Tag Archives: dan houser

Speaking in a interview with The Times, Rockstar co-president has said that games are “a popular and easy enemy.”

It comes as the latest media criticism is aimed squarely at Modern Warfare 2 for it’s airport level.

“Look, video games are a popular and easy enemy. It’s all part and parcel of doing something that’s not been done before. One of the things that’s always been exciting is the feeling of being in at the birth of a new medium, but of course the history of technology-driven art from the printing press onwards has been of people fighting against that stuff,” revealed Houser.

“It feels at last like we’re moving on from that debate. The audience is getting past 30 so it all becomes a bit silly. That’s not to say that all games are for all people; we’ve never said that. GTA has always been rated 18 and we’ve always been very happy with that.”

In the same interview, Houser talked about GTA V a bit. Lovely.

Speaking in a interview with The Times, Rockstar co-president Dan Houser has admitted that they would need to think of the main location and the main characters for Grand Theft Auto V before it goes into pre-development.

It’s really the first we’ve heard of any kinds of development work in GTA V, although a location for the game was teased in the manual for stand-alone DLC disc Episodes from Liberty City.

“We’ll think of a city first, then the characters,” admitted Houser.

Houser also spoke out on the controversy overshadowing the initial banning of Manhunt 2 in the UK, before it was lifted in March last year.

“Manhunt 2 was not a good situation. When a game gets banned, it means we’re not doing our first job, of making the investors back their money.”

Find the full interview through here.

Rockstar’s Dan Houser reckons GTA IV’s DLC episodes have to come to discs because digital distribution for larger items just isn’t there yet.

“I know, as a consumer, I’m more comfortable buying songs, which are almost like playing a jukebox, than I am buying movies as purely digital items,” Houser told USA Today.

“We all feel that way, so we can surely get more people to experience it if we put it on a disc.”

However you end up consuming Gay Tony, it looks as though it’s going to be awesome. Houser expanded on the plot.

“Luis has to do some of these favors and see if he can get them out of debt,” he added.

“The situation with Tony’s drug problems gets worse and worse, and Tony gets more and more out of control.”

Sounds fun. The episode’s first movie was released tonight. It’s awesome. The content releases on October 29.

Rockstar does not plan on turning the Grand Theft Auto series into a movie franchise any time soon.

As a matter of fact, vice president Dan Houser says the prospect of one considered, and then quickly tossed aside.

“We don’t believe that the Grand Theft Auto games, which are massive in scope and structurally complex, can be adequately compressed into a two-hour movie,” he told the LA Times. “It seems obvious to us that maintaining the long-term integrity of any entertainment property has been dependent on not making substandard spin-off products to people whose primary interest is making a quick buck.

“If we ever decide to do a film, it will be because we have resolved our creative doubts, and while retaining enough control to ensure that if the movie is terrible, at least we will know we ruined the property ourselves.

Via GTA.4net, Kotaku.

Red Dead Redemption is to have multiplayer containing stagecoaches and trains, Rockstar’s Dan Houser’s told IGN.

“Charging around on horses and stagecoaches and trains, shooting each other in a multiplayer world,” said Houser.

“It’s pretty epic, but it’s not finalized to talk about in any more detail than that. We’re still learning a lot as we learn how to do multiplayer games successfully.”

Houser said lessons learned on GTA IV would be applied to its upcoming western.

“We definitely feel there’s something really fun about third-person multiplayer games, just as we feel there’s something really fun with third-person single-player games.

“Even between GTA IV and the Lost and Damned we made quite a leap forward in how the games were structured and how they played and I think we’re looking to do that again with everything we do going forward.”

The game’s out this year.

Time’s put Sam and Dan Houser in the “artists and entertainment” section of its most influential people in the world issue, saying the pair have offered “quantum leaps in genre-defining fun”.

Their work’s on a par with that of Dickens, apparently:

“But what makes the Housers’ creation unparalleled is that their games have a take on American cultural history,” said Matt Selman, executive producer of The Simpsons.

“A smart take. A take that solidifies the culture’s vision of its recent past. Was it a prominent film or book or record that defined how we look back on gang-era Los Angeles? No, it was a video game that uses movies, music and writing to a greater effect.

“Who better summarized and satirized the drug-dealing Miami of the ’80s? Or the New York City of now? The Housers are doing the work of Tom Wolfe, creating tapestries of modern times as detailed as those of Balzac or Dickens. At least, I assume that’s true. Instead of reading those guys, I’ve been in Liberty City stealing tanks.”

Thanks, Kotaku.

Kotaku’s noticed that the Houser brothers were confirmed getting a Take-Two stock windfall of 2,849,003 shares in last night’s Q1 financials, which equates to roughly $18 million.

