Opinion: GTA 6 will have strip clubs and bars. Vox would like them to be worth walking into

Vox here, and this one is an opinion, so adjust your expectations accordingly. The confirmed bits are labelled. The rest is Vox, who has spent more hours in fake nightclubs than real ones, has opinions about it, and would like you to keep the screenshots to yourselves.

Let us get the obvious part out of the way. Yes, GTA 6 has strip clubs. Rockstar told us itself: Boobie Ike is "a former street hustler turned businessman" with real estate, a recording studio and a strip club, and the whole Only Raw Records storyline runs through his door. Yes, it has bars and clubs. "Clubbing" is on Rockstar's own list of things to do from the Extended Look, next to basketball and jet skis, and the official screenshots have a neon club interior and more lit-up signs than a Vegas car park at 3 AM. And yes, the ratings boards have been very clear about why this is an adults-only game. The ESRB's descriptors include strong sexual content, nudity, and use of drugs and alcohol. Every board on Earth looked at this game, blushed, and reached for the biggest number it had. I wrote about that yesterday.

And let us be honest with each other for a second, because nobody else will be. Everyone reading this is going to walk into that strip club in the first hour. Not for the story. Not for the "world-building". You know why, I know why, and Rockstar knows why, which is exactly why it is in the game. We can all stop pretending.

So the question is not "will there be a strip club". The question I actually care about is this: once you have done the thing everyone does in the first hour, will Leonida's nightlife be somewhere you go, or somewhere you drive past?

Rockstar's track record with doors

Here is my problem, and if you played GTA V you already know where this is going.

Bahama Mamas. The nightclub on the Vespucci strip. Beautiful sign, music leaking out onto the pavement, bouncer outside, and a front door that stayed shut for twelve years. Twelve. Children were born, learned to drive, and bought GTA V themselves, and that door was still locked. People datamined it. People modded it. People wrote threads about it that outlived three console generations. Rockstar built an entire club and then locked it, and the only club you could actually walk into in Los Santos was the Vanilla Unicorn, where the full experience was one dance, one drink, a bouncer who hated you, and one very slow walk to the car park with your dignity in a carrier bag.

Vice City, 2002, did better with less. The Pole Position was a business you owned. The Malibu Club was a place you bought and then ran heists out of. Those were not sets. They were places the story lived in. GTA IV had something else again: you could take Roman or Jacob to a bar, get properly drunk, and spend the next five minutes trying to walk to the car while the camera did its best impression of a boat. It was stupid, it was the best thing in the game, and it was the only time a GTA has ever made me feel like I had friends. Because it was something you did with people.

Then GTA V came along with the biggest map Rockstar had ever made and turned the nightlife into a painting. A very expensive painting of a party you were not invited to. You all know this. You all went to the Unicorn once, got the dance, went "huh", and never went back. Be honest. That is my fear for Leonida. Not that there will not be enough clubs. That there will be too many clubs with nothing inside.

What the signs say

This bit is confirmed, as far as reading a sign counts as confirmation. People have gone through every official screenshot with a magnifying glass, and the names are right there on the buildings: a cabaret in Port Gellhorn, a beach bar in the Keys, a pool-party venue with a pink neon sign, a plain old bar with "LIQUOR" running down the side of it, and a venue in Vice City whose awning literally says "Adult Entertainment", which is as close as Rockstar gets to a press release, and frankly closer than most of them. The Extended Look footage has a rooftop bar in it too.

That is at least six nightlife venues in the marketing before the game is out. GTA V did not show us that many in its first year on sale, and the best one was locked.

What none of this tells you is what happens inside. Rockstar has not shown a single second of a bar interaction. It has not shown anyone ordering a drink. The club interior in the screenshots is a dance floor and lights. Beautiful. Also, until proven otherwise, a painting. I have been burned before. See: twelve years.

What the paperwork says

Now the bit that is reported, not confirmed, so read it with that in mind. Before it was taken down, the PEGI content summary for GTA 6 reportedly said players can pay for private dances in night clubs, with a level of hands-on interaction I will describe as "GTA V, but the dancers will be filing a complaint". If that holds, the strip club is at least a thing you do rather than a thing you look at. That is a low bar. GTA V cleared it, then charged you forty dollars and threw you out. And look, I know what half of you are thinking, and no, that is not a feature, that is a fifteen-second video you watch once and then feel weird about. Everybody wants the thing. Nobody wants to be the guy who admits it. I am saying it so you do not have to.

And then there are the leaks. The October gameplay leak reportedly includes a strip club scene. I have not watched it, I am not linking it, and I would ask you not to send it to me, because it is from an old development build and because I would like to see Vice City properly, in November, like a person. Nothing in this piece depends on it.

What Vox actually wants

Fine. Rockstar is going to do the strip club. Every GTA since 2002 has done the strip club, with the enthusiasm of a man who has told the same joke at every wedding for twenty years. It is in the ratings, it is in Boobie Ike's bio, and it is coming whether I write about it or not. So here is what I want from the rest of the night.

Bars where you go with people. Jason and Lucia are a couple. The character switching happens instantly when they are together. The single most obvious use of that is two people at a bar, and I will be insulted on behalf of the entire medium if the only drink in Leonida is the one you buy at the Vanilla Unicorn's spiritual successor. Give me the GTA IV bar back. Give me the boat camera. Give me Lucia dragging Jason out by the collar at 4 AM while he insists he is fine.

Clubs that are actually open. Not three. Not one in Vice City and a locked door in Port Gellhorn. If a sign is lit, let me in. Rockstar has said this is the most detailed street-level city it has ever built, with more interiors than any GTA before it. Nightlife is the test of that claim, because a club with a locked door is a billboard, and I did not pay eighty dollars for billboards.

The Criminal Profile should notice. GTA 6 tracks how you behave. The Extended Look showed petting a dog nudges it. So should drinking yourself stupid and driving home. So should starting a fight in a bar. So should being the person who tips. If the game is going to judge me for the dog, it can judge me for the bar, and honestly I would like a little credit for the tipping.

The social feed should notice too. The in-game phone has a feed where NPC posts go viral. The Real Dimez film themselves in a car. If I cannot end up on that feed falling off a bar stool in Ocean Beach with 40,000 strangers laughing at me, somebody at Rockstar North has missed an open goal. Humiliation is content. Ask the Real Dimez.

Let the money flow back. Vice City let you own the Pole Position and the Malibu. Boobie Ike owns a strip club, a studio and the real estate around both, and Rockstar describes that as the engine of the Vice City music scene. If the story walks me through his business and never lets me take a piece of it, I will spend the next five years posting about it. You have been warned.

What I do not want

A strip club that is just a pervert's photo mode. GTA V's was, and the internet treated it accordingly, which is to say the Vanilla Unicorn has a YouTube footprint it did not earn. Yes, I want the adult stuff in the game. So do you. The ratings boards have already told your mum. But if the whole thing is a loading screen for a jiggle physics demo, Rockstar has wasted a club, and I will have wasted a Thursday. Rockstar is better than that now. The Real Dimez have personalities, Boobie Ike has a bio, the dancers at the club that books the acts should be people too. The adult content in this game is going to be there. I would like it to also be good.

The bottom line

Confirmed: strip clubs, clubbing, bars on the signs, adult content on the ratings. Reported: private dances you pay for. Unknown: literally everything else, including whether a single one of those doors opens.

Rockstar has one month to show me a bar. If it does not, I will find out on November 19 along with the rest of you, and you will hear about it either way. Tip your dancers. Do not drive home. And if you do drive home, do it in the game, where the worst that happens is Lucia judging you and a fifth star.