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, and also 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’s back with a new studio and a range of projects, and 12 years after we last interviewed him, he’s ready to talk about what comes next.

“Finishing those big projects and thinking about doing another one is really intense,” he says about his decision to go. “I’d 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’s probably a good time to try working on some other stuff.”

At first, he looked into film or TV writing, but didn’t like what he found. “That world was not overly excited by me and I was not overly excited by them,” he says. “I’ve spent 20 years talking about how games are the coming medium and now they are the medium […] you look at TV and the budgets and the amount of money they can generate, but the creative ambition is so small at times”. 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 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’s presidency.

It was clear from the start it wouldn’t 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 – 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 indeed a satire on our current digital oligarchy, in which billionaire tech bros wield astronomical influence over society.

“All of thes

Dan Houser‘s Absurd Ventures: A New Chapter Beyond Grand Theft Auto

Dan Houser, the creative force behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, isn’t slowing down. He’s launched Absurd Ventures, a new company focused on creating original intellectual property. The goal? To build worlds ripe for storytelling across various mediums, including video games, television, and comics.

Houser’s first major project is Absurdaverse, a comedic metaverse featuring a cast of eccentric characters.It’s described as “a living sitcom,” constantly evolving with new content and interactions. The project isn’t aiming for photorealism; instead, it embraces a deliberately artificial aesthetic. This allows for rapid content creation and a unique visual style. Absurd Ventures is partnering with several studios to bring this vision to life, including Eight Bit Farm, known for its work on Among Us.

The company is also developing a game based on its second IP, the comic book series american Caper, co-written with Lazlow, another rockstar Games veteran. The series follows escaped convicts, crooked lawyers, and beauty queens. Given its similarities to Grand Theft Auto, Houser is intentionally steering the interactive adaptation in a different direction. “I’m not making an open-world game for that,” he states. “we’re actually looking at maybe doing more of a story game. We’re still kind of exploring it.”