Dan Houser leaving Rockstar Games

[Jabalous]

14 hours ago, Zapper said:

Garbut is still there though.

Yes, in addition to other key names that are not known as well as the others. It is only a matter of time before those names also pack up and leave, and eventually it will be Sam and Aaron, too. It may happen following the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, or by the end the of current decade at maximum. When all these producer, executive, story writer and director names leave, it would be hard to carry on the legacy without witnessing a drastic change from a player perspective. 

[Zapper]

8 minutes ago, Jabalous said:

It is only a matter of time before those names also pack up and leave, and eventually it will be Sam and Aaron, too. 

Hopefully these guys get out from that bloodsucking Take Two's control and get the band back together independently and do what they do best.

[Jabalous]

37 minutes ago, Zapper said:

Hopefully these guys get out from that bloodsucking Take Two's control and get the band back together independently and do what they do best.

I do not fully agree with this sentiment about T2. One could argue that if it was not for the current management of T2, R* might not have had the funds needed to build and perfect games like Redemption 2 over the course of 5 years of full development. How many video games executives are willing to take such a risk by investing into a single extremely large release? T2 did nothing but enabling the vision of the Houser brothers. When Sam and Aaron leave, they'll simply move to retirement. They will not be as young and energetic as they once were, and even if they tried, they will most likely not find a pool of investors willing to give them the funds and freedom that they had when they worked under T2's umbrella. It's too costly and difficult to rebuild the R* environment somewhere else. 

Edited April 18, 2020 by Jabalous

[Iggy Pop]

He's a good writer for most of Rockstar Games, so this is indeed a significant blow for the company.

 

I'm not going to look too deep into this. Video game staff do get tired of the industry and want to move on to other ventures in their lives. I'm sure he and his brother and co-founder, Sam Houser, are on good terms.

[MrPhillips]

21 minutes ago, Iggy Pop said:

He's a good writer for most of Rockstar Games, so this is indeed a significant blow for the company.

 

I'm not going to look too deep into this. Video game staff do get tired of the industry and want to move on to other ventures in their lives. I'm sure he and his brother and co-founder, Sam Houser, are on good terms.

I always imagined Sam as a conservative and Dan as a liberal, maybe that's why their games are making fun of both.

[Journey_95]

I just hope he finished GTA 6 before this. His writing style is very unique and he has delivered so many great stories and memorable characters of the years. I feel like without him GTA and RDR's identity will be lost.

 

Rockstar may just be like Bioware in a few more years, just a shell of their former self. 

Edited May 13, 2020 by Journey_95

[Jabalous]

9 hours ago, Journey_95 said:

I just hope he finished GTA 6 before this. His writing style is very unique and he has delivered so many great stories and memorable characters of the years. I feel like without him GTA and RDR's identity will be lost.

 

Rockstar may just be like Bioware in a few more years, just a shell of their former self. 

I am concerned that his leave might be due to external pressures on the industry from the left-leaning media. He was quoted in 2018 commenting on why it's difficult for him to write satire in the present.

 

Quote

 

"Both intense liberal progression and intense conservatism are both very militant, and very angry. It is scary but it's also strange, and yet both of them seem occasionally to veer towards the absurd. It's hard to satirize for those reasons. Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire. It would be out of date within two minutes, everything is changing so fast."

 

Grand Theft Auto V was criticized in 2013 by writers and media outlets as being sexist and misogynist, and some of them used the saying of "They don't make you play a female protagonist" as a basis for their argument. It's progressively become worse since 2013, so I'd not blame him if this was one of the reasons for which he decided to leave the industry. There's a pressure to conform to a particular way of writing and no more unrestricted artistic freedom without risking the possibility of being negatively described in articles using politically manufactured labels.  

Edited May 13, 2020 by Jabalous

[Journey_95]

19 minutes ago, Jabalous said:

I am concerned that his leave might be due to external pressures on the industry from the left-leaning media. He was quoted in 2018 commenting on why it's difficult for him to write satire in the present.

