{"id":634048,"date":"2025-12-15T14:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T14:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/634048\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T14:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T14:06:12","slug":"he-wrote-the-worlds-most-successful-video-games-now-what-rockstar-co-founder-dan-houser-on-life-after-grand-theft-auto-dan-houser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/634048\/","title":{"rendered":"He wrote the world\u2019s most successful video games \u2013 now what? Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser on life after Grand Theft Auto | Dan Houser"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are only a handful of video game makers who have had as profound an effect on the industry as Dan Houser. The co-founder of Rockstar Games, and its lead writer, worked on all the GTA titles since the groundbreaking third instalment, as well as both Red Dead Redemption adventures. But then, in 2019, he took an extended break from the company which ended with his official departure. Now he\u2019s back with a new studio and a range of projects, and 12 years after we last interviewed him<\/a>, he\u2019s ready to talk about what comes next.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinishing those big projects and thinking about doing another one is really intense,\u201d he says about his decision to go. \u201cI\u2019d been in full production mode every single day from the very start of each project to the very end, for 20 years. I stayed so long because I loved the games. It was a real privilege to be there, but it was probably the right time to leave. I turned 45 just after Red Dead 2 came out. I thought, well, it\u2019s probably a good time to try working on some other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, he looked into film or TV writing, but didn\u2019t like what he found. \u201cThat world was not overly excited by me and I was not overly excited by them,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve spent 20 years talking about how games are the coming medium and now they are the medium [\u2026] you look at TV and the budgets and the amount of money they can generate, but the creative ambition is so small at times\u201d. It seemed to Houser that it would be easier to come at the industry with IP that had already been generated. So he moved to Santa Monica and formed Absurd Ventures, bringing in Greg Borrud (founder of Seismic Games<\/a> and Pandemic Studios) as head of games and, as COO, Wendy Smith, previously at the New Yorker and Ralph Lauren, and a White House special assistant during Bill Clinton\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was a privilege to be there\u2019\u2026 Red Dead Redemption 2. Photograph: Rockstar Games<\/p>\n

It was clear from the start it wouldn\u2019t just be a video games studio. In 2024, the company released the 12-part story podcast A Better Paradise, a dystopian thriller about an ambitious online game world overseen by a powerful AI presence that begins to become sentient \u2013 with devastating consequences. Its creator is the mysterious tech billionaire Dr Mark Tyburn, a British inventor who intends the game as a digital utopia, then abandons it when things go awry. In some ways it is a satire on our current digital oligarchy, in which billionaire tech bros wield astronomical influence over society.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these tech companies start out with grandiose ambitions, this \u2018we are going to save the world through togetherness\u2019-type gibberish,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve created some of the most powerful people in history in terms of reach and mind control. Those people end up living with far more money than anyone\u2019s ever had. And it feels, as someone who lives in the society that they have helped create, that there are moments in those journeys when they must have felt their product was not quite what they intended it to be and was doing unforeseen harm, and \u2026 they went out of their way to ensure that was not regulated. That Faustian moment I find fascinating, and that\u2019s not to say I wouldn\u2019t make the same choice or judge them for it, I just find it interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve created some of the most powerful people in history in terms of reach and mind control<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tellingly perhaps, the company at the centre of A Better Paradise, Tyburn Industria, feels much more like a games studio than a social media mega-corp. Also, the lead protagonist is a writer who finds himself at the centre of the game\u2019s development. Is there an element of autobiography here?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, of course \u2013 at that level,\u201d says Houser. \u201cBut I also wanted to write about games and tech in a way that felt authentic. To lean slightly more into the games side in terms of the office environment was really easy for me. I know what it\u2019s like to work in a games company obviously. I wanted to try and bring that to life in a way that felt real and to capture some of the micro dramas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having turned A Better Paradise into a novel, Houser\u2019s Santa Monica studio is now working on an open-world video game version. He\u2019s not saying how it will fit in with the podcast, just that Mark Tyburn and the AI at the heart of his game, NigelDave (a wildly intelligent program, fixated by humans but with no understanding of how they function), will both figure in the action.<\/p>\n

Also in development at the company\u2019s second studio in San Rafael, is the Absurdaverse, a comedy universe populated by a menagerie of weird characters, from a skeletal warrior to an ageing hippy. The company is planning a series of animated TV shows and\/or movies for the concept, but also another open world game, which Houser has described as, \u201ca living sitcom\u201d. Again, he\u2019s vague on the details, but it looks to be a more story-driven take on The Sims, possibly utilising AI to create emergent narratives around the characters and their lives. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to use the memories of NPCs in a fun way,\u201d he says. \u201cJust trying to make it a bit more alive. You\u2019ll see when we talk about it more, but it is shaping up really well. It\u2019s a completely gamey game \u2013 very mechanics driven. With both games, we\u2019re trying to make them really strong on mechanics, really fun to play, accessible, but plenty of depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A living sitcom\u2019 \u2026 Absurdaverse. Photograph: Absurd Ventures<\/p>\n

Houser is also planning a game around the company\u2019s third IP, the comic book series American Caper, co-written with fellow Rockstar alumnus, Lazlow. With its cast of escaped convicts, crooked lawyers and Mexican beauty queens, it is perhaps the closest out of all his new projects to Grand Theft Auto<\/a>. Which is perhaps why the interactive version is going in a different direction. \u201cI\u2019m not making an open-world game for that,\u201d says Houser. \u201cWe\u2019re actually looking at maybe doing more of a story game. We\u2019re still kind of exploring it.\u201d<\/p>\n

We talk a little bit about the current prevalence of forever games such as Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox and how they\u2019re sucking up a lot of the world\u2019s playtime. But Houser is adamant that there\u2019s still a vast audience for mature single-player narrative experiences \u2013 and that\u2019s what he\u2019s aiming at.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to be ambitious, to make new stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cAt some level [our projects] are traditional console games, accessible, but action-oriented story-driven open world console games \u2013 but then at the same time, we\u2019re doing it a slightly different way or with slightly different subject matter. Three years ago we were watching one of those PlayStation showcases, and if you blinked and missed the credit sequences, you couldn\u2019t tell where one game ended and the other began. Everything was sort of dark purple and about space ninjas. They were about this apocalypse or that apocalypse but always felt the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s fine. Some of them are amazing games. But we were like, well, we\u2019ve got limited money and we are starting from scratch. We have to have good stories and fun dialogue, and make sure our gameplay is amazing and accessible, and our art direction has to be fresh \u2013 at all points, it has to feel different. We have to make stuff where people go, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve never played a game about that\u2019, and then treat the audience, not just as gamers, but as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he\u2019s not worried about the industry\u2019s current obsession with live-service multiplayer mega-games? \u201cI still think there is enough of an audience who want new stuff and single player-led stuff,\u201d he says. And then in his characteristically self-deprecating way he adds: \u201cI hope so. Or we\u2019re in a little bit of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are only a handful of video game makers who have had as profound an effect on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-634048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115723972395460279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}