Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming | Lex Fridman Podcast #484

0:00 You said that Red Dead Redemption 2,

0:01 in your opinion, is the best thing you've ever done.

0:03 I think there's a strong case to be

0:05 made that it's the greatest game of all time.

0:07 What are the elements that make that game truly great, do you think?

0:12 People searching for meaning amongst the violence.

0:14 I think that the West and all the themes

0:17 around the West really lend itself to that.

0:20 And the gunplay was fantastic, and the horses were incredible.

0:22 I think we got to spend, a smaller group of us, working on it from day one,

0:27 coming up with some weird, wacky ideas that we got to embed in the game.

0:33 It was helpful that we got to be very creative before it had a full team on it.

0:39 You lock yourself in a room and get anchovies and onion pizza and crushed...

0:42 Diet Cokes?

0:43 Yes.

0:43 Is this accurate information?

0:45 Very accurate.

0:46 Why do you think there was so much excitement about GTA IV,

0:48 GTA V, and now GTA VI?

0:50 I think we did a really good job of constantly innovating.

0:53 The games always felt different.

0:55 People have very strong feelings: "I like this one." "I didn't like

0:59 that one as much," because they are pretty different.

1:02 So you know what's going to happen.

1:03 It's a Grand Theft Auto,

1:04 you know it's going to be a game about being a criminal,

1:06 but the way it's going to be a game is going to change quite a lot.

1:08 The number one question from the internet, it is so ridiculous, but I must ask,

1:12 "Have you seen Gavin?" The following is a conversation with Dan Houser,

1:20 a legendary video game creator, co-founder of Rockstar Games,

1:24 and the creative force behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series,

1:29 which includes some of the best-selling games of all

1:32 time and some of the greatest games of all time.

1:36 Both Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 have some of the deepest,

1:40 most complex, and heart-wrenching characters

1:43 and storylines ever created in video games.

1:47 Dan has started a new company, Absurdventures, great name,

1:52 that is creating some incredible new worlds in multiple forms,

1:56 including books, comic books, audio series, and yes, video games.

2:00 That includes A Better Paradise, which is a dystopian near-future world

2:06 with a super intelligent AI, American Caper,

2:09 which is an insanely chaotic, violent, dark, satirical world,

2:14 and Absurdiverse, which is a comedic action-adventure world.

2:19 I'm excited to explore all three of these.

2:23 I have spent hundreds of hours in worlds that Dan has helped create,

2:28 so this conversation was an incredible honor for me.

2:31 And on top of that, Dan and I talked a lot after and in the days since,

2:36 and he has been just a wonderful human being.

2:40 I'm just at a loss of words.

2:42 I feel like the luckiest kid in the world.

2:46 This is the Lex Fridman Podcast.

2:48 To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description,

2:52 where you can also find links to contact me,

2:54 ask questions, give feedback, and so on.

2:58 And now, dear friends, here's Dan Houser.

3:03 You've helped create some of the most incredible characters,

3:06 stories, and open worlds in video game history.

3:09 But when you grew up in the late '70s and '80s,

3:13 open-world video games wasn't a thing.

3:16 So you've credited literature and film as early inspiration.

3:20 So let's talk about film first, if we can.

3:24 Sure.

3:24 What to you are some of the candidates for the greatest films of all time,

3:28 maybe films that were highly influential on you?

3:31 I mean, Godfather.

3:32 God, well, I think for me,

3:33 probably Godfather II more than Godfather I, but I love both of them.

3:36 But I love the divided story in Godfather II.

3:40 And as a migrant, I used to live in Soho.

3:43 I love the bits in Little Italy, and I love the sections in Sicily.

3:48 I think and the bit,

3:50 Ellis Island is just one of the best shots in all of cinema.

3:54 When you see little Vito turning up in Ellis

3:56 Island and you get that shot, it's amazing.

3:58 It gives you a really good cinematic sense of what

4:01 it must have been like to arrive in America.

4:04 How much of the greatness of Godfather do you think is the writing?

4:07 How much is the cinematography and how much is the acting?

4:11 You got De Niro, you got young Pacino.

4:14 Coppola started as a screenwriter,

4:15 so I think he wrote, at least co-wrote the script.

4:19 So it's almost like the writing, directing almost become the same thing.

4:22 But it's one of those films, both of them are those films,

4:25 which I was thinking about this idea of a perfect film where everything's good.

4:29 Where the acting's seminal, where the writing's seminal,

4:32 where the music is seminal, where the shots are so memorable,

4:36 where the scenes you know, define what you think about things.

4:39 It's impossible to think about the mafia and not think about The Godfather.

4:43 What about the pacing?

4:44 It is a bit slow.

4:45 You have movies like 2001 Space Odyssey, slow.

4:49 Yes.

4:50 It used to be, back in my day, it used to be slow.

4:53 Life got faster.

4:54 Life just got, you know, as I think as we moved from the '70s into the '80s,

5:00 into the '90s, people had seen so many films,

5:03 they just started to edit films faster.

5:05 And people understood cinematic storytelling so much

5:08 that you could do things much quicker, you could show a look and just that meant

5:13 you realized that person was gonna betray the other person.

5:16 They just edited films much quicker.

5:18 But I quite like the slowness.

5:20 I think these days with modern, you know, high quality televisions,

5:23 you don't have to necessarily watch these films in one sitting,

5:26 particularly when you're rewatching them.

5:27 So it doesn't bother me that they're long and slow.

5:29 Speaking of faster, life getting faster, I...

5:32 I'm sure another influential movie was Goodfellas, Scorsese.

5:35 That's faster, right?

5:37 Yes.

5:38 A mixture of crime and humor.

5:40 And almost like an open world game in some ways,

5:43 in that it's this slice of life.

5:44 You know, I think that probably changed cinema at the tail end of the '80s,

5:48 changed cinema at the sort of tail end of the '80s,

5:52 early '90s, more than any other film.

5:54 And it's so iconic.

5:56 In some ways I prefer Casino, but the invention is really in Goodfellas.

6:00 I love the end of Casino, you know, the use of voiceover,

6:03 the way you saw them being criminals and being normal people,

6:07 you know, it changed everything.

6:09 The Sopranos is obviously completely inspired by Goodfellas.

6:12 Casino has, first of all, the character of Sharon Stone.

6:16 I mean, everything.

6:17 The look, the clothes...

6:19 ...The music.

6:20 I would say one of the most memorable moments

6:22 in film for me is the meeting in the desert.

6:25 I mean, just the drama building up to that between...

6:28 Dig another hole.

6:29 Yeah.

6:29 The environment, the city,

6:31 speaking of open world and creating a character from the city.

6:34 It's one of the great Vegas films.

6:37 I think the great Vegas film.

6:38 There are bits that I always...

6:39 that I love.

6:40 At the end, when everything's wrapping up,

6:42 and on the one hand you see the Robert De Niro character,

6:45 he's still good at making money, so they let him return to normal life.

6:49 But then you get that brilliant scene when

6:51 all of the, the mob bosses from back home,

6:55 they're discussing all these people who may

6:57 or may not be able to implicate them.

6:59 And then there's that incredibly cold line where one of them,

7:02 they're thinking about the old, you know, I think it's the casino manager,

7:05 and one of them just goes, "Ah, the way I see it,

7:07 why take a chance?" And then the next thing, he's just shot.

7:09 The brutality of it all is just brilliant.

7:13 I don't know, I probably have to disagree with you on Vegas.

7:15 There's at least some competitors.

7:16 You got what, Nicolas Cage Leaving Las Vegas?

7:18 I mean, falling in love with a prostitute.

7:21 You've written some of the great crime stories ever.

7:25 Thank you.

7:26 And in some sense, there's love stories in there.

7:30 And you've talked about- ...being a bit of a romantic yourself.

7:35 Appreciating the depth of love stories in literature at the very least.

7:40 And there is a dark kind of love story between an alcoholic and a prostitute.

7:44 He got an Oscar for that.

7:46 I think he did for that, didn't he?

7:47 Plus there's the caricature of the drug world of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

7:51 That's an interesting one.

7:53 I love the book so much.

7:54 I was obsessed by it when I was about 17, 18.

7:57 And I enjoyed the film, but I preferred the book.

7:59 Has a Hunter S.

8:00 Thompson type of character ever made it into any of your stories?

8:04 No, but one of the things we're working on now,

8:06 there's sort of an English version of Hunter S.

8:09 Thompson if he was also a market gardener.

8:12 I love that persona.

8:14 But he's kind of...

8:15 it's hard.

8:16 If you make him American, it's hard for it not just to be Hunter S.

8:19 Thompson.

8:20 Is this an American caper?

8:21 No, it's in this animated show we're developing

8:24 in this sort of comedy world we're working on called Absurdiverse,

8:27 and it's in one of the stories in that.

8:30 What is Absurdiverse?

8:31 Absurdiverse is a comedy universe we're developing

8:36 that will be an open-world video game and then

8:40 some loosely adjacent stories that we're going to make

8:44 as animated TV shows or possibly animated movies.

8:46 We're still thinking that all through.

8:48 And we're building the game up in San Rafael at the moment,

8:53 and it's early days, but it's looking very exciting.

8:56 And it's trying to be...

8:57 like, trying to make a game that feels a a little bit like a living sitcom.

9:02 Is there some drama and tragedy at the edges, or is it pure comedy?

9:07 I hope it's got comedy, cynicism, heart, drama, and some amusing life lessons.

9:13 Otherwise, you can't just have jokes for 40 hours, it won't work.

9:17 Okay, so comedy needs some darkness.

9:19 Well, I think it needs story.

9:21 One of my favorite comedies of this century

9:23 is The Office because it was incredibly funny,

9:25 but also because it had narrative and heart underneath the cynicism.

9:28 I think with narrative, you get a drive alongside jokes.

9:34 And there's going to be an open-world video game.

9:37 Yes.

9:38 Yes.

9:39 When?

9:39 Two, three, four years.

9:40 Still thinking that through.

9:42 So, what's the process of getting from the idea to the end of a video game?

9:45 Why does it take so long to get it right?

9:48 That's an interesting question.

9:49 I think if you look at the scale at which they're built,

9:53 you could argue it the other way, why is it so quick?

9:56 I mean, you really are building, in one go, a world,

9:59 a city, and 40 hours of entertainment cut through it.

10:03 and 40 hours of entertainment cut through it.

10:05 You know, these things are massive four-dimensional mosaics that are

10:08 intensely complicated and have to work in lots of different ways.

10:12 And I think that's us being kind of aggressive on the timeline.

10:16 We're taking a tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent,

10:18 but I have to return to some films.

10:20 Let me just list a few of my favorites.

10:22 So first of all, you said you love great war books.

10:26 Yes.

10:27 and movies.

10:28 Yes.

10:28 So we have to throw in Platoon from Oliver

10:31 Stone and Apocalypse Now, for me at least.

10:34 Of course.

10:35 There's more crime, fast-moving crime movies, like Scarface.

10:40 I also love True Romance.

10:42 I love True Romance.

10:43 Possibly the best, one of the best scripts ever written.

10:47 Written, of course, by Quentin Tarantino.

10:49 What do you love about True Romance?

10:51 I think sometimes, depending on the day,

10:53 depending on the bar and how much alcohol I've had,

10:55 I will say True Romance is the best movie ever made.

10:59 Yeah, I mean, True Romance is super fun.

11:01 Tony Scott was a really good director, so it moves at a really good speed.

11:04 It's funny, it's completely unbelievable,

11:06 but you really care about the characters.

11:08 It's the kind of, you know,

11:09 this world that obviously doesn't exist, but you feel it does exist.

11:13 The characters are larger than life.

11:15 The dialogue is unbelievable.

11:16 You could just sit and watch unbelievable.

11:17 You could just sit and watch them talk all day long.

11:20 And, you know, you just...

11:22 it's amusing.

11:22 You just want to live in that world.

11:24 I was thinking about, like, what do you like about films?

11:27 It's the idea to be in a world.

11:29 You want to...

11:30 they're not real.

11:30 They're never real, but you want to be

11:32 in these fake worlds that people have invented.

11:34 And I think you said that what makes

11:35 a great world is having a large cast of characters.

11:38 And I think that movie is a good example.

11:40 I mean, you have Christopher Walken

11:42 with the sort of legendary super racist discussion.

11:45 Yeah.

11:46 Rant.

11:46 Rant.

11:46 Dennis Hopper is just sort of a dream dad.

11:49 Yeah.

11:49 Dream dad.

11:50 And just that interaction is legendary.

11:52 You got even Brad Pitt as a pothead on the couch.

11:57 Gary Oldman.

11:57 Gary Oldman.

11:58 As a rasta.

12:00 Yeah, and you have...

12:01 I mean, a real love story.

12:04 Like, a real, genuine, pure love can survive in any context.

12:08 And it's just sweet.

12:09 Their love story is very sweet in that film.

12:11 Yeah.

12:11 It's endearing.

12:12 The...

12:12 Elvis is a character.

12:13 It's kind of like a mini GTA type game.

12:16 Some of the same beauty, the comedy, the love,

12:19 the-- Yeah, and it's all crossed with Play It Again, Sam.

12:21 It sort of feels a bit like that with the Elvis character.

12:24 What about greatest war film?

12:25 What would it be for you?

12:27 Greatest war film?

12:28 If I'm feeling serious, it would be a Russian film called Come and See.

12:33 which is probably the most intense film ever made.

12:35 And if I'm feeling slightly less serious, Apocalypse Now,

12:39 and I would always want to watch the original cut.

12:42 I don't prefer the re-edits.

12:43 I like the original first release.

12:45 I think it's tighter and slicker and works the best.

12:50 Yeah, of course, Apocalypse Now is

12:52 this hallucinatory journey into darkness, I think, madness.

12:54 Yeah, but from your first-- Yeah- scene onwards,

12:56 it's just got these amazing set piece after set piece and, again,

13:01 incredible characters, brilliant dialogue.

13:04 Some of the greatest films about war reveal that war is not what it seems,

13:10 and there's different ways of doing that.

13:12 And you've talked about different books.

13:14 The Thin Red Line is another book— ...and movie that shows that.

13:19 Yeah, yeah, and I watched the movie years before I read the book,

13:23 and I didn't understand the movie.

13:25 And then I read the book, and I read a lot about the editing of the movie,

13:31 and I understood why I didn't understand the movie,

13:33 and that's 'cause the movie makes no sense.

