{"id":60608,"date":"2026-06-14T09:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T01:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=60608"},"modified":"2026-06-14T09:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T01:45:09","slug":"at-tribeca-festival-panel-rockstar-co-founder-dan-houser-says-theres-no-right-way-to-play-an-open-world-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=60608","title":{"rendered":"At Tribeca Festival Panel, Rockstar Co-Founder Dan Houser Says There\u2019s No Right Way to Play an Open-World Game"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Dan Houser doesn\u2019t care that <\/em>much if you get all the way to the story credits on his games, as long as you\u2019re having fun in the worlds he\u2019s created. \u201cIf someone enjoyed a game, that’s great,\u201d the Rockstar co-founder and Grand Theft Auto\/Red Dead Redemption writer said at a panel at the Tribeca Festival in New York City on Saturday. \u201cIf you can\u2019t finish a story, but you loved it in other ways: Great, I don’t care. I mean, I would like it if you finish the story because I spent ages on it.\u2029If you enjoyed it, that’s enough for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Houser\u2019s longtime creative partner Lazlow \u2014 who founded the multimedia studio Absurd Ventures with Houser after leaving Rockstar in 2020 \u2014 also sat on the panel, adding: \u201cWe also love burying very deep Easter eggs and games. Sometimes they take one or two years or longer for players to discover. I mean, we love burying stuff so deep that sometimes three or four years goes by, I’m like, \u2018Maybe this makes it too hard to find.\u2019 And somebody finds it and then it blows up on Reddit, and we’re like, \u2018Yay.\u2019\u201d Just earlier this year, Red Dead Redemption 2 players discovered a spiderweb mystery<\/u> that had gone unnoticed for seven years since the game\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe whole point of an open world game is we provide guides,\u201d Houser said. \u201cWe want you to experience the story. Our goal was always \u2014 from GTA 3 onwards \u2014 to try and get more and more people to finish the story. And the numbers went up and up; they used to be pretty level.\u2029But ultimately, that’s up to the player. The players enjoy being in the world, mucking around, doing whatever they want to do, messing with the systems. The most fun thing about the game isn’t any rubbish we write, it’s the systems that we make. <\/p>\n

\u201c[What\u2019s] always gonna be the most fun is being in this world, seeing what happens when you jump off this building, when you punch that person, you drive that car, when you interact with this thing, or that thing, whatever way,\u201d Houser continued. \u201cThat’s always gonna have a sort of magical quality to it, and we are on some level on the story side, just the icing on the cake.\u2029We can’t be precious about what they do. We can encourage them to play it the way we want them to play it. But we have to give them agency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lazlow also spoke to the difficulty of creating fleshed-out satirical worlds that, when they\u2019re crafting them, seem patently deranged until reality catches up to their fiction. (It’s something that The Boys also recently dealt with in its fifth season<\/u>). <\/p>\n

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\u201cWe would set out with a massive list in every game of all the media that we wanted, be it a phone that you can disappear into, just like you do in the real world,\u201d Lazlow said. \u201cI mean, we’re basically like an in-house ad agency because there would be a billboard for a brand, you’d hear a radio commercial from the same brand. You can see a TV commercial for the same brand, and then you get a pop-up on your phone for it, but it’s all got to be this hyper-ridiculous satire that also speaks to the tone of that place and the vision that [Houser] has for how he wants you to experience that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lazlow specifically recalled creating GTA 5\u2019s Jock Cranley<\/u>: \u201cThe thing that became difficult as the projects took longer, is making ridiculous characters, brands, products, situations so that the world doesn’t catch up with you. I remember we had a politician that we came up with in GTA that was an ex-stuntman who was running for governor, and a Hollywood guy, and he came out with this campaign ad saying that he hates the elderly, he hates crippled people, he hates the military. We’re like, \u2018Ha ha ha ha, this kind of crazy shit will never happen in real life.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Since its founding, Absurd Ventures has released the comic series American Caper via Dark Horse Comics, and the novel A Better Paradise along with an audiobook adaptation. An animated series of shorts, Absurdaverse, first premiered at the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival, and an unnamed AAA open-world sci-fi action-adventure game<\/u> set in the A Better Paradise universe is in development with South Korea\u2019s Smilegate as publisher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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