Rockstar Games sent developers across Florida with police officers and gang members while researching GTA 6, head of development Aaron Garbut said in an interview with Love Magazine ahead of the game’s release. He said the studio spent years studying Miami, the Florida Keys and the wider state that inspired Vice City’s return.
Garbut said Rockstar’s process starts with a small group of developers and expands over time. The first trips took staff from Miami through nearby towns and down the Keys to Key West, where they recorded locations, talked through ideas and worked out how to turn what they saw into the game’s version of Florida.
Rockstar starts with a small scouting trip
Garbut said the early stage of each project is limited and practical. One small group drove from Miami through surrounding towns and along the Florida Keys to Key West, spending days talking about the game while taking notes on the places they passed through.
As development moved forward, the studio brought in more people and widened the scope of the trips. Garbut said Rockstar wanted to understand not just roads and landmarks, but the people, stories and habits that shape the area. That meant spending time with locals and hearing as much as possible from the communities the team was trying to represent.
The result, Garbut said, was a research process built around immersion rather than quick reference gathering. The studio looked for details that could make Leonida feel lived in, from the broad character of Miami to the smaller things people do and say in everyday life. Those observations were recorded for later use across the game world.
“We travel around with cops and with gang members”
The most striking part of Garbut’s comments was the range of people the team met during those trips. “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.”
He said some of the people Rockstar encountered could be “equally scary,” and added that the stories, locations and details they found could be terrifying. At the same time, he said the guides who showed them around were often among the nicest people the team had met.
Garbut tied those extremes to the version of Florida Rockstar wants to build. In the same interview, he said Miami is defined by stark contrasts: wealth and poverty, excess, hustle and people showing off all of it at once. He said those extremes shape the research trips and feed directly into the game’s world.
That approach also helps explain why Rockstar’s version of Leonida is being built from more than postcard views of beaches and nightlife. The studio has spent time with people on different sides of Florida life, and Garbut said that included both police officers and gang members. The point was not to chase a single image of the state, but to gather enough material for a world that can shift from bright and tourist-heavy to rough and unsettling.
Flights over the Everglades and a concert in the frame
Rockstar’s research went beyond cars and street-level exploration. Garbut recalled one trip where members of the team flew low over mangrove inlets in the Everglades before hovering above a stadium during a Beyoncé concert.
“I think we made the local news the next day,” he said.
Those trips were not just about collecting headline-grabbing memories. Garbut said Rockstar records the small things too, because they can shape parts of the game players may not think about first. That includes pedestrian conversations, fictional radio shows and advertisements, all of which can carry details picked up during research.
Garbut said Rockstar tries to create a world that feels believable, varied and deep, and that is why the studio treats this kind of fieldwork as part of the core development process. The company wants the setting to feel broad enough that different parts of Florida can show different moods, scenes and social tensions inside the same game map.
The size of GTA 6 is also part of that approach. Rockstar has said the map is so large that the story missions will not cover everything, which gives the studio room to place smaller discoveries, side details and environmental touches in places that may only be seen by players who wander away from the main route.
IGN’s coverage of the same interview said Rockstar also uses the trips to immerse developers in Miami and its surrounding areas, with more people added on later visits as the team digs deeper into the culture and stories. According to that report, Garbut described the work as part of a group process where staff talk through ideas while driving for days through real locations.
Garbut also said the team records everything that happens on these trips, then folds the material back into the project. That can mean a conversation, a sign, a stretch of road or a strange encounter becoming part of the game later on. The studio’s aim, he said, is to use the research to give the world depth rather than to copy any one place directly.
The Florida trips show how far Rockstar is going to make Vice City’s return feel rooted in a real place. Miami, the Keys, the Everglades and the people living around them all fed into the work, along with the mix of wealth, danger, spectacle and everyday life that Garbut said defines the region. When GTA 6 arrives, some of the most memorable details may come from those moments off the main road.
Garbut’s comments also line up with Rockstar’s wider focus on building a world that feels active beyond the main plot. The company has already said it wants deeper relationships, more realistic NPCs, body changes and a social media system, and the Florida research suggests that a lot of those ideas are being shaped by what the studio saw in person. The trips through Miami, the Keys and the Everglades were not a side note to development; they were part of the foundation.
The studio’s method seems designed to leave room for surprises. A day that starts with a drive through small towns can lead to notes for dialogue or radio content later on. A flight over the Everglades can turn into a reference point for how the map feels from above. Even the mix of people Rockstar spent time with, from cops to gang members, points to the broad range of stories the game is trying to hold together.
Garbut did not frame the research as a search for spectacle alone. He described it as a way to understand the place well enough to build something convincing, and he stressed that the details gathered in Florida will keep finding their way into the finished game. With Vice City returning and Leonida stretching far beyond it, Rockstar’s time on the ground looks set to shape more than just scenery.
honestly the cops and gang members part makes sense. if you want vice city to feel real, you don’t get that from drone shots and google maps alone. but rockstar always makes these stories sound way more dangerous than they probably were, like they spent a week in a movie. still, the florida weirdness is probably exactly why gta 6 is taking forever.
I reckon the immersion matters more than the drama.
flying low over the everglades then over a stadium at a beyonce concert is wild lol
wait, do you mean they actually hovered above the concert while filming, or just flew nearby? because one is research and the other is basically a GTA mission already.
the game being so huge that story missions won’t cover everything is the real headline here. sounds like rockstar is building a map full of stuff people will only notice after 200 hours and three abandoned saves.
beyoncé concert? lol
i mean that is a pretty rockstar thing to do though. they were probably just using it for scale and crowd noise, not sneaking into the pit with a clipboard.
the social media system part still worries me more than any florida field trip. rockstar can research all they want, if they stuff the game with gimmicks it is gonna feel forced anyway.