On January 20, 2026, students at the University of Tennessee will attend the world’s first Grand Theft Auto college history class. That’s right: we got a GTA college history class before GTA 6.
‘Grand Theft America: U.S. History Since 1980 through the GTA Video Games’ was devised and will be taught by history professor Tore Olsson, who eagle-eyed IGN fans might remember from our coverage of his Red Dead Redemption American history class — another world first. Accompanying that course was Professor Olsson’s book, Red Dead’s History, and its audiobook narration by none other than Arthur Morgan actor Roger Clark.
It turns out, Professor Olsson had planned to launch his class with GTA 6 firmly under his belt, but Rockstar’s high-profile delay to May 2026 dashed those plans — just as they did those of so many video game publishers. So, with what will no doubt be the biggest entertainment launch of all time waiting in the wings, Professor Olsson will soldier ahead.
In this wide-ranging interview with IGN, Professor Olsson discusses why Grand Theft Auto was the right choice for a history class after Red Dead, what the GTA games get right and wrong in their portrayal of contemporary America, and the place of GTA 6 in the class. But perhaps most important of all, we ask the question: will playing the Grand Theft Auto games count as ‘studying?’
IGN: What’s the basic idea behind this class?
Tore Olsson: Video games are great at conjuring fictional worlds, but they also impact players’ thinking about real-world times and places. And just as Red Dead Redemption 2 has shaped folks’ perception of the nineteenth-century American West or Ghost of Tsushima has informed their vision of feudal Japan, millions of people around the globe imagine contemporary America through the lens of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Just think of how many GTA veterans have recognized landmarks in Los Angeles and New York thanks to their hours in Los Santos and Liberty City!
In my class, I take seriously GTA’s fictional representation of the United States: its characters, its urban and rural landscapes, and its storylines. And I use that world as the framing device for a serious history class that examines what’s actually taken place in the United States over the last half-century. The class is much more about American history than the games themselves, but GTA provides the framework that structures our exploration of the past. My hope is that after the class, students will never look at these games, or modern America, the same again.
IGN: The Red Dead Redemption series, which you’ve worked with in the past, is obviously historical in its framing. Few people think of the Grand Theft Auto games in the same way. How can the GTA games’ contemporary setting serve as the backbone of a college history class?
Tore Olsson: Of course, most folks wouldn’t put GTA in the same category as games set in distant eras, like Red Dead, Assassin’s Creed, or Kingdom Come: Deliverance. But because the franchise is now nearly 30 years old, and because some of the early titles were set a decade or two before their release date, the games capture a particular historical epoch: the United States from 1980 to the present. Vice City Stories (set in 1984) and Vice City (1986) cover the 1980s. San Andreas (1992) and Liberty City Stories (1998) speak to the ‘90s, and then 3, 4, 5, and soon 6 provide different snapshots of the twenty-first century.
I really believe that the years between 1980 and today mark a distinct and cohesive era in American history. If we want to understand the divided and unequal U.S. of today, we have to grapple with what’s happened in that time. 45 years ago, the political fires that burn so hot today were much cooler. Most Americans got their news from the three TV networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS – which presented a very centrist spin on controversial topics. In 1980, the average CEO earned about 25 times the salary of their rank-and-file employees; today it’s nearly 400 times as much. 45 years ago, just over 5% of Americans were immigrants; today the number surpasses 15%. And the U.S. prison population quadrupled between 1980 and 2005.
In many ways, the America of today is unrecognizable from its 1980 version. In my class, we’ll explore how all of this came to change – and we’ll use the fictional world of the GTA games as the window for this exploration.
IGN: What do the GTA games get right in their portrayal of contemporary America? What do they get wrong?
