Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming | Lex Fridman Podcast #484

You said that Red Dead Redemption

2, in your opinion, is the best thing you've ever done.

I think there's a strong case to be made that it's the greatest game of all time.

What are the elements that make that game truly great, do you think?

People searching for meaning

within Amongst the Violence.

I think that the West and all of the themes around the West really

lend itself to that.

And then the the gunplay

was fantastic and the horses were incredible.

I think we got to spend

a smaller group of us

working on it from day one,

coming up with some weird

wacky ideas that we got to embed in the game that I think was helpful.

Like we got to be very creative

before it had full team on it.

>> You lock yourself in a room and get anchovies and onion pizza and crushed eye cokes.

Is this accurate information? >> Very accurate.

>> Why do you think there was so much excitement about GTA 4, GTA 5,

and now GTA 6?

I think we did a really

good job of constantly innovating.

The games always felt different.

You know, people have very strong feelings.

I like this one.

I didn't like that one as much because they are pretty different.

So, you there would be simultaneously

where you know what's going to happen.

It's a Grand Theft Auto.

You know, it's going to be a game about being a criminal.

But the way it's going to be a game is going to change quite a lot.

>> The number one question from the internet,

it is so ridiculous, but I must asked.

Have you seen Gavin?

The following is a conversation

with Dan Howser, a legendary

video game creator, co-founder

of Rockstar Games, and the creative force

behind Grand Theft Auto

and Red Dead Redemption

series, which includes some of the bestselling

games of all time and

some of the greatest

games of all time.

Both Red Dead Redemption

1 and 2 has some of the deepest,

most complex, and heart-wrenching

characters and storylines ever created in video games.

Dan has started a new company, Absurd Ventures.

Great name, that is creating some uh incredible

new worlds in multiple forms, including books, comic books, audio series,

and yes, video games.

That includes A Better Paradise,

which is a dystopian

near future world with a super intelligent AI,

American Caper, which is an insanely chaotic,

violent, dark, satirical world,

and Absur, which is a comedic action adventure world.

I'm excited to explore all three of these.

I have spent hundreds of hours in worlds that Dan has helped create.

So, this conversation was an incredible honor for me.

And on top of that, Dan and I talked a lot after

and in the days since,

and he has been just

a wonderful human being.

I'm just at a loss of words.

I feel like the luckiest kid in the world.

This is the Lex Freedman podcast. supported.

Please check out our sponsors in the description

where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions,

get feedback, and so on.

And now, dear friends, here's Dan Hower.

You've helped create some of the most incredible

characters, stories, and open worlds in video game history.

But when you grew up in the

late 70s and 80s,

open world video games wasn't a thing.

So you've credited uh literature

and film as early inspiration.

So let's talk about uh film first if we can.

>> What do you are some of the candidates for the greatest films of all time?

Maybe films that were highly influential on you. I mean Godfather.

>> Well, I think for me

probably Godfather 2 more than Godfather one, but I love both of them.

But I love the divided

story in Godfather 2.

And as a migrant, I used to live in Soho.

I love the bits in Little Italy

and I love the uh the sections in Sicily.

So I think and the bit Ellis Island is just one of the best shots

in all of cinema.

When you see little VTO

turning up in Ellis Island and you get that shot, it's amazing.

It gives you a really good cinematic

sense of what it must have been like to arrive in America.

>> How much of the greatness of Godfather

do you think is the writing?

How much is the cinematography?

And how much is the acting?

You got Dairo, you got Young

>> Well, Coppai started as a screenwriter.

So, I think he wrote, at least co-wrote the script.

So, it's almost like the writing, directing almost become the same thing.

It's one of those films.

Both of them are those films which I was thinking about

this idea of a perfect film,

where everything's good, where the acting's

seinal, where the writing's seinal,

where the music is seinal,

where the shots are so memorable,

where the scenes, you know, define what you think about things.

You know, it's impossible

to think about the mafia and not think about the Godfather.

>> What about the pacing?

It is a bit slow.

You have you have movies like 2001 Space Odyssey. Slow.

>> It used to be

back in my day,

it used to be slower. >> Life got faster.

life just got, you know, as I think as we

moved from the 70s into the 80s into the 90s,

people had seen so many films,

they just started to edit films faster

and people understood cinematic

storytelling so much that you could do things much quicker.

You could show a look and just that meant you realized that person was

going to betray the other person.

They just edited films much quicker.

But I quite like the slowness.

I think these days with with modern,

you know, highquality televisions, you have to necessarily watch these films in one sitting,

particularly when you're re-watching them.

So, it doesn't bother me that they're long and slow.

>> Speaking of faster, life getting faster.

I'm sure another influential

movie was uh Good Fellas Scorsesei.

That's faster, >> A mixture of crime

and humor >> and almost like an open world game in some ways in that

it's this slice of life you see.

You know, I think that probably

changed cinema at the sort of tail end of the 80s, early 90s

more than any other film.

And it's it's so iconic.

In some ways, I prefer Casino,

but the invention is really in Good Fellas.

I love the end of Casino.

You know, the use of voice over,

the way you saw them being criminals and being normal people,

you know, it changed everything.

I mean, the Sopranos obviously is completely inspired by Good Fellas. >> Yeah.

casino has first of all the character of Sharon Stone.

I mean >> the look, the clothes, >> the music.

>> I would say one of the most memorable

moments in film for me

uh is the meeting in the desert.

I mean, just the drama building up to that dig another hole. >> Yeah.

The environment, the city.

Speaking of open world and creating a character from the city,

>> it's one of the great Vegas films.

>> I think the great Vegas film.

The bits that I always

that I love at the end when everything's wrapping up and on the one

hand you see the Robert Dairo character.

He's still good at making money.

They let him return to normal life.

But you get that brilliant scene when all of the uh the mob bosses

from uh back home.

They're discussing all these people who who who

may or may not be able to implicate them.

And then there's that incredibly cold line where one of them they're thinking about

the the old uh

you know I think it's a casino manager and one of them just goes ah

the way I see it why take a chance and then the next thing

he's just shot right the brutality of it all is just

>> I don't know I probably have to disagree with you on Vegas there's at least some

competitors you got um with Nicholas Cage leaving Las Vegas

I mean falling in love with a prostitute.

You're also you you've written some of the great crime stories ever. >> Thank you.

And in some sense there's

love stories in there and you've talked about

being uh a bit of a romantic yourself.

Uh appreciating the depth of love stories in literature

at the very least.

And there is a dark kind of love story

between an alcoholic and a prostitute.

He got an Oscar for that.

>> I think he did for that, didn't he?

>> Plus, there's a caricature

of the drug world of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

That's an interesting one.

>> I love the book so much.

I was obsessed by it when I was about 17, 18.

>> And I enjoyed the film, but I I preferred the book.

>> Has a Hunter S.

Thompson type of character ever made it into any of your

>> No, but one of the things we're working on now,

there's sort of an English version of Hunter S.

Thompson, if he was also a market gardener.

