How Rockstar Researched Florida to Build Leonida in GTA 6

Leonida began on the road. Head of Development Aaron Garbut says Rockstar starts its games with research trips to the real place that will inspire them, and for GTA 6 one early group travelled from Miami through surrounding towns and the Florida Keys before reaching Key West. Those first trips were about understanding the place and spotting what might matter in the game; larger teams later returned to study particular locations and communities in more detail. Dexerto

As the work expanded, Garbut recorded material constantly with cameras and phones, and Rockstar staff spent time with local people, looking deliberately beyond the tourist view of Florida. That included travelling with both police officers and gang members to understand very different sides of the region. Dexerto

The source shows how broadly Rockstar researched the environment it was turning into Leonida. It does not establish that any specific person they met became a GTA 6 character or inspired a particular mission.

Garbut and several art directors spent a full day filming from a helicopter above the mangrove inlets of the Everglades, downtown Miami and the beaches. At one point they ended up over a stadium hosting a Beyoncé concert and drew enough attention that Garbut believes they made the local news the next day. GTAVice

That footage gave Rockstar another way to understand scale, geography and the transitions between different parts of Florida, distances that have to work once the player crosses Leonida by car, boat or aircraft.

Garbut describes Miami through contrast, with enormous wealth, poverty, excess, ambition and people who want to be seen, and Rockstar actively looked for those extremes. Vice President of Art Michael Kane adds that the team studied individual places and communities so Florida would not collapse into one broad caricature. The interview names Vice City, Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga among the regions shaped by that approach. GTAVice

Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson explains the next stage. After researching a location, Rockstar decides which areas belong in the game, what kinds of people live there and which protagonists can show the player the widest range of that world. A rough narrative follows, and the major story beats are plotted against the map. GTAVice

The map and the story grow together, because Jason and Lucia need reasons to travel through the world Rockstar wants players to experience.

Nelson says Rockstar then works in milestones of around eight weeks. Agreed sections of the game are assembled and reviewed, and what the team learns changes the priorities of the next milestone. He describes GTA 6’s development as highly iterative: build, evaluate, adjust, repeat. GTAVice

That matters in an open world, where a mission that makes sense on paper can behave differently once traffic, roads, NPCs, animation and the player’s freedom all exist at the same time.

Nelson says realism is useful when it improves immersion, and when it makes the game less enjoyable Rockstar can move away from it. GTAVice Leonida can start with real places, communities and observations and still be reshaped around what GTA needs.

The LOVE interview also describes dedicated pedestrian-dialogue teams, alongside advertising and comedy writers. Writing director James Horton says conversations designed to be heard in passing should still hold together if the player stops and listens. GTAVice The research and the writing serve the same goal: Florida supplies the material, and Rockstar turns it into a world the player can move through, interrupt and examine.

What the research does not prove

Rockstar travelled with police officers and gang members, researched both familiar and less visible parts of Florida, filmed from roads and helicopters, and has now described how that material feeds an iterative development process. What we cannot do is tie a real person to Jason, Lucia, Raul, a particular gang or a specific mission without more evidence.

The documented process is useful on its own:

Florida → research → regions and people → story beats on the map → iterative development → Leonida.

For the world that came out of it, see the GTA 6 map and Leonida regions, our guide to GTA 6 NPCs and AI and the GTA 6 story guide. Street-by-street matches between Vice City and Miami are in GTA 6 real-life locations.

Sources

Dexerto — Rockstar researched Florida with police and gang members

GTAVice — LOVE #27 breakdown and Rockstar development process

LOVE Magazine — official site

LOVE #27 — KD Presse

Last verified: October 6, 2026.