Dan Houser still hasn’t seen GTA 6: ‘I will try and avoid it’
The Rockstar Games co-founder explains why he’s avoiding GTA 6’s Extended Reveal
Rockstar Games co-founder and former GTA series writer, Dan Houser, says he still hasn’t watched Grand Theft Auto 6’s extended reveal.
Houser – who wrote and produced its biggest games including Grand Theft Auto 3-5, Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, Bully and Max Payne 3 – left Rockstar in 2020 to found his new company Absurd Ventures, which is creating, among other things, an open-world action game.
Speaking in a new interview with Variety, Houser explained that he’s been actively avoiding paying attention to what Rockstar – helmed by his brother, Sam – is doing with the next GTA, because he doesn’t want his own work to be influenced by it.
“I haven’t seen it yet. I will try and avoid it because I always try and avoid stuff that’s going to distract or disrupt me creatively,” Houser said. “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 claimed that his policy of avoiding media wasn’t limited to GTA and that he doesn’t “play a lot of open-world games” at all.
He explained: “I find when I play them, I can almost deconstruct the strengths and weaknesses of the team in real time and it’s distracting. 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.”
Instead, Houser said his team keeps up with the latest games and trends. “It’s not my job within any company that I’ve ever worked at, thankfully, to be the person that understands what everyone else is doing,” he said.
“I’m trying to think about new ways of doing it. 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.”
According to Houser, Absurd Ventures is currently working on two open-world games. One of these games is a comedy action-adventure, while the other is “definitely less of a comedy”.