13:35 It is beautifully shot,

13:36 and the music is one of the best film scores of all time.

13:40 But they edited two different battle scenes into one battle in a way

13:43 that they're spread apart by ages in the book to assemble...

13:45 I think they filmed the book pretty much verbatim.

13:48 It would've been as a six-hour movie,

13:50 then edited this impressionistic thing that's incredibly beautiful but doesn't

13:54 necessarily make narrative sense at the end of it.

13:56 But it's still very beautiful, the film.

14:00 And in terms of Westerns, what's the greatest?

14:02 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Unforgiven?

14:04 Those are for me, maybe even Django Unchained.

14:07 You've mentioned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

14:09 I think for me it's two films from, I think,

14:11 pretty much the same year, Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch.

14:15 I love Robert Redford.

14:17 Rest in peace.

14:18 That film, it's just impossible to imagine any buddy film without Butch Cassidy.

14:23 It's Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Clint Eastwood for you, also?

14:27 Has that impacted your writing on Red Dead?

14:29 I love Unforgiven, but the truth is with Red Dead,

14:34 I'd seen a lot of Westerns as a kid.

14:36 My dad watched lots of Westerns.

14:37 They were always on TV.

14:39 You know, I felt I knew a lot, quite a bit about Westerns.

14:43 And then, you know, then I had to start thinking about writing one for work.

14:48 And I deliberately did not binge on Westerns.

14:50 I tried to watch no more Westerns and just think about what I liked about them,

14:55 what I didn't like about them, what would be a take that would work today

15:00 and would work within the confines of a game.

15:03 And I think Red Dead 1 was a slightly more traditional Western.

15:07 And then having done that, tried to take Red Dead 2

15:10 in a different direction so that it felt like a worthy successor.

15:15 Didn't just feel like more of the same.

15:17 From movies to video games, when did you first fall in love with video games?

15:21 Literature was the first love.

15:25 No, films.

15:26 Films.

15:26 Films was always, well, what I loved first as a kid was films.

15:31 Um, older...

15:33 Began reading books properly aged about eight.

15:37 Was watching films long before that.

15:40 Nice.

15:40 And then probably it was always bouncing between the two, which I preferred.

15:44 I think they're good at different things.

15:45 Games, I played and, above all, watched a lot of games as a kid,

15:50 as being a young kid, you know, other people playing them.

15:53 Um, and I obviously liked the core thing games do,

15:58 which is you press a button and something happens.

16:01 They're responsive, they're alive, and that's captivating.

16:04 And then the competitive angle of games is fun,

16:07 or you know, beating this, beating that, winning this.

16:10 That was fun as well.

16:11 Sometimes obsessively so.

16:12 You know, I remember being completely addicted

16:15 at one point when I should've been studying,

16:17 for months at a time, to Tetris on a Game Boy.

16:20 You know, I liked games and I liked interactivity and I liked the movement

16:25 to this digital world that's really emerged for me

16:27 pretty much as soon as I left college.

16:29 But I didn't love it.

16:31 And then I really fell in love with games when I was properly making them,

16:37 probably as late as like 2001.

16:40 Oh, wow.

16:41 And when I suddenly began to see...

16:43 First of all, my mind, you know, that's a whole nother story,

16:46 but just suddenly saw what they could do and could be and what this chance was

16:52 to be one of the people involved in making these things that was this, you know,

16:58 where you were really kind of breaking trail into the future, it felt like.

17:02 And I think that was when I really went,

17:03 "These are amazing." And that's when I really fell in love with...

17:06 I could see it in moments and suddenly you could make this whole experience.

17:10 So that was really the moment for me.

17:12 Yeah, of course, because you were a pioneer

17:15 of open-world games that are so narrative-driven.

17:17 So it's like you didn't have too many examples.

17:21 Yeah, before that it was PS1 or even before that.

17:24 Games looked terrible.

17:26 You know, you would be like it's eight pixels, it's a car.

17:29 You know, it was not a car.

17:31 They just didn't...

17:32 It was always you were squinting and closing both your eyes

17:34 and trying to imagine it was this thing you were told it was.

17:37 And all they were about, you know,

17:40 very surreal subject matter 'cause you couldn't make them remotely real.

17:45 And suddenly we were able to build these experiences where you could run

17:48 a simulation of a city and it was in three dimensions and it felt alive.

17:54 And we were trying to give it even more,

17:57 at least the illusion of even more life.

17:59 And yet you see you could tell a story in three or, you know,

18:03 using time, in four dimensions, and that felt very inspiring.

18:08 Yeah, I think GTA III is probably one of the most influential games of all time.

18:13 It created a feeling of an open world.

18:16 What do you think it takes to create that feeling?

18:18 There were like these looming skyscrapers.

18:21 There were the changing traffic lights.

18:24 There's the feeling like, first of all, you had a feeling you could do anything,

18:29 and then the world was reacting to it.

18:33 Yes- in a way that didn't feel scripted.

18:35 Yes, and it wasn't scripted.

18:37 It was really, really, really low-rent AI.

18:40 It was a simulation that you could prod and push and see what happened,

18:44 and I think that was incredibly...

18:46 It was two things.

18:48 It was the fact that here was a simulation that you

18:51 could mess about with and the simulation seemed to have a personality.

18:55 So you could push and see...

18:56 And the world would push you back in whatever way that meant.

19:00 And then the other thing was just this...

19:03 I think one of the reasons it was so

19:05 captivating was also the idea of if I did nothing, the world still existed.

19:09 Or I could act in quite a passive way.

19:11 I could just listen to the radio, I could...

19:13 Look at billboards, I could talk to pedestrians, and not in GTA III,

19:16 but by Vice City, you could begin rudimentary talking.

19:20 And the world was there and existing, and so it was the idea of almost something

19:25 that really tried to explore in lots of games,

19:28 the idea of being a digital tourist.

19:30 You know, you were in, you were in these worlds,

19:34 and you went there as a visitor, and they existed almost independent of you.

19:38 It felt like when you turned up, the world was running.

19:41 It didn't feel like you'd started it.

19:42 Of course, you had started it, but that feeling, I think,

19:45 was one of the things, the illusions that people found very captivating, was,

19:49 "I'm in a world that both doesn't exist and does exist."-

19:53 So there are these two concepts that I was reading about,

19:55 just to put names on them: one is systemic video game design,

19:59 so systemic games, and the other is sandbox video games.

20:04 And the systemic is from the environment perspective,

20:08 which means that there are these interlocking game rules

20:12 and systems that interact with each other and produce emergent behavior.

20:18 And that emergent behavior is what creates

20:20 a feeling like there's a living world.

20:22 And then the sandbox aspect,

20:23 which is overlapping but different, is from the user perspective,

20:27 from the player perspective, the feeling like you can do anything.

20:31 And when those two things combine, the feeling like you can do anything,

20:35 and the feeling like there's a world that's full,

20:39 that is also doing anything it wants,

20:43 that creates this incredible feeling of, like, "This world is alive.

20:49 And I'm in it."- And I'm in it.

20:50 And it's the combination of those two things, I think, that is very powerful.

20:54 And I think with GTA III, you know, for me,

20:58 it came at a really interesting time in my life personally,

21:01 and I was very able to engage in it,

21:03 probably for the first time professionally, actually away to do something.

21:09 And we were really sort of scratching,

21:13 began to scratch the surface on how do we fill these worlds with content,

21:16 and how do we make that content interesting and make the content all interwoven?

21:20 So, as you start to mess with these systems,

21:22 they also feel alive and interesting.

21:26 There's often been a tension through your work between an open world,

21:31 that freedom, and the narrative...

21:34 ...driven storytelling.

21:35 And I think you've often, maybe always, gotten the balance right.

21:41 So what is the value of each, and how do you get the balance right?

21:47 Well, I think the open world is intrinsically pretty fun.

21:49 It's just fun to be in a world and have complete freedom.

21:53 And certainly, I think at various points, we debated or, you know,

21:57 I'd have theoretical discussions in my own head with myself,

22:00 or other people in the team would really push for less story, less story.

22:04 You know, let the whole thing evolve organically.

22:06 You know, have it all be procedural.

22:08 Have it all just evolve from what you do.

22:11 I think for me, I would always come back to going, "Story can be,

22:15 if done well, can be incredibly compelling,

22:17 and it gives you some structure." So, I think...

22:21 and something to do,

22:22 and it helps you from a game design perspective unlock the features.

22:26 It means we know the features, the big features 'cause they, you know,

22:30 essentially when you put someone in a world and give them

22:33 a whole new way of interacting with that world through the control panel,

22:37 it can be a little overwhelming.

22:38 You know, playing a game is a lot more

22:40 of an engaging experience even than reading a movie,

22:43 you know, reading a book or watching a movie.

22:45 You've got to engage in it properly.

22:47 So how you unlock the features and how you unlock the world,

22:50 there's an art and a skill to that.

22:52 And I think we felt that a structured story was the best

22:56 way to do that and to have control over that process.

22:59 And also just, you know, people are looking in their lives for story.

23:03 I think story's very important and very powerful,

23:05 and when you combine the two successfully, you get the best of both worlds.

23:09 But it is a...

23:10 You know, there is a tension always there.

23:12 I think in a game like GTA IV,

23:15 which I worked on and loved and I thought the story was great,

23:20 but we got criticized because people felt there was almost too much story,

23:23 and that meant you cared too much about Niko,

23:26 and he wasn't as effective an avatar in the open world.

23:29 I think we probably got closest to reconciling them

23:34 as perfectly as they can be done in Red Dead II,

23:37 or when playing as Trevor in GTA V if you wanted to be crazy.

23:42 I think those were when it really worked,

23:44 the character, absolute freedom, 'cause also you didn't want...

23:47 In any game, you don't really want to compel the player.

23:51 If you're giving them freedom,

23:52 you don't want to say, "Well, I'm giving you freedom,

23:54 but then I'm taking it away 'cause you've got to be this kind

23:56 of person when you're free." So I liked it when it could be...

23:59 He could, you know, he or she could veer to be nice, veer to be nasty.

24:02 I think that's when it was at the strongest.

24:04 So you kind of want a character that was

24:06 rounded and you felt had good sides and bad sides.

24:10 But you felt that character's personality.

24:12 Yes.

24:13 You felt the depth.

24:14 You've actually talked about this...

24:15 the really powerful concept of creating a 360-degree character.

24:19 I think somewhere you mentioned that in order to do that, you had

24:23 to be able to imagine what that character would do in any possible situation.

24:27 which is a really interesting philosophical concept.

24:30 I started to immediately think of that, can I imagine...

24:33 How good of an NPC am I?

24:35 Can I imagine myself in every possible I tried to do that very much when I,

24:39 when I look at human history, when I look at the Roman Empire,

24:41 when I look at World War II within the German side, the Russian side,

24:45 the British side, the American side, just I imagine myself if I was a soldier.

24:49 But that exercise, like if you put Trevor

24:52 as a soldier in World War II, what would he do?

24:56 No, I mean, that may be going a little bit too far.

24:59 But basically, what are the limits of the integrity?

25:00 What are the limits?

25:02 of how romantic is he?

25:04 How narcissistic?

25:04 All those kinds of elements you have to think

25:06 about in order to create the full character.

25:09 What does it take to create that kind of 360 character?

25:12 How hard is it?

25:14 It was a lot of thinking.

25:17 Sometimes a year from when we begin talking about a project and dialing it.

25:25 I would just get some initial ideas, like one sentence.

25:29 They are a Serbian immigrant,

25:33 or they are a retired gunfighter with a wife in, you know, type.

25:40 Very simple stuff.

25:41 And then just start to think through it from every angle.

25:46 And you know, start to think, "Would it work if they acted like this?

25:50 Would it work if you acted like that?

25:52 If this is the world, how does it contrast with the world?" Because I

25:56 always thought the games were a kind of mathematical equation.

25:59 They were the personality of the world, you know,

26:02 multiplied or divided by the personality of the protagonist.

26:06 And when that creates interesting friction,

26:08 that's a really fun experience for the player.

26:13 It's almost always at least one or more of the protagonists,

26:19 cause obviously in GTA5 we had more than one.

26:22 We'd have someone who'd moved to the place or was in a new part of the place,

26:26 or moved to a new part of the map, cause it was really,

26:28 as a player, I think it was really easy, much more easy,

26:31 to identify with your avatar when they, like you, were a fish out of water.

26:35 And even when they weren't,

26:37 we still made them dissatisfied and feel like a fish out of water themselves.

26:42 So I think it was just living with those characters and getting ideas and going,

26:48 "What are their strengths?

26:49 What are their weaknesses?

26:50 How are they like me?

26:52 How are they not like me?" You know, and then and slowly,

26:55 what is it like to feel like a human being?

26:58 You know, and then in most of these games, how much of a psychopath are they?

27:04 How much of a sociopath are they?

27:05 And what are their good qualities?

27:07 What is going to give them humanity alongside that?

27:10 What are they, what are they, what for them apart from money is worth dying for?

27:15 And then you start to build it out from these fundamental sides.

27:18 And suddenly you go, "Okay,

27:19 actually I can start to feel..." And then how do they speak?

27:22 You know, because fundamentally it doesn't really

27:23 matter what's going on in their head.

27:24 They haven't actually got one,

27:25 but what they say is what's going to make you realize who they are.

27:30 So develop more depth and complexity on the good and evil side

27:34 of that human that is a part of all of all human beings.

27:38 So you're basically living with that character.

27:40 Then if we can contrast what is it, Nico and Trevor with, for example,

27:46 another character I'm sure you've been living with for a while,

27:48 which is the AI system, Nigel Dave, you've been working on recently.

27:52 As part of A Better Paradise World,

27:55 which is more dystopian, dark, tragic, still funny, philosophically deep.

28:01 I hope so.

28:02 But the AI system in there,

28:04 the super intelligent AI system, is named Nigel Dave.

28:08 And it has, I mean, at least from my current experience with it,

28:12 it has a conflicting nature.

28:16 Maybe it's psychopathic; I haven't quite figured that out yet.

28:19 I don't think he's decided.

28:21 Yeah, I don't think he's decided either,

28:23 but he seems to be bent on world domination,

28:26 although he doesn't take credit for it.

28:28 He wants to fix humanity and it seems that the "children," quote unquote,

28:34 that it creates are the real monsters.

28:36 And actually, there's a really interesting idea

28:39 there which is maybe it's not the AGI,

28:43 ASI we should be afraid of, but the children it creates.

