In 2020, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser left the company after over two decades as one of the driving forces behind the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises. While Houser has since launched a new company, Absurd Ventures, he recently shared his thoughts on Grand Theft Auto 6 and explained why Bully 2 never materialized.
During a panel appearance at Los Angeles Comic Con (via IGN), Houser was asked about how he feels regarding GTA 6, the first Grand Theft Auto game in decades that he had no involvement with.
“I think it’s a great privilege to have worked on something that big–you know, I wrote the last 10 or 11 of them, so I think the world’s probably had enough GTA from me … There’s always a new story, so it’s not going to be a story that I wrote or a character set that I developed. I think it’s going to be exciting. The game will be great, I’m sure.”
Houser has previously voiced his desire to see a sequel to Bully, the 2006 game set at a boarding school. When he was asked about the reasons why Bully 2 didn’t come to pass, Houser cited “bandwidth issues,” before adding, “If you’ve got a small lead creative team and a a small senior leadership crew, you just can’t do all the projects you want … With certainly how we’re structuring it, [we were] trying to do two projects with a very fairly small team, and just really trying to think through that. ‘How can we do that and keep them both moving?'”
Picking a favorite game from his time at Rockstar proved to be difficult for Houser. He noted that Red Dead Redemption 2 was “the best thing that I worked on [and the] best single kind of realization of open-world storytelling thematic consistency and understanding how the games are assembled to take you on an an emotional journey.” He also cited GTA 4, GTA 5, Bully, and Red Dead Redemption as some of his best experiences at Rockstar.
Houser’s next project is a comic book miniseries called American Caper, which will be released by Dark Horse Comics on November 12. He also said that Absurd Ventures’ first video games will be a currently untitled “open-world third-person comedy,” and A Better Paradise, which he described as “a third-person dystopian tragedy.” Both games are still early in development.
