Rockstar co-founder refuses to play GTA 6 but not because of any bad blood

Dan Houser, who was the lead writer on nearly every GTA game, is skipping GTA 6 entirely and isn’t even paying attention to the trailers.

While there are no exact pre-order figures for GTA 6, publisher Take-Two has described them as ‘unprecedented’ and it’s estimated the game will make half as much money as GTA 5 has made in its lifetime in only a week.

In other words, Rockstar Games doesn’t need to worry about not enough people playing GTA 6. Even if you yourself are skipping it, you probably know many people who have already put money down for the game.

A few public figures have also expressed great enthusiasm for the game, such as Lewis Hamilton and Millie Bobby Brown, but one person who has no intention of playing it is none other than Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser.

This might come as a shock considering Houser was one of the main creative forces behind the modern GTA series, having served as lead writer and creative director on most of the 3D games until his departure from Rockstar in 2020.

Before you go assuming his refusal to play the game is due to some bad blood, or personal distaste for any GTA that doesn’t involve him, Houser explains that he’s avoiding anything to do with the new game because he doesn’t want it to ‘distract or disrupt me creatively.’

He doesn’t want to see what GTA 6 is doing and wind up being influenced by its ideas, inadvertently or otherwise.

‘I will try and avoid it because I always try and avoid stuff that’s going to distract or disrupt me creatively,’ Houser told Variety, meaning he’s not even paid attention to the trailers or the Netflix preview.

‘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.’

Houser is currently working at Absurd Ventures, a studio he founded in 2021 which has two open world video games in production.

You’d think it would be good to know what the competition is doing if Houser wants to ensure his games remain innovative, but he adds that he has a team of people whose job is to keep up with the latest trends.

Houser goes out of his way to avoid playing any open world games at all, saying that he ‘can almost deconstruct the strengths and weaknesses of the team in real-time and it’s distracting.’

This is apparently nothing new for Houser, as he admits he stopped watching Western movies during his work on Red Dead Redemption, which could be argued is oddly antithetical to any sort of creative endeavour. Although it clearly worked out since Red Dead Redemption and its sequel were huge successes for Rockstar.

As for GTA 6, while it’s only about a month away, there’s still some hunger from fans for new info or footage. Just recently, fans have been poring over ratings listings, which refer to sex scenes and cocaine usage as a gameplay mechanic.

Earlier today, a photo of an alleged American TV schedule was shared online via Reddit that suggests a new television ad for GTA 6 will start airing soon.

The original post has since been deleted but this is the internet, so of course someone else saved it and re-uploaded the photo for posterity.

There’s no guarantee the ad will feature any new footage, though, and since it’s described as a TV spot, it may not even be particularly long, but it’s further evidence that marketing for GTA 6 is beginning to ramp up.

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