Rockstar Games doubled its employee headcount for Grand Theft Auto 6 and hired real-world professionals for the game's vehicles, fashion, and more.
As part of a cover story for Dazed, Rockstar Games shared a boatload of information about Grand Theft Auto 6. In the piece, it was confirmed that Rockstar doubled in size following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in order to bring GTA 6 to life, with a new Los Angeles-based office being "almost solely" dedicated to working on nothing but the game's NPCs. For context, Rockstar had around 2,000 employees in 2018. That would put them at around 4,000 now. The studio has expanded a lot over the last decade by acquiring new studios in Australia, India, and the aforementioned LA office.
Rockstar's expansion doesn't exclusively encompass game developers. The company brought on other real-world professionals, such as Miami-based stylist Jillian Carr, who was hired to help create a “fashion ecosystem” that can capture the diversity in style, culture, and class necessary to give Vice City's people their distinct character.
“Vice City is built around vanity,” Carr said to the magazine. “Between social media, celebrity culture and a constant flow of tourists, appearances carry significant weight, and trend cycles turn over quickly.”
Rockstar also hired racecar drivers to help with vehicle handling and 50 real street artists to design murals around the game's map. While consultants are hardly unique to this project, Carr and others are full-time employees at Rockstar and have been for years.
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