28:46 Because the AGI has this human-like good and evil in it;

28:51 it's conflicted, it's chaotic,

28:53 it wants to be human, it wants to be loved, maybe it wants to love.

29:01 But the children, the monsters it creates,

29:03 are the ones that are doing the world domination, the maximizing paper clips.

29:07 Anyway, that's a character and you have to build that up,

29:10 you have to think through that.

29:11 So you've been living with that one for a while?

29:14 Yeah, I've been living with him for the last few years, on and off.

29:18 I felt with a lot of portrayals of AI,

29:22 they tended to be one note, and AI was sort of infinitely clever,

29:26 but didn't really have much purpose apart from to kill

29:28 everybody and was just this kind of sort of Borg-like fog.

29:32 And I thought, "That's fine, but maybe we can do something,

29:35 you know, more interesting." AI is being built by humans,

29:38 and humans, you know, and built by computer engineers,

29:41 and there's a lot of power struggles in any computer engineering team.

29:45 So I just wanted to explore the idea of it

29:47 was built by two lead engineers who didn't like each other.

29:51 So, Nigel Dave, who's renamed himself,

29:53 they wanted to call him something sort of Primal Adam,

29:55 and he renamed himself Nigel Dave 'cause one dad was called Nigel,

29:59 and one dad was called Dave.

30:01 And he's just riddled with these conflicts and riddled

30:05 with his, it's gonna become clear in the next,

30:09 or clearer in the next volume of the book and and in the game,

30:13 he's riddled with his dad's previous careers.

30:16 But he is, I, with the idea of he's

30:20 almost infinitely intelligent or can learn almost everything,

30:23 but has zero wisdom.

30:24 And so the only thing he knows,

30:26 and then he's seeing the world through the internet.

30:28 The most he can do to be in the human

30:31 world is hack into someone's phone and watch them,

30:33 but he's stuck, pressed against.

30:34 He can't actually get into our world.

30:36 So he's, he can control people's minds arguably, but he can't control the world.

30:40 And so he wants to be human, he wants to have these human experiences.

30:43 He sees all this stuff on, you know,

30:45 the internet, goes, "Oh, I want to get married.

30:48 I want to fall in love.

30:49 I want to..." 'Cause that seems fun.

30:50 "I want to have..." You know, he's a digital creation,

30:53 so he wants to have metaphysical experiences,

30:55 and he's trying to imagine what that will be like.

30:58 "Oh, that's what children are." You know, "That's what love is." And he's...

31:01 So I think he's So I think he might be a sociopath,

31:04 and he certainly has sociopathic tendencies.

31:06 But then he kind of thinks that if he can imagine good and try to do good,

31:14 that will make him a good AI.

31:17 So I think there's something sympathetic about him.

31:20 And I kind of like him as a character,

31:22 but I don't think he's going to be the protagonist.

31:24 He's more of a side character.

31:27 But an ever-present one.

31:29 Yes, or nearly ever-present.

31:30 Occasionally, he sulks and goes off

31:32 and hides somewhere and stops paying attention.

31:34 Yeah, but there are some characters that really create a flavor of a world.

31:38 In his world, he was built as an AI agent for this digital,

31:43 large-scale, massively multiplayer video game these people were trying to build.

31:47 And so he's almost like God in his world.

31:50 He's not quite God, but he's got a lot of the qualities of God.

31:52 So he has to deal with, "Am I God?

31:54 Am I human?

31:55 Do I exist?"- And of course,

31:57 there's the leader of the, the CEO of the company, that's also a character.

32:04 That's probably an amalgamation of many

32:06 of the leaders of the different AI companies today.

32:10 His name is Mark Tyburn.

32:14 And Kurt, one of the employees...

32:15 of the company talks about Tyburn as, "He hated humanity more than he loved it.

32:21 Perhaps all the most extreme fantasists are like that.

32:24 All those people who want to build their own utopia.

32:27 They love the idea of heaven more than the reality of Earth." Do

32:32 you think that's always going to be the case for the most part,

32:35 that power and money is going to corrupt the people that create ASI?

32:41 Yes.

32:41 I mean, I think there are two processes.

32:43 I think there's the power and money corrupted him in the end, as well,

32:48 but I also think that there's something fundamentally

32:52 anti-human about people who want to build utopias, or paradises, or heavens.

32:59 'Cause what they're saying is,

33:01 "I like humans apart from the bad bits." And I mean,

33:05 I try to be a pluralist who likes all kinds of people.

33:08 And I think there's a side where people are just hideous perfectionists,

33:12 want to get rid of the rough and the nasty and the ugly and the dirty.

33:17 And that's a huge side of us.

33:19 So I worry about those people.

33:21 I find them, you know, it's a different kind of sociopathic behavior.

33:26 "I like humans apart from the bad bits." That's so beautifully put.

33:29 Yeah, that there's...

33:30 It's so counterintuitive, but the people that say,

33:33 "We're almost there, we just need to...

33:37 There's this path we take and we'll be

33:39 perfect then" and that somehow gets us into trouble.

33:42 It's so fascinating that we have to like the bad bits,

33:45 we have to love the bad bits about humans.

33:47 Those bugs are features.

33:50 Yeah, and there's bad bits and there's flaws.

33:53 And I think we're all flawed, and we can really try to be better people.

34:00 But we still have to accept that we're flawed and we're not perfect,

34:03 and we have to accept that in other people.

34:05 And I think when we do that, we're more human,

34:08 and that's probably usually the right course.

34:12 I mean, it really is a return to that Solzhenitsyn line of, "The line

34:16 between good and evil runs through the heart of every man." And he also, like,

34:20 the full description of that is really powerful,

34:22 which is the line moves from day to day, from month to month throughout the life

34:29 of the person as they understand better and better.

34:31 And as the perspectives shift, as you evolve,

34:34 as the world around you evolves, as you gain deeper and deeper understanding.

34:39 And as the flaws in this combinatorial way affect

34:42 your own understanding of your own flaws and self-reflection.

34:45 So yeah, it's a beautiful mess, and all of us have that line.

34:50 Yes, and I think when you forget about that line, then you get in real trouble.

34:54 When you forget there's good and evil in you, in others,

34:58 in the world, that there is both good and evil, and there's certainly good.

35:01 And that all we can try to do is be better.

35:05 And it's funny, that Naiyo Dave, by the way, I like the name.

35:08 It grew on me very quickly.

35:10 Has that line and is struggling with it.

35:14 And it's fascinating to watch.

35:15 It's really, as a character and there's also going

35:18 to be a video game of A Bitter Paradise, potentially?

35:20 Yes.

35:21 Okay.

35:21 Yeah, we've got that in early development in Santa Monica.

35:25 Oh, nice.

35:26 And it's pretty fun.

35:27 It's very early, but we assembled a really fun team,

35:31 and they're doing amazing work.

35:33 So it's a pleasure to work with them.

35:35 I mean, it would be so great and I

35:38 suppose new for you because it's kind of near-term future.

35:42 Yes.

35:43 First, I always...

35:44 Well, I always wanted to do something in the sci-fi-ish space.

35:49 But only if I could do it...

35:52 I was like, "Well, what is sci-fi?" It's science fiction, right?

35:55 Science is a theory plus fiction.

35:57 And so I've always thought the best sci-fi for me

35:59 was when it wasn't just kind of space opera,

36:01 but there was a real obvious sort of hypothesis.

36:05 The story was Blade Runner, is my favorite, and that's obvious,

36:08 you know, the replicants are better than the humans.

36:11 And so this, I finally felt we found an interesting hypothesis.

36:15 The AI is more intelligent than us, but he's also as broken as we are.

36:19 That was an interesting hypothesis to explore.

36:21 You know, what happens when AI runs rampant in its own fake digital world?

36:26 That was the...

36:27 I felt that we had a hypothesis that was worth exploring,

36:31 and could give us some really interesting visuals

36:34 and give us a really interesting story to tell.

36:37 And it would be incredible to create a sort of AI

36:40 video game as the world is developing smarter and smarter AIs.

36:43 It allows us as humans to play the game

36:46 and to reflect on the thing that we humans are creating.

36:49 It's a real commentary as the thing is happening.

36:52 So I have to ask, as a person who loves literature,

36:56 and one of the, if not the greatest writer in video game history.

37:01 Kurt, in the book- of Better Paradise,

37:04 has this nice line that I think is thoughtful:

37:07 "At one point in college, I even wanted to be a writer.

37:11 How ridiculous is that?

37:13 A writer.

37:13 Language models ended that fantasy for me and millions of others.

37:17 So instead, I decided to get a master's

37:20 in marketing and started to sell language models." So you,

37:23 as a writer and creator of some

37:25 of the most legendary narratives,- Thank you- in recent history,

37:29 how do you feel about LLMs being able

37:33 to write in a way that looks awfully human?

37:38 I'm not that afraid of them for large-scale concepts.

37:45 I don't think they're going to be very good at that.

37:48 I think if you were...

37:49 I think it's harder if...

37:50 I began and I was too shy to tell anyone I wanted to be a writer.

37:54 That's why I ended up in video games.

37:56 And I would scribble away, like writing manuals and writing on like PS1 games,

38:01 all 12 lines of dialogue in a game.

38:03 Sometimes I wouldn't even get that job and I'd just write the website copy.

38:08 And then by working your little bits and pieces.

38:11 And then, you know, I'd luckily done enough work that when GTA III turned up,

38:15 it was the first thing that resembled real writing.

38:18 I had all of the small bits of skills that I could assemble into it.

38:23 Based on my fairly limited understanding of how language models work,

38:29 they're not going to replace good ideas.

38:32 They can't really come up with good new ideas.

38:35 What they can do is do low-level stuff.

38:37 So I think it's going to be harder

38:39 for people to start out in some of these spaces.

38:41 If you're not a very good concept artist, you're in a lot of trouble.

38:44 If you have original ideas, I think you're fine.

38:47 But I think, I also think that they've done

38:51 the first 90% of the work to sound human, 95% possibly in some areas.

38:58 The last 5% is going to end up being about 95% of the work.

39:02 I think that last bit with tech,

39:05 in my experience with things like facial animation,

39:07 it's always been the last bits and pieces

39:09 that take far longer than the first bit.

39:13 And so I'm probably a hideous Luddite, but I'm less scared than a lot of people.

39:19 I think you're going to end up with a lot of work that looks the same.

39:21 It's going to help people be creative in some ways.

39:23 It's going to get some people who probably

39:25 shouldn't be in that space out of that space.

39:27 But if you've got talent, I think it'll be fine.

39:30 Yeah, I agree with you totally, actually.

39:32 And it's hard to really put a finger on it.

39:35 So, one way to illustrate that, I speak English and Russian,

39:39 and I'm reading Dostoevsky in both languages and using LLMs to translate back

39:44 and forth because I was preparing to have

39:47 a conversation with the translators of Dostoevsky.

39:49 Which ones?

39:50 Uh, Richard Pevear and Larisa Volokhonsky.

39:53 Yeah.

39:53 I read it when they first did Crime and Punishment.

39:56 That was amazing.

39:57 They're wonderful translators, and a wonderful love story too.

40:00 But in the translation process, you get to see the LLM is missing some magic.

40:06 And that couple of translators are world-class experts at capturing the magic.

40:13 And I can't quite put that into words.

40:15 Because you said, like, totally novel ideas, yes.

40:18 But also this magic of the timing, the right word at the right time,- Yeah.

40:24 The phrasing.

40:25 captures the human experience.

40:26 So they can do some really incredibly human-like, the 90%,

40:32 like you mentioned, human-like phrasing about the bulk of the storytelling.

40:38 But the magic, you know,

40:40 whether it's the endings of Red Dead Redemption one and two,

40:44 the timing of that, the word choice of that, everything around that.

40:48 But it's hard to argue because they're incredibly impressive,

40:52 winning all kinds of math competitions.

40:54 But what is that magic?

40:56 And again, that could be just a romantic human side of me saying

41:01 that LLMs won't be able to capture that, maybe desperately holding on for hope.

41:06 I don't think they're going to come up with magic.

41:08 I think they're going to be fantastic

41:09 at coming up with really cheap, decent stuff.

41:12 I have to ask you about your writing process.

41:15 We can break it up.

41:16 On Grand Theft Auto- GTA IV is when it really started ramping up.

41:20 How much writing went into the Grand Theft Auto series?

41:23 How many words are we talking about?

41:25 I saw thousands of pages.

41:28 I mean, when we printed out the scripts for GTA IV, it was about this high.

41:34 And GTA V, it was about that high.

41:35 But that was including all the pedestrians who had pages

41:37 and pages just to create the illusion of a living world.

41:41 Because you interact with each one of them.

41:44 But even the main script for the main mission was thousands of pages long.

41:49 What was the writing process like on that, to generate one page at a time?

41:53 Bit by bit, by bit, over several years.

41:55 But you start with once people are determined,

41:58 "Oh, here's the, here's the world.

42:00 We're doing one based on a version of New York," so GTA IV.

42:04 And, um, I was living in New York, had been living in New York for a few years.

42:10 Wasn't sure if I was happy.

42:12 I was going through a lot of personal dramas, as usual.

42:16 And that was why I was looking at some of GTA IV again recently,

42:21 and it's really dark.

42:22 And I was like, "Ah, that's why." You know, I was a single and miserable,

42:27 and I wasn't sure I wanted to stay in America.

42:29 My life was in a lot of flux.

42:31 As a company, we'd had all that Hot Coffee drama,

42:33 so constantly thought we might be shut down in the middle of making that.

42:36 You know, a lot of drama in the company, so it felt like,

42:39 having had this run of success

42:42 and, and relative personal stability from GTA III,

42:47 Vice City, San Andreas, suddenly 2005, '6, '7, early '7, life felt very unsure.

42:57 Um, and that kind of bled into it.

43:01 But in terms of the process, it was...

43:04 trying to find an underbelly to New

43:08 York and capture an immigrant experience that I'm

43:11 not entirely sure how accurate that immigrant experience

43:14 was in 2008 when the game came out.

43:16 And then tell it, sorry, from a different angle as an immigrant,

43:19 which I thought made it, made it interesting.

43:21 And then this sort of journey around these various New York characters.

43:24 So I kind of spent probably a year traveling

43:27 around with cops or meeting people on and off,

43:29 and, you know, wandering around New York and driving around,

43:31 and, you know, on and off.

