Zeus
04-02-2006, 08:09 PM
The prankster who put up a webpage dedicated to a supposed new GTA title has now revealed the story behind his April fool's prank. He claims it to be hist most successful prank ever, claiming over 30,000 visiting (most likely hits not unique visitors) his phony <a href="http://www.gtachicago.com/" target="_blank">gtachicago.com</a> web page. He says he was surprised at the amount of people who did not realise this was a clear April fool's joke and that several websites went as far as setting up dedicated pages for this 'new title'. He has even be so kind as to put up a 6-page guide on how to create your very own fake GTA web page - what a nice guy :-)!
<center><img style="border: none;" alt="" src="http://www.maxconsole.net/content_img/gta_chicago_april_joke.jpg"></center></a>
<center><i>Some smart folk noticed the unusual font for the city name Chicago, others noticed something a little strange about the domains for the registered website.</i></center></a>
Well this was the most successful April Fools I've ever done, In roughly 24 hours, over 30,000 people saw it, a lot of them realising it was April, but hilariously, some of them didn't realise. It even managed to prompt some foreign GTA fansites to make a whole new section on their website for it!
So how did people know? Well firstly they will have noticed a somewhat poorly chosen font for the word "Chicago". Secondly you needed to be a little more knowledgable about domain names - I had set gtachicago.com's nameservers to APRIL.GTACHICAGO.COM and FOOLS.GTACHICAGO.COM...
<A href="http://www.kotaku.com/gaming//gta-chicago-official-and-exclusive-to-ps3-164462.php" target="_blank">One site</a> claimed they contacted Rockstar to confirm it was a hoax (this was at 2am on a Saturday...I smell a cover-up for embarrasment)...and it was amazing to see how <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2006/03/31/zomg-gta-chicago-skepticism-overwhelms-us" target="_Blank">one site</a> analysed every little detail to prove it was false, some people obviously lose their sense of humour at this time of year...
A lot of people were saying that because it used a real city name it therefore cannot be real - obviously these people have never played GTA London 1969 or the London 1961 addon pack. Yeah that's right, apparently London is a real city in England!
Another thing I found funny was people commenting on the 'amateur source code'. I mean it was copied and pasted from the Official San Andreas website when it first launched - to make it look more authentic. It's an insult to Rockstar's web designers... (Yeah it is bad but what the hell, it's not me your insulting, it's them)
If you're interested in creating a fake GTA website yourself you can read my 6-step guide (we don't suggest you do though).
Anyway I hope you all enjoyed it, and I know this is all over the internet now and basically posted on every gaming forum in the world so no doubt you must have seen it somewhere.
The following 6 steps are what Chris went through to begin the foolery:
- The two domains were registered on the 2nd Feburary
- Later, he copied and pasted source code from GTA4.com's page, as it was parked at Register.com - this made it look as if Rockstar had parked gtachicago there as well for the average visitor.
- Chris went to archive.org and looked at the first version of the Official San Andreas site, took the source code and associated images. This formed the basis of the page, image sizes were all kept exactly the same to add to the authenticity. All that was needed was a font to write Chicago.
- An authentic 1930's font was hard to find, but he did find one, it wasn't the best but it didn't need to be, this after all was a joke. If it was too serious, perhaps worse things would have happened.
- Late on March 31st, he uploaded the site and posted the fake storyline he had written as a press release on TheGTAPlace.com
- We submitted the story to a few gaming sites (QJ, Kotaku etc) and the web did the rest. People saw it and posted it themselves, that was seen by many other people who then posted it everywhere else.
News Source: <A href="http://www.thegtaplace.com/news/5147/New-GTA-City-Named-as-Chicago" target="_blank">thegtaplace.com</a>
<center><img style="border: none;" alt="" src="http://www.maxconsole.net/content_img/gta_chicago_april_joke.jpg"></center></a>
<center><i>Some smart folk noticed the unusual font for the city name Chicago, others noticed something a little strange about the domains for the registered website.</i></center></a>
Well this was the most successful April Fools I've ever done, In roughly 24 hours, over 30,000 people saw it, a lot of them realising it was April, but hilariously, some of them didn't realise. It even managed to prompt some foreign GTA fansites to make a whole new section on their website for it!
So how did people know? Well firstly they will have noticed a somewhat poorly chosen font for the word "Chicago". Secondly you needed to be a little more knowledgable about domain names - I had set gtachicago.com's nameservers to APRIL.GTACHICAGO.COM and FOOLS.GTACHICAGO.COM...
<A href="http://www.kotaku.com/gaming//gta-chicago-official-and-exclusive-to-ps3-164462.php" target="_blank">One site</a> claimed they contacted Rockstar to confirm it was a hoax (this was at 2am on a Saturday...I smell a cover-up for embarrasment)...and it was amazing to see how <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2006/03/31/zomg-gta-chicago-skepticism-overwhelms-us" target="_Blank">one site</a> analysed every little detail to prove it was false, some people obviously lose their sense of humour at this time of year...
A lot of people were saying that because it used a real city name it therefore cannot be real - obviously these people have never played GTA London 1969 or the London 1961 addon pack. Yeah that's right, apparently London is a real city in England!
Another thing I found funny was people commenting on the 'amateur source code'. I mean it was copied and pasted from the Official San Andreas website when it first launched - to make it look more authentic. It's an insult to Rockstar's web designers... (Yeah it is bad but what the hell, it's not me your insulting, it's them)
If you're interested in creating a fake GTA website yourself you can read my 6-step guide (we don't suggest you do though).
Anyway I hope you all enjoyed it, and I know this is all over the internet now and basically posted on every gaming forum in the world so no doubt you must have seen it somewhere.
The following 6 steps are what Chris went through to begin the foolery:
- The two domains were registered on the 2nd Feburary
- Later, he copied and pasted source code from GTA4.com's page, as it was parked at Register.com - this made it look as if Rockstar had parked gtachicago there as well for the average visitor.
- Chris went to archive.org and looked at the first version of the Official San Andreas site, took the source code and associated images. This formed the basis of the page, image sizes were all kept exactly the same to add to the authenticity. All that was needed was a font to write Chicago.
- An authentic 1930's font was hard to find, but he did find one, it wasn't the best but it didn't need to be, this after all was a joke. If it was too serious, perhaps worse things would have happened.
- Late on March 31st, he uploaded the site and posted the fake storyline he had written as a press release on TheGTAPlace.com
- We submitted the story to a few gaming sites (QJ, Kotaku etc) and the web did the rest. People saw it and posted it themselves, that was seen by many other people who then posted it everywhere else.
News Source: <A href="http://www.thegtaplace.com/news/5147/New-GTA-City-Named-as-Chicago" target="_blank">thegtaplace.com</a>