for gamers to discover.
It’s arduous to consider that GTA’s Epsilon Program really fooled somebody in real-life into pondering it was an actual faith. Maybe Jones bought the mistaken finish of the stick from the cellphone name? Not so, he insisted.
“She genuinely appeared like she was a follower of the Epsilon Program,” he stated. “It is loopy while you make a satire of one thing… as a result of we had been very simple about it. We created an internet site for the Epsilon Program again in 2004, and all the copy on that, it is in my thoughts very clear that it is a money-grab, modern-day fictional faith. However they appeared like correct followers of it. It excited me and scared me to dying concurrently.”
In disbelief at what Lazlow Jones had advised me, I had a hunt round on-line to see if this was an remoted incident, or whether or not there was proof that others believed GTA’s pretend faith to be actual. There are just a few joke posts right here and there from folks pretending to be an Epsilonist, however there’s little to recommend a widespread motion, at least in 2024.
Nonetheless, in accordance to Lazlow Jones, real-life believers did as soon as exist, and one way or the other managed to discover his work cellphone quantity.
Try IGN’s interview in full with Lazlow Jones, the place he talks about audio collection A Higher Paradise and his new firm, Absurd Ventures.
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You’ll be able to attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.