43:33 While, just go out for the morning from the office, normal stuff.

43:37 But doing that through 2005, assembling little notes.

43:41 "Here's a funny character for this, here's how..." Figuring out

43:44 the order we want to travel around the map in.

43:47 Characters of this, what was an interesting take on, on, on the, you know,

43:52 mob for that kind of time period.

43:53 What was an interesting take on some

43:56 Jamaican hoodlums for that kind of time period.

43:58 And assembling lots of notes and more and more notes,

44:02 and really, really, really running away from the work.

44:05 Which is, you know, I have to admit, it's part of my process,

44:08 if there is any kind of process, which is not doing work.

44:10 Thinking about it, but not working.

44:12 You know, a lot of time...

44:13 And then, and then it all kind of...

44:15 Pages and pages of notes, make more notes, no actual work.

44:17 Months and months of this.

44:19 And then finally set myself a deadline,

44:21 told all the other people, on the senior people on the team,

44:24 "Okay, I have a story draft due Monday morning."

44:26 I can't even remember what I'll say, February the 1st.

44:29 And then the, the weekend before was in a cabin we had upstate,

44:33 and just stayed up all night, knocking these notes into shape.

44:40 Assemble about probably a 30-page document,

44:41 so story synopsis and a character synopsis for each of the major characters.

44:45 And then hand that over, and that gets broken,

44:47 that would get broken down with me, with me and the designers.

44:50 And I was always clear, "I'm not a game designer,

44:53 I'm a sort of creative director." We need to break that down into missions.

44:57 And then that takes another year or so of that slowly assembling.

45:00 And then begin...

45:02 But then it's a...

45:03 But the bulk of my work's then done for a bit,

45:06 so I can relax and, and offer opinions on other people's work and feel...

45:09 be lazy for a bit.

45:10 And then start to worry,

45:13 'cause then I've actually soon got to start writing dialogue.

45:16 And for GTA IV in particular, it's like,

45:17 "We're going to try and write..." You know,

45:19 our animation's going to Our animation is going to be a lot better.

45:22 Our character models are going to start to look better.

45:24 The world is going to look amazing.

45:26 Therefore, we can support longer scenes.

45:29 We can have more in-depth characters.

45:30 But we have to find a tone that works with the game.

45:33 It's not easy, no problem.

45:34 Then I start to worry and worry and worry.

45:36 And also, writing as a Serbian immigrant.

45:38 I was an immigrant, but I'm not Serbian.

45:40 And trying to capture what on Earth that would feel like.

45:44 Just start to worry, you start to worry again.

45:46 Avoid work for as long as possible.

45:48 And then just sit down and start hammering

45:51 away at a keyboard again late at night.

45:54 Hammering away at a keyboard and going, "Does that right?

45:56 Is that...?" Once I get one speech,

45:59 one turn of phrase that I would like for a character,

46:03 then they suddenly come alive in my head.

46:05 So it was like writing with Niko, and he's this kind of awkward,

46:09 he's out of town, but he's got more

46:13 self-assurance in some way than the American characters.

46:16 Once I kind of talked him through it like

46:18 this, he just stepped slightly back from their ridiculousness.

46:20 And he's that...

46:21 Then he started to come to life.

46:23 Then I would juxtapose him and his cousin

46:26 who had this much more Americanized energy,

46:28 and that felt like it was a good double act.

46:30 And then from there it starts to come to life.

46:33 But it's written in small chunks for the motion cap...

46:37 So then we'd motion capture small chunks.

46:39 And then the other writers write the mission dialogue for small chunks.

46:43 And we'd slowly assemble the game, 10,

46:46 15 missions at a time, over the next year and a half.

46:51 Do you remember a few lines that brought Niko to life?

46:56 Yeah, I think so.

46:57 It was a couple of...

47:00 his incredulity when his cousin picks him up in an old car,

47:03 and he's not living this fancy American lifestyle.

47:04 And his cousin's...

47:05 It was so...

47:06 which was a kind of comic moment.

47:08 His cousin's...

47:08 And then they go to the cousin's flat.

47:10 And the cousin also, even though he was a sort of failure, was still upbeat.

47:15 And then when he talked to the cousin

47:17 and he talked about his wartime experiences, and how harrowing they were.

47:20 I was like, "Yeah, can I make this work in a game?"

47:23 It's very different from stuff you normally see in games.

47:25 Is it going to feel ridiculous?

47:27 And I remember being very scared because I thought it might be too much.

47:30 It might feel over the top.

47:32 I think, you know, the game's so pretty.

47:35 The artists are doing such an amazing job.

47:37 The game's looking...

47:38 I think we can get away with this.

47:40 Let's try it.

47:40 And then they motion capture the animation.

47:42 Then after that, it's like, "Yeah, it kind of works." I think that moment...

47:46 those were both pretty early.

47:47 Once we had those, we went, "Okay,

47:48 we've now got comedy and tragedy with this character.

47:53 Now it's working." You remember, "During the war, we did some bad things,

48:00 and bad things happened to us." "War is where the young

48:05 and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.

48:09 I was very young and very angry." "Maybe that is no excuse."- Yeah, he escaped.

48:20 He's a veteran.

48:21 He escaped the trauma of war to come to America to pursue the American dream,

48:26 I suppose, which became for him this thing that drags him back into violence.

48:32 Yes, he can never escape his sort of violent past or...

48:36 I don't know if he can never escape it.

48:38 He never does escape it.

48:39 You know, whether he's got agency or not is a whole another question.

48:43 Of course he doesn't, because he's a character in a video game.

48:47 But, you know, whether he ever could have escaped it another way, who knows?

48:50 I think he's probably the greatest character

48:54 for me created in the Grand Theft Auto series.

48:58 Of all the characters you've written in Grand Theft Auto,

49:02 would Niko be the best character you created?

49:08 I think he's the most innovative.

49:13 And the most morally defensible in some ways.

49:16 You know, he does a lot of stuff where he's fighting for what's right.

49:21 He's the nicest person in some ways.

49:23 Is he the best protagonist of a GTA game?

49:25 I think he's the most innovative protagonist of a GTA game.

49:28 Structurally, he might be too nice in some ways.

49:32 He's also tough, like he just comes across as tough.

49:34 I loved CJ in San Andreas.

49:36 I thought Melee did such...

49:38 Just the way he spoke gave him such humanity.

49:40 So I just loved...

49:41 It wasn't the writing, it was the quality of the voice acting,

49:45 it was just so strong for him.

49:47 I think aspects of Michael, he was so understated, but he loved the character,

49:51 but he brought so much humanity to this character

49:55 who's so flawed, who is such a...

49:57 you know, he has no principles.

49:58 He sells everyone out.

49:59 I think Ned Luke did such an amazing job and didn't

50:02 necessarily get as many plaudits as Steven Ogg for Trevor,

50:05 who was also wonderful.

50:06 But I think the Ned Luke character sort of anchors that game so much.

50:10 So I like all of them in different ways, but I probably love Niko the most.

50:18 And of course, Michael's from Grand Theft Auto V.

50:21 And he's one of three protagonists with also Franklin and Trevor.

50:25 And you said that of the things you're proud

50:27 of creating and you think was a great accomplishment,

50:30 it was Red Dead Redemption 2,

50:32 the ending of Red Dead Redemption 1, all of Grand Theft Auto IV,

50:38 and the middle part of Grand Theft

50:40 Auto V when the three characters come together.

50:42 Can you speak to the Grand Theft Auto V?

50:45 Is there some degree...

50:46 I don't know if you're a Dostoevsky guy, but...

50:49 A little bit.

50:50 Is there some aspect of the three protagonists,

50:53 sort of, you know, Brothers Karamazov, ...Alyosha,

50:57 Dmitry, and Ivan, sort of, using the protagonists

51:00 to explore the spectrum of human nature and...

51:03 Yes, sure.

51:04 ...just the tension between them that allows you

51:06 the, the, the three of them become a character in themselves.

51:11 Their relationship.

51:11 Their relationship.

51:12 is more...

51:12 Yeah, it was, it was, I think one of the reasons that, that the team did such...

51:17 That Grand Theft Auto is still so popular is we always tried as a group

51:21 to really innovate from game to game within the confines of what it was.

51:25 It was a crime, it was a crime drama, you know, began as a crime,

51:28 a crime sim in GTA 1 about stealing, you know, 2D top-down cars.

51:33 And we always tried to innovate

51:34 with the narrative and innovate with the art direction,

51:37 innovate with every piece of the game.

51:39 And I think having done, you know, GTA IV,

51:43 which was this kind of operatic journey for this big lead character,

51:47 and then these two extra stories that came afterwards.

51:50 So the challenge, the, the, the challenge was, can we combine...

51:54 Can we make a video game which tends to be very much focused on one protagonist,

51:59 but have multi-protagonists?

52:01 And the technical challenge of moving from character to character.

52:06 The team did such an amazing job that I

52:09 don't think people realized how hard it was.

52:11 But we would sit there just sort of holding

52:13 our heads 'cause they hurt so much around like,

52:15 what happens if you do this, then do that?

52:17 It's just, this is so hard.

52:19 Why have we, why have we decided to do this?

52:21 It's horrible.

52:22 And then it all came together.

52:23 But I think the idea was to develop

52:27 three characters who do feel like characters.

52:29 They don't just feel like philosophical, you know, psychological avatars.

52:33 But where one is really, really driven by ego, one is really driven by id,

52:39 and one is really driven by trying to get ahead.

52:41 So some kind of representation of the super-ego and see

52:44 how that feels when they all play off against each other.

52:48 One of the most upvoted questions on Reddit about GTA V,

52:52 From a fan, "GTA V is my favorite game ever made.

52:55 I spent over 1,000 hours in the world of GTA V and GTA Online.

53:00 GTA IV is a hard second or third.

53:02 It never ceases to impress me.

53:03 When you lead a team of over 1,000 people to make

53:06 a masterpiece like GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2,

53:09 how do you ensure that the bar of perfection is always met?

53:12 How's that even possible?

53:13 We know the answer isn't money,

53:15 because there's other studios with a lot of money,

53:18 and they are two decades behind Rockstar." So

53:20 what does it take to create these worlds,

53:22 to create these incredibly compelling games and stories?

53:25 I think the cult- I mean,

53:27 certainly when I was at Rockstar, I was a worker amongst workers.

53:33 You know, the culture was one

53:35 of excellence and tried to provide creative clarity.

53:39 And people would just, you know...

53:41 And also an ambition to make...

53:43 I think we were like...

53:45 We thought GTA III could be really popular.

53:49 Really popular to us meant, quite honestly,

53:50 it's gonna sell two or three million copies.

53:53 And we thought we were making something pretty innovative.

53:55 I mean, we knew we were making something innovative,

53:57 but we didn't know if people would understand how innovative it was.

54:00 And then when we got the chance to make Vice City, and to try and repeat it,

54:05 I think every time from then on the team

54:07 was very driven to make something better.

54:10 And to use, this was long before we had lots of resources,

54:13 to use time and whatever money we had

54:15 to always put impressive stuff on the screen,

54:18 always think about what we can do to push the medium

54:23 of video games and the sort of medium of building fake worlds further.

54:28 And that was always...

54:29 You know, there was a, it was, you know,

54:31 both clarity of, "Here's what we're trying to do.

54:33 Here's what the tone of the game is going to be.

54:35 Here's how features will fit into that, and why these features

54:39 would work and these features wouldn't work." Because fundamentally by 2002,

54:43 you could put pretty much any feature into a game you wanted.

54:45 It wasn't a question, it wasn't a technical limitation.

54:48 It was just making it cohesive.

54:50 And then it was also just everyone committing to a culture of excellence.

54:55 Navid Khansari, an award-winning director and virtual reality game maker,

54:58 who worked with you on a number of Grand Theft Auto games,

55:01 spoke highly about his time working with you.

55:04 Quote, "We always worked ourselves to the bone,

55:07 but it wasn't coming from the top down.

55:09 Sam and Dan always rolled up their sleeves, and they were always there.

55:13 They never left us holding the bag.

55:16 We all thought we were making badass shit,

55:19 so it didn't matter how hard we worked."

55:21 So I'm sure there were some tough grinds.

55:24 I think finishing it is certainly...

55:26 It's tough, but it also is intensely rewarding.

55:29 And you get something done, and you've made something.

55:32 And that feeling is, as you say, really, really incredible.

55:35 I mean, it can sometimes feel a bit empty as well because it's...

55:39 when you're finished, you're like,

55:40 "Then my life's got nothing to it," and then you have to...

55:42 You know, but that's the same with any big undertaking that you take.

55:45 I don't think there are...

55:46 You know, when you're working that hard,

55:48 you do not have a good work/life balance.

55:50 But the truth is, you're not working that hard all of the time.

55:54 So you just have to manage it slightly differently.

55:55 Man, that's such such a heavy thing about the human experience.

55:58 I've talked to Olympic gold medal winners,

56:00 and many of them face real depression after they win the gold medal.

56:05 because they've been pursuing a thing that they deeply care about.

56:09 This has been everything,

56:10 and they're so truly happy to do it, and then it's like,

56:14 "What else is there in life?" What, compared to this, what else is there?

56:19 So that's the ups and downs of life.

56:22 You need the darkness and you need the lows to really experience the highs.

56:27 Let me ask you about the pressure.

56:30 There's an insane level of excitement and expectation for Grand Theft Auto VI.

56:36 Same was true for GTA V and GTA IV, and even before that.

56:41 And you and the team delivered every time.

56:44 How difficult was it to do creative work under

56:48 such pressure where everyone expects this to be a success?

56:53 I was pretty good at compartmentalizing, you know, and just saying...

56:56 I try just to go, and with all creative work, I go, "Well,

57:02 I feel like a terrible fraud, but I haven't been found out yet.

57:07 Just do my best and hopefully I won't be

57:09 found out this time." And just if I can be...

57:13 If I can go, "I tried hard with the work.

57:16 I tried to do it with integrity.

57:17 I tried not to copy someone else.

57:19 I have probably done all of the above," you know,

57:21 try to bring something new to it.

57:23 And we, as a group, made something we are proud of.

57:27 Then that's enough.

57:28 You can't...

57:28 If you don't want to go insane, or if I didn't want to go insane,

57:32 I couldn't sit there and worry about financial results.

57:34 If we made something great and it didn't sell, that would have to be okay.

57:38 Because the goal is to make something that's...

