Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser left the acclaimed studio in 2020 after starting the studio in 1998. It was quite a run that spawned most Grand Theft Auto titles and the latter two Red Dead games. He has now officially announced his next endeavor, which is a studio called Absurd Ventures.
What is Absurd Ventures?
Absurd is, according to a press release, about “building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a diverse variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.”
It’s all quite general, and the studio’s Twitter account didn’t offer much clarity. It’s full of aptly absurd videos and images that have little in common with one another. One post is just an abstract image with the text, “The robots are depressed.” Another tweet has a video with an eye with eerie music in the background. Another has an ominous robotic figure. The most off-kilter one features three businessmen seemingly from the 1980s asking the viewer if they want to become an intimacy coordinator. The apparent trailer for the team is similarly erratic, as it bounces from one unrelated clip to another with the text, “Storytelling. Philanthropy. Ultraviolence.” at the end.
It’s unclear when more will come out about Absurd, as Houser has typically not given interviews or held much of a public presence throughout his career.
The name of the studio isn’t quite new, as news of Absurd Ventures surfaced in early 2021 through a listing on the U.K.’s registrar of companies.
Houser also left Rockstar shortly after he was one of the central figures in the reports surrounding the allegedly brutal working conditions the team had facilitated over the years, something he later tried to clear up in another comment.
