Miami has started covering Grand Theft Auto VI as local news. On Wednesday morning, CBS News Miami ran a segment matching the game's version of Vice City to the real streets it is built from, side by side, with the kind of hometown pride usually saved for a sports team. It is not fans doing the comparison this time. It is a TV station, on the morning broadcast, treating the biggest game of the year as a story about the 305, a number used to refer to Miami as homage to its original area code and one of the original 86 area codes in the United States.
The piece, reported by Austin Carter, ran about three minutes and worked almost entirely in side-by-sides, cutting between trailer footage and the real thing. Beyond the specific buildings, it gestured at how much of the city is in there, with nods to South Beach, Port Miami, Wynwood and the Everglades. The named matches are where it got specific.
Real Miami and its Vice City stand-in
Real Miami | In GTA 6 |
|---|---|
Breakwater Hotel, Ocean Drive | Hotel Boardwalk |
Victor Hotel | Dixon Hotel, a nod to architect L. Murray Dixon |
Chase branch on 41st | Matching red lettering and arches |
Kaseya Center | A clear in-game replica |
15th and Biscayne | The downtown Metromover walkway, recreated |
Just a few of over a hundred of matches fans have found, as shown on CBS News Miami.
For example, renaming the Victor Hotel the Dixon Hotel is a quiet tribute to L. Murray Dixon, one of the architects behind Miami Beach's Art Deco district, the sort of deep cut that shows Rockstar studied the city's history. None of this is news to the people who have spent years mapping the next Grand Theft Auto. What is new is the messenger. When a local CBS affiliate gives a morning segment to the accuracy of a video game's streets, the game has become a civic one, achieving the goal set by Take-Two Interactive in a way.
The broadcast also highlighted the amount of research it took to make GTA 6 a close approximation of MIami, including a Rockstar executive's claim that developers rode along with former cops to experience Miami after dark. Also, as part of the much larger effort, the same multi-year research had art directors filming Miami from a helicopter and the team embedding in the city to capture its extremes. Riding with cops after dark is the kind of detail that ends up as a Chase sign rendered down to the arches.
GTA has spent two decades drawing mainstream coverage for its violence and satire, so a local newscast covering GTA 6 as a source of pride is its own small milestone. Miami is getting enormous free marketing as the real Vice City and locals clearly like seeing their hotels, arenas and causeways rendered at this level, even knowing the game will satirize the city's excess right alongside its beauty.
So the accuracy that fans have obsessed over has crossed into the mainstream and the city it copied is embracing it.
With GTA 6 due on November 19 and on track to be the biggest launch ever, Miami is about to spend years as the most famous virtual city in the world and its local news is already proud of it.