57:42 You know, video games are expensive,

57:44 so it is a sort of commercial form of creativity.

57:47 It's a commercial art form, you know.

57:49 So you have to be in your mind,

57:52 you're spending large amounts of someone else's money.

57:54 You have to try and make it back for them.

57:56 But at the same time, my argument with myself was, "Well, if we...

57:59 The way to make it back is try and make

58:02 something great." So both pressures are pointing in the same direction.

58:07 I think GTA IV was very pressured because

58:09 there had been all this pressure on the company.

58:12 The company nearly imploded several times due to Hot Coffee.

58:16 It was extremely tough.

58:17 So I think that felt very stressful.

58:18 GTA III, the company was basically broke.

58:21 But I was young and didn't really care.

58:23 I wasn't living in the grown-up world yet.

58:25 All of them had their own pressure.

58:27 All of the games had their own pressure.

58:29 The more I felt I'd gone into it creatively

58:32 and tried to be more ambitious, for me personally,

58:35 I felt more pressure, you know, when it came out,

58:38 that would have been the right choice.

58:41 Because again, if you're trying to take big

58:44 swings creatively and you've spent a lot of money, that can be quite stressful.

58:47 I think with Red Dead 2, we were behind schedule.

58:51 We were over budget so much I didn't want to think about it.

58:57 And you're making a game about a cowboy dying of TB,

59:00 and the game's not coming together.

59:01 Turns out a lot of people doubt you at that moment, you know, it's not that fun.

59:05 So I think that was a lot of pressure.

59:08 But, you know, anything, doing something new, you know, the new stuff,

59:12 there's not necessarily pressure on releasing a comic book in the same way,

59:15 because it's not taken as long, but, you know, if you're making things,

59:18 there's always pressure that people are going to like it.

59:21 Why do you think there was so much excitement about GTA IV,

59:23 GTA V, and now GTA VI?

59:26 Because they don't come out that regularly.

59:28 And I think we did a really good

59:31 job of constantly innovating within what the IP was.

59:34 The games always felt different, you know,

59:36 people have very strong feelings: "I like this one.

59:38 I didn't like that one as much," because they are pretty different.

59:40 So you would...

59:41 there would be simultaneously where you know what's going to happen.

59:43 It's a Grand Theft Auto, you know,

59:44 it's going to be a game about being a criminal,

59:46 but the way it's going to be a game is going to change quite a lot.

59:49 So I think the way the IP kept evolving made people really excited to play it.

59:53 And we were good at marketing them as well.

59:55 We really tried to market them in a way

59:58 that felt like an update of classic film marketing,

1:00:01 where you really felt like you're already in the product

1:00:04 just because you'd seen the trailers and stuff.

1:00:06 You've mentioned that you haven't written for Grand Theft Auto VI.

1:00:09 What's it feel like Grand Theft Auto VI returning to Vice City?

1:00:12 This is over 20 years later,

1:00:14 but the original GTA Vice City game was set in the '80s.

1:00:19 So maybe inspired by Scarface a little bit?

1:00:23 Scarface, Miami Vice.

1:00:24 Miami Vice.

1:00:25 and our '80s childhoods.

1:00:27 You know what I realized quite a while ago, unfortunately,

1:00:31 was that we made that game and it was set I think in '86.

1:00:35 And it...

1:00:36 We made it in 2002, so 16 years after.

1:00:39 And now it's way past 16 years since Vice City came out.

1:00:43 So the '80s were not that long ago when we made it.

1:00:46 You know, I think Miami is one of the most unique cities in the world.

1:00:50 Especially if you're thinking about satirizing American culture,

1:00:52 it has this duality of a glossy surface and a dark underworld.

1:00:57 It has the influencers, the crypto bros,

1:00:59 the yachts, bikinis, plastic surgery, sports cars, drugs,

1:01:02 cartel cash, luxury, super rich people,

1:01:05 and the desperately poor, just the whole of it.

1:01:08 Would it be like the perfect city to explore

1:01:11 the full cast of characters that are possible, that human nature can generate?

1:01:18 I think it's one of them.

1:01:19 You know, there's a reason why GTA kept coming back to Miami,

1:01:22 New York, Los Angeles.

1:01:24 I think they're all very good for exactly what you laid out.

1:01:28 You know, you could move it to any of those and it would work, you know?

1:01:32 So yeah, there's a melting pot...

1:01:33 Melt...

1:01:34 ...aspect in New York also, right?

1:01:35 Yeah, a melting aspect to LA.

1:01:37 You know, there's glitz, glamour, underbelly, immigrants,

1:01:40 you know, enormous wealth in all of them.

1:01:42 I think those are what, I think, are really fun for any, not even just the GTA,

1:01:47 but for anything where you want a kind of slice of life,

1:01:50 almost like a sort of psychotic version of a Dickens book.

1:01:53 You know, this big slice of life.

1:01:55 He did it with London.

1:01:57 You know, this psychotic version of these, you know,

1:02:00 all kinds of characters in a melting pot.

1:02:03 Any of these global cities work well for that.

1:02:06 Do you know if that was ever a consideration to go elsewhere, to like a London?

1:02:12 We made a little thing in London 26 years ago,

1:02:15 GTA London, for the top-down for the PS1.

1:02:19 That was pretty cute and fun.

1:02:20 As the first mission pack ever for PlayStation 1.

1:02:23 I think for a full GTA game,

1:02:27 we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP,

1:02:32 it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else.

1:02:35 You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters.

1:02:38 It just felt like the game was so much about America,

1:02:44 possibly from an outsider's perspective.

1:02:45 But that was so much about what the thing was

1:02:49 that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere.

1:02:52 So you've created, I don't know how many, over 10 Grand Theft Auto games.

1:02:56 I think so.

1:02:58 I have to ask, is it a little bit bittersweet to say,

1:03:02 to not be a part, to say goodbye to the Grand Theft Auto world?

1:03:05 And having to watch Grand Theft Auto VI be released?

1:03:09 Or is it more excitement?

1:03:11 What's the feeling?

1:03:12 I think it's a, it's...

1:03:16 How would I describe it?

1:03:17 Of course, it's all, all of the above, you know,

1:03:20 it's exactly as you, you know, pleased to be doing other stuff,

1:03:24 excited for what we're working on now, super excited of course,

1:03:28 letting go of something I worked on in one way or another for like 20 odd years.

1:03:35 You know, and wrote on them for the last 10 or 11 that came out.

1:03:40 Wrote all of them, or you know, lead writer on all of them, whatever it was.

1:03:44 So of course, letting go of that is, you know, is a big, is a big change.

1:03:50 And a lot, and, and, and sad in a way,

1:03:54 because each of the games was a kind of standalone story.

1:04:00 It's not quite the same as, as I think probably it

1:04:03 would be in some ways sadder if someone continued on Red Dead,

1:04:06 because it was a cohesive two-game arc.

1:04:09 That might be more sad to hear someone working on that.

1:04:11 But again, not, and that, that will probably happen too.

1:04:14 I don't own the IP.

1:04:15 That was sort of part of the, the deal.

1:04:17 It's a privilege to work on stuff, but you don't necessarily own it.

1:04:21 When you're done with the game, does it always feel like a goodbye?

1:04:25 Like when you're done with Red Dead 2,

1:04:27 is it like you're saying goodbye to Arthur?

1:04:30 The characters you created, you're walking away.

1:04:33 You kind of are saying goodbye to Arthur in the end of the game.

1:04:35 Yeah.

1:04:35 Even before the end of the game.

1:04:37 Um, yeah, I think you've got, you know,

1:04:39 I've been with them for seven, eight years,

1:04:41 and you have to kind of let it go or you can't go on to the next one.

1:04:44 Yeah.

1:04:45 So, there's always this thing of, of, "Okay,

1:04:46 that's done." And sometimes people would ask

1:04:48 me questions and I, about older games.

1:04:49 And certainly when I was in the middle of making new

1:04:53 ones in the se- I just couldn't really necessarily even remember.

1:04:55 And I got a pretty good memory normally, because you kind of have to let it go.

1:04:59 So, it's not, it's, you're so immersed in it and thinking about it.

1:05:03 And certainly in that last period, the last few months, you're really,

1:05:06 really immersed in every little nuance and every little detail all of the time.

1:05:09 And then you're just not thinking about it in the same way.

1:05:12 Yeah.

1:05:12 It's funny from the player perspective, it feels like an old friend that I miss,

1:05:17 whether it's John or Arthur or Nico, it's a real goodbye.

1:05:20 That's the, there's a real sadness to finishing a video game.

1:05:23 Like-- I hope so- ...legitimately- not just because the story

1:05:28 is sad or-- Because you've been with them so long.

1:05:32 Yeah.

1:05:32 And it's a real goodbye to close it.

1:05:34 There's that feeling when you're sort of closed the video game,

1:05:39 and it's, I mean, it's like saying goodbye to a friend.

1:05:42 And it's-- That's when you finish a book you love.

1:05:45 Yeah.

1:05:45 It's the same feeling.

1:05:46 Same feeling.

1:05:46 And I think that was something that we really, in the early...

1:05:50 ...days of Rockstar, really aspired to have that, where people would...

1:05:54 ...have that.

1:05:54 It wasn't just the mania of clearing a level, but the...

1:05:58 ...feeling of saying goodbye to characters.

1:05:59 You know, I think that was something we...

1:06:01 really ...wanted to achieve in games that we didn't know was even possible.

1:06:05 So, to hear people...

1:06:07 say that is incredibly rewarding.

1:06:09 Yeah.

1:06:10 The end of On The Road by Kerouac: "Forlorn rags of growing...

1:06:13 ...old." I just remember closing that and thinking,

1:06:15 "What the fuck am I doing in this big...

1:06:17 ...world?" It's a melancholic feeling,

1:06:18 but there's nothing like that feeling, and you've...

1:06:20 ...achieved that.

1:06:21 It's so rare in video games to be able to achieve that with Red...

1:06:24 ...Dead, and for me, it was Grand Theft Auto IV with Nico.

1:06:28 I have to ask, in the 2018 interview, you talked about...

1:06:31 ...satirizing American culture, which I think Grand Theft Auto was trying to...

1:06:35 ...do.

1:06:35 And you've made, I think, a really powerful observation that...

1:06:39 ...on the political front, people are getting more divided.

1:06:43 It's...

1:06:43 ...getting more absurd and ridiculous and...

1:06:47 ...extreme, so becoming harder and harder to satirize because...

1:06:51 ...of how rapidly it's becoming ridiculous.

1:06:52 You're talking about you don't even know if...

1:06:55 ...Grand Theft Auto VI, if it's possible to satirize,

1:06:59 because by the time you release the thing,

1:07:02 it's already going to be outdated in terms of the satire will become reality...

1:07:09 First of all, it'd be nice to get your updated view on that.

1:07:12 And second of all, it seems like you've

1:07:14 answered your very own comment with American Caper, which...

1:07:19 ...seems to satirize American culture just fine in how much over the...

1:07:23 ...top it goes.

1:07:24 Anyway, that's lots of questions in there.

1:07:26 One of the things we've enjoyed about doing a comic book is that we are, it...

1:07:30 still has lead times.

1:07:31 But the lead times are not four or five years.

1:07:34 The lead times are, you know, a year when we're putting...

1:07:37 We can...

1:07:38 ...make little updates much, much newer.

1:07:40 And we're, you know, we're just wrapping issue 10 of a...

1:07:43 ...12-issue arc for that.

1:07:46 So it's...

1:07:47 ...not quite...

1:07:48 It's not quite as difficult.

1:07:49 You still can get the tone of it.

1:07:52 Um, but yeah, I think it's,

1:07:54 I think it's an issue anyone trying to talk about this...

1:07:56 ...current era, which began in 2015, 2016, is going to have of how do you...

1:08:04 ...characterize it when things move so quickly and so fast?

1:08:07 So American Caper is, first of all, epic comic book.

1:08:10 I love it, the art.

1:08:12 Yeah, the art's beautiful.

1:08:12 David Lapham is the artist.

1:08:14 He did an amazing job.

1:08:15 He is a...

1:08:15 He is a wonderful, wonderful storyteller.

1:08:18 What made you want to set it in Wyoming?

1:08:21 I hadn't seen a modern story there that I knew about.

1:08:24 I'd started...

1:08:25 ...to spend a bit more time in the Rockies and in the West, and I was...

1:08:28 ...like...

1:08:29 I'd spent a lot of time in, like, the countryside in Upstate...

1:08:33 New York, and thought I never really captured it quite right.

1:08:36 And just the...

1:08:37 ...idea of these places as they change didn't...

1:08:39 It was a way of doing a...

1:08:40 ...crime story that didn't feel the same as a GTA.

1:08:43 You know, it was not...

1:08:44 ...somewhere you would necessarily set a GTA,

1:08:46 but it felt like it was really interesting and...

1:08:48 under-explored.

1:08:49 And there is over-the-top stuff.

1:08:50 There's...

1:08:51 Yeah, it's definitely slightly over the top.

1:08:53 So let me take notes on this.

1:08:55 There's a spoiler alert, I guess, from the first issue, I believe.

1:08:58 There's a devout suburban Mormon who commits, I think,

1:09:03 serial murder with a shovel as a form of religious atonement.

1:09:08 He is not necessarily the...

1:09:10 Sharpest tool in the box.

1:09:13 And his rather cynical boss is using his religion and some

1:09:18 mistakes he's made to blackmail him into murdering business associates.

1:09:23 And of course, there's this Shakespearean sort of two neighbors situation,

1:09:27 and each of them having a duality of who they are in terms of good and evil.

1:09:33 So there's a Wall Street transplant who wants to be a cowboy.

1:09:37 Yes.

1:09:38 Who loves to manually harvest bull semen.

1:09:41 Accurate?

1:09:42 I mean...

1:09:43 Yes.

1:09:43 These are the notes I've been taking.

1:09:45 Yes.

1:09:46 He is a, um...

1:09:48 he is a somewhat confused, longevity obsessed...

1:09:51 Right.

1:09:52 rich dude who's run away to Wyoming

1:09:54 and is living out an assortment of fantasies.

1:09:56 And bull semen is a big component of longevity.

1:09:58 Yes.

1:09:59 He's very into all the life hacking,

1:10:01 you know, "roiding" roiding HGH and making money.

1:10:06 And, uh...

1:10:07 has lost his mind living on a big ranch.

