Sports and minigames

Reporting on preview footage lists basketball, golf, pool and off-road riding among the confirmed side activities. Some of that is visible without needing anyone's word for it.

What can be seen

The daytime Vice City aerial has a basketball court in the middle of it with a game in progress. One of the Cal Hampton screenshots has him playing pool in a bar. The Ambrosia material includes the Thrillbilly Mud Club, first shown back in trailer one, which is off-road riding as a social event rather than a race.

Why the small ones matter

Minigames are the connective tissue of a Rockstar game. Grand Theft Auto V had golf, tennis, darts and yoga, and none of them were the reason anybody bought it. What they did was give the world something to do between missions that was not shooting, which is what stops an open world feeling like a menu with scenery.

They also do quiet character work. Playing tennis with Michael's wife told you more about that marriage than the cutscenes did.

The Florida choices

Golf is the obvious one and the funniest. Florida has more golf courses than any other US state by a wide margin, and the sport is inseparable from the retirement and property economy the game is clearly going to have opinions about.

Basketball in the city and mud riding in the interior is a neat geographic split: the same idea of an unstructured social activity, done completely differently at either end of the state.

What is not known

None of these has been shown as a playable system. Rockstar has not confirmed a list, and the basketball court in the aerial is scenery until somebody plays on it. Treat the list as reported.