Grand Theft Auto VI's return to Vice City — Rockstar Games' fictionalised parody of Miami and South Florida — has generated an unprecedented wave of localised cultural engagement within the state itself. From the December 2023 first trailer through the May 2025 second trailer, Florida-based media outlets (Miami Herald, Miami New Times, NBC 6 South Florida, Axios Miami, Secret Miami, Local 10) have treated the game less as a piece of foreign entertainment and more as a cultural mirror reflecting the region's own identity. The coverage pattern reveals a distinctive form of "civic pride through satire": Floridians, and Miamians in particular, have embraced the fact that one of the world's largest entertainment franchises has chosen their geography, vernacular and visual culture as its canvas. This report examines how Florida media has framed GTA VI, what landmarks and cultural signifiers have been identified as central to that resonance, and how the state's tourism, preservation and gaming communities have responded.
Florida journalists have approached the trailers as exercises in geographic decoding. Axios Miami enlisted Daniel Ciraldo, executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League, to confirm that the opening trailer shot depicts the Loews and Royal Palm hotels and 1500 Ocean Drive on Lummus Park, with the Breakwater Hotel and Hotel Victor (renamed the "Boardwalk" and "Hotel Dixon" in Vice City) appearing further south (Vassolo, 2023). Ciraldo told Axios that "the architecture looks very realistic, though some buildings are out of order or on the wrong block," and added that the depictions captured "the best of South Florida from the Everglades to South Beach and everything in between" (Vassolo, 2023). The Kaseya Center (home of the Miami Heat), the Marquis Residences in Brickell, the MacArthur and Venetian causeways, Wynwood's mural district, and the Florida Keys were all confirmed as in-game references.
Miami New Times noted in its initial trailer write-up that the game showcases "downtown Miami, South Beach, Wynwood, and the Florida Everglades and tons of South Florida staples: bikinis, gators, and Florida Man™" (Duran, 2023). Secret Miami's enumeration of "the most Miami things" in the trailer foregrounded the same iconography — neon-lit Ocean Drive, airboat tourism, and convenience-store wildlife encounters — as evidence that Rockstar had successfully captured the region's distinctive sensorium.
A key element of the cultural resonance is Florida's longstanding self-mythology as a place of absurdity, captured in the "Florida Man" meme. Miami New Times explicitly catalogued this dimension, noting that the trailer leans into bikini culture, alligator imagery and the wider stereotype that Floridians have ambivalently embraced (Duran, 2023). Rather than recoiling from satire, Florida outlets reported the depiction as flattery. The Miami Herald's coverage of the first trailer emphasised the confirmation of "Vice City" as a fictionalised Miami and treated landmark recognition as a point of regional interest, not offence (Miami Herald, 2023).
The second trailer's May 2025 release intensified the place-marketing dimension. Miami New Times reported that the new trailer "unveils a trove of recognizable Vice City locations" including landmarks "vaguely recognizable to inveterate Miamians" (Miami New Times, 2025). The Miami Guide framed it as "Vice City Is Back, Baby," characterising the trailer as a tourism asset: an aestheticised, hyper-saturated rendering of South Florida that arrives organically into the feeds of hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide (The Miami Guide, 2025). E11even Miami, the downtown nightclub, responded to its apparent in-game reference by flying a celebratory banner — a moment that itself generated further Florida media coverage and demonstrates how local businesses have folded GTA VI into their own marketing playbooks (Miami New Times, 2023b).
Not every aspect of the resonance is celebratory. Miami New Times reminded readers that the 2002 Vice City prompted protest from Haitian-American Floridians over the line "Kill all the Haitians," which Rockstar later removed (Duran, 2023). Florida's media coverage of GTA VI thus carries an implicit awareness that satire of a multi-ethnic region risks alienating the very communities it depicts — a dynamic likely to recur once the full game is released. Critical voices outside Florida, including those amplified by Hindustan Times, have framed the game as a "satirical canvas of Miami" that may sharpen rather than smooth the region's reputation for excess and crime (Hindustan Times, 2023).
Florida media coverage of GTA VI is distinguished by participatory enthusiasm rather than defensive critique. Outlets ranging from the alt-weekly Miami New Times to the legacy Miami Herald and the newsletter-native Axios Miami have positioned the game as a cultural event with direct relevance to local identity, real estate landmarks, tourism marketing and preservation discourse. The cultural resonance with Florida is thus not incidental to GTA VI's reception — it is one of the franchise's defining marketing assets, organically generated by local journalists who treat Vice City as a parallel-universe version of their own city.
Duran, J. D. (2023) 'Watch the trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, a return to Vice City (AKA Miami)', Miami New Times, 4 December. Available at: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts-culture/watch-the-trailer-for-grand-theft-auto-6-set-in-miami-18381025/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Hindustan Times (2023) 'Rockstar Games' GTA 6 portrays a satirical canvas of Miami', Hindustan Times, 10 December. Available at: https://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/rockstar-games-gta-6-portrays-a-satirical-canvas-of-miami-101702202926918.html (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Miami Herald (2023) 'Trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI shows famous Miami locations', Miami Herald, 5 December. Available at: https://www.miamiherald.com/miami-com/miami-com-news/article282695038.html (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Miami New Times (2023b) 'E11even brings its Grand Theft Auto VI shout-out to real life', Miami New Times. Available at: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/music/e11even-miami-flies-banner-in-response-to-grand-theft-auto-vi-trailer-18513763/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Miami New Times (2025) 'New GTA 6 trailer shows more Miami locations in vivid detail', Miami New Times, 7 May. Available at: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/new-gta-6-trailer-shows-more-miami-locations-in-vivid-detail-23040082/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Secret Miami (2023) '7 of the most Miami things we spotted in the new GTA 6 trailer', Secret Miami. Available at: https://secretmiami.com/gta-6-trailer-miami/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
The Miami Guide (2025) 'Vice City is back, baby: GTA VI trailer 2 hits hard with Miami vibes', The Miami Guide, 6 May. Available at: https://themiamiguide.com/vice-city-is-back-baby-gta-vi-trailer-2/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Vassolo, M. (2023) 'Every Miami landmark in Grand Theft Auto VI', Axios Miami, 5 December. Available at: https://www.axios.com/local/miami/2023/12/05/gta-6-trailer-vice-city-landmarks (Accessed: 14 May 2026).