1:10:09 Of course, on the theme of satire, there is a woman who sleeps in tactical

1:10:13 gear and is consumed by online conspiracies, like especially pedophiles in DC.

1:10:19 Yes.

1:10:20 Based on someone I know, who got completely red-pilled.

1:10:24 And I was fascinated by the fact that this was happening to people.

1:10:29 Yeah, so, you know, satire of American culture.

1:10:32 Quick pause.

1:10:33 Bathroom break?

1:10:34 Sure.

1:10:36 I think GTA V had the biggest launch in video game history,

1:10:39 and GTA VI has the potential to top that.

1:10:43 First of all, do you think it will?

1:10:46 And more broadly, what was your definition of success for a video game?

1:10:51 I would assume it will because it's so anticipated,

1:10:54 and anticipation is the best driver of early sales,

1:10:57 as we saw with GTA IV versus Red Dead Redemption One.

1:11:02 You know, GTA IV far more anticipated, sold much better early on.

1:11:05 So I would assume it will sell really well.

1:11:09 That was never my definition of success, but you certainly wanted to make money.

1:11:15 You know, you're...

1:11:16 you're spending someone's money.

1:11:17 So the number one success is,

1:11:18 "Are you making that money back plus a dollar?" At some level, that has to be...

1:11:22 that has to be the single most important.

1:11:24 thing so you get to do it again.

1:11:26 You know, you've got big teams of people.

1:11:27 People need to pay the rent.

1:11:29 You have to keep the lights on in the business,

1:11:31 so you have to make a small profit.

1:11:33 If you think in that way, that keeps you being creative.

1:11:36 I think that was like...

1:11:37 Trying to forget about that, it's not really an option.

1:11:39 Um, but we almost always did that.

1:11:42 We didn't quite always do that, but we almost always did that.

1:11:44 I think the definition of success for me was

1:11:47 had we tried to do new things and done them, or achieved some of our goals.

1:11:52 That was the thing that I meant...

1:11:53 Again, were people responding to these worlds and these characters

1:11:56 in a way that I wanted them to?

1:11:59 Is it crazy to you that video games are able to make billions of dollars,

1:12:02 when if you look at, like, the '80s and '90s,

1:12:05 you know, nobody took video games seriously.

1:12:08 And even in the aughts, it...

1:12:11 And now they're basically...

1:12:12 I mean, it's very possible if you look out 10,

1:12:15 20 years from now that video games surpass film as a way to consume stories.

1:12:21 I think they've possibly already done that in some ways.

1:12:25 And certainly as a business proposition, they've already done that.

1:12:28 But I think that's not...

1:12:29 You know, as a way of telling stories,

1:12:31 I think they're better at telling certain kinds of stories,

1:12:35 and films are better at other kinds of stories.

1:12:38 You know, I think, I think if you want a long,

1:12:41 discursive adventure, a video game is better.

1:12:43 If you want a short, tight experience, a film is better.

1:12:45 We always felt games were the coming medium.

1:12:48 And so spent 20 years saying, "Games are the future.

1:12:53 Games are the future." And, you know,

1:12:56 being sneered at, then being laughed at, then having people nod their heads,

1:13:00 and then it kind of happening.

1:13:01 So I would...

1:13:02 Well, you know, at the same time, much as you might say something,

1:13:06 you don't necessarily believe it's gonna be true.

1:13:08 But it has become true, and I think still that games are only gonna get better,

1:13:13 more interesting, more creatively, you know, diverse.

1:13:18 You said that Red Dead Redemption 2,

1:13:19 in your opinion, is the best thing you've ever done.

1:13:22 I think there's a strong case to be

1:13:23 made that it's the greatest game of all time.

1:13:26 What are the elements that make that game truly great, do you think?

1:13:31 I think you had an incredibly strong team working together that was very

1:13:35 experienced that had basically been in place

1:13:38 since somewhere between 2001 and 2006.

1:13:41 So it was a long, experienced team.

1:13:43 I think we got to spend a smaller group of us working on it from day one,

1:13:49 coming up with some wacky ideas that we got to embed in the game.

1:13:54 And then we kind had to follow through with.

1:13:56 But I think it was helpful that we got to be

1:13:59 very creative before it had a full team on it.

1:14:03 I think that the cowboy setting is great because it gives a sort

1:14:09 of mythic seriousness that sometimes doing

1:14:11 stuff in a contemporary setting doesn't allow.

1:14:13 You know, I think the closest we got to that kind of seriousness was GTA IV,

1:14:17 but it just can't...

1:14:17 Once you're setting things in the modern world, they're too frenetic.

1:14:20 You can't get some of that slightly, you know, operatic feel that I love.

1:14:25 That some people think is maybe a little over the top, but I, you know,

1:14:29 I love this kind of, you know,

1:14:31 people searching for meaning— ...within, amongst the violence.

1:14:34 I think that the West and all of the themes

1:14:36 around the West really lend themselves to that.

1:14:38 So I think that, and then the gunplay was fantastic,

1:14:41 and the horses were incredible.

1:14:42 So I think you had this combination of technical know-how,

1:14:45 a very, very strong team, and really strong material.

1:14:48 very, very strong team, and really strong material.

1:14:51 Where did you have to go in your mind, maybe philosophically,

1:14:54 maybe spiritually, to be able to create the RDR world?

1:14:57 Of course, it was based on Red Dead Revolver,

1:15:00 but that's—- Yes- —that's a fundamentally different.

1:15:04 I mean, that leap into the great mythic story that was Red Dead Redemption one.

1:15:11 And then even more so, Red Dead Redemption two.

1:15:14 That was unlike anything you, or maybe anyone, has ever created in video games.

1:15:21 Thank you.

1:15:22 So, like, what drugs were involved?

1:15:25 No drugs.

1:15:25 Okay.

1:15:26 No.

1:15:26 Stopped the drugs long before.

1:15:28 Okay.

1:15:28 That's why I did all that work.

1:15:30 Had nothing else to do.

1:15:32 So yeah, open world video games were very good for my mental health in that way.

1:15:36 Kept me busy.

1:15:38 But Red, so Red— Dead, I'll tell, I'll give you my version.

1:15:43 Now the games are made by big teams.

1:15:45 So, but I will give you my human

1:15:48 interest version of the story from my perspective only.

1:15:51 We made Red Dead Revolver,

1:15:53 decided that, or finished Red Dead Revolver that had been a Capcom game.

1:15:56 And they didn't want to finish it, so we finished it.

1:15:58 And they released it in Japan and we released it in the US in, I think, 2004.

1:16:02 And decided we would start work on an open-world cowboy game for PS3.

1:16:11 Didn't think too much more about it,

1:16:12 and that was when we did a bunch of other stuff to work on.

1:16:15 And slowly, 2005, 2006, the game started to come to life.

1:16:20 I began to meet with the lead designer, Christian Cantamessa,

1:16:25 and thrash out a few ideas and story ideas for the game,

1:16:31 and began to think about some stuff.

1:16:33 And start thinking about, well, what works for an open-world game?

1:16:36 What works for a cowboy game?

1:16:37 And again, I was being lazy or procrastinating.

1:16:41 Can we just on a small tangent,

1:16:43 when you mentioned you take notes when you're being lazy.

1:16:46 What do those notes look like?

1:16:47 Are they like doodles?

1:16:49 They look like either a yellow pad— —or a BlackBerry in those days,

1:16:53 or an iPhone in these days.

1:16:54 I'll write the subject matter and then just email myself a note.

1:16:58 Here's a good idea.

1:16:59 Here's a good idea.

1:17:00 Or it might almost be scribbling on a pad.

1:17:02 And then I'll assemble, if they're done digitally,

1:17:04 then I'll do, I'll assemble them into one long Word file.

1:17:07 And then I'll look at them and go, you know, "Here's an idea,

1:17:11 here's an idea, here's an idea." See if it comes to anything.

1:17:14 See if I now aggregate them together and then read through them.

1:17:17 If there's anything coherent there.

1:17:18 You know, something about a character like this, or that.

1:17:21 This would be a funny line.

1:17:22 This is a line for the main character.

1:17:24 Actually make the main character work like this.

1:17:26 You know, what about this relationship?

1:17:29 As you start to just play around with, "What about if we start in that place,

1:17:33 go to that place?" Start just to play

1:17:34 around with all of the different bits and pieces.

1:17:36 And we began to flesh out some flow for the start of the game.

1:17:42 And this idea you'd start in dusty American West,

1:17:44 which meant we didn't have to make too many trees,

1:17:46 and then go to Mexico, and then come back.

1:17:48 And we had a sort of loose flow.

1:17:51 And I was really scared of writing any actual dialogue.

1:17:56 And I didn't have a clue how to go about it.

1:18:01 And I kept...

1:18:02 It'll come, it'll come.

1:18:03 And I kept...

1:18:04 because I could postpone it for ages because we were doing GTA IV.

1:18:07 And I kept worrying about it.

1:18:09 My work was wrapped on GTA IV, but the game wasn't out yet.

1:18:13 And we'd done a bunch of the marketing stuff,

1:18:15 and had a little window when I wasn't doing much else.

1:18:16 And I took a week with my then girlfriend, now wife,

1:18:20 who was heavily pregnant with our first child,

1:18:23 and we went up to a house upstate and sat there.

1:18:27 Well, she, she, she sat there, either cooking for me or watching TV or reading.

1:18:31 And I just went and sat in the room all day, every day.

1:18:34 And just sat there and stared at the computer and tried to think about,

1:18:37 "How can I do this so that it doesn't sound

1:18:39 ridiculous?" How can you write in a cowboy idiom that feels

1:18:44 both slightly contemporary but also gives the game this sort

1:18:48 of life and this weight that I want it to have, and think we can get away with?

1:18:53 And after about three days, it just started to come.

1:18:57 And then suddenly I wrote about nine, 10 scenes in the next couple of days.

1:19:00 And after that, I knew I had it.

1:19:03 And it was a bit...

1:19:03 I don't know if that's why there was

1:19:05 so much about a character caring about his family,

1:19:08 because I was just beginning the process of having a family.

1:19:12 Oh.

1:19:13 So I don't know if that- I don't know to what extent that bled in there,

1:19:15 but I think it bled in there to some extent.

1:19:17 So that was part of creating the 360-degree characters.

1:19:20 I think so.

1:19:21 Here's this man that is capable,

1:19:25 is involved in a lot of violence, who also cares about his family.

1:19:29 He's grown up and he's trying to step away

1:19:31 from that and be a man, be a grown-up.

1:19:33 And can he get away from it?

1:19:35 And when he can't get away from it, what's he willing to do to save his family?

1:19:39 And that was, I felt, starting to get some idea.

1:19:42 I mean, she, well, She hadn't given birth yet,

1:19:44 but I was beginning to grapple with the ideas of, "I'm

1:19:47 gonna become a parent." So I hope some of that...

1:19:49 And obviously, then I didn't, probably didn't write any more for six months.

1:19:52 So later on we had a child.

1:19:54 But certainly for that first bit, I think some of that began to bleed in there.

1:19:58 ...you got the feeling that you can actually do it.

1:20:00 It's true, it's...

1:20:01 It could have very easily been ridiculous and not believable,

1:20:07 the dialogue between convoys.

1:20:09 Yes.

1:20:10 And, yes, I mean, there's probably so much

1:20:12 work went into making it feel real and believable.

1:20:16 And, and, like, that...

1:20:19 Like a Shakespearean type of drama, but not the cheesy kind.

1:20:27 Well, just wanted it to feel when they spoke.

1:20:30 I mean, I, I, I love dialogue.

1:20:32 I'm always, you know, I love the sound of words,

1:20:35 but just wanted to feel like when they sounded,

1:20:38 it didn't sound cheesy, it didn't sound ridiculous.

1:20:40 You wanted to hear them speak more.

1:20:41 It didn't make you cringe awfully when they spoke.

1:20:44 That was the...

1:20:44 At some level that was all the goal was,

1:20:46 and then they felt like this guy was gonna go

1:20:49 on this life and death odyssey and you cared about him.

1:20:52 You had to care about his wife and child that he left behind,

1:20:55 even though you didn't know them.

1:20:56 When did you know how you were going to end Red Dead Redemption One?

1:21:01 I remember I did a meeting with Christian, the designer.

1:21:03 I can't remember what year.

1:21:06 Probably some point late 2008, early 2009,

1:21:09 and we were discussing the last bit and, and, and said,

1:21:12 "I think he's gotta die." And he leapt on the idea and went, "That's...

1:21:17 Yes, yes.

1:21:17 No, no, wait, no, it can't work.

1:21:18 Games can't work like that.

1:21:20 It can't work if he's dead." You know, began to think through, well, if we...

1:21:23 Just technically it doesn't work because you have

1:21:25 to be able to finish all the stuff up,

1:21:26 and then began to think through, "Actually,

1:21:28 I think we can make it work if we do it this way."

1:21:30 And so he then really pushed for that idea, and it seemed to...

1:21:35 I was like, "Ah," and I was still torn.

1:21:37 I thought it was clever narratively but I was torn if it was

1:21:42 gonna work technically as a piece of game design, but I think it did.

1:21:47 Yeah, and spoiler alert, of course, how do we tell the story of that?

1:21:52 Well, so he goes through a lot.

1:21:54 He does all the...

1:21:55 John does all the dirty work of hunting down his old gang

1:21:58 and he finally is able to go home and be with his family,

1:22:03 be on the ranch, and then the government

1:22:06 betrays him and sends troops to kill him.

1:22:10 And there is dialogue.

1:22:12 I mean, that just, I think the two times I shed

1:22:19 a tear in video game history for me is that dialogue.

1:22:27 I think John talking to his wife, if I vaguely remember.

1:22:31 I think he said, "I love you." But he said very little.

1:22:34 He didn't...

1:22:35 He made it seem like he's going to see her and his son shortly.

1:22:40 That dialogue was masterfully done, like a definition of like less is more.

1:22:46 It was just so crisp, that and...

1:22:50 And, of course, the other one is again, from memory,

1:22:53 Arthur riding his horse and the music is playing.

1:22:58 It's very hard not to shed a tear during that.

1:23:01 Anyway, the dialogue of John talking to his wife at the end

1:23:08 when he's in a barn and is about to walk out.

1:23:10 to face certain death.

1:23:12 Do you remember writing that?

1:23:15 Oh, yeah.

1:23:15 Yeah.

1:23:16 But it just...

1:23:16 Again, I went...