I love that persona.

Um, but he's kind of, it's hard if you if you make him American,

it's hard for it not just to be Hunter S.

>> Is this an American caper?

No, it's in this animated

show we're developing in the this sort of comedy world we're working on called

Absurverse and it's in one of the stories in that. >> What is Absurse?

>> Absurd is a comedy

universe we're developing that will be

an open world video game

and then some loosely adjacent

stories that we're going to

make as animated TV shows or or possibly animated movies.

is still thinking that all through

and we're building the game up in

San Rafael at the moment and it's early days but it's uh looking very

exciting and it's trying to be

like trying to make a game that feels a little bit like a living sitcom.

>> Is there some drama and tragedy at the edges

or is it pure comedy?

>> I hope it's got comedy,

cynicism, heart drama and

some amusing life lessons.

Otherwise, you can't just have jokes for 40 hours. it won't work. >> Okay.

So, comedy needs some darkness.

>> Well, I think it needs story.

One of my favorite

comedies of this century is The Office

because it was incredibly

funny, but also because it had

narrative and heart underneath the cynicism.

I think with narrative, you get a drive alongside jokes.

>> And there's going to be an open world video game. Yes. In that world.

>> 2 3 4 years.

Still thinking that >> So, what's the process of getting

from the idea to the end of a video game?

Why does it take so long to get it right?

>> That's an interesting question.

I think if you the scale at which they're built,

you could argue it the other way.

Why is it so quick?

I mean, you really are

in one go a world,

a city, and 40 hours of entertainment cut through it.

You know, these things are

massive four-dimensional mosaics that are intensely

complicated and have to work in lots of different ways.

And I I think uh

I think that's us being kind of aggressive on the timeline.

>> We're taking a tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent, but um I have

to >> uh return to some films.

Let me just list a few of my favorites.

So, first of all, you said you love >> great war books. Yes. And movies.

>> So, we have to throw in

uh Platoon from Oliver Stone and

uh Apocalypse Now, for me at least.

>> Of course, >> there's more

crime, fastmoving crime movies like Scarface.

I also love True >> Love True Romance.

Possibly the best one of the best scripts ever written.

>> Written of course by Quinton Tarantino.

>> Uh what do you love about True Romance?

I think sometimes depending on the day,

depending on the bar and how much alcohol I had, I will say True

Romance is the best movie ever made.

>> Yeah, I I mean I True Romance is super fun.

Tony Scott was a really good director, so it moves at a really good speed. It's funny.

It's completely unbelievable, but you really care about the characters.

It's a kind of,

you know, this world that obviously doesn't exist, but you feel it does exist.

The characters are larger than life.

The dialogue is unbelievably,

you could just sit and watch them talk all day long,

and you know, you just it's amusing.

You just want to live in that world.

I was thinking like, you know, what do I you like about films?

It's the idea to be in a world you want.

They they're not real.

They're never real, but you want to be in these fake worlds that people

have >> And I think you said that what makes a great world is having

a large cast of characters.

And I think that movie

is a good example.

I mean, you have Christopher Walkin with the sort of legendary super racist uh uh discussion.

>> Dennis Hopper is your sort of dream dad. >> Yeah. Dream dad.

And just that interaction is legendary.

You got even Brad Pitt is a pad on a couch. >> Gary Oldman. >> Gary Oldman. >> Yeah.

And uh you have

I mean a real love story like

a real genuine pure

love can survive in any context

>> and it's just sweet.

Their love story is very sweet in that film. It's endearing.

>> The Elvis as a character.

It's kind of like a mini GTA type game.

Some of the same beauty, the comedy,

the love >> crossed with Play Against Sam.

So it feels a bit like that with the Elvis

>> What about greatest war film?

What what what would it be for you?

greatest war If I'm feeling serious,

it would be a Russian film called Come and See,

>> which is probably the most intense film ever made.

And if I'm feeling

slightly less serious, Apocalypse

Now, and I would always want to watch the original

cut, I don't prefer the re-edits.

I like the original first release.

I think it's tighter and slicker and and

works the >> Yeah, of course.

Apocalypse Now is this hallucinatory journey into darkness.

I think madness >> from the first

scene onwards, it's just got these amazing setpiece

after set piece and

again incredible characters, >> brilliant dialogue.

>> Some of the greatest films

about war reveal that war is not what it seems

and and there's different ways of doing that.

Um, and you've talked about different books.

The Thin Red Line is another

uh book and movie that shows >> Yeah.

And I I watched the movie years before I read the book

and I didn't understand the movie.

And then I read the book and I read a lot about the editing

of the movie and I understood why I didn't understand the movie.

And that's cuz the movie makes no sense.

It is beautifully shot and the music is one of the best film scores of all time.

But they edited two different battle scenes into one battle in a way that

they're spread apart by ages in the book to assemble.

I think they filmed the book pretty much verbatim.

that would have been as like a six-hour movie

then edited this impressionistic

thing that's incredibly beautiful but doesn't necessarily

make narrative sense at the end of it

but it's still very beautiful the film

>> and in terms of westerns

what's the greatest the good the bad and the ugly unforgiven

those are for me maybe even Django unchained you've mentioned butch Cassidy and the

Sundance kid >> I think for me it's two films from I think pretty much

the same year butch Cassidy

and the w bunch

>> I love Robert Redford

rest in peace >> that film film.

It's just it's impossible to imagine anybody

film without Butch Cassidy.

>> Paul Newman, Robert Redford,

and Clint Eastwood for you also.

Has that impacted your writing on Red Dead?

>> I I love Unforgiven,

but the truth is

with Red Dead, I'd seen a lot of westerns as a kid.

My dad watched lots of westerns.

They were always on TV, you know.

I I knew I felt I knew a lot a bit quite a bit about westerns.

And then, you know, then I had to start thinking about writing one for work.

And I deliberately did not binge on westerns.

I tried to watch no more westerns

and just think about

what I liked about them, what I didn't like about them,

what would be a take that would work

today and would work within the confines of a game.

And I think uh Red Dead one was a slightly more traditional western.

And then having done that

tried to take Red Dead 2 in a

different direction so that it felt like a worthy successor.

Didn't just feel like more of the same.

>> From movies to video games, when did you first fall in love with video games?

Literature was the first love.

>> I mean fil no films.

>> Films was always was always well what I loved first as a kid was films.

um older began reading books properly age at about eight

was watching films long before that

>> and then probably it was always bouncing between the two which I preferred they're

good at different things

games I played and above all watched a lot of games as a kid

as being a young kid and you know other people playing them

um and I obviously liked

the core thing games do which is you press a button and something happens

They're responsive, they're alive, and that's captivating.

And then the competitive angle

of games is fun.

Or, you know, beating this, beating that, winning this, that was fun as well.

Um, sometimes obsessively so, you know, I remember being completely addicted

at one point when I was should have been studying for months at a

time to Tetris on a Game Boy,

you know, and I liked games and I liked interactivity

and I liked the movement to this digital world

that really emerged for me pretty much as soon as I left college.