Tore Olsson: Unlike Red Dead Redemption and other historical games, the GTA franchise is a satirical parody of the past (and present), rather than an attempt at faithful recreation, which means it’s almost a waste of time to list what it gets wrong. But just for fun… here’s a few. Every GTA game depicts an America plagued by violence and criminality. This is rather ironic given that homicide and car theft, as two examples, plunged dramatically from the early ‘90s until the pandemic. The games imagine an America largely without suburbs or traffic. (Have you ever actually visited L.A.?) They present a society where most women seem to find their primary employment in sex work, and where people of color are often gang members. It’s not hard to see the flaws (and ugliness) in such a portrayal. Or what about the fact that no vehicle seems to have door locks?
But I find the games much more interesting – and useful in the class – when their parody rings true. For example, Los Santos, Liberty City, and Vice City are each home to bustling container ports – what 5 calls “the orifice of American capitalism” – that often sit near rusting manufacturing districts. This is spot-on: arguably no technology was more transformative of post-1980 America than the shipping container, which facilitated the global outsourcing of U.S. industry. Or there’s GTA’s radio stations, where much of the games’ sharpest social commentary takes place. In 4 (set in 2008) and 5 (2013), we encounter a highly polarized media landscape where rival political commentators spit acid at each other from separate stations. But the talk radio of the Vice City and San Andreas era are very different: here, an assortment of weirdos debate each other on a single station. It’s an interesting (and perhaps unintentional!) reference to how in 1987 Ronald Reagan began the deregulation of television and radio with the repeal of 1949’s “fairness doctrine,” which paved the way to overtly partisan networks like Fox News and MSNBC.
IGN: Can you give an example how you plan to use the games’ storylines to teach historical content?
Tore Olsson: I’ve invested more hours than I care to admit in playing these games, and I’m eager to use their plots and characters to teach big historical topics. I’m perhaps most excited to use San Andreas, set primarily in a fictional Los Angeles of 1992. As many know, the game follows Carl “C.J.” Johnson as he returns to the West Coast, seeking to evict drug dealers from his neighborhood and then free his brother from prison, while crooked cops seek to derail his plans. The narrative climax of the game comes when these police officers are found innocent of their crimes, which triggers a vast urban rebellion against the miscarriage of justice. “Los Santos will burn tonight,” declares an in-game news anchor ominously.
It’s probably obvious to many that this drama is an allusion to the L.A. Riots of April and May 1992, one of the most significant turning points in contemporary U.S. history, but also one that is widely misunderstood. Explaining the origins and meaning of this violent convulsion is a key goal of my class. Most folks understand the 1992 riots as a knee-jerk reaction to the videotaped police beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the near-total acquittal of the officers charged. But that explanation lacks backstory and context, some of which San Andreas hints at, but much of which is absent from the game.
Immigration, policing, capitalism, drugs, government policies – these are all towering dilemmas of contemporary America. And it’s my plan to use GTA’s allusion to them as the entry point for a history that I hope will be fresh and timely to many students.
IGN: How can a less-than-serious video game be the foundation for a serious college class?
Tore Olsson: It might surprise or even shock some folks to learn of a college class built around the fiction of a video game, and especially this franchise. But video games have by now moved from the margins to the mainstream. Other forms of pop culture have made the same journey before. 50 years ago, it would have been unthinkable to find a “history of rock’n’roll” class at a college or university, thanks to the music’s edgy and risqué reputation. Today, that exact course is one of the most popular at my institution. Perhaps a generation from now we’ll see many more courses built around the digital fiction of games.
When it comes to GTA’s unique brand of unseriousness, I’ve certainly played enough to become familiar with its cynical, irreverent, and crude sense of humor. Sometimes this is amusing; often it’s not. In my class, I’m steering clear of the games’ most distasteful satire. Instead, I’ll be emphasizing the elements that are most evocative of big social, cultural, and political paradoxes – of which there’s plenty.
