After leaving Rockstar Games in 2020, Dan Houser founded Absurd Ventures. Very discreet in the media, the co-founder of the company responsible for GTA took part in Lex Fridman’s podcast.
The producer and screenwriter of GTA, Bully, and Red Dead Redemption was asked about various topics. One of them was Agent, a PS3 exclusive announced in 2009. It was supposed to be an open-world action-espionage game set in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the project never saw the light of day… And Houser explained why.
He simply stated that after several iterations, the concept didn’t work. Rockstar even tried to transpose the story of Agent to the modern day, but without success.
« We worked hard on several versions of an open-world spy game, but it never came to fruition. Agent went through about five different versions. I concluded that it didn’t work. I think about it sometimes, I lie in bed and think about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that what makes these stories really good as movie scripts doesn’t work as video games, or I need to think of a different way to adapt them as video games.
That was one of the versions (the story set in the 1970s). There was another one set in the present day… We had so many different versions of this game, we worked on it with so many different teams.
It’s interesting to hear Dan Houser’s perspective on the cancellation of Agent. His journey after Rockstar Games seems intriguing, and it’s always fascinating to learn about the behind-the-scenes decisions in the gaming industry. Looking forward to seeing what he creates next!