4 minSociety
Rockstar Embedded With Gang Members and Police to Research GTA 6
Rockstar Games developers traveled across Florida with gang members and police officers to research the setting for GTA 6, the studio's head of development said in a rare interview about the game's creation.
Rockstar Games sent developers on research trips across Florida alongside gang members and police officers as the studio built the world of Grand Theft Auto 6, the company's head of development has revealed.
Aaron Garbut described the process in an interview with Love Magazine ahead of the game's release next month. He said the trips are a foundational part of how the studio approaches every project, and that the Florida research was among the most immersive the team has undertaken.
«Every game we make starts with research trips. It's where we get to explore both the place and our ideas as a group,» Garbut said. The work began with a small group driving from Miami through surrounding towns and down through the Florida Keys to Key West.
Garbut called that early phase one of the best parts of the entire project: a car full of friends driving for days, talking about what they wanted to build while absorbing the locations around them. He documented the trips with a camera and a phone, recording everything as it happened.
The research extended well beyond sightseeing. Garbut said team members spent time with locals, heard their stories, and traveled with both law enforcement officers and gang members. He described the people who showed them around as among the nicest they had met, while acknowledging that some of the stories, places, and details they encountered could be terrifying.
«We do go in-depth, we hang with locals and we hear lots of stories and learn as much as we can,» he said. «We travel around with cops and with gang members. Everyone is lovely. Some people are equally scary.»
One outing involved a handful of developers flying low and fast over mangrove inlets in the Everglades before ending the day hovering over a stadium where a Beyoncé concert was underway. Garbut said he believes the team made the local news that day.
For Garbut, Miami itself embodies the extremes the studio wanted to capture: lovely people alongside incredible wealth and incredible poverty, excess, craziness, and the hustle of showing it all off. He said the research trips are designed to experience those extremes so they can be brought into the game, where they surface in surprising ways.
Those details can appear in pedestrian dialogue, radio shows, and advertisements. Rockstar said it does not treat such elements as secondary content, because everything matters when building a world players are expected to explore for hundreds of hours.
The studio's approach to a modern-day GTA also involves deliberately avoiding the recreation of real-world viral moments. Long development timelines mean those references can quickly date a game, so the satire in GTA 6 instead focuses on modern culture, conspiracy theories, and what Garbut described as the strange ways people react to events.
The game's Florida setting has already begun spilling into the real world. Last week, the Miami Heat announced a special match during which the team will wear a GTA 6 uniform in a themed arena.
The interview comes as anticipation builds for the release, with Rockstar having previously confirmed the first voice actor for the game and offered an extensive preview of what players can expect. The research trips, however, remain central to how the studio tries to make its virtual worlds feel believable and varied, with the depth that has become a signature of the series.
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