Dan Houser on Leaving ‘GTA 6’ Studio Rockstar Games, Starting an Absurd New Company and Why He Doesn’t Play Open-World Games Anymore

“Red Dead Redemption” and “Grand Theft Auto” mastermind Dan Houser is ready to spill the first significant details about his next video game projects.

The co-founder and former head writer of Rockstar Games is currently developing two titles at his new media company, Absurd Ventures, which he formally launched in 2023 following his 2020 exit from Rockstar.

“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,” Houser says on this week’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast. “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.”

The untitled games are just two of the many projects Houser and his longtime writing partner Jeffrey “Lazlow” Jones (a fellow Rockstar alum) have in the works at Absurd Ventures, which is building out its own original IPs beginning with three worlds: “A Better Paradise,” “American Caper” and the “Absurdaverse.” Currently, Absurd is rolling out graphic novels and comics, fiction podcasts, books and animated series, along with the planned games, to give consumers a full transmedia experience in each of these new Houser-created properties.

LISTEN to the full conversation on Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast:

“It’s a privilege to be tied to stuff that was really successful and to have worked in great teams with great people and do innovative new things,” Houser says. “All we’re trying to do now is do a version of that for this period, and try and do it in a new way and see if there’s anything interesting we can say with new IP.”

In order to do that properly, Houser has been tuning out the noise surrounding the upcoming release of “Grand Theft Auto VI,” including the 27-minute extended look presented by Netflix in August.

“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 says. “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.”

This is not exclusive to “GTA” though, as Houser says he doesn’t “play a lot of open-world games” at all anymore: “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.”

Houser says he manages this by having a team full of people who are keeping 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,” Houser says. “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.”

Until Houser is able to fully reveal what his next games look like, there will be speculation about how they will stack up to his previous work, especially after “Grand Theft Auto VI” launches Nov. 19 and the world sees the first “GTA” game made without him.

“In terms of will I always be compared to it? I don’t know,” Houser says. “I mean, hopefully, on some level there could be no greater compliment. On another level, I hope some of the stuff we make is going to be successful in its own right. It’s no problem to have made good things, but of course, if you make good things, if the new stuff’s not as impactful, that’s going to be disappointing in some ways. But it’s still a privilege to make anything, otherwise you’re just always drowning in your own previous creative work.”

Houser says he thinks his job “isn’t to be successful in media,” but “to make things I’m proud of.”

“Certainly, there was a lot of pressure making any ‘GTA’ game when I was on them,” Houser says. “And the way I would control that pressure for me was to say, am I making something with as much integrity as I can muster and am I making something I’m proud of? And does it feel fresh, new? And if that’s the case, let the results fall where they may. And certainly, even with games at Rockstar that were not successful, I was proud of them if we’d done what I thought was a good job. And so that’s going to be the same here. We can’t sit there going, if it’s not the biggest thing ever, I’m a failure. Because then you’ve got to process either, I’m a failure, I’m a success — but it feels just the same. So the work is the creative work, not what the market thinks of it.”

“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Friday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.