And from day one, I’ll take great pains to establish that this is a serious college class that will handle weighty and difficult topics, which we’ll always approach with sensitivity and respect. I’ll make clear that my classroom is a professional environment for students, nothing like their friend’s basement where they may have played GTA for the first time. I’m confident that my 20 years of experience teaching challenging subjects – and my four years of working through such material via the Red Dead games – have prepared me to navigate the unique demands of teaching through a complex piece of pop culture like GTA.
There’s also the question of GTA’s nihilistic violence, which has been the subject of controversy many times during its career. In no way do I celebrate or endorse that digital bloodshed. Indeed, the core message of my course is profoundly anti-violent, revealing the common humanity and strivings of all Americans. My hope is that students will walk away from this class with the understanding that Americans are divided today because powerful forces profit from that division, and that a more harmonious future is possible.
IGN: Has there ever been a class like this before?
Tore Olsson: Not really! Certainly there have been other college classes built around pop culture, whether Taylor Swift or HBO’s The Wire, and there are other historians who teach using video games – though it’s fairly rare to see instructors frame a class around one particular game franchise. There’s been a game design course at a Canadian university on GTA, but its goals are very different from what I’ll do as a historian. I’ve searched far and wide but have come across no previous examples of instructors in traditional disciplines who’ve made these games central to a class – which is rather surprising, given how astoundingly popular GTA has become in the last two decades.
IGN: Are students required to buy or play any of the games? Will playing the games count as ‘studying?’
Tore Olsson: I bet many students would embrace that kind of studying! But no, I’m afraid they will be disappointed on that count. As with my previous courses on Red Dead Redemption, I don’t require students to own or play the games during our semester. I’d be anxious asking cash-strapped students to buy a pricy console or gaming PC plus the games themselves. And I never examine students on the fictional content of the games; there’ll never be an exam question about Trevor Philips or Niko Bellic.
However, that’s not to say that the games will be absent from the class – far from it. I begin each lecture by showing game footage or screenshots on our topic of the day. Sometimes I’ll pull out a controller and briefly play on my laptop and projector – perhaps loading shipping containers in the Port of Los Santos – before proceeding to the core historical content. I expect many students will be familiar with the GTA franchise, though ultimately their knowledge of game lore won’t do much to earn them an A. Yet I do hope that their passion for the games’ fictional world will inspire a similar dedication for learning the history that informs the games in the first place.
IGN: What is the place of GTA 6 in the class?
Tore Olsson: I had originally hoped that it would be a major part! I first began planning this class more than a year ago, when GTA 6 was scheduled for release in late Fall of 2025 – well-timed for the start of our semester in January 2026. Of course, the recent delay to May 2026 made that impossible. So yes, that’s why we got a GTA college history class before we got GTA 6! (I really hope 6’s release date doesn’t fall during Spring final exams week, because I’d be very worried about my students’ ability to concentrate…) I certainly plan to integrate the new game into future versions of the course, but for now I’ll have to rely on the older games. Thankfully that’s a ton of material.
IGN: Is it a coincidence that you’re turning to another Rockstar game after RDR, or is there something unique about that developer’s game formula that allows a historian to base a course around?
Tore Olsson: I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Few developers rival Rockstar in terms of the granular detail that goes into their games. But I also think Rockstar is rather rare in their eagerness to comment on the social fabric of American life. Their games – from L.A. Noire through Red Dead through GTA – are all interested in saying something about the unique strangeness of the American experiment. What they say is sometimes thoughtful, sometimes not – but that they’re trying is fascinating.
IGN: What advice do you have for folks who are curious about your class but are not students at the University of Tennessee and can’t enroll in it?
Tore Olsson: First off, follow me on social media – on X/Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok – where I’ll be sharing regular updates about what we’re doing in the class, and my thoughts on GTA 6. I loved the work of adapting my college class on Red Dead Redemption into a book for wider audiences, and it was a dream to work with Roger Clark as the book’s narrator. So I’m very much considering the possibility of doing the same with ‘Grand Theft America’ – perhaps with an equally perfect audiobook narrator? Stay tuned!
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
