Tright here are solely a handful of online game makers who’ve had as profound an impact on the business as Dan Houser. The co-founder of Rockstar Video games, and its lead author, labored on all the GTA titles since the groundbreaking third instalment, in addition to each Pink Lifeless Redemption adventures. However then, in 2019, he took an prolonged break from the firm which ended together with his official departure. Now he’s again with a brand new studio and a spread of initiatives, and 12 years after we last interviewed him, he’s prepared to speak about what comes subsequent.
“Ending these large initiatives and interested by doing one other one is actually intense,” he says about his choice to go. “I’d been in full manufacturing mode each single day from the very begin of every mission to the very finish, for 20 years. I stayed so lengthy as a result of I beloved the video games. It was an actual privilege to be there, but it surely was most likely the proper time to depart. I turned 45 simply after Pink Lifeless 2 got here out. I assumed, properly, it’s most likely a superb time to strive working on another stuff.”
At first, he appeared into movie or TV writing, however didn’t like what he discovered. “That world was not overly excited by me and I used to be not overly excited by them,” he says. “I’ve spent 20 years speaking about how video games are the coming medium and now they are the medium […] you have a look at TV and the budgets and the amount of cash they’ll generate, however the inventive ambition is so small at instances”. It appeared to Houser that it will be simpler to come at the business with IP that had already been generated. So he moved to Santa Monica and shaped Absurd Ventures, bringing in Greg Borrud (founding father of Seismic Games and Pandemic Studios) as head of video games and, as COO, Wendy Smith, beforehand at the New Yorker and Ralph Lauren, and a White Home particular assistant throughout Invoice Clinton’s presidency.
It was clear from the begin it wouldn’t simply be a video video games studio. In 2024, the firm launched the 12-part story podcast A Higher Paradise, a dystopian thriller about an formidable on-line recreation world overseen by a robust AI presence that begins to grow to be sentient – with devastating penalties. Its creator is the mysterious tech billionaire Dr Mark Tyburn, a British inventor who intends the recreation as a digital utopia, then abandons it when issues go awry. In some methods it is a satire on our present digital oligarchy, during which billionaire tech bros wield astronomical affect over society.
“All of those tech firms begin out with grandiose ambitions, this ‘we are going to save the world by togetherness’-type gibberish,” he says. “We’ve created a few of the strongest individuals in historical past when it comes to attain and thoughts management. These individuals find yourself residing with far extra money than anybody’s ever had. And it feels, as somebody who lives in the society that they’ve helped create, that there are moments in these journeys once they should have felt their product was not fairly what they supposed it to be and was doing unexpected hurt, and … they went out of their method to be sure that was not regulated. That Faustian second I discover fascinating, and that’s not to say I wouldn’t make the similar selection or decide them for it, I simply discover it fascinating.”
Tellingly maybe, the firm at the centre of A Higher Paradise, Tyburn Industria, feels way more like a video games studio than a social media mega-corp. Additionally, the lead protagonist is a author who finds himself at the centre of the recreation’s improvement. Is there a component of autobiography right here?
“Yeah, after all – at that degree,” says Houser. “However I additionally wished to write about video games and tech in a method that felt genuine. To lean barely extra into the video games facet when it comes to the workplace atmosphere was very easy for me. I do know what it’s like to work in a video games firm clearly. I wished to try to deliver that to life in a method that felt actual and to seize a few of the micro dramas.”
Having turned A Higher Paradise right into a novel, Houser’s Santa Monica studio is now working on an open-world online game model. He’s not saying the way it will slot in with the podcast, simply that Mark Tyburn and the AI at the coronary heart of his recreation, NigelDave (a wildly clever program, fixated by people however with no understanding of how they operate), will each determine in the motion.
Additionally in improvement at the firm’s second studio in San Rafael, is the Absurdaverse, a comedy universe populated by a menagerie of bizarre characters, from a skeletal warrior to an ageing hippy. The corporate is planning a collection of animated TV reveals and/or films for the idea, but additionally one other open world recreation, which Houser has described as, “a residing sitcom”. Once more, he’s imprecise on the details, but it surely seems to be to be a extra story-driven take on The Sims, presumably utilising AI to create emergent narratives round the characters and their lives. “We’re attempting to use the recollections of NPCs in a enjoyable method,” he says. “Simply attempting to make it a bit extra alive. You’ll see once we speak about it extra, but it surely is shaping up very well. It’s a very gamey recreation – very mechanics pushed. With each video games, we’re attempting to make them actually sturdy on mechanics, actually enjoyable to play, accessible, however loads of depth.”
Houser is additionally planning a recreation round the firm’s third IP, the comedian ebook collection American Caper, co-written with fellow Rockstar alumnus, Lazlow. With its forged of escaped convicts, crooked attorneys and Mexican magnificence queens, it is maybe the closest out of all his new initiatives to Grand Theft Auto. Which is maybe why the interactive model is stepping into a special course. “I’m not making an open-world recreation for that,” says Houser. “We’re truly taking a look at perhaps doing extra of a narrative recreation. We’re nonetheless form of exploring it.”
We speak a bit of bit about the present prevalence of ceaselessly video games resembling Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox and the way they’re sucking up lots of the world’s playtime. However Houser is adamant that there’s nonetheless an unlimited viewers for mature single-player narrative experiences – and that’s what he’s aiming at.
“We’re attempting to be formidable, to make new stuff,” he says. “At some degree [our projects] are conventional console video games, accessible, however action-oriented story-driven open world console video games – however then at the similar time, we’re doing it a barely completely different method or with barely completely different subject material. Three years in the past we had been watching a type of PlayStation showcases, and in case you blinked and missed the credit score sequences, you couldn’t inform the place one recreation ended and the different started. The whole lot was form of darkish purple and about area ninjas. They had been about this apocalypse or that apocalypse however at all times felt the similar.”
“That’s high-quality. A few of them are superb video games. However we had been like, properly, we’ve obtained restricted cash and we are beginning from scratch. We have now to have good tales and enjoyable dialogue, and ensure our gameplay is superb and accessible, and our artwork course has to be contemporary – in any respect factors, it has to really feel completely different. We have now to make stuff the place individuals go, ‘Nicely, I’ve by no means performed a recreation about that’, after which deal with the viewers, not simply as avid gamers, however as human beings.”
So he’s not nervous about the business’s present obsession with live-service multiplayer mega-games? “I nonetheless assume there is sufficient of an viewers who need new stuff and single player-led stuff,” he says. After which in his characteristically self-deprecating method he provides: “I hope so. Or we’re in a bit of little bit of hassle.”
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