But I didn't love it.

And then I really fell in love with games

when I was properly

making them probably as late as like 2001. >> Oh wow.

>> And when I suddenly began to see

first of all my mind, you know, that's a whole another story, but just

suddenly saw what they could do and could be and what this chance was

to be one of the people

involved in making these things.

that was this, you know, where you were really kind of breaking trail into the future.

It felt like and I think that was when I really went these are

amazing and that's when I really fell in love with I I I could see

it in moments and suddenly you could make this whole experience.

So that was really the moment for me. >> Yeah.

Of course, because you were

a pioneer of open world games that are so narrative driven.

So it's like you didn't have too many examples. >> Yeah.

And before that it was PS1

or even before that games looked terrible.

You know that you would be like it's 8 pixels it's a car you

know it was not a car.

It was they just didn't it was always you were squinting

and closing both your eyes and trying to imagine

it was this thing you were told it was and all they were about

you know very surreal subject matter cuz you couldn't make them remotely real. Mhm.

>> And suddenly we had we're able to build these experiences

where you could run a simulation

of a city and it was in three dimensions

and it felt alive and and we were trying to give it

even more at least the illusion of even more life

and and yet so you could tell a story in three or you know

using time in four dimensions

and that felt very inspiring.

>> Yeah, I think uh GTA

3 is probably one of the most influential games of all time.

created a feeling of an open world.

What do you think it takes to create that feeling?

You know, there was like these looming skyscrapers.

There was a changing traffic lights.

There's a the feeling like

first of all, you had a feeling you could do anything.

And then the world was

reacting to it >> in a way that didn't feel scripted. >> Yes.

And it wasn't scripted.

It was it was

really really really low rent AI

like it was a simulation

that you could prod and push

and see what happened.

And I think that was incredibly

it was a it was two things.

It was the fact that here was a simulation

that you could mess about with and the simulation seemed to have a personality.

Um so you could push and see and the world would push you back

in whatever way that meant.

And then the other thing

was just this I think one of the reasons it was so captivating

was also the idea of if I did nothing the world still existed

>> or I could act in quite a passive way.

I could just listen to the radio.

I could re look at billboards.

I could talk to pedestrians

and the not in GTA 3 but by Vice City could begin rudimentary talking.

Um and the world

was there and existing.

And so it was idea of like almost something that really tried to explore

in lots of games.

um the idea of being a digital tourist,

you know, you were in

you were in these worlds

and you went there as a visitor and they existed almost independent of you.

It felt like when you turned up the world was running.

It didn't feel like you'd started it.

Of course, you had started it, but that feeling I think was uh was

one of the things the illusions that people found very captivating

was I'm in a I'm in a world that

both doesn't exist and does exist.

>> So, there's these uh two concepts that I was uh reading about just to

put names on them.

uh one is uh systemic video game design.

So systemic games and the other is sandbox uh video games.

And the systemic is from the environment perspective.

Uh which means that there is

these interlocking game rules and systems that interact with each other and produce emergent uh behavior.

And that emergent behavior is what creates a feeling like there's a living world.

And then the sandbox

aspect uh which is overlapping but different is from the user perspective

from the player perspective

the feeling like you can do anything.

And when those two things combine

the feeling like you could do anything

and the feeling like there's a

world that's full that that is also

doing anything it wants.

that's creates this incredible

feeling of like this

world is alive >> and I'm in it and it's the combination of those two

things I think is very powerful

and I think with GTA

3 you know for me it came at a really

interesting time in my my life personally and I was very able to engage

in it probably the first time professionally

actually awake and do something

and um it uh we were really sort of scratching

began to scratch the surface on how do we fill these worlds with content

and how do we make that content interesting

and make the content all interwoven.

So as you as you start to mess with these systems

they also feel alive and and and

>> Uh there's often been a tension through your work between

uh an open world at freedom

and the narrative >> driven storytelling

and I think you've

often maybe always gotten the balance right.

So what is it?

What is the value of each and how do you get the balance

>> Well, I think the the open world is intrinsically pretty fun.

It's just fun to be in a world and have complete freedom

and and certainly I think at various points we we we we

debated or or you know I had theoretical discussions in my own head with

myself or other people in the team would really push for

less story less story

you know let the whole thing evolve organically

you know have it all be procedural

have it all just evolve from what you do

I think um for me I would always come back to going

story can be incred if done well can be incredibly compelling

and it gives you some structure

So I think and something to do and it helps you from a a

game design perspective unlock the features.

It means we know the fe the the

big features because you know essentially when you put someone in in a world

and give them a whole new way of interacting with that world through the

control panel it can be a little overwhelming.

You know playing a game is a lot more of an engaging experience

be even than reading a movie you know reading a book or or watching a movie.

You've got to engage in it properly.

how you unlock the features and how you unlock the world.

There's an art and a skill to that.

Um, and I think we felt that a structured story was the best way

to do that and to have control over that process.

And also just, you know,

people are looking in their lives for story.

I think story is very important and very powerful.

When you combine the two

successfully, you get the best of both worlds.

But it is a,

you know, there is a tension always there.

I think in in a

like GTA 4, which I worked on and loved and I thought the story

was great, but we got criticized because people felt there was almost too much

story and that meant you cared too much about Nico

and he wasn't as effective an Avatar in the open world.

I think we probably

got closest to reconciling

them as perfectly as they can be done in Red Dead 2

or when playing as Trevor

in GTA 5 if you wanted to be crazy.

I think those were when it really worked

the character absolute freedom because also you didn't want in any game

you don't really want to compel the player if you're giving them freedom

you don't want to say well I'm giving you freedom but I'm taking away

because you've got to be this kind of person when you're free.

So, I liked it when it could be he could, you know, he or

she could veer to be nice, veer to be nasty.

I think that's when it was at the strongest.

So, you kind of want a character that was rounded and you felt had

good sides and bad sides,

>> but you felt that character's personality.

You felt the depth.

You've actually talked about this the really powerful concept of creating a 360deree character.

I think somewhere you mentioned that in order to do that you had to

be able to imagine

what that character would do in any possible situation

which is really interesting philosophical concept.

I started to immediately think like can I imagine how good of an NPC am I?

Can I imagine myself in every part I I tried to do that very

much when I when I look at human history when I look at the

Roman Empire when I look at World War II

uh within the German side, the Russian side, the British side, the American side.

Just I imagine myself if I was a soldier.

But like that exercise

like if you put Trevor as a soldier in World War II,

what what would he do?

No, I mean that may be going a little bit too far, but basically

what are the limits of the integrity?

What are the limits

of uh how romantic is he? How narcissistic?

All those kinds of elements you have to think about in order to create the full character.

What does it take to create that kind of 360 character?

How hard is it?

Um, it was a lot of thinking,

a lot like a year

sometimes from when we'd begin talking about

a project and dialing

it, you know, and I would just

get some initial ideas very like one sentence, they are

a Serbian immigrant or they are a

retired gunfighter um with a wife in, you know,

type very very simple stuff and then just start to think through it from every angle.

