After two decades of creating some of gaming's most beloved titles, Dan Houser shocked the industry when he walked away from Rockstar Games in 2020. Now, the co-founder has finally opened up about what drove him to leave the empire he helped build.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Houser revealed that the sheer scale of projects like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 had become overwhelming.
It's worth noting that Houser was instrumental in the development of every Grand Theft Auto game, especially starting with Grand Theft Auto III. Grand Theft Auto V was released in 2013, after which full development on Red Dead Redemption 2 started until it was launched in 2018. Before this, Houser was also hard at work on Grand Theft Auto IV, a personal favorite of his and former Rockstar North lead developer, Obbe Vermeij.
The numbers alone are staggering. Red Dead Redemption 2 contained approximately 450,000 lines of dialogue. That's not counting the countless other moving parts that needed to come together perfectly. For context, that's more dialogue than many television series produce across their entire runs.
What really pushed Houser over the edge was the time commitment these projects demanded. Grand Theft Auto 6, for instance, is set to arrive a full 13 years after its predecessor. That's over a decade of work on a single project, even if the actual development only began in earnest in 2020.
This can lead to creative burnout. Working on games of this magnitude means sacrificing personal projects, other creative outlets, and essentially putting your life on hold while you shepherd these massive productions to completion.
True enough, rather than spending another decade on a single massive game, the other half of the UK's biggest gaming moguls is now juggling multiple creative projects at once. His new company, Absurd Ventures, is working on novels, comics, audio dramas, and yes, even video games, but nothing on the scale of what he left behind at Rockstar.
