Rockstar New England’s role in Grand Theft Auto VI is one part of a larger project whose development Rockstar has not publicly detailed. The Andover studio’s contribution is known largely through outside reporting, leaving its exact staffing and the scope of its current work unconfirmed by the company.
The studio is Rockstar New England, and according to MassLive, much of the artificial intelligence technology that guides the game's non-player characters, along with cars, boats and aircraft not actively driven by a player, is developed there. That work does not stay local; it is shared across a global team spanning several Rockstar studios, per the same report.
Massachusetts video game industry executives estimate that Rockstar New England has between 150 and 200 employees, MassLive reports, though the company has not confirmed a headcount. Rockstar Games did not respond to the outlet’s interview requests, leaving the estimate and job postings among the limited public information about the studio’s size and work.
From a Hundred-Person Startup to a Global AI Hub
Rockstar New England began as Mad Doc Software, founded by Ian Lane Davis. Davis grew up in Andover, attended Phillips Academy and Dartmouth College, and earned a doctorate in artificial intelligence and robotics at Carnegie Mellon. After three years as a technical director at Activision in Santa Monica, he started Mad Doc with one employee; the company grew to about 100 workers before it was acquired.
Take-Two Interactive bought Mad Doc in March 2008 for about $6 million in cash, stock and development advances, renaming it Rockstar New England, the station's report notes. Davis stayed on as the studio's head after the sale, according to ZMCLP. Before the acquisition, Mad Doc had already worked on a Rockstar game called Bully, giving the Andover team an early foothold inside the Rockstar family.
Since then, the studio has contributed to every major Rockstar release, including Grand Theft Auto V, which came out in 2013. Recent job postings for the Andover studio describe in-office rather than remote roles, with openings for environment and character artists, graphics and UI programmers, technical designers, quality assurance staffers and tools programmers, and base salaries ranging from about $58,000 for an admin coordinator to nearly $180,000 for a principal data engineer, per the same account.
Why Anticipation Is Running So High
Hank Howie, a local gaming industry executive, described the moment as unusually significant for the regional scene: “I don't think there has ever been a game that has had more focus and anticipation.” Tim Loew, who co-founded the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute, said the industry has a longstanding habit of keeping quiet about projects in development, making secrecy part of the appeal as well as a marketing strategy.
That hunger for the next installment has real financial stakes behind it. Some analysts expect the next Grand Theft Auto to sell 40 million copies on PlayStation and Xbox and generate more than $3 billion in revenue in its first four months, according to Bloomberg. Its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto V, has sold 230 million copies, making it the bestselling nonmobile game of all time, per Bloomberg's reporting.
A Once-Dominant Boston Gaming Scene
Rockstar New England is not the only studio with a foothold in the region. Warner Bros. Games' Needham studio worked on the mobile game Game of Thrones: Dragonfire, released earlier this year, and CD Projekt Red is working on Cyberpunk 2 out of its Watertown office, MassLive reports.
The region's gaming footprint is a shadow of what it once was, however. Mike Dornbrook told the Boston Globe that “thirty-five years ago, the Boston area was second only to the [San Francisco] Bay Area in concentration of computer game companies,” a ranking that has since slipped considerably.
Nationally, the industry itself has contracted. A 2026 economic impact report estimates the U.S. video game industry had 82,930 direct jobs in 2025, according to theesa.com, but that same report found total U.S. video game industry employment fell by more than 21,100 workers compared to its 2023 database. Massachusetts alone accounted for an estimated 1,308 direct video game industry jobs in 2025, supporting roughly 4,075 jobs and $1.547 billion in economic output through total interstate impacts, per the report.
What employment figures can—and can’t—show
Direct employment figures and broader estimates of jobs supported through economic impacts describe different measures, and neither gives a headcount for a particular studio. A separate Game Developers Conference survey found that 11% of developer respondents said they had been laid off in the previous year. That response is survey evidence of job insecurity, not an official count of industry job losses or a finding about Rockstar New England. Massachusetts’ broader game-development activity is reflected in programs as well as employment estimates. MassDigi says that since its establishment in 2011 it has worked with hundreds of students and published more than 60 games, offering a separate measure of the state’s development infrastructure.
Against that backdrop, a studio tucked into Andover helping shape one of the most anticipated games in entertainment history stands out. Whether or not Rockstar Games ever details publicly what its Massachusetts team built, the Nov. 19 release will be the clearest signal yet of how far that quiet office's reach extends.
