Former Rockstar Boss Talks New Games And GTA While Red Dead Online Celebrates Thanksgiving
- Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser revealed Absurdaverse, a comedic open-world game with linked animated shows from his new studio, Absurd Ventures.
- Plans for a Trevor secret-agent DLC and a full GTA set in London were scrapped—partly to prioritize Red Dead Redemption 2.
- Rockstar is marking Thanksgiving in Red Dead Online with free food, double rewards, and 10x RDO$ for hunting turkeys.
- Houser says future titles can be more emotional and alive, teasing bold new ideas from Absurd Ventures.
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Absurd Ventures
Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar and lead writer on multiple GTA and Red Dead Redemption titles, recently appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast and gave an update on his new studio, as well as details on failed Grand Theft Auto games.
Fridman is a research scientist at MIT, who started his podcast by looking at human-robot interaction and associated topics, before branching out into subjects as diverse as paleontology and drugs. Houser left Rockstar in 2020 and, earlier this year, revealed more details on his new studio Absurd Ventures. He spoke to Fridman about one of the multimedia projects his new studio has been working on.
“Absurdaverse is a comedy universe we’re developing, that will be an open world game and then some loosely adjacent stories that we’re going to make as animated TV shows or possibly animated movies.”
“We’re building the game up in San Rafael at the moment, and it’s early days, but it’s looking very exciting,” he added. “And it’s like….trying to make a game that feels a little bit like a living sitcom.”
GTA Needs Guns
Houser also touched on two GTA ideas that ultimately failed to take off. One was GTA V single-player DLC featuring fan-favorite Trevor as a secret agent, and the other was a follow-up to GTA: London 1969, a mission pack released on PS1 in 1999.
“I think for a full GTA game, we always decided that there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else. You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters,” Houser said.
And as for the Trevor DLC: “It never quite came together, and it was never finished. It was about half done when it got abandoned. But I think if that had come out, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to make Red Dead 2. So, there are always compromises.”
Gobble Gobble
Houser has gone on record before to say that Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best thing he’s ever worked on, at least from a narrative point of view. Although the base game was released in 2019, its multiplayer component, Red Dead Online, is still very popular and ongoing.
Gamers were anticipating Rockstar to make a game announcement soon about GTA VI, but they instead received news that Red Dead Online is celebrating Thanksgiving with a feast of in-game treats. These include free food, drink and provisions in Saloons from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, with current bonuses including earning 2x on things like selling to traders and completing trader sales.
Rockstar also revealed that there’s a host of Showdown events this month, exclusive and returning costumes, and a massive 10x RDO$ for any players who manage to bag a turkey from Nov. 25.
The Future of Video Games
Fridman and Houser finished their chat by talking about the future of games, which is a topic that’s becoming more popular to talk about. Where game designers like Hideo Kojima and David Cage see the future of games as being closer to movies, Houser believes that they can at least be more emotional.
“Some of the stuff we’re working on now is going to do stuff that people haven’t really seen before. And I think that games can get so much better. They can feel so much more alive.”
For now, Absurd Ventures has books and comics available: A Better Paradise is a novel about a forgotten AI, and is also set to become a TV series and game; American Caper is a crime-fiction saga published by Dark Horse Comics.
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