Nice work if you can get it.

The Housers are now tied into producing games for the company until 2012. With profit share included, obviously.

Get the rest of the news from last night’s release here.

Rockstar boss Dan Houser’s told the Telegraph that writing games allows more freedom than creating movies and books, despite the fact other mediums are more respected.

“I hope it’s long,” he said when asked on what timescale he thought games would be given the same respect as other mediums.

“It’s really fun at the moment because we’re not in any Academy and the medium’s not codified. There’s no accepted way of doing anything so that give us enormous pleasure because we can make it up as we go along,” he added.

“Movies and TV and books have become so structured in the way they have to approach things. Not working in that environment gives us enormous freedom. I’d rather keep the freedom and not have the respect.”

Tons through there.

Take-Two’s resigned Rockstar’s big bosses into contracts lasting to 2012, with the new agreements involving elements of profit-sharing.

Sam Houser, Dan Houser and Leslie Benzies have all inked the new deal.

Unsurprisingly, the publisher has also agreed to fund future GTA games.

“The entire Rockstar team has always been dedicated to making groundbreaking games with unprecedented production values, style and depth,” said Sam Houser.

“We are excited to continue our partnership with the new management team at Take-Two, who have helped us to protect the unique atmosphere that fosters creativity and innovation.”

The news came as part of Take-Two’s fourth quarter financials announcement.

Press release after the link.

More »

Dan Houser’s told Variety that he’s unsure whether or not the 360 version of GTA IV will get its exclusive DLC this year – we’ve been told it won’t – and that Rockstar’s wary of hyping the content too much in case people begin to think “it’s this enormous thing that it can never be.”

“I’m not sure,” he said when asked if it was shipping in 2008.

“It’s going well. But we don’t know a date. We hope to be announcing that in the next few weeks. We’re still figuring out a few things. We’re more focused on quality than dates, always have been. But the development is going really good. It’s shaping up to be something we’re very proud of. That was our goal.”

Houser added that the content’s nature in terms of the main game’s plot will be outlined before it releases.

“We want to give people a rough idea so their expectations are roughly in line. We don’t want them to imagine it’s this enormous thing that it can never be.

“Doing a big digital launch is something we’ve never done before. It’s virgin territory, but at the same time, we feel very exposed because there’s no case history. No one ever came out with major DLC for a major game like this before.

“It’s new territory for everybody. We’re making it up a little bit as we go along. That’s always fun, but it makes you nervous.”

More through there.

Speaking in the latest edition of Edge, Rockstar boss Dan Houser’s said that Nintendo was keen for GTA Chinatown Wars to maintain its adult feel.

“Nintendo wanted us to make GTA, and we wanted to make GTA on their platform,” he said.

“They didn’t want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren’t interested in making a game we wouldn’t normally make. GTA is about stealing cars and shooting people – how could it not be an 18 rating? You couldn’t do GTA without that 18 – it wouldn’t feel like it’s supposed to feel.”

Game’s out next year. More on D-Pad.

According to this CVG story, UK mag Edge has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars contains a drug dealing game which allows you to sell heroine, cocaine, pot, tablets, acid and downers.

“We wanted to have a drug-dealing minigame in lots of the GTA games,” said Dan Houser. “We played with it a little in Vice City Stories, because it worked really well juxtaposed with the main story.

“It works well with what GTA is, with driving around the map, and it gives you another thing to think about – another layer or piece of the puzzle to keep you motivated.”

Place your bets on the first furious editorial from the Daily Mail. More through the link.

GTA: Chinatown Wars is on DS because Wii wasn’t the way to go on Nintendo platforms, according to Dan Houser.

Speaking to Nintendo Power, the Rockstar boss answered the question of why he didn’t take the series to Wii before DS thus:

It didn’t feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we’d done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven’t really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They’re sort of separate issues.

Glad that’s cleared up. Thanks, NintendoEverything.

Speaking in the June issue of Playboy, Rockstar boss Dan Houser’s said that the film industry doesn’t wholly support gaming because it’s a threat to its audience.

“It’s about economics,” he said. “We take market share and audience from other media – videogame makers are challenging the Hollywood hegemony – so they’re going to fight us. But I’m not going to fight them. I believe your Constitution protects us.”

Houser continued, saying games eat into movie entertainment market share because they essentially offer the same experience.

“These are works of fiction,” he said. “Playing a game that features violence is no different from choosing to see a violent movie. We’re not trying to create a ‘here’s real life’ sensation in a video game; it’s “you’re the star of a movie. We want to re-create the sensations you have watching movies. We’re putting those in a video game.”