Um, and you know, started to think, well,

would it work if they were acted like this?

Would it work if you acted like that?

If this is the world,

how does it contrast with the world?

Because I always thought that the games were kind of a mathematical equation.

They were the personality

of the world, you know, multiplied or divided by the personality of the protagonist.

And when the when that creates interesting friction,

that's a really fun experience for the player, you know.

Uh it's uh so

almost always at least

one or more of the protagonists

cuz obviously in in

GTA 5 we had more than one.

um we'd have someone who'd moved to the place or was in a new

part of the place or moved to a new part of the map cuz

it was really as as a player I think it was really easy much

more easy to identify

with your avatar when they like you were fish out of water

and even when they weren't we still made them dissatisfied

and feel like a fish out of water in themselves.

Um, so I I think it was just living with

characters and getting idea and going what are their strengths,

what are their weaknesses,

how are they like me,

how are they not like me,

you know, and then and slowly

what is it like to feel like a human being,

you know, and then

in most of these games,

how much of of a psychopath are they?

How much of a sociopath are they?

And what are their good qualities?

What what is going to give them humanity alongside that?

what are they what what what

do they what what for them apart from money

is worth dying for

and then you start to build it out from these kind of fundamental

sides and suddenly you go okay actually I can start to feel and then

how do they speak

you know because fundamentally

doesn't really matter what's going on in their head they haven't actually got one

but what they say is what's going to

make you realize who they are >> so develop more depth and complexity on the

good and the evil side

of that human that is

a part of all

of all human beings so you're basically living with that character

Like we if we can

uh what is it Nico

and Trevor with for example another character I'm sure you've been living with for

a while which is the AI system Nigel Dave

you've been working on recently

as part of a better paradise

world which is the more dystopian dark tragic >> Mhm.

still funny, philosophically deep.

Uh, but the AI system in there, the super intelligent AI system,

uh, is named Nigel

Dave, and it has,

>> I mean, at least from my current experience with it,

um, has like a conflicting nature.

Um, maybe it's psychopathic.

I haven't quite figured that out yet.

>> I don't think he's decided.

>> Yeah, I don't think he's decided either.

Uh, but he seems to be

uh, bent on world domination,

although he doesn't take credit for it.

He wants to fix humanity

it seems that the children quote unquote that it creates

are the real monsters.

Uh and actually there's a really interesting idea there

which is maybe it's not the AGI

ASI we should be afraid of but the children it creates

because the AGI has this

humanlike good and evil in it. It's conflicted.

It's It's it it wants to be human.

It wants to be loved.

Maybe it wants to love,

>> but the children monsters

it creates are the ones that are doing the world domination,

the maximizing paper clips.

Anyway, it's that's a character.

You have to build that out.

You have to think through that.

So, you've been living with that one for a while.

>> Yeah, I was living I've been living with him

for the last few years on and off.

I felt with a lot of

portrayals of AI, they tended to be one note and AI was sort of

infinitely clever but didn't really have much purpose apart from to kill everybody

and was just this kind of sort of

Borg like fog >> and I thought that's fine but maybe we can do something

you know more interesting.

AI is being built by humans

and humans you know and built by

computer engineers and there's a lot of power struggles in any computer engineering team.

So I just wanted to explore the idea of it was built by two

lead engineers who didn't like each other.

So So Nigel Dave who's renamed himself,

they wanted to call him something sort of primal, Adam,

and he renamed himself Nigel Dave because one dad was called Nigel

and one dad was called Dave.

And um just he's riddled with these conflicts

and riddled with his

it's going to become clear in in in the next

or clearer in the next uh volume of the book and and and in the game.

He's riddled with his dad's previous careers.

Um, but he is

with the idea that he's in almost infinitely intelligent or can learn

almost everything but has zero wisdom.

And so the only thing he know and then he's seeing the world through the internet.

The most he can do to be in the human world is hack into

someone's phone and watch them.

But he's stuck pressed against he can't actually get into our world.

So he's he can control people's minds arguably,

but he can't control the world.

And so he wants to be human.

and he wants studies human experiences.

He sees all this stuff on, you know, the internet and goes, "Oh, I

want to get married.

I want to fall in love.

I want to cuz that seems fun.

I want to have,

you know, he's a a digital creation.

So, he wants to have metaphysical experiences."

And he's trying to imagine what that will be like.

Oh, that's what children are.

You know, that's what love is.

And he's So, I think he's a

but he might be a sociopath

and he might certainly have sociopathic tendencies.

and uh but then he kind of thinks that

if he can imagine

good and try to do good that will make him a good AI.

So I think there's something sympathetic about him.

And I kind of like him as a character, but I don't think he's

going to be the protagonist.

He's more a side character,

>> but an an everpresent one. >> Yes. Or nearly ever.

Occasionally he sulks and goes off and hides somewhere and stops paying attention. >> Yeah.

Yeah, but there's some some characters that really create a flavor of a world.

>> In his world, he was built as an AI agent for this

digital large scale, massively multiplayer

video game these people were trying to build.

And so, he's almost like God in his world.

He's not quite God, but he's got a lot of the qualities of God.

So, he has to deal with, am I God? Am I human? Do I exist?

>> And of course, there's the leader, the the the the

CEO of the company,

uh that's also a character.

uh that's probably amalgamation

of many of the leaders of the different AI companies today.

Uh his name is Mark

and Kurt, one of the employees

uh of the company talks about Tyburn

as he hated humanity more than he loved it.

Perhaps all the most extreme

fantasists are like that.

All those people who want to build their own utopia,

they love the idea of heaven more than the reality of earth.

Uh, do you think that's always going to be the case

for for the most part that power money is going to corrupt

the people that create ASI? >> Yes.

I mean, I think there's two processes.

I think there's the power and money corrupted him in the end as well,

but I also think that

there's something fundamentally antihuman

about people who want to build

utopias or paradises or heavens.

Because what they're saying is

I like humans apart from the bad bits.

>> And I mean I'm

try to be a pluralist

who likes all kinds of people.

And I think there's a side where people just

you know hideous perfectionists

want to get rid of you know the uh the rough and the nasty

and the ugly and the dirty.

And that's a huge side of us.

So I I I worry about those people.

I find them you know it's a different kind of sociopathic

>> I like humans depart from the bad bits.

That's so beautifully put. Yeah.

That there's it's so counterintuitive.

But the people that say we're we're we're almost there.

We just need to

there's this path we take and we'll be perfect then and that somehow gets us into trouble.

It's it's so fascinating that we have to like the bad bits.

We have to love the bad bits about humans.

We can't that those those bugs are features. >> Yeah.

And there's there's there's bad bits

and then there's flaws.

And I think we're all flawed.

and we can really try

to be better people,

but we still have to accept that we're flawed and we're not perfect and

we have to accept that in other people.

And I think when we when we do that, we're more human.

