Rockstar Games Co-Founder Won’t Play GTA VI for a Good Reason — He Hasn’t Even Watched the Extended Trailer

Dan Houser is one of the most important names in the video game industry. That is hardly an exaggeration considering he is one of the co-founders of Rockstar Games, the studio behind [Grand Theft Auto](Grand Theft Auto) and [Red Dead Redemption](Red Dead Redemption). Despite his deep connection to these franchises, however, he recently revealed that he still hasn’t watched the extended GTA VI trailer.

Even more surprisingly, the veteran writer says he has no plans to buy the new game in the series or other open-world titles. He discussed the subject in a recent interview and explained why.

Rockstar Games co-founder explains why he won’t play GTA VI

Dan Houser, co-founder and former vice president of Rockstar Games, [announced that he would leave the company in March 2020](the announcement about Dan Houser leaving Rockstar). The news came shortly after the creative took a break in spring 2019. His brother, Sam Houser, remains at the company.

After leaving Rockstar, the writer began working at Absurd Ventures, a studio he founded in 2023. In a recent interview with Variety, he discussed Grand Theft Auto VI and the open-world genre in general.

During the conversation, Dan Houser admitted that, despite the Grand Theft Auto series being a central part of his career, he still hasn’t watched the official GTA VI presentation that was released through Netflix in late August. And yes, he had a good reason for skipping one of the biggest gaming events of the summer.

“I haven’t seen it yet. I tried to avoid it because I always try to stay away from anything that could distract me or disrupt my creativity. And since I spend a lot of time creating open-world games, and the rest of my waking time looking for innovative ways to market them, I don’t need to see what other people are doing,” the developer said.

You could say Dan Houser belongs to the small group of people who managed to ignore the GTA VI showcase. According to the data, the nearly 30-minute preview surpassed 30 million views just 4 days after its Netflix debut, becoming the [streaming platform’s most-watched release during its premiere week](GTA VI preview became Netflix’s most-watched release that week).

At the moment, the extended trailer has already racked up 29 million views on YouTube. Grand Theft Auto VI will launch on November 19, 2026, and will undoubtedly dominate headlines when it arrives. It will be interesting to see whether Dan Houser manages to escape all the media attention surrounding Take-Two Interactive’s highly anticipated title.

Dan Houser also avoids playing open-world games

The former Rockstar Games writer currently works on several multimedia franchises at Absurd Ventures, and the studio has already released several comic books and novels. He is also still involved in the gaming industry, as he is currently working on 2 video games based on those franchises.

“One is an open-world comedy that tries to focus on humor and character memory (…) The other is a dystopian science fiction title about the development of a video game that went terribly wrong and a rogue AI that became sentient,” the developer explained.

In addition to having no plans to play Grand Theft Auto VI, Dan Houser says he tries to stay away from other open-world games as well. Why? Whenever he plays them, he inevitably ends up analyzing how they were made.

“When I play, I can almost analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the team in real time, and that distracts me. I’m always thinking, ‘well, their animation team is weak, but I think the game design is fantastic,’ and ‘oh, I can imagine the meeting where they discussed this feature,’” the Rockstar Games co-founder said.

Fortunately for him, Dan Houser says he never had to “be the person who understands what everyone else is doing,” so he doesn’t need to play other open-world titles in an attempt to borrow elements from them. In general, he tries to stay away from anything he believes could influence his work too much.

“When we started working on Red Dead Redemption, I stopped watching westerns. In fact, I didn’t watch The Sopranos until after I left Rockstar. I watched one episode because my girlfriend (now my wife) and I watched the finale live. I hadn’t seen anything before that. And then I watched the whole thing during the pandemic. And I’m grateful. It’s so good that it would have completely disrupted everything I was doing on GTA if I had watched it at the time,” he admitted.