Rockstar has to ‘be careful’ about what GTA 6 picks to satirize because ‘very specific political issues or memes will date fast’

The veil between satire and reality has seemed so thin for such a long time now that I find myself double checking every other news post I see just to make sure it’s not something from The Onion—sadly it never is. But I guess it could be worse, I could be the one who has to write the satire, I could be the one who has to write scripts for GTA 6.

It’s certainly a tall order, especially right now, but if someone’s able to do it I’m confident in Rockstar, who should be able to pull off some meta-commentary about the make-believe state of Leonida, based on Florida, and the US at large.

“That’s a question a lot of people ask: how do you deal with satire in today’s world?” Rockstar North’s co-studio head, Ron Nelson, tells IGN. “I think there’s always stuff to satirize. As long as humans are humans, other humans will figure out ways to satirize what we do.”

Sure, they’ll always be people who will satirize the world around them, but the key here is doing it well enough that it doesn’t make players’ eyes permanently roll into the back of their heads, while also holding up against the test of time. Rockstar surely wants people to play and enjoy GTA 6 beyond 2026.

“We have to be careful that what we’re choosing to satirize is not going to feel dated in a weird way,” Nelson explains. “I think those broader things are OK to satirize, but very specific political issues or memes will date fast. Even the way our characters speak, we think about it a lot so that they’re not using extremely contemporary slang. Even though our characters are a certain age, they need to feel somewhat timeless.”

That probably means we won’t be seeing any brainrot or references to the orange man in GTA 6, and you know what? Thank god—sometimes art doesn’t need to fully imitate life.