 Los Angeles was extensively researched for the game . The team organised field research trips with tour guides and architectural historians , and captured around 250 @,@ 000 photographs and many hours of video footage . Houser said , " We spoke to FBI agents that have been undercover , experts in the Mafia , street gangsters who know the slang — we even went to see a proper prison " . Houser considered the research and creation of the game world to be the most demanding aspects of the game 's production . The team viewed Google Maps and Google Street View projections of Los Angeles ; the field research team then used the coordinates to capture the photographs and video footage , which were used to design the layout of Los Santos . The team also studied virtual globe models of the city , census data and documentaries to recreate the geographical and demographic spread of Los Angeles . Reproducing Los Angeles as a play space required the team to condense the city 's spread into an area that the player could comfortably traverse ; according to Houser , they captured " the essence of what 's really there in a city , but in a far smaller area " . Sam Sweet of The New Yorker said , " [ The ] exhaustive field work ... wasn 't conducted to document a living space . Rather , it was collected to create an extremely realistic version of a Los Angeles that doesn 't actually exist . The map of Los Santos is familiar but its contents are condensed " . Garbut said the team were not " dictated by reality " when designing the city and instead used Los Angeles as a starting point for the city 's design . 
