Dan Houser helped write and produce every Grand Theft Auto as well as Red Dead Redemption 2. He was president of creative at Rockstar Games, the company he co-founded with his brother Sam Houser, at the time he left in 2020. He’s now working on new projects, including a comedic open-world game, and says he can’t watch the GTA 6 gameplay reveal because it would “distract” him creatively.
In a new podcast interview with Variety, Houser admitted that despite his connection with the Grand Theft Auto franchise and the fact that his brother is still in charge of Rockstar Games, the former GTA writer has no idea what was shown in the GTA 6 gameplay reveal that premiered in August on Netflix.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” said Houser. “I will try and avoid it because I always try and avoid stuff that’s going to distract or disrupt me creatively. And given that I spend a large amount of time trying to make open-world games, and the rest of my conscious time trying to figure out innovative ways to market them, I don’t need to see what other people are [doing]. I’m always trying to think about new ways of doing it, not sit there in some kind of comparison of what I would have done differently.”
Houser further explained that he can’t really play open-world games anymore because he ends up deconstructing how the game was made, and it distracts him too much.
“I find when I play them, I can almost deconstruct the strengths and weaknesses of the team in real time, and it’s distracting,” said Houser. “I’m always thinking, ‘Well, their animation team is weak, but I think this game design is fantastic.’ And, ‘Oh, I can imagine that meeting when they discuss this feature.’ I’m not a game designer; I’m a sort of creative director. So I’m trying to always find new things that haven’t been done before, or that I can steal from older media, quite frankly, or just inspired me, or things I always thought about.”
The former Rockstar Games head writer explained that “thankfully” he’s never needed to “be the person that understands what everyone else is doing,” so he doesn’t need to play all the new open-world games. Instead, other people at his new company, Absurd Ventures, founded in 2023, play all the new open-world games that come out for him.
“I’m trying to think about new ways of doing it,” said Houser.
“So when we worked on Red Dead Redemption, as soon as we started working, I never watched another Western. I never watched The Sopranos until after I left Rockstar. I saw one episode, because my girlfriend-now-wife and I did watch the finale in real time. I’d not seen any of it before that moment. And then I watched it all during COVID. And I’m grateful. It’s so good that it would have disrupted everything I did on GTA had I watched at the time. So I really try and avoid things that I think are going to overly influence me.”
As for what Houser is working on now, he is building out a few different multimedia franchises via Absurd Ventures. So far, the company has only released audio dramas, comic books, and novels. But it’s also developing two video games based on these media franchises.
“One is an open-world comedy which is trying to really lean into comedy and character memory, and that we’ll have more information on in the next few months,” said Houser. “And the other is a dystopian sci-fi about a video game development gone very wrong, and about a rogue AI that discovered sentience. But unfortunately, it was made by two people that didn’t like each other, so it doesn’t like itself.”