'Vice City' frenzy: Eastern perspectives on Grand Theft Auto VI

 After a 13-year wait, Rockstar Games is preparing to release the sixth installment of its flagship “Grand Theft Auto” franchise on Nov. 19. The highly anticipated title follows “Grand Theft Auto V,” which has sold 230 million copies worldwide, making it the third best-selling video game of all time behind “Tetris” and “Minecraft.”

Expectations for the new release are enormous. Beyond its potential to reshape the gaming landscape, “Grand Theft Auto VI” is projected to have a major economic and cultural impact. Forbes predicts the game could generate more than $1 billion in sales within its first three days. A BambooHR survey, meanwhile, found that 18% of salaried workers, including 32% of Gen Z workers and 27% of millennials, plan to call out of work on release day.

With the gaming world counting down to launch, three members of the Eastern community with experience in video game research and the gaming industry shared their perspectives on what the release could mean for the future of gaming and beyond.

What the research says about video game violence

Among his research and teaching interests, Sociology Professor William Lugo studies video games and their impact on society. He is a long-time fan of Grand Theft Auto and uses the franchise as material in his course on video games, aptly titled “Video Games and Society.”

Although excited for the game's release, Lugo said the game's hype may be overstated: “Will people call out of work? Yes. Is it going to be enough to affect the gross domestic product? No.”

He also expects mixed reviews post-release, noting that the series is known for its negative representation of women, extreme violence, and other unsavory topics.

While Lugo is hopeful that representation of women will be improved in GTA VI, violence is still core to its brand. He expects a debate on video games and violence to be revived after the release.

Whether or not violence in video games translates to violence in society, he said, “The research is inconclusive,” explaining that it's almost impossible to create a controlled study with violent crime as a possible outcome.

He admitted that in a mostly unregulated video game market, there are some games that explore obscene topics, but research neither supports nor refutes the claim that violent video games increase violent tendencies.

“What does the research really tell us about playing violent video games?” he asked. “In my opinion, very little.”

A 2020 press release by the American Psychological Association (APA) agreed with Lugo's assessment, refuting the claim that violent video games cause violent actions. The APA cited that violent behavior is more accurately indicated by an individual's personal history.

On the other hand, Lugo said that research does show that fast-paced video games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, when played in moderation, can improve cognitive abilities, eyesight, reaction times, and even course grades.

As for his course at Eastern, Lugo said: “One of the things that I teach about GTA is that the story is actually pretty deep,” explaining that it explores many societal topics, including capitalism, healthcare, homelessness, drug use, and more.

“Some video games are a reflection of our society,” he said. “They have all these really deep messages that I teach about in my sociology class."

Lugo continued: "Are there problems with GTA? Yes, and I teach about those too,” he said, referring to the game’s negative depictions of women and sensationalized violence, among other sensitive topics. 

‘An economy of its own’

In GTA VI, players are transported to Miami-inspired Vice City, playing as Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, small-time criminals who accidentally find themselves in the middle of a major conspiracy. Gamers interact with hundreds of characters in a fully immersive world, making decisions that directly impact Duval and Caminos' fight for survival.

“From a technological standpoint, GTA VI looks like a huge leap over GTA V,” said Zach Horta, an experienced video game designer and web design assistant at Eastern’s Office of Communications and Marketing.

Horta has worked on multiple gaming projects after graduating from Becker College in 2021. The designer helped develop a mobile puzzle game with more than one million downloads on Android, a mobile first-person shooter game for one of Turkey's largest developers, and various indie games and projects.

He explained that from a design and quality perspective, GTA VI is an incredible improvement from previous Rockstar titles.

“Few studios have the time and budget to build something at GTA's scale,” Horta said. “Characters, vehicles, and buildings all have to be modeled and textured, and anything that moves has to be rigged and animated.”

He continued: “Then it all has to be lit and optimized to run smoothly, and that’s on top of the engineering, audio, and quality assurance. Now do that for an entire [digital] world and everyone in it.”

