According to Variety, Rockstar co-founder and Grand Theft Auto head writer Dan Houser said this week that Absurd Ventures, the media company he started in 2023, is developing two untitled games and a transmedia library of comics, podcasts, books, and animation. One of the games is "a dystopian sci-fi about a video game development gone very wrong," with a rogue AI that "was made by two people that didn't like each other, so it doesn't like itself."*
The name is the whole strategy. He left the most profitable video game studio on earth and named the company Absurd Ventures. In 2005 they would have called it a brand. Now it is one word, and the word is the business plan.
The company has shipped zero finished games and is already selling a universe. Three original worlds, A Better Paradise, American Caper, and the Absurdaverse, each rolled out as comics and podcasts first, because a graphic novel is a game you never have to defend. Comics, books, podcasts, animation, two games. That is the entire business plan, and the release calls it a transmedia experience.
The rogue AI pitch is the truest thing in the press materials. "Made by two people that didn't like each other" is him and his brother Sam, who still runs Rockstar. No villain in a game pitch has ever been described more honestly.
And the discipline. The man who wrote the lines of the most anticipated game ever made says he hasn't seen the 27-minute trailer, doesn't play open-world games, and is avoiding the marketing because comparisons disrupt him. GTA 6 lands November 19, the first GTA without him, and the Fasting Founder is doing a creative fast while his brother ships it.
YOUR TURN: Have you ever quit the company you built and named the new one after what you think the old one was?
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