And that's probably usually the right

>> I mean, it really is

return to that souls

and line of the line between good and evil runs to the heart of every man.

And he also like the full description of that is really powerful which is

the line moves as

from day to day from month to month throughout the life of the person

as they understand better and better and as the pers uh perspective shift as

you evolve as the world around you evolves

as you gain deeper and deeper understanding

and as the flaws in this combinatorial

way affect your own

understanding of your own flaws and self-reflection.

So yeah, it's it's a beautiful must and all of us have that >> Yes.

And I think when you forget

about that line, then you get in real trouble.

When you forget there's good and evil in you, in others,

in the world, that there is both good and evil.

And there's certainly good and that that all we can

try to do is be better.

>> And it's funny that Nigel Dave,

by the way, I liked and it grew on me very quickly.

Um uh has that line

and is struggling with it.

>> It's fascinating to watch.

It's really as a character.

Uh and there's also going to be a video game of a better paradise potentially.

>> Yeah, we've got that in uh early development in Santa Monica. >> Oh, nice.

>> And it's pretty fun.

It's uh very early,

but we assembled a really

fun team and they're doing amazing work.

So, it's a pleasure to work with them.

>> I mean, it would be

so great and I suppose new for you because it's

kind of near-term future. >> Yes.

First, I always well I always wanted to do

something in the sci-fiish

space, but only if I could do it.

I was like, well, what is sci-fi?

It's science fiction, right?

Science is a a theory plus fiction.

>> And so, I always thought the best sci-fi for me was when it wasn't

just kind of space opera,

but there was a real

obvious sort of hypothesis.

The story was Bladeunner is my favorite.

And that's it's obvious, you know, that the replicants are better than the humans.

And so this I finally felt we found an interesting hypothesis.

The AI is more intelligent

than us but is also as broken as we are.

That was an interesting hypothesis to explore.

You know what happens when

AI runs rampant in its own fake digital world.

that was the I felt that we had a a a hypothesis

that was worth exploring

and could give us some really interesting visuals

and give us a really interesting story to tell

and uh it would be incredible to create a sort of AI

video game as the world is developing smarter and smarter AIs.

It allows us as humans

to play the game and to reflect

on the thing that we humans are creating.

It's a real commentary as the thing is happening.

>> So, I have to ask as a person,

you as a person who loves literature

and uh one of, if not the greatest writer in video game history,

uh Kurt in the book,

A Better Paradise, has this nice line that I think is thoughtful.

>> At one point in college,

I even wanted to be a writer.

How ridiculous is that? A writer.

Language models ended that fantasy for me and millions of others.

So instead, I decided to get a master's in marketing

and started to sell language models.

So you as a writer and creator of some of the

most legendary narratives in recent history,

how do you feel about

LLM's being able to

uh write in a way that looks awfully human?

>> I'm not that afraid of them

for large scale concepts.

I don't think they're going to be very good at that.

I think if you were I think it's harder

if you know I I began and I I was

too shy to tell anyone I want to be a writer.

That's why I ended up in video games

and I would scribble away like writing manuals and and writing on like PS1

games all 12 lines of dialogue in a game.

Sometimes I wouldn't even get that job and I just write the website I

copy and um and then by do and then working on little bits and

pieces and then it it it

you know I'd luckily done enough work that when GTA

3 turned up was the first thing that was resembled real writing.

I had all of these small bits of skills that I could assemble into it.

Um based on my fairly limited understanding of how language models work

if you they're not going to they're not going to replace good ideas.

they can't really come up with good new ideas.

What they can do is do low-level stuff.

So, I think it's going to be harder for people to start out in

some of these spaces.

If you're not very good concept artist, you're in a lot of trouble.

If you have original ideas, I think you're fine.

But, I think uh I also think that

the fir they they've done the sort of first

90% of the work to sound human.

95% possibly in some areas.

The last 5% is going to end up being about 95% of the work.

I think that last bit in with with the with with with

tech in my experience with things like facial animation always been the last bits

and pieces take far longer than the first bit.

And so I I I I'm

probably a hideous lite,

but I'm less scared than a lot of people.

I think you're going to end up with a lot of work that looks the same.

It's going to help people be creative in some ways.

It's going to get some people who probably shouldn't be in that space out

of that space, but if you've got talent, I think it'll be fine.

>> Yeah, it's I agree with you.

Uh, totally actually and it's hard to really put a finger on it.

So, one way to illustrate that I

speak English and Russian and and I've been

reading the sefk in both languages and

using lumps to translate back and forth

because I was preparing to have a conversation with the translators of the >> which ones?

>> Uh, Richard Pier and Lissa Volkski.

>> Yeah, I read quite there when they first did Crime and Punishment. >> That was amazing.

>> They're wonderful translators and a wonderful love story too.

But in the translation

process, you get to see

the LLM is missing some magic

>> and that they're, you know, that

couple of translators are worldclass

experts capturing the magic.

And I can't quite put that into words cuz you said like totally novel ideas. Yes.

>> But also this magic of the timing,

the right word at the right time that captures the human experience.

So it they can do some really incredibly

humanlike the 90% like you mentioned humanlike

phrasing uh about like the bulk of the storytelling

but the magic you know

whether it's you know the the endings of Red Dead Redemption one and two

the timing of that the word choice of that

everything around that but it's hard to argue

because they're incredibly impressive

winning all kinds of math competitions

but it's what is that magic? IC.

Uh, and again, that could be just a romantic human side of me just

saying that LL's won't be able to capture that.

Maybe desperately holding on for hope.

>> I don't think they're going to come up with magic.

I think they're going to be fantastic at coming up with really cheap, decent stuff.

>> I have to ask you about your writing process, and we could break it

break it up on on Grand Theft Auto.

GTA 4 is when they really started ramping up.

>> How much writing went into the Grand Theft Auto series?

How many words are we talking about?

I I saw some thousands of

>> I mean, when we printed out the scripts for

GTA 4, it was about this high. Yeah.

>> And GTA V was about that high.

But that was including all the pedestrians

who'd have pages and pages

just to create the illusion of a living world

because you interact with each one of them.

But even even the main script

for the main missions was thousands of pages long.

>> What was the writing process like on that

to generate one page at a time?

bit by bit by bit over several years.

But you start with

once people had determined,

oh, here's the here's the world.

We're doing one based on a version of New York, say GTA 4.

And um I was living in New York.

I've been living in New York for a few years.

Wasn't sure if I was happy.

I was going through a lot of

personal dramas as usual.

And um and that was why I was looking at some of GTA

4 again recently and it's really dark

and I was like ah that's why

you know I was uh single and miserable and and I wasn't sure if I

want to stay in America.

My life in a lot of flux as a company

we'd had all that hot coffee drama.

So constantly thought we might be shut down in the middle of making that

you know the lot of drama in the company.

So it felt like

having had this run of

success and and and

relative personal stability from

uh GTA 3 by city San Andreas

suddenly 2005 7 early 7 life felt very unsure.

