Dan Houser says he ultimately walked away from Rockstar Games because the massive, drawn-out development cycles of its biggest hits wore him down. After years of living inside projects like GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, he felt he no longer had the strength for another marathon of that scale, so he left and founded Absurd Ventures, which is now preparing to launch its debut novel.

AAA game development is notoriously slow and demanding, often stretching across many years and placing relentless pressure on the people making these games. That pressure can easily turn into burnout and total exhaustion. According to Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, this is exactly what happened to him: the years spent building GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 were so consuming that he could not imagine going through the same ordeal again.

Houser explains that he simply did not feel he had another project of that magnitude left in him, which is why he chose to leave the studio. This is important because working on gigantic AAA productions means being tied to a single game for years at a time, with little room to do anything else. That level of commitment and isolation is precisely what the Rockstar co-founder no longer wanted to endure.

To put things into perspective, Red Dead Redemption 2 alone is believed to have gone through roughly eight years of development.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Dan Houser was unusually candid about his 2020 departure from Rockstar Games – a major turning point for the studio, given that he had writing or creative credits on almost every major game the company released. “The scale of the last couple (GTA 5 and RDR 2) was beyond any imagining. The projects take a long time to make. I don’t know if I had another one of those games in me.” he said.

He added that the sheer size and ambition of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 exceeded even the team’s early expectations, and that he stayed as long as he did because he could rely on the talents of so many gifted colleagues. Over time, however, the endless cycle of huge projects left him drained, and he no longer had the energy to commit to yet another multi-year blockbuster.

After leaving Rockstar, Houser founded Absurd Ventures, which is currently preparing to release a novel titled A Better Paradise next year. In hindsight, his decision looks even more understandable, given that GTA 6 has now been in development for around 13 years – a timescale that runs completely counter to the philosophy that led him to step away. Even so, fans are hoping that the new game will still capture the same magic that turned earlier entries into modern classics.

Source: 4techgamers