Most, if not all, of you know me as Sammy. In the video game I’m “Dr. Sammy”, a therapist, a doctor, a commissioner, a realtor, a car salesman…. Whatever is needed. I have a Judge Character named Jasper and a Crim Character named William. William always wears flip flops, is a pretty terrible criminal and is relatively a quiet guy. Sammy, on the other hand, is closer to my IRL personality. Much closer. He’s me.
I am Joel. I’m an older guy, 46, who lives in Chicago. I’m a smitten single dad, to an amazing 17 year old Senior captain of her volleyball team, Hannah. I am, in fact, a counselor and therapist IRL. I love spending time with people who need someone to listen to em, or walk with em through something difficult. I wanna give yall a bit of my backstory so you know who I am, and how I got here. Sometimes, I believe that, in order to know where you are going, it’s important to know where you’ve been.
I’m a Florida boy. Went to Florida State University and then decided to make the move to Chicago. Growing up in Florida, and born and raised in the hood, I kinda found myself in between 2 scenarios. Keep hustling and surviving in the hood, or dip out of there and be a better example to my brothers and sister. I’m the oldest of 4 and I felt like I wanted to show them a better path than mastering life in the hood. This is where Dr. Sammy gets his “little bit of hood, little bit of good” personality. I made a decision between College and moving to Chicago to focus on building people up rather than tearing them down. A lot of the times, growing up poor, you gotta fight and hurt people to survive. I just wanted a different path for me and my people.
Moved to Chicago and I got involved in the service industry. I started off serving tables at the Cheesecake Factory and then went on to bartend at nightclubs. From there, for me, the natural progression was for me to figure out how to run nightclubs… then bars… then restaurants. I probably ran a dozen bars and nightclubs over the next decade and a half. I was pretty good at it. I loved taking care of people with customer service… I loved creating new and memorable experiences for them when they came to my venues… I loved doing events that brought people together to have fun. No matter what their differences were… no matter where they were in life or how much money they had or what color their skin was… I LOVED getting all kinds of different people in the same place to have fun together.
I learned a ton about running businesses, customer service, operations, marketing… but as I grew in my status as one of the best nightclub GMs/owners in Chicago… I felt like I really wanted to do MORE. I didn’t wanna get ppl drunk anymore. Honestly. I knew I loved serving ppl and I knew I loved celebrating with people AND being with em in a hard time… but I needed a different way to go about my purpose in life. So I decided to walk away from nightclubs and get into ministry. Yup. From the top of the service industry in Chicago, to the bottom of the totem pole at my local church.
I wasn’t a pastor yet, so I took the only job I could get, which was basically stacking chairs and lifting heavy things at my church. I was the guy that setup and tore down events and rooms for the events we had at the church. It was an extremely physical job but I was in good shape. I was strong. Able. So I didn’t really care about the small salary and hard work. I was doing a job where my purpose was.
Unfortunately I got hurt doing this job. I had inadvertently slipped 3 disks in my back and torn my meniscus in my left knee. I had, what was supposed to be a routine surgery on my knee and it went horribly wrong. Horribly. I was in more pain than I knew a human could experience … for months. Then years. I would be diagnosed with a rare nerve damage condition called CRPS. Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. Basically, inexplicable pain… with little rhyme or reason. I went from strong and able bodied to disabled. Depressed. Broken. The pain that I feel on a daily basis, even today, is something that I’d never wish on my worse enemy. I have battled the pain and depression of this condition for almost 4 years now. But! This is how I found RP.
I crawled out of bed for the first time in nearly a year and around 2am, I snuck into my first city. MetaWorld 1.0. I had been watching streamers play this city and I just wanted to sneak in and see what this GTA RP stuff was all about. I was depressed and broken and so close to the edge … I hate to even think of it. I had lost everything over the course of the last year. Everything. Not only every material thing that I had built up over the previous years of success, but, even more costly, I had lost myself. I hadn’t interacted or hung out with people in months. Maybe even a full year. I was isolated and alone.