Um and that kind of bled in into it.

But in terms of the process, it was uh

trying to find an underbelly

to New York and capture an immigrant experience.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that immigrant experience was in 2008

when the game came out and then tell it story from a different angle

as an immigrant, which I thought made it made it interesting.

Um, and then this sort of journey around these various New York characters.

So I kind of spent probably a year

traveling around with cops or meeting people on and off and

you know wandering around New York and driving around and you know on and

you know while just go up for the morning from the office

normal stuff but doing that assembling little notes.

Here's a funny character for this.

Here's how figuring out how the order we want to travel around the map

in um characters this what was a interesting take on on on the

you know mob for that kind of time period.

what was an interesting take on on

some Jamaican hoodlims for that kind of time period

and um assembling lots of notes

and more and more notes and

really really really running away from the work which is you know I have to

admit it's part of my process if there is any kind of process which

is not doing work thinking about it but not working you know a lot

of time and then

>> and then it all kind of pages and pages of notes make more notes

no actual work months and months of this and then um

finally set myself a deadline told all the other people on on the scenior

the people on the team.

Okay, I'll have a story draft to you.

Monday morning, I can't even remember.

I want to say February the 1st.

And then the the weekend before

was in a in a cabin we we we we had upstate

and just stayed up all night

grab knocking these notes into shape,

assembled about probably a 30-page

documents, a story synopsis

and a character synopsis for each of the major characters,

and then hand that over.

And that gets broken that would get broken down with with me and the designers.

Um, and I was always clear, I'm not a game designer.

I'm a sort of creative director

uh with me and break that down into missions

>> and then that takes another

year or so of that slowly assembling and

then begin then so

the bulk of my work's then done for a bit so I can relax

and and and offer opinions on other people's work and feel be lazy for a

bit and then um

start to worry because then I've actually soon I've got to start writing dialogue

and for GTA 4 in particular like we're going to try and write

you know our animation is going to be a lot better our character models

going to start look better the world is going to look amazing.

Uh therefore, we can support better,

you know, longer scenes.

We can have more in-depth characters.

Uh but we got to find a tone that works that with a game. Easy. No problem.

I start to worry and worry and worry and and also writing as a

as a Serbian immigrant and I was an immigrant, but I'm not Serbian.

And trying to capture what on earth that would feel like.

So, I start to worry and start to worry again.

Avoid work for as long as possible.

Um, and then just sit down and start

hammering away at a keyboard again late at night.

>> Hammering away at a keyboard and going, "Does that right?

Is that" And once I get one speech,

one turn of phrase

that I would like for a character,

then they suddenly come alive in my head.

And so it's like writing

writing with Nico and just he's a kind of he's awkward,

he's out of town,

but he's got more self assurance in some way.

Not the American characters.

And so once I kind of taught him through in this he's just stepped

slightly back from their ridiculousness

>> and he's that then he started to come to life and then I would

juxtapose him and his cousin

who had this much more Americanized

energy and that felt like it was a good a good double act and

then from there it starts to come to life and and

but it's written in small

chunks uh for the motion.

So then then we'd motion capture

small chunks and then the other other writers would write the mission dialogue

for small chunks and we'd slowly assemble the game

sort of 10 15 missions at a time

over the next year and a half.

>> Do you remember a few maybe

lines that uh brought Nico to life?

>> Yeah, I think so.

I mean, it was a couple of

it was his incredul

when his cousin picks him up in an old car and he's not living

this fancy American lifestyle

and his cousin's so which was a kind of comic moment and his cousin's

and then they go to the cousin's flat

and the cousin also even though he was a sort of a failure

was still upbeat and then when he talked to the cousin

and he talked about his wartime experiences

and how harrowing they were and I was like this is can I make

this work in a game?

It's very different from stuff you normally see in games.

Is it gonna feel ridiculous?

And I remember being very scared

because I thought it might be too much.

It might feel over the top.

I was I think, you know, the game's so pretty.

The artist doing such an amazing job.

The game's looking, you know, I think we can get away with this. Let's try it.

And then it then

motion capture the animation back like, "Yeah, it kind of works."

And I think that moment

those were both pretty early.

Once we had those, you go, "Okay, we've now got

comedy and tragedy in the g with this character.

Now I now it's working."

You remember during the war

we did some bad things

and bad things happened to us. Huh?

War is where the young and stupid

are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.

I was very young and very angry.

Maybe that is no excuse. >> Yeah, he escaped. He's a veteran.

He escaped the trauma of war

>> to come to America to pursue the American dream.

I suppose which became for him this thing that drags him back into violence.

Yes, he can never escape his sort of violent

past or I don't know if he can never escape it.

He never does escape it.

You know, whether he's got agency or not is a whole another question.

Of course, he doesn't cuz, you know, he's a character in a video game.

But, you know, whe whether he ever could have escaped in another way, who knows?

I think uh he's probably

the greatest character for me created in the Grand Theft Auto series.

What of all the characters you've written in Grand Theft

would Nico be the the best character you created?

>> I think he's the most

innovative and the most morally

defensible in some ways.

you know, normally he does a lot of stuff where he's fighting for right.

He's the nicest person in some ways.

Um, is he the best protagonist of a GTA game?

I think he's the most innovative protagonist of a GTA game.

Structurally, he might be too nice in some ways.

Um, he's also tough.

Like, he just comes across as tough.

I loved CJ and San Andreas.

I thought Melee did s he's got just the way he spoke gave him such humanity.

So, I just loved I mean, not wasn't the writing, it was the quality

of the voice acting was just so strong for him.

I think aspects of Michael,

he was so understated,

but he loved the character,

but he brought so much humanity to this character

who's so flawed, who is such a, you know, he's sold has no principles.

He sells everyone out.

You just kind of I think Ned Luke did such an amazing job

and and didn't necessarily get as many as many plaudits as as

Steven Og got for Trevor,

who was also wonderful, but I think the Nedloop character so

anchors that game so much.

So, I like all of them in different ways, but I probably

love Nico the most.

>> And of course, uh uh Michael's from Grand Theft Auto 5,

and he's one of three

protagonists with also Franklin and Trevor.

And you said that

of the things you're

proud of creating and you think was a great accomplishment.

It was Red Dead Redemption 2, the ending of Red Dead Redemption

1, all of Grand Theft Auto 4, and the middle part of Grand Theft

Auto 5 when the three characters come together. Mhm.

>> Can you speak to the the Grand Theft Auto 5?

Is there some degree?

I don't know if you're a dusty

guy, but is there

is there some aspect of

the three protagonists sort of,

you know, brothers Kaza,

Aloha, Dmitri, and Ivonne,

>> sort of using the protagonist to explore the the spectrum of

human nature and just the tension between them.

That's that allows you

the the the three of them become a character in themselves. >> Their relationship.

Yeah, it was it was I think one of the reasons that that that

the team did such

that Grand Theft Auto is still so popular

is we always tried as a group to really innovate from game to game

within the confines of what it was.