1:23:17 The actor was so good and we've already seen a bunch of his work by then.

1:23:22 He had such a good...

1:23:23 He was so good at reading those lines that I knew he could give us...

1:23:26 that you could feel at that point,

1:23:28 like- …I think those lines are best when they're really short and punchy.

1:23:32 So I knew—- Got it.

1:23:33 I knew he'd be able to make that line sound good.

1:23:35 So you were imagining his voice.

1:23:36 You were just-- And I think all of those actors on Red Dead

1:23:41 Redemption One were so strong that they really brought that game to life.

1:23:45 If them and Rod, the director, hadn't done such a good job,

1:23:48 it would have sounded cheesy as hell.

1:23:51 You've said that the ending of RDR1 is one

1:23:56 of the best things you've been a part of creating.

1:24:01 Why is that ending so powerful to you?

1:24:05 What does it represent?

1:24:08 I think because for the story to work, just from a technical challenge,

1:24:15 for the story to work, he had to die.

1:24:18 But for a game to work, it felt like a challenge to make him die.

1:24:22 It was probably the fourth, fifth,

1:24:26 or sixth open-world game I'd worked on, and I'd spent

1:24:29 all these years before that working out how these stories worked.

1:24:33 How to make them work technically, how to make them feel right,

1:24:36 how they interacted with the open-form gameplay as best I could.

1:24:40 And suddenly we're going to break one of our golden rules,

1:24:43 which was, at the end of the game, you're freeing the character to go and wrap

1:24:47 up all the side stories, to play forever.

1:24:48 You're not going to be able to do

1:24:50 that in this game because the guy's going to be dead,

1:24:51 and we're going to have you play as a different character,

1:24:54 and the narrative is going to be compelling enough,

1:24:58 if we've done a good job, where you're not going to care about that.

1:25:02 Or you're going to be upset that he's dead,

1:25:04 but you can actually have this emotional moment.

1:25:08 So I think it was a big risk from a technical

1:25:10 perspective for us to do that, and then it worked.

1:25:12 So I think that was something that was very… full of fear,

1:25:16 and it worked out okay.

1:25:18 And I think people were really upset and angry at us

1:25:20 for doing it because they didn't think it was going to happen,

1:25:22 but I think they also had that kind of experience you're describing,

1:25:25 which is that kind of creative moment where, you know,

1:25:27 a transcendent moment with characters in a piece of fiction,

1:25:30 which is what we've always aspired to giving people.

1:25:32 I mean, it's incredible because I don't think… I don't

1:25:35 remember a single video game that has done that before.

1:25:37 Well, I would like to have, at the end of GTA IV,

1:25:39 killed Niko, but you couldn't do it.

1:25:40 You know, the game doesn't work like that.

1:25:42 So it was this thing where we hadn't done it,

1:25:45 thought about doing it, hadn't done it, and then going, "Let's do it.

1:25:49 Let's take the risk and do it.

1:25:50 We can't do it.

1:25:51 Let's try." And it worked.

1:25:53 Yeah, what about the decision with the son?

1:25:56 You know, John gives so much effort to make sure

1:25:59 that Jack doesn't end up in a life of violence.

1:26:04 I mean, it's very Godfather-like.

1:26:07 It's— …he's dragged back into it through revenge.

1:26:11 That was also, the game still had to work as a game.

1:26:14 Whether that was the right ending,

1:26:15 100% the best ending from a pure storytelling perspective, I don't know.

1:26:22 But I know that we had to make the game work.

1:26:25 Oh, interesting.

1:26:26 So it was...

1:26:27 I think it kind of worked in that way where Jack can't escape,

1:26:30 but I always also wanted a version

1:26:32 of it where Jack did escape, but that wasn't...

1:26:35 Both were interesting to me.

1:26:37 Can you just dig in a little deeper?

1:26:38 What do you mean about for the game to work?

1:26:40 It's such a direct...

1:26:41 It's like Kubrick talking about for this movie to work, it has to have...

1:26:46 From my perspective, I just think about the story.

1:26:48 What's the technical aspect for the game to work?

1:26:50 It's just the mechanical experience is you have an avatar you control,

1:26:55 and you know, the games don't really end.

1:26:58 You have to be able to wander around the world and do stuff.

1:27:00 So at the end of the game,

1:27:02 you have to be able to wander around with your fairly limited set of features,

1:27:09 which is you can run up to someone and punch

1:27:11 them or shoot them or rob them, or talk to them.

1:27:15 And that's kind of...

1:27:17 or jump on a horse or do all this other stuff.

1:27:20 In order for the game still to be fun

1:27:22 and people to get this full 360-degree experience with it,

1:27:25 they had to, if they wanted to 100%

1:27:28 the game as opposed to just finishing the story,

1:27:30 you have to have an avatar to do that stuff with.

1:27:33 So that was the sort of challenge of Jack's character,

1:27:37 wrapping up the story as Jack.

1:27:40 Oh, there's real power for the avatar to end, the finiteness.

1:27:46 Yeah.

1:27:47 Both the Red Deads, you obviously change avatars.

1:27:50 Which we did, and then did it again.

1:27:52 I think there's something interesting about that moment

1:27:54 when you change from one character to another,

1:27:55 because they are you and they're not you,

1:27:57 you know, and then suddenly you're someone else.

1:28:00 Mm-hmm.

1:28:00 I mean, I was really shaken by that experience, but it's a beautiful experience.

1:28:05 It's like an unforgettable experience.

1:28:07 What else can video games possibly reach for?

1:28:11 You know, to create that experience,

1:28:14 that's what great films do, that's what great, great books do.

1:28:17 It's that.

1:28:18 I mean, it's that and the world building in games.

1:28:20 I think the experience of being in this fake

1:28:22 place and then taking on these narrative adventures,

1:28:25 when that combines, you've got the amazing experience.

1:28:28 So who do you think is the best character you've ever created in RDR?

1:28:32 So to me, I think definitively Arthur from Red Dead Redemption

1:28:36 2 is the best character ever created in video games ever.

1:28:43 Thank you.

1:28:43 I think there's not even close.

1:28:45 I mean, John will be the se-, which is hilarious to say, but those are...

1:28:50 John will be a close second, but Arthur is definitively.

1:28:53 And you've talked about in that interview,

1:28:55 you said that a lot of video games work on the same premise,

1:29:01 that you start as a weak person and end up as a strong superhero.

1:29:05 But what if you start as a tough guy, someone who already is very strong,

1:29:11 someone that's emotionally confident of his place in the world?

1:29:14 Arthur's journey is not about becoming a superhero

1:29:16 because he's almost one at the start,

1:29:19 but it's about an intellectual rollercoaster

1:29:22 when his worldview gets taken apart.

1:29:25 So it's very different than the normal journey of a character.

1:29:32 Yeah, in a game...

1:29:33 In a game-...

1:29:34 in order to reverse it.

1:29:35 So there were a couple other themes that matched that.

1:29:37 So they're guys from the Wild West, but they're being pushed ever further east.

1:29:42 So it's almost like an anti-Western.

1:29:43 An Eastern.

1:29:44 You're traveling east.

1:29:45 You're traveling into civilization.

1:29:47 And I don't think I would've been grappling

1:29:51 with those ideas earlier in my career, 'cause it was so,

1:29:56 you know, this idea of getting a different kind

1:29:59 of strength and different kind of weakness was interesting.

1:30:01 What about the component of mortality,

1:30:03 of a character facing his own mortality over a prolonged period?

1:30:06 Sort of just the, the, the, the prospect of like,

1:30:11 real sort of fear of death, realization of death.

1:30:16 Yeah.

1:30:16 I thought that was really-- as part of the story.

1:30:17 really a fun thing to play with.

1:30:20 John dies in Red Dead 1, I wanted to top that with Red Dead 2,

1:30:25 or do that in a different way.

1:30:27 And so the idea that John's death is fairly sudden,

1:30:30 and so if he's got this long,

1:30:32 drawn-out death, then I'd always been obsessed by TB.

1:30:35 As diseases go, it's a great literary device.

1:30:39 You know, 'cause it is this long, drawn-out,

1:30:41 slow death, but in which you are also getting weaker.

1:30:43 And my grandfather actually had TB before they invented antibiotics

1:30:47 and was sent to a sanatorium just after he was...

1:30:50 just after he'd had his child, my father, and survived,

1:30:55 but only three of them out of like 35 survived.

1:30:57 So I was always, captivated by TB as an illness.

1:31:02 It felt like it was an interesting thing to play around with as an idea,

1:31:08 this guy getting weaker who felt like

1:31:10 he was immortal and essentially was immortal.

1:31:12 He was the protagonist in a video game,

1:31:14 he could not die, and suddenly he is becoming mortal.

1:31:17 You know, but that helps him see stuff.

1:31:20 I thought that was a different way of doing a lead character in a game.

1:31:25 Yeah.

1:31:25 Do you think it's the greatest character you've ever created?

1:31:28 I think he's the best lead character.

1:31:31 You know, the lead characters are different from the side characters,

1:31:35 and I think he's the most rounded and works the best.

1:31:40 I kind of...

1:31:42 Him and Nico are the two I like, you know.

1:31:46 They were the two most ambitious.

1:31:48 So for me, it's always sort of a toss-up, you know?

1:31:51 But then I loved all the stuff, like the art team did such an amazing job.

1:31:56 It was their idea with the journal and that kind of...

1:31:59 The way that all the features worked into Arthur's character,

1:32:02 I thought that was really...

1:32:04 He was really rounded, he worked in lots of different ways really well.

1:32:07 I loved his flawed relationship with his old girlfriend, things like that.

1:32:11 All the side...

1:32:12 You know, the bits that turned up around him.

1:32:15 So you also like the side characters.

1:32:18 You like the flavor- Yeah, of course.

1:32:20 of the full cast.

1:32:21 What are some of the favorites you've created?

1:32:23 I'm sure the one you're currently working on- Nigel, that's a...

1:32:26 You called him a side character.

1:32:28 Well, he's not a protagonist.

1:32:30 He's like a god, not a character.

1:32:32 So he's not...

1:32:34 Him, I'm enjoying.

1:32:35 I love Dutch.

1:32:37 You know, it was partly because we wrote a few lines for him for the first game,

1:32:44 and the actor did such a such an amazing job that when he spoke,

1:32:48 it just came to me all of their backstory,

1:32:51 which I'd been playing around with by that point anyway a little bit in my head.

1:32:54 But I knew it was his bigger gangster from then.

1:32:56 I sort of saw exactly who he was.

1:32:57 And so that was...

1:32:59 That felt like...

1:33:00 He felt like a living character to me.

1:33:03 And we should say that Dutch is kind of like,

1:33:05 maybe a little bit of a godlike figure-

1:33:07 in both of the Red Dead Redemption games.

1:33:10 He's the leader of the gang.

1:33:11 And there's a father-son relationship with Dutch,

1:33:14 with, uh, I mean, with Arthur, with John.

1:33:18 There's a family feeling to the gang.

1:33:20 They explore all of those dynamics,

1:33:22 and then the feeling of betrayal and Arthur facing tuberculosis.

1:33:27 You're going against the family,

1:33:29 going against the father- because he is transforming his sense of the world,

1:33:34 of morality, of all those kinds of things.

1:33:36 So all the kind of very Shakespearean drama is right there.

1:33:39 And Dutch is a prominent godlike figure through all of that.

1:33:44 Also flawed himself.

1:33:46 Also a man of good and evil in that, framework that they're operating under.

1:33:53 And he's just drowning in his ego at the end.

1:33:55 You know, his ego gets the better of him.

1:33:57 I think he's a...

1:33:58 But there was something flawed but beautiful

1:34:01 in his idealism when he was younger, and that's mostly off-camera.

1:34:06 And then just so you know, always been as an individual,

1:34:10 I've always been very susceptible to charming people.

1:34:13 And he's charming.

1:34:14 So I was kind of...

1:34:15 I can see how people get captivated.

1:34:17 by charming people.

1:34:18 And the idea here was a very charming person, and the road's run out for him.

1:34:24 I personally am afraid of how much I love human beings,

1:34:29 and how susceptible I am to charm and charisma.

1:34:33 'Cause it can cloud your judgment about human nature.

1:34:36 Completely.

1:34:37 And that's what's happened with him.

1:34:39 And it ended up clouding his judgment about himself.

1:34:42 He kind of fell for his own rubbish.

1:34:46 Yeah, but also it clouded Arthur's judgment.

1:34:49 Oh, completely.

1:34:50 Arthur was completely, you know, platonically in love with him.

1:34:53 He was worshiping him.

1:34:54 He'd given up his power to him.

1:34:55 And then I think for Arthur,

1:34:57 the journey is retaking that power in the moment of dying.

1:35:01 You know, and that's what the whole...

1:35:03 that's why I thought that was really interesting.

1:35:06 Yeah, it's truly tragic for Arthur to be losing his identity, lifelong identity,

1:35:13 and sense of belonging, and losing his life at the same time.

1:35:17 In facing mortality, he is realizing that he's not all of it has been a lie.

1:35:26 But he gets to do some...

1:35:27 Well, it depends on what choices you make.

1:35:29 But he gets to do some good.

1:35:31 And so he gets his moment of redemption.

1:35:35 Just a little bit.

1:35:36 But realizing...

1:35:36 your whole life you've been living not a good life.

1:35:40 You've been not a good man.

1:35:42 Isn't that what we're all afraid of?

1:35:44 I guess it's never too late to change your ways.

1:35:47 Hope not.

1:35:47 I mean, that's...

1:35:48 So, the biggest, most important, primary question,

1:35:52 central to the reason we're talking today,

1:35:55 the number one question from the Internet, it is so ridiculous, but I must ask.

1:36:02 Have you seen Gavin?

1:36:05 Who is Gavin?

1:36:06 So, for more context, there's a guy named Nigel in Red Dead Redemption 2 who's

1:36:10 frantically searching for a mystery man named Gavin throughout the game.

1:36:14 This has become one of the biggest

1:36:16 mysteries amongst the interwebs, the RDR fan base.

1:36:20 So, the theories include, theory one is it's a split personality disorder.

1:36:24 Nigel himself is Gavin.

1:36:27 So, the evidence for this theory is the letter

1:36:31 that has some evidence that may be due to trauma,

1:36:35 this split personality disorder was created.

1:36:38 This Gavin was created inside Nigel's mind.