Horta agreed that the rumored billion-dollar price tag for the title seems appropriate, explaining that graphics, labor, and scope contribute to development costs. “Whether it fully delivers is something we’ll find out at launch,” he added.

English Professor Jordan Youngblood, who also has research interests in video games and digital culture, seconded Horta’s claim. “There are thousands of people working on this game,” he said. “It’s become an economy of its own.”

He commented on Rockstar’s ability to consistently trailblaze in the video game industry, explaining that after GTA IV, the studio made a concerted pivot to focus on realism in their games.

“There is, on the one hand, this fantasy power narrative of ‘go be an outlaw in this immense world and do whatever you want,” he said. “At the same time, if you want to skin an animal in ‘Red Dead Redemption II ’ (a 2018Rockstar Games release), you have to kneel down on the ground, and you have to actually cut the animal.”

Youngblood commented on the expected level of detail in GTA VI, citing vehicles having individual fuel gauges, and the map having fully active weather cycles, impacting gameplay and road conditions.

Playing the long game

GTA V Online uses a "Gaming as a Service" (GaaS) business model to keep players engaged for years, with developers adding content, missions, and add-ons to the decade-old game as recently as this July.

GTA VI is expected to take a similar route, which may mean years of updates and new content for players, but also lasting work for developers. "Rockstar has to make a single-player game and a multiplayer one that will last for at least a decade," said Youngblood.

Lugo held the same sentiment. “If they got 13 years out of GTA V, they’re planning a minimum of 13 years for GTA VI,” he said.

The two professors agree that years of development, more than a billion-dollar budget, and the decade-long success of the last GTA point toward Rockstar Games playing the long game, investing more time, labor, and funding into GTA VI as the game ages.

Student perspectives

Talk of the release has been buzzing around Eastern's campus in recent weeks.

“A lot of people have been joking that they can’t wait,” said Cooper DesRocher, an accounting sophomore who already preordered the game. 

Daniel Roland, a business administration junior, felt the release was a long-time coming. When the last Grand Theft Auto game released, he was eight years old.

“Kids my age weren’t allowed to play it,” he said. “Now we’re all adults, and I think it’s a really exciting moment for us, kind of avenging the tiny part of our childhood selves that couldn’t play Grand Theft Auto V.”

As Lugo predicted, sentiment on the release is mixed.

Sam Hicks, a biology senior, doesn’t agree with Rockstar Games’ monetization practices, and feels the decade-long wait on the new title was excessive.

Tanner Matchett, a business administration junior, says the studio has “done a good job living up to the hype in terms of their advertisements and trailers."

He continued: “They’ve made it seem like this is going to be one of the best games of all time, and it truly might be.”

Gaming and Hollywood

The game’s release weekend is expected to perform better than most major box-office releases this year, signaling a changing dynamic between Hollywood and the video game industry.

While video game sales aren’t directly competing with movie theatres, Lugo says an increase in video game adaptations in Hollywood may be the result of growing competition-- — and partnerships — between the two industries.

The global video game industry currently makes approximately $80 billion more than the film industry annually, and Lugo claims that the video game industry has “surpassed” Hollywood in terms of sales, engagement, and creative storytelling.

While video game adaptations have been common over the last 10 to 15 years, Lugo pointed to recent blockbuster adaptations including “The Last of Us” (2023), “Super Mario Bros.” (2023, 2026), and “Arcane” (2021).

The September 2026 movie release of “Resident Evil,” based on the popular zombie video game franchise, scored 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and earned $400 million during its theatre run.

“I think in the past, video games needed Hollywood more than Hollywood needed them,” Lugo said. “I think that we’re at a point now where Hollywood needs video games more than video games need them.”

Horta agreed: “A game is interactive and a show isn’t,” he said. “A game gets its emotion from what the player does, like the choices, tension, and mechanics. A show can’t hand someone the controller, so it has to create that feeling in a different way.”