It was a crime it was a crime drama,

you know, began as a crime

crime sim in GTA 1

about stealing, you know, 2D top down cars.

And we always try to innovate with the narrative and innovate with the with

the art direction, innovate with every piece of the game.

And uh I think

having done you know

GTA 4 which was this kind of oporatic

journey for this big league character and then these two extra stories that came afterwards.

Uh the I the the the

challenge was can we combine

can we make a a video game which tends to be very much focused

on one protagonist but have multiprotagonists

and and and the

the technical challenge of

moving from character to character.

The team did such an amazing job that I don't think people realized how hard it was.

But we would sit there just sort of holding our heads because they hurt

so much around like

what happens if you do this then do that.

It's just this is so hard.

Why have we why have we decided to do this? It's horrible.

Um and then it all came together.

Uh but I think the the the idea was

develop three characters who do feel like characters.

They don't just feel like

philosophical, you know, or psychological

avatars, but where one is

really really driven by ego,

one is really driven by id and one is really driven by

trying to get ahead.

So, some kind of representation

of the super ego and see how that feels when they all play off against each other.

>> One of the most upvoted

questions on uh Reddit about GTA

5 uh from a fan, GTA V is my favorite game ever made.

I spent over 1,000

hours in the world of GTA

5 and GTA Online.

GTA 4 is a hard second or third.

It never ceases to impress me.

When you lead a team of over 1,000 people to make a masterpiece like

GTA 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2, how do you ensure that the bar

of perfection is always met?

How is that even possible?

We know the answer isn't money

because there's other studios with a lot of money and they are two decades behind Rockstar.

So, what does it take

to create these worlds to create these incredibly compelling games?

the cult I mean

certainly when I was when I was at at Rockstar

I was a worker amongst workers

you know the culture was was one of excellence

and tried to provide

creative clarity and and

people just you know and also an ambition to make

I think we were like we thought GTA

3 could be really popular

but really popular to us meant quite honestly it's going to sell two or

three million copies um and we thought we were making something pretty innovative.

I mean, we we knew making something innovative,

but we didn't know if people would understand how innovative it was.

And then when we got the chance to make to make Vice City and

to try and repeat it, I think every time from then on, the team

was very driven to make something better

and to use this long before we had lots of resources

to use time and whatever money we had to always

put impressive stuff on the screen,

always think about what

we can do to push

the medium of video games and the

sort of medium of building fake worlds further.

And that was always, you know, there was it was a

it was, you know, both clarity of here's what we're trying to do.

Here's what the tone of the game is going to be.

Here's how features will fit into that and to why these features would work

and these features wouldn't work.

Cuz fundamentally by 2002,

you could put pretty much any feature into a game you wanted.

Um, it wasn't a it wasn't a tech there wasn't a technical limitation.

It was just a making it cohesive.

Um, and then it was also just uh everyone committing to a culture of excellence.

N'vi Kansar, an award-winning director and virtual reality game maker

who worked with you on a number of Grand Theft Auto games, spoke highly

about his time working with you.

Quote, "We always worked ourselves to the bone,

but it wasn't coming from the top down.

Sam and Dan always rolled up their sleeves, and they were always there.

They never left us holding the bag.

We all thought we were making badass

so it didn't matter how hard we worked.

So, I'm sure there were some tough grinds.

>> Finishing it is certainly

it's tough, but it also is, you know, intensely

rewarding and and you you get something done and you've made something

and that feeling is is is, as you say, really really incredible.

I mean, can sometimes feel a bit empty as well cuz it's when when

you finish it, you're like and my life's got nothing to it and then

you have to, you know, but that's the same with any

big undertaking you take.

I don't think there you know when you're working that hard, you do not

have a good work life balance.

But the truth is you're not working that hard all the

>> So just you have to just manage it slightly differently.

>> Man, that's such a

heavy thing about the human experience.

I've talked to Olympic gold winners

and many of them face real depression

after they win the gold

>> Because they've been pursuing

a thing that they deeply care about.

This has been everything and they

truly happy to do it and then it's like what else is there in life?

What compared to this?

What else is there?

So that's the ups and downs of life.

It's you need the darkness, you need the lows to really experience the highs.

Uh let me ask you about the pressure.

Uh there's an insane level of excitement and expectation for Grand Theft Auto 6.

Uh same was true for GTA 5 and GTA 4

and even before that

and you and the team delivered every time.

Uh how difficult was it

to uh do creative work under such pressure

where everyone expects this to be a success?

>> I was pretty good at compartmentalizing,

you know, and it just saying

and at I try just to go and when with all

creative work I I I

go, well, I feel like a terrible fraud,

but I haven't been found out yet.

Just do my best and hopefully I won't be found out this time.

And just if I can be if I can go I tried hard with the work.

I tried to do it with integrity.

I tried not to copy someone else.

I probably done all of the above.

You know, try to

bring something new to it.

And we made and we as a group made something we are proud of. Then that's enough.

You can't if you don't want to go insane or if I didn't want

to go insane, I couldn't sit there and worry about financial results.

You know, if we made something great and it didn't sell, that would have to be okay.

uh because the goal is to make something that's

you know video games are expensive so it is a

sort of commercial form of creativity

it's a commercial art form

you know so you have to be an alumni you're spending large amounts of

someone else's money um

you have to try and make it back for them but at the same

time my my argument with myself was well if we the way to make

it back is try and make something great so both

pressures are pointing in the same direction

um I think GTA

4 was very pressured cuz there had been all this pressure on the company.

The company nearly imploded

several times uh due to hot coffee.

It was extremely tough.

So, I think that felt very stressful.

GTA 3, the company was basically broke, but I was young.

I didn't really care, you know.

It wasn't I wasn't living in in in in the grown-up world yet.

All of them had their own pressure.

All of the games had their own pressure.

All the more I felt I gone into it

creatively and tried to be more ambitious.

For me personally, I felt more pressure,

you know, when it uh when it came out that that that would that

would have been the right choice because again, if you're trying to take

big swings creatively and you've spent a lot of money, that can be quite stressful.

You know, I think with with with

Red Dead 2 when you know, we

we were behind schedule, we were

over budget so much I didn't want to think about it

and you're making a game about a cowboy dying of TB

and the game's not coming together.

Turns out a lot of people doubt you at that moment.

you know, it's not that fun.

So, I think that was a lot of pressure.

Um, but you know, anything any doing something new, you know, the new stuff,

there's not necessary pressure on releasing a comic book or in the same way

cuz it's not taken as long.

But, you know, if you're making things, there's always pressure that people are going to like it.

>> Why do you think there was so much excitement about GTA 4, GTA 5,

and now GTA 6?

because they don't come out that regularly.

And I think we did a really

good job of constantly innovating within what the IP was.

The games always felt different.

You know, people have very strong feelings.

I like this one.

I didn't like that one as much cuz they are pretty different.

So you there would be simultaneously

where you know what's going to happen.

It's a Grand Theft Auto.