But then… all of a sudden… people started getting excited when Sammy came around. Lemme tell you… there’s something magical about when people see you, recognize you and are happy to see you. Even as a video game avatar. I needed it so badly and I didn’t even realize it. Slowly (very slowly) but surely, I began to crawl out from under my rock of loneliness. I found a deep sense of purpose in showing up regularly to “be the healer” in their story. Whether it was picking their dead asses up off the side of the road after they crashed their tebex cars that were too fast (this is how I met my partner in Synergy, Brian, actually) or whether it was standing at the hospital and listening to the troubles they had, in city or out.
And that’s how I got here. After playing Doctor in a video game for 3 years, someone suggested that I build a city. Then someone else came and offered the opportunity. That’s how I got involved with Brian to open Synergy. A year ago, the project started and it’s been a whirlwind since.
I’ve learned a lot. Still… learning a lot. This opportunity has had a lot of ups and a LOT of downs. I’ll be the first one to admit… I honestly had no idea what I was in for. I thought I was just building a video game city for people to enjoy. I knew that I had a lot of operational and customer service experience that I could apply to it. I had spent a long time realizing that cities and nightclubs are VERY similar business models. Everyone’s opening a city every 5 minutes so the player/consumer base is diluted regularly. That means you regularly think of ways to keep people engaged. There’s very little loyalty in this industry … I’d have to say, though that this FiveM is worse than the service industry. People are hidden behind a steam name and a discord account… so they can be way more ruthless without any real repercussions. That’s tough to navigate. Everyone thinks they know exactly what you SHOULD be doing. Maybe they watched a streamer that was an owner of a city and they expect you to do whatever he does. Maybe they think you should do a better job as a video game commissioner.
It’s rough. lol. Not gonna lie. Most of the times, dozens and dozens of hours of work is shrugged off as “not enough” or “not good enough”. Things turn toxic in milliseconds. Trolling people is seemingly the first reaction to… anything.
Lemme tell you … it’s been trial by fire but I wouldn’t trade it in for anything. I still think that the reasoning for starting a city is still the thing that drives me. It CAN be a place where people fly in and get a break from reality for a bit. It CAN be a place where we have stellar RP and great scenes and enjoy the great mechanics and functionality of a well maintained and developed city. It CAN be a healthy place for players to play. It can be an encouraging place for ppl to play.
And listen. I’m not dumb enough to think that shit doesn’t or won’t get toxic occasionally. Even though GTA RP is NOT a shooting simulator OR and driving simulator… people shoot and drive and get competitive with it. Competitive personalities will ALWAYS clash in the moment. Someone’s always gonna have a W mentality in the moment but I came up with the name Synergy because I really still believe that there is the possibility for balance in this weird GTA FiveM role play stuff. I still feel like people can play this GAME with the intentions to create fire interactions and have a shitload of fun while doing it. I still think that this world has the ability to leave a more positive impact on someone’s life than what I see as a largely negative environment a lot of the time.
I still believe in the possibility of Synergy. Balance. Mutual enjoyment. I still believe that we can provide an environment where people can show up and feel good that someone knows their name. I still believe that we can fly in and forget about the fk shit that’s out there in the real world for a little while. Even trolling each other has a fun place without getting toxic. My friends give me shit all the time… matter of fact they’d probably read this whole piece and call it a “Joel-ism”. Lol. I’m a bit of an optimist and a visionary type. But what I see is all the pieces to a fantastic city. We have a community that’s gone through a lot of division but still come through on the other side still overall positive. We have a staff and Dev team that really cares and wants to support the players with great response times and accommodation. We have a lot of experienced ppl in the community with great RP. We have a fresh city with endless RP possibilities with little to no bugs. Like… c’mon. We’re there… we just need people to believe in it again and fly in. We need people to recommit to seeing the synergy of good scenes. We need people to know that we don’t and won’t allow cheating from anyone… players or admins. Period. We need people to invite their friends into this city experience… to give us feedback… to help us help the community.
I just wanted to reintroduce myself as who I really am. I wanted you to see that I’m not anything cool or anyone special… I’ve gotten my ass kicked for life in the last 4/5 years. I didn’t start a city to make a shitload of money… or be FiveM famous. I’m not a good shooter or driver or PD Commissioner (lol) … I’m just a guy tryna build a halfway healthy community for what I think is a lotta people that need it. People need fun. People need to belong. People need to laugh. People need to be loved on a lil.
Welcome Home… hopefully.
Joel - aka “Sammy”