Thanks, Kotaku.

Dan Houser’s hardcore. He swears in interviews. And he ain’t playin’ no Peggle, foo’.

“Fuck all this stuff about casual gaming,” he told the New York Metro.

He actually said, “F***,” apparently, but we’ve filled in the blanks for you.

Wii, apparently, isn’t casual gaming.

“I think people still want games that are groundbreaking,” he added. “The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic. We’re hopefully going to prove that there’s also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies.”

Full thing through the link.

In a Variety interview, Rockstar chief Dan Houser’s spoken about how Rockstar’s managed to keep GTA at the top of its game for the past decade.

“The intellectual property is the main asset in the company,” he said. “That’s why GTA is still relevant 10 years later. We haven’t put one out every year. We haven’t fleeced it. And we haven’t put it on 50 different formats. We’re not per se against moving properties between different media but for GTA it just seems so perfect as a game. You lose a lot of what makes it what it is if you move it into being, say, a movie. It just never seemed interesting creatively.”

Creativity is key, said the bald boss.

“We’ve had successful launches before but our angle is always creativity,” he said. “Mainly because we’re in a position where we see games slowly gaining credibility as an art form as a medium.

“A lot of other people want to purely look at that from a business angle. For those of us who spend years slaving over making the thing, the thing isn’t ‘We make this much money.’ That isn’t interesting. The thing is, ‘Does it resonate with people and take an interesting place in their cultural fabric?’ That’s an interesting story to us.”

An awful lot more through the link.

Rockstar boss Dan Houser’s defining moment of GTA IV so far involves a favourite track, some police and lots of guns, according to this.

“A song I love came on one of the radio stations while I had two cop cars chasing me through Chinatown,” he said. “I was speeding along when another cop car I hadn’t seen rammed me straight on, our cars crunched together, and I was sent flying through the windshield. I ducked into cover and could still hear the song playing from my smashed-up car. Then the cops opened fire, but one of them hit a pedestrian who pulled out his gun and started shooting. The next thing I know, there was a full-scale war going on between a random gang and the cops. Within a few seconds all the cops were dead and the gang members walked away. I got hold of another car and quietly drove out of the search area to lose my wanted level.”

We’re suckers for the hype. April 29 can’t happen soon enough.

Rockstar head Dan Houser has been quick to stamp on further talk of a GTA movie following yesterday’s Variety story, which claimed a filmed based on the giant gaming franchise almost came to fruition last year.

“Rockstar was not involved in this project in any way, shape or form,” said Houser, speaking to MTV. “Some movie producers were trying to put something together to entice us to make a movie, as studios and production teams frequently have done in the past. This proposal was no more interesting than the numerous others we receive. We never entertained proceeding with the project.”

The Variety report claimed the movie involved one of Hollywood’s “big six” studios and that Eminem was touted for lead. Guess we can put that one to rest, then.

Rockstar boss has pointed towards a more mature iteration of Grand Theft Auto in GTA IV in a demo here, saying the upcoming title’s plotline generation is to be a step beyond that seen in previous games in the series.

“We wanted to make the storytelling more sophisticated and more organic,” said Houser. “We give you choices to really recreate the experience of an immigrant moving to New York in the present time and emulate walking down the street and meeting the freaks that you meet. It’s largely streamlining and adding to the ideas that were there before.”

“If the graphics are slightly cartoony, we make sure the writing is slightly cartoony to match that,” he added. “Obviously, the graphics have gone closer to realism, so we wanted everything else to be closer to realism as well.”

GTA IV will release for both PS3 and Xbox 360 on April 29, and is expected to sell over six million units in six months. Even the confirmation of the game’s release date was enough to heavily boost Take-Two’s shares earlier this week.

According to this AP report about positive trading on Take-Two’s stock today, “the company’s contract with Sam and Dan Houser, the heads of its Rockstar Games studio, expires in early 2008, and has yet to be renewed.”

The news will certainly raise eyebrows considering the proximity to the launch of GTA IV, now confirmed for release on April 29. The Houser’s are the notorious drivers of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, renowned by those in the know for keeping a very tight hold on Rockstar’s reins and being fiercely protective of the brand and its properties. And their mother was in Get Carter. They told us so 10 years ago.

Maybe the big men are looking for a change? Sam and Dan were original Rockstar founders in 1998, along with Terry Donovan and Jamie King. Back then the Housers were touting the top-down GTA2 (we interviewed them at E3 that year) and everything was very bed-of-roses compared to the megalithic creation we see today in the 3D GTA. Is enough enough, chaps?

Don’t expect official comment any time soon.