 

Grand Theft Auto V was criticized in 2013 by writers and media outlets as being sexist and misogynist, and some of them used the saying of "They don't make you play a female protagonist" as a basis for their argument. It's progressively become worse since 2013, so I'd not blame him if this was one of the reasons for which he decided to leave the industry. There's a pressure to conform to a particular way of writing and no more unrestricted artistic freedom without risking the possibility of being negatively described in articles using politically manufactured labels.  

Its possible..Dan Houser definitely doesn't follow the PC "guidelines" that woke people demand these days. And these days the left has gotten much more extreme. They would just want him to bash Trump & the "alt right" (like all other american entertainment) instead of being more balanced. And force female/lgbt+ etc. MC's.

 

Whatever it is, my hype for GTA 6 has definitely gone down.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Journey_95

[KarimNTerr]

I just hope we don't see anything nearly similar to The Last of Us Part II woke bullsh*t in any future GTA game

[universetwisters]

On 5/13/2020 at 11:19 AM, KarimNTerr said:

I just hope we don't see anything nearly similar to The Last of Us Part II woke bullsh*t in any future GTA game

 

tbh we probably will because a lot of Rockstar's sh*t has been more story-driven hand holding stuff recently.

[Schwartzxz]

is anybody else kinda annoyed by the fact that Dan never bothered to say anything after he left Rockstar? Lazlow did and thats cool. I dont know why he likes to be so mysterious.

[Zello]

37 minutes ago, nob said:

Dan Houser sits on the board of the Rainforest Alliance now, since 2019 https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/bios/dan-houser 

 

Remember that Rockstar Humble Bundle a couple of years back where all the proceeds went to the Rainforest Alliance?

I guess he wants to be a philanthropist now. 

[universetwisters]

7 hours ago, Zello said:

I guess he wants to be a philanthropist now. 

 

Either that or, like most billionaires and other rich people, he uses philanthropy as a cover to get tax breaks 

[Zello]

12 hours ago, universetwisters said:

 

Either that or, like most billionaires and other rich people, he uses philanthropy as a cover to get tax breaks 

 

He's the sick kind of Philanthropist 

Edited October 5, 2020 by Zello

[Valhall Viking]

Looked through the thread and surprised no one's talking about the elephant in the room: Rockstar's working environment. The company and the Houser bros are notoriously known for their crunch and treatment of employees. Remember when Dan was doing press for RDR2 and bragged about the working hours which backfired and caused some massive stories and investigations to come out? The place is equally legendary and infamous for being the studio equivalent to a frat house and the online employee reviews is pretty damning.

 

For my cents, the work culture at the studio is most likely changing going forward and tbh it's about time. I don't give a f*ck about how good the games are if the people making it are suffering for it. Dan probably left as he's one of the bosses/founders and therefore seen as, or quite possibly is, an instigator to all the sh*t employees have had to put up with over the years. This lines up with a comment I saw on Reddit when Dan left that said Imran Sarwar had been let go as well. This hasn't been verified, but his title as Director of design on LinkedIn stopped in May 2019. I remember seeing some comments saying that he was a real POS and instigator. That there's been no drama reported is just R* avoiding bad PR again and letting Dan leave with some honor intact. Anyway, don't feel sorry for Dan. After all, he married one of the russian voice actors from IV that's substantially younger than him and milked Online for everything it was worth.

 

And please don't give me any of that "He can't work in a PC society" bullsh*t. GTA have always poked fun at and taken hits from both sides of the american political spectrum and I seriously doubt Dan Houser has a problem with left wing politics. Did you already forget that RDR2 included all kinds of social issues which is still pissing people off for being too preachy and unrealistic? His comments about the difficulty of writing satire in today's climate means exactly what he said: things are changing so fast largely because of social media and the surreal events transpiring. I mean, even GTA V felt incredibly dated fast.