Investigate the population of NPCs in Los Santos and analyse how specific demographics are simulated and represented. As you navigate the game world pay attention to how the city population is portrayed in different districts, what animations NPCs perform and how they are programmed to behave in different situations. Finally, make your way to Vespucci district and find a spot where you can observe the life around you. Take screenshots of the NPC in the style of the Humans of New York blog, where photographer Brandon Stanton features portraits of strangers and the personal stories they share with him. You can find some Humans of Los Santos accounts on Instagram (e.g. instagram.com/peopleofgta) as examples. Accompany your images by writing down your observations, taking inspiration from Michael Crowe’s “An Attempt at exhausting a place in GTA Online”. Crowe reenacts George Perec’s 1974 “An Attempt at exhausting a place in Paris”, a publication in which the author collected his observations – about all the things that usually go unnoticed – while sitting in Saint-Sulpice Square in Paris over the course of three days.

Wander from the city of Los Santos towards the more rural areas of Blaine County. Look more closely at how aspects such as class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and social beliefs are represented in specific communities and districts, and reflect on the politics of simulation and representation as enacted by the game. Choose a group of people you are interested in documenting. If you head over to Dignity Village you can find a tent city founded by individuals with anti-capitalist beliefs. Use the in-game camera to document the social and political issues of the simulation, drawing inspiration from Morten Rockford Ravn’s Fear and Loathing in GTA V and Alan Butler’s Down and Out in Los Santos.

Re-imagine the lives of Los Santos’ NPCs by creating your own visual narratives and stories. Look at Casey Brooks’ You Only Live Forever work with images and text, and develop a new storyline for some of the inhabitants of San Andreas. You could also use the manuals to spawn new NPCs and stage them around the game world to create your shots. Switch your approach from documentary photographer to a studio photographer and use the game as your set rather than a given reality to document without intervention. Visit the affluent district of Vinewood and stage your NPCs using a trainer mod to create a visual essay about class, or intervene in the gender politics at play at the Vanilla Unicorn Strip Club, where sex workers and objectified women NPCs perform looping animations for the male gaze of the player.