The Philadelphia Eagles presently person the champion grounds successful the NFL, with 10 wins and lone a azygous loss. And portion you mightiness expect this large grounds is the effect of hard work, tons of practice, talented players, and immoderate luck, you mightiness beryllium amazed to observe that Grand Theft Auto and online roleplaying are besides a imaginable portion of the team’s palmy season.
Grand Theft Auto V is simply a very, precise fashionable open-world video game that has been released connected astir arsenic galore consoles arsenic Skyrim astatine this point. It besides has a ample online mode that is still—nearly a decennary aft its 2013 release—one of the astir played games successful the world. But, for galore players, GTA Online isn’t the multiplayer acquisition they crave. Instead, players person flocked to modified versions of GTA V to play online successful roleplay servers. These mods and fan-run servers let radical to roleplay unneurotic arsenic cops, EMTs, firefighters, criminals, taxi drivers, and more. And it’s this circumstantial benignant of online GTA experience—which Rockstar Games doesn’t regulate oregon power arsenic tightly—that galore Philadelphia Eagles squad members are playing erstwhile disconnected the field.
As reported by The New York Times, galore Eagles players get excited to hop online and play with different squad members aft spending hours watching past games, studying, practicing, and weightlifting. For many, this offers them the accidental to halt being NFL players and to beryllium idiosyncratic wholly different. It besides helps players successful antithetic positions, who don’t usually walk overmuch clip together, enslaved more, processing person friendships that Eagles information C.J. Gardner-Johnson says is the team’s “secret sauce.” He besides runs 1 of the team’s ain GTA roleplay servers from his basement, wherever helium has a gaming PC setup that outgo him $10,000.
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Other players told the Times that aft playing GTA together online, they are each much connected and happier for each other, starring to players wanting to bash much for each different connected the field. For galore Eagles, playing Grand Theft Auto with chap teammates fits perfectly into their schedule, too.
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“A batch of people, particularly me, are conscionable astatine location doing nothing,” Eagles moving backmost Miles Sanders said. “Since I’ve got my PC, I’ve been connected the crippled much and calling radical more.” Other Eagles teammates who play GTA with each different see antiaircraft players Darius Slay, Avonte Maddox, linebacker Stewart Bradley, and moving backmost Miles Sanders. In fact, according to The New York Times story, Sander’s GTA character was stuck successful situation connected Gardner-Johnson’s server earlier successful the season. Some players, similar moving backmost Kenneth Gainwell adjacent watercourse themselves playing GTA on Twitch for hours astatine a time.
Not lone has roleplaying unneurotic successful modded GTA servers helped players link more, but it besides offers them much things to speech astir disconnected the tract beyond football. And for players similar Gardner-Johnson, it’s each they privation to bash aft moving hard each day.
“I conscionable privation to play football, travel home, and play video games,” said Gardner Johnson.