Rockstar North co-lead Rob Nelson says GTA 6 has been in development since 2015, so the developers have had to be “very careful” to ensure the ideas they ran with still feel relevant in 2026.
Grand Theft Auto has always managed to capture a moment in time. While the likes of GTA Vice City looked back to the era of 1980s Miami, the long-awaited GTA 6 is more like GTA 5 in reflecting contemporary times. Due to swelling development timelines, it can be challenging when something you’re working on today might not release for another 10 years.
Speaking to French outlet TroisCouleurs, Nelson offers some insight into how Rockstar is trying to make GTA 6 feel immediately recognizable despite being in development since 2015.
As part of the interview, Nelson is asked if Rockstar devs keep an eye on the current news with an eye to implementing what they see into a future game – the COVID pandemic, for example.
In response, Nelson says “there will always be things to satirize,” but there is a method to picking the right things to make fun of.
“We develop on very long cycles,” he explains. “The game’s been in development since 2015, so the idea is gestating for a long time. The majority of the team really started rolling on to it after Red Dead Redemption 2 released in 2018.
“We have to be very careful about what ideas we choose to put in there, because it can take a long time to figure out what our angle is on this. Because by the time we write it and cast it and shoot it, and implement it, whatever it is – it could be gone, it could change, it could be dated.
“And so we’re always trying to think about whether something will stand the test of time. And so, you look at those things, and we only try to pick things if they work with the story we’re trying to tell, in the world we’re trying to tell it in. I think there will always be things to satirize, there are always ridiculous situations and behaviors that we can find, but we just have to be careful about what we pick.”
From what we can see of GTA 6 so far, there’s plenty of that on show already. In the GTA 6 Extended Look, we see that Vice City is no stranger to a streamer trying to capture the next viral moment on the streets, for example – something that’s been around for years now, and will likely be around for years longer. We’ve also seen a fair few in-game TV ads, which is one of Rockstar’s favorite ways to skewer capitalism.
We’ll have to wait until GTA 6 releases on November 19 to see what else Rockstar makes fun of, though it’s clear that the silliness of human nature has given developers ample wells of inspiration to draw from.