You know, it's going to be a game about being a criminal,

but the way it's going to be a game is going to change quite a lot.

So, I think the way the the IP kept evolving

meant people being really excited to play it and we were good at marketing them as well.

We we really tried to market them in a way that felt like

an update of classic

film marketing where you were really felt like you're already in the product just

because you'd seen the trailers and

>> You mentioned that you haven't

written for Grand Theft Auto 6.

What's it feel like Grand Theft Auto 6 returning to Vice City?

This is over 20 years later, but the original GTA Vice City game was

set in the 80s.

So maybe inspired by Scarface a little bit.

>> Scarface, Miami Vice, >> Miami Vice

>> and our 80s childhoods.

You know the what I realized quite a while ago unfortunately

was that we made that game and it was set I think in ' 86

and it we made it in 2002 so 16

years after and now it's waved past 16 years since Vice City came out

so it was uh the ' 80s were not that long ago when we made

it >> you know I think Miami is one of the most unique cities in the world.

Oh >> especially if you're thinking about satarizing American culture.

It has this duality of a glossy surface and a dark underworld

as the influencers has the crypto bros,

the yachts, bikinis, plastic surgery, sports cars, drugs, cartel cash,

luxury, super rich people, and uh the desperately poor, just the whole of it.

Would it be like the perfect

city to explore the full

cast of uh characters that are possible that human nature can generate?

I think it's one of them.

You know, there's a reason why

GTA kept coming back to Miami,

New York, Los Angeles.

I think they're all very good for exactly what you laid out.

You know, you could you could say move it to any of those and

it would work, >> you know.

>> So, yeah, there's a melting pot aspect also, right? >> Yeah.

A melting pot aspect to LA, >> you know.

There's glitz, glamour, underbelly,

immigrants, >> you know, enormous wealth in all of them.

I think those are what I think are really fun for any,

not even just for GTA, but for anything where you want a kind of

slice of life, almost like a sort of

psychotic version of a Dickens book,

you know, this big slice of life.

He did it with London,

you know, this psychotic

version of of these,

you know, big all kinds of characters in a melting pot.

Any of these global cities

work well for that.

>> Do you know if that was ever a consideration to go elsewhere

to like a London?

We made a little thing in London

26 years ago, GTA London

for the top down for the PS1.

Um, that was pretty cute and fun

as the first mission pack ever for PlayStation one.

I think for a full

GTA game, we always decided

it was there was so much Americana

inherent in the IP.

It would be really hard to make it work in London or who else.

You know, you needed guns, you needed

this larger than life characters.

It, you know, it just it just felt like it was the game was

so much about America,

you know, possibly from an outsiders perspective, but

you know, that that was so much about what the thing was that it

wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere.

So, you've you've created

I don't know how many over 10

Grand Theft Auto games, >> I think.

So, >> I have to ask, is it a little bit

bittersweet to say to not be part to say goodbye to the Grand Theft

Auto world and having to watch Grand Theft Auto 6 released

or is it more excitement?

Is it what's the feeling?

>> I think it's a it's

how would I describe it?

Of course, it's all all of the above, you know.

It's it's exactly as you you know

pleased to be doing other stuff.

Excited for what we're working on now. Super excited.

Um of course letting go of something.

I worked on it one way or another for like

20 odd years, you know, and and and wrote

on them for the last 10 or 11 that came out.

Wrote all of them, you know, lead writer on all them, whatever it was.

Um, so of course letting go of that

is, you know, is a big is a big change

and and a lot and and and sad in a way.

Um, because it was each of the games was a kind of standalone story.

It's not quite the same as as I think probably

it would be in some ways sadder if someone continued on Red Dead because

it was a cohesive two game arc.

that might be more

sad to hear someone working on that.

But again, not that that will probably happen, too.

They're not I don't own the IP.

That was the sort of part of the the the deal.

It's a privilege to work on stuff, but you don't necessarily own it.

>> That when you're done with the game, does it always feel like a goodbye?

Like when you say when you're done with

uh Red Dead 2 is like you're saying goodbye to Arthur,

like the characters you created, you're walking away.

>> You kind of are saying goodbye to Arthur in the end of the game,

even before the end of the game.

Um, yeah, I think you've got, you know, I've been with them for seven,

eight years and and you have to kind of

let it go or you can't go on to the next one.

>> So, it was always this thing of of okay, that's done.

And sometimes people would ask me questions and I about

older games and certainly when I was in the middle of making new ones

in the I couldn't really necessarily even remember.

I've got a pretty good memory normally

because you kind of have to let it go.

So I it's it's not

it's you're so immersed in it and thinking about it and certainly in that

last period the last few months you're really really immersed in every little nuance

and every little detail all of the time and then you're just not thinking

about it in the same >> Yeah.

It's funny from the player perspective

it feels like an old friend that I miss

whether it's John or Arthur or Nico.

It's a real goodbye.

That's there's a real sadness to finishing a video game.

like legitimately a sad exper not just because the story

>> is sad or >> because you've been with them so long. >> Yeah.

And it's a real goodbye to close it.

There's that feeling when you're sort of

close the video game

>> and it's I mean it's like saying goodbye to a friend.

>> That's when you finish a book you love.

>> It's the same feeling.

And I think that was something that we really

in the early days

of of Rockstar really aspired to have that where people would have that.

It wasn't just the mania of of clearing a level, but the feeling of

saying goodbye to characters,

you know, I think that was something we really

wanted to achieve in games that we didn't know was even possible.

So to hear people

say that is incredibly >> Yeah.

The end of On the Road by Carowak,

Fourlor Rags of Growing Old.

I just remember closing that and thinking, "What the am I doing in this big world?"

It's a melancholic feeling, but there's nothing like that feeling.

And you've achieved that.

It's so rare in video games to be able to achieve that with Red Dead.

And for me, it was Grand Theft Auto 4 with Nico.

I have to ask about in that 2018

interview, you talked about satarizing

American culture, which I think Grand Theft Auto

was trying to do.

And you've made, I think, a

really powerful observation that on the political front, people are getting more divided.

It's getting more absurd and ridiculous and extreme.

So, becoming harder and harder to satarize

because of how rapidly it's becoming ridiculous.

You're talking about you don't even know if Grand Theft Auto 6

if it's possible to satarize

because by the time you release the thing,

it's already going to be outdated

in terms of the the satire will become reality essentially.

Uh, first of all,

it'd be nice to get your updated view on that.

And second of all, it seems like you've answered your very own comment with

uh American caper, which

seems to satarize American culture just fine

in how much over the top it goes.

Anyway, that's lots of questions in there.

One of the things we've enjoyed about doing a comic book

is that we are, it still has lead times,

but the lead times are not four or five years.

the lead times are, you know,

a year and we're putting we can make little updates much much newer

and we're, you know, we're we're just wrapping

issue 10 of a of a 12 issue arc for that.

So, it's not quite

it's not quite as difficult.

You still can get the tone of it.

Um, but yeah, I think it's uh I think it's an issue anyone trying