Dan Houser, the Visionary Behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, Talks “Absurd Ventures” and New Comic Book, American Caper at L.A. Comic Con 2025

Houser reflects on his groundbreaking career and teases new creative projects alongside IGN Senior Executive Editor Ryan McCaffrey

LOS ANGELES, CA — September 27, 2025 — L.A. Comic Con, Los Angeles’ largest event for comics, gaming, sci-fi, anime and pop culture, hosted a historic moment this weekend as Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and the creative force behind Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Bully and more, made his first-ever sit-down on-camera interview appearance.

Houser took the L.A. Comic Con Main Stage on Saturday, September 27, for a rare conversation with IGN Senior Executive Editor Ryan McCaffrey, drawing a packed audience eager to hear insights from one of gaming’s most influential storytellers. Together, they revisited the cultural legacy of Houser’s landmark titles while looking ahead to the next chapter of his storytelling at Absurd Ventures, including his upcoming crime-fiction comic series American Caper.

“It changed over time... When I started work on GTA 3…we were figuring out quite fundamental building blocks of how we do open storytelling and open world gaming…From a writing perspective, I hopefully got better as I went along, and I began to understand the process more. By GTA 4, we really tried to make it a more character rich experience... It was always an equation of: the tone of the world multiplied by the personality of the lead character – that was the game.”

-Dan Houser on the creative process

“For me personally, it was an advantage to be an outsider and an insider…You think you understand America when you live in Britain, but you really don’t. And when you come here, you start to grapple with it firsthand - it’s a very different experience...the combination of it was very important.”

-Dan Houser on American satire in his work via the British POV

“Red Dead [Redemption] 2 was the best thing that I worked on. The best single realization of open world storytelling, thematic consistency, and understanding how the games resembled to take you on an emotional journey…”

-Dan Houser on his favorite Rockstar games through his career

“I love doing crime comedy and having done lots of stories about carjackers, or people that have to be tough, living in this moment right now, I wanted to tell a story about some degenerate criminals from a completely different perspective, in a completely different part of the world, that you could never make a GTA game in.”

-Dan Houser on his upcoming comic book, American Caper

“It’s a great privilege to have worked on something that big…There’s always a new story, so it’s not going to be a story that I wrote or a character set that I developed, but it’s going to be exciting. The game will be great, I’m sure.”

-Dan Houser on Grand Theft Auto VI

“Men getting confused between reality and the fantasy in their heads is something a lot of stories are about, and is something I find very interesting. America, particularly the rural west, in this moment right now is something I found interesting, and thought was an interesting place to set a dark comedy.  We’re still grappling with contemporary American themes but doing it from a different perspective…”

-On revisiting themes in his upcoming comic book,American Caper

“Small town, suburban, ‘successful people.’ One is a happily married-ish (in his mind) lawyer, and the other is a happily married (in his mind) property developer. Both have made some terrible mistakes and their lives go very awry.”

-Dan Houser’s elevator pitch on what American Caperis

“We’ve got two video games in development. One is in our comedy world, which we are calling the ABSURDAVERSE, and it’s going to be open world, third person comedy. The other is set in our other universe, A BETTER PARADISE, and it’s going to be a third person, dystopian tragedy - a dystopian mess. Both are in early development…”

-Dan Houser on upcoming projects in the works via Absurd Ventures

Founded in 2023, Absurd Ventures is Houser’s bold new storytelling company, designed to build immersive worlds and narratives across multiple mediums including video games, television, film, animation, books, and comics. With a focus on original IP, Absurd Ventures aims to expand the boundaries of how stories are told, blending Houser’s signature worldbuilding with innovative formats that engage fans in fresh ways.

Recently, Circana released new data on the top-selling PlayStation titles of the past 30 years highlights Dan Houser’s impact on gaming, withGrand Theft Auto V (#1), Red Dead Redemption 2(#3), and GTA: San Andreas (#4) — all written and directed by Houser — ranking in the top four.

Fans were also given an exclusive preview ofAmerican Caper, Absurd Ventures’ debut comic book series launching November 12, 2025 with Dark Horse Comics. Set against the backdrop of a fictional American city, the series follows a cast of flawed but compelling characters caught in a web of crime, corruption, and morality. American Caper represents Houser’s fresh take on the crime-fiction genre, giving fans a first look at how Absurd Ventures is bringing his narrative style into new formats.

Additional highlights from the panel included a tease of A Better Paradise, Houser’s forthcoming novel releasing on October 14, 2025. Houser’s forthcoming novel is based on the audio fiction podcast that debuted at #1 on Apple’s Fiction charts and won the 2024 Signal Award for Best Episode of Scripted Fiction, awarded to the show’s season finale. The novel will go deeper into the origins and secrets of the mysterious video game’s development as told by the tortured souls who are now on the run from the AI entity they played a part in creating and unleashing.