Rockstar Consulted with Former Criminals While Making GTA 6
Rockstar Games heavily relied on real Miami when creating Leonida and Vice City, the settings of GTA 6. The team visited the city numerous times over the past decade, not only studying the street layout but also interviewing ex-criminals, arms dealers, and law enforcement to make the characters, the criminal underworld, and the local culture more believable.
Miami’s Criminal Underworld Directly Researched for GTA 6
According to Rockstar Games’ senior narrative director, the team preferred to draw on the experiences of real people rather than writing characters entirely at a desk. Therefore, the developers met with ex-criminals, arms dealers, police officers, and nightclub organizers. The goal was to understand how Miami’s criminal underworld operated in a more natural way.
These interviews alone weren’t deemed sufficient. The team also consulted books, news articles, and past media records to compare the stories told to real-world events. So, when someone came up with an interesting story, Rockstar didn’t just directly incorporate it into the game; they checked its real-world counterpart.
A similar approach was applied to music, brands, and stores. Rockstar’s goal was for Vice City to feel like a living city with its own rhythm, not just an exaggerated parody of Miami. Of course, GTA’s classic humor and satire are still preserved; however, this time the background world is based on much more serious field research.
These details come from the extensive pre-review conducted for GTA 6 and offer an interesting glimpse into the game’s development process ahead of the official Extended Look, which will be released on August 27th. GTA 6 is scheduled for release on November 19, 2026, and Rockstar’s thorough research into Vice City explains why they want the game’s world to feel so intense.
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