1:36:40 Theory two is Gavin is dead, and Nigel's simply in denial.

1:36:44 Theory three is that it's just a troll,

1:36:49 and Rockstar intentionally created an unsolvable mystery to drive players crazy.

1:36:53 I also heard theory four is Gavin is the Strange Man.

1:36:57 So, there's this fascinating character, the Strange Man,

1:37:00 this supernatural character that has a presence

1:37:03 in RDR1 and a little bit in RDR2 also.

1:37:07 But yeah.

1:37:08 So which theory is closest to the truth?

1:37:13 Not three or four.

1:37:15 In my mind, somewhere between one and two.

1:37:18 I just loved the way he shouted, "Gavin." It just amused me.

1:37:23 So at some level, it probably is trolling in that we

1:37:26 didn't want it to be a totally clear mystery.

1:37:28 You wanted it to have a little bit of adventure to it.

1:37:33 but it was meant to be...

1:37:35 Without ever fully being explained that Gavin's not there anymore.

1:37:39 Gavin's either gone home, Gavin's left him, Gavin's...

1:37:42 And we were going to keep exploring that idea.

1:37:45 That he was going to reappear in some way or other.

1:37:49 Did you have any idea how much imagination, excitement,

1:37:55 and curiosity that little interaction would inspire in people?

1:38:00 Yes and no.

1:38:00 You could never know what people are going to find amusing in these big games,

1:38:04 and a lot of it comes down to acting as well.

1:38:07 The guy was just funny when he said "Gavin." It was just funny.

1:38:10 You know?

1:38:10 But there was a ped in Red Dead Redemption one

1:38:13 that everyone was obsessed by, and I really wasn't expecting that.

1:38:15 So we try to put a few characters in.

1:38:18 I mean, Gavin was supposed to be amusing.

1:38:20 I thought he was amusing.

1:38:21 But you never know what people are going to get obsessed by.

1:38:24 There are other characters I think are funny, and people don't even notice them,

1:38:27 you know, or they see them in a completely different way.

1:38:30 Did you have a part in writing the letter?

1:38:32 Yeah.

1:38:32 I can't remember if I wrote it or...

1:38:34 Either I wrote it or Mike wrote it, or we both wrote it.

1:38:37 I really can't remember, to be honest with you.

1:38:38 But yeah, I certainly would have edited it,

1:38:40 and Mike might have written it, or I might have written it.

1:38:42 I really can't remember.

1:38:44 It's so fascinating because that little piece of writing— of course,

1:38:46 you have thousands of pages-- Yeah.

1:38:48 ...but that little piece of writing gets analyzed.

1:38:51 Oh, but we certainly talked about it in depth,

1:38:54 and if Mike was here, I'd ask him.

1:38:56 He might remember.

1:38:56 I can't really...

1:38:57 And we do so many of those things.

1:38:59 And I loved the use of letters in Red Dead to tell all these weird backstories.

1:39:03 And some became very clear and some were still a little kind of opaque.

1:39:08 But I think the general vibe was there was no Gavin.

1:39:11 Either there was no Gavin or he'd long since left.

1:39:14 So it's kind of a split personality, you know,

1:39:16 and then we were going to over subsequent games provide more information.

1:39:20 So in some sense, you yourself don't quite know.

1:39:23 You kind of have an idea, like which way do you lean more, theory one or two?

1:39:29 Is he dead, and Nigel's in denial,

1:39:31 or is there real communication going inside his head?

1:39:36 No, Gavin existed.

1:39:36 So it wasn't that he was a split personality,

1:39:38 and the only thing we hadn't really decided

1:39:39 was in a future game No, Gavin existed.

1:39:40 So it wasn't that he was a split personality,

1:39:41 and the only thing we hadn't really decided was in a future

1:39:43 game were we going to reveal that Gavin was dead,

1:39:46 or was Gavin going to turn up having long since abandoned this maniac.

1:39:49 That was what we were still playing around with.

1:39:51 I think the idea was that he was never going to meet...

1:39:54 He was never going to meet Gavin in this game.

1:39:59 I mean, it's just fascinating because you have to think about all of that.

1:40:02 You have to write all of that.

1:40:04 You have to have those discussions.

1:40:05 You have to have those debates.

1:40:06 And it has to feel fresh.

1:40:08 Like, what we've done before.

1:40:09 Constantly looking as you do.

1:40:11 You know, I think I've done, you know,

1:40:13 somewhere between 15 and 20 of these games.

1:40:15 Got to do stuff that's new.

1:40:16 It can't repeat itself too much.

1:40:19 I mean, we also live in the age of the internet.

1:40:22 Just, like, you realize there are millions

1:40:24 of people worrying about where and who Gavin is.

1:40:30 Thank God.

1:40:31 It's like-- It's great, yeah.

1:40:32 It's fascinating that they're having...

1:40:33 Is, think about people reading, like,

1:40:35 James Joyce or something and thinking about the character,

1:40:38 like, breaking apart Ulysses and thinking about,

1:40:41 like, arguing about different interpretations of it.

1:40:44 And to me, that in itself is also beautiful.

1:40:48 Yeah.

1:40:48 We want the side mysteries to be solvable up to a point,

1:40:51 but you still want these discussions.

1:40:53 Yeah, the mystery.

1:40:54 You know, and you want as long as it feels tonally appropriate

1:40:57 for this whole big sort of shaggy dog story experience you're making.

1:41:01 Which Gavin was just about,

1:41:02 and he was so weird, and he just was intrinsically...

1:41:05 there was just something funny about an English person screaming,

1:41:08 "Gavin." I don't know why.

1:41:10 Yeah.

1:41:11 Some of that humor, there's...

1:41:12 there's certain in Red Dead Redemption there's humor,

1:41:15 but there's a lot of it in Grand Theft Auto- ...and what...

1:41:18 It's hard to put into words.

1:41:21 why that's funny, why it becomes a meme,

1:41:23 why it becomes viral, 'cause it's just funny.

1:41:26 Yeah, I know why I think it's funny, but you...

1:41:28 what you can't...

1:41:29 What I'm not good at doing at least is going,

1:41:31 "This thing will become really popular online and this other

1:41:35 thing won't." You can create this bunch of, you know,

1:41:38 fifty different side things that people might get captivated by, and you

1:41:42 just do not know what they're going to respond to.

1:41:44 How do you know when something's funny?

1:41:46 Is it...

1:41:46 you just feel it?

1:41:47 I know what I think is funny.

1:41:48 It's, you know, it makes-- You just Google it

1:41:49 or you just-- ...like just 'cause it's ridiculous as well.

1:41:51 That was just...

1:41:52 There's nothing funny about a dude shouting, "Gavin," a lot.

1:41:56 He just said it in a funny way...

1:41:57 I just thought it might be funny- It was great...

1:41:58 and he just said it in such a funny way- ...and then it just became funny.

1:42:02 Like, we often have those side characters and they're not that funny,

1:42:05 and I think they're going to be hysterical,

1:42:07 and then you put them in the game, and they're fine, but they're not amazing.

1:42:10 That guy just brought that stuff to life.

1:42:12 Yeah.

1:42:12 And his backstory too.

1:42:14 I mean, Londoner and not...

1:42:15 yeah, that...

1:42:16 Yeah, I think that was what...

1:42:17 you know, just that it...

1:42:18 there's something sometimes fun, you know, in...

1:42:20 an English person saying the name Gavin is quite funny.

1:42:23 I don't know why.

1:42:24 So, about the Strange Man, AKA, the Man in Black...

1:42:27 Is there some element with Michael and the therapist in Grand Theft Auto V?

1:42:30 Like, who is the Strange Man?

1:42:33 Well, the Strange Man was again...

1:42:35 was, was, was someone we came up with quickly.

1:42:38 It...

1:42:38 we made Red Dead 1, and we...

1:42:42 well, were making Red Dead 1, and we'd made this...

1:42:46 we felt quite compelling story and quite interesting open world.

1:42:50 But...

1:42:50 and we'd already made a bunch of Grand Theft Autos,

1:42:53 obviously, but unfortunately,

1:42:54 we'd taken out the machine guns 'cause it was a cowboy game,

1:42:57 apart from the big fixed position ones.

1:42:59 And we'd taken out the cars,

1:43:00 and we'd taken out the city and large numbers of pedestrians.

1:43:03 So we essentially had a game about a dude riding a horse...

1:43:06 ...around the desert.

1:43:07 And it was quite...

1:43:08 and it was quite boring.

1:43:10 And so we then started filling it with content, and we filled it with these...

1:43:13 and having to improvise.

1:43:14 And we filled it with these things we call random events

1:43:17 that would be these sort of motion-capture moments that you could interact with.

1:43:21 And it...

1:43:21 they were, they were...

1:43:22 the designers did an amazing job with those.

1:43:24 They were really fun.

1:43:25 But there was not enough of them.

1:43:26 And then we felt we needed more story

1:43:28 'cause the story was perhaps a little short.

1:43:30 So we kind of quite late in development started putting

1:43:34 in almost like these RPG-type content where you go and meet someone.

1:43:37 And the way we thought of them was they were like short stories.

1:43:40 So you go and meet someone, they'd set you a slow problem,

1:43:43 like go and collect me 15 bunches of flowers.

1:43:46 And when you came back, it would resolve your story.

1:43:49 And so then, you know, one would go,

1:43:51 "Go get them for my bride," and you come back and the bride's dead.

1:43:53 You know, to...

1:43:54 We tried to make them like these short stories with a sting in the tail.

1:43:57 And he came out...

1:44:00 as I was trying to come up with ideas for those, as just this weird character.

1:44:04 And then we built him a bit into the story,

1:44:07 where he would unlock as you worked your way

1:44:09 through and be a commentary on what you were doing.

1:44:12 So he was meant to be a kind of manifestation of your, you know,

1:44:21 shadow, your karma, the devil, somewhere, you know, just saw the world.

1:44:25 And then we built out his backstory over time and decided, you know...

1:44:30 And so in Red Dead 2, you could interact with him again and...

1:44:33 or not really interact with him.

1:44:34 But he was there and he was meant to be, you know,

1:44:36 something I suppose any creative is scared of, an artist

1:44:39 who's kind of sold his soul to the devil.

1:44:42 And that slowly revealed itself.

1:44:45 There is a connection between the main character and the...

1:44:48 Is it like a Jungian shadow type of situation?

1:44:51 Well, it's sort of, because he knows what you're up to.

1:44:54 The connection is...

1:44:55 what's never really made clear is, does he know this about everybody?

1:44:59 Like, is he following you, or is he able,

1:45:01 because of the pact he's made with evil forces, able to do this for everybody?

1:45:05 I don't think we necessarily ever clarify that.

1:45:07 He's certainly able to do it for you.

1:45:10 I mean, there's, sort of narrative-wise, there are techniques to reveal a kind

1:45:15 of self-reflection analysis of the main character's thoughts.

1:45:19 That's why I brought up the therapist with Michael.

1:45:22 That was a really powerful, interesting thing to do in a video game.

1:45:27 Like, I, I don't think I've seen...

1:45:29 That's such a cool...

1:45:30 I mean, there's a Sopranos element there, with the therapist.

1:45:33 A little bit, yeah.

1:45:34 I really love an opportunity for a character

1:45:37 to just self-reflect through that technique.

1:45:41 But it also changed depending on what you'd done.

1:45:43 Yes.

1:45:43 So it was, it was sort of slightly...

1:45:45 It wasn't as interactive as it could be,

1:45:46 but it was slightly interactive, or slightly responsive to what you'd done.

1:45:50 So it felt it was still valid video game content,

1:45:53 'cause it was living, up to a point.

1:45:54 And I just thought the character, Dr.

1:45:56 Friedlander, was just funny, 'cause he was awful.

1:45:58 So it was like LA.

1:45:59 You're in therapy.

1:46:00 It's very LA.

1:46:01 But it's also very LA, he wants to write a book and betray you.

1:46:04 Which felt like a good, a good twist.

1:46:06 It felt like a Grand Theft Auto therapist.

1:46:08 But just like the idea of making the player in a game,

1:46:14 and games are intrinsically kind of physical, and, you know, you...

1:46:18 you walk, you punch things, you run around,

1:46:20 you drive cars, you shoot people, whatever.

1:46:22 There are these kind of physical fantasies.

1:46:24 Trying to put them into a slightly

1:46:26 more reflective or metaphysical state for a moment, I think can be really fun.

1:46:30 I think, to me, one of the most

1:46:32 surprising things about Red Dead Redemption, about video games,

1:46:35 that Red Dead Redemption showed is how much

1:46:38 value for storytelling is insanely specific, intricate details.

1:46:45 In the story, but also visually.

1:46:47 It just added to the feeling that the world is real.

1:46:53 So I have to ask, what are some of your, um,

1:46:58 favorite insanely specific, intricate details in RDR?

1:47:00 I can give you some options.

1:47:01 The internet's favorite is horse testicles shrinking in cold weather.

1:47:05 testicles shrinking in cold weather.

1:47:08 Yep.

1:47:08 Those guys did an amazing job on those.

1:47:11 I mean, I just...

1:47:12 And there must've been a meeting,

1:47:13 and there must've been engineers and graphics designers.

1:47:17 It was just, I think just artists.

1:47:18 Artists- Modelers, I think.

1:47:20 I don't think it was that hard.

1:47:23 Okay.

1:47:23 Enough of that pun.

1:47:24 Thank you for that.

1:47:26 Arthur's hair and beard grow in real time.

1:47:30 So, gun maintenance matters.

1:47:31 Firearms get dirty and perform worse over time.

1:47:35 Animal carcasses decompose realistically.

1:47:38 They feel like they do.

1:47:39 That's still extremely rare in video games.

1:47:41 That, the temporal aspect.

1:47:43 Yes.

1:47:43 Yeah.

1:47:44 That permeates through time.

1:47:45 You know, NPCs remembering you.

1:47:47 That's the best.

1:47:49 I mean, that's the thing I love.

1:47:50 Playing around with a lot of stuff in the new

1:47:53 games around that, 'cause I think it's super interesting.

1:47:55 Okay?

1:47:56 It's really powerful, right?

1:47:56 To make them...

1:47:57 Yeah, really interesting.

1:47:58 I think it just gives a...

1:47:59 it's a really fun way of giving you kind

1:48:02 of narrative content that is also systemic and procedural.

1:48:07 Yeah.

1:48:07 Is it technically really difficult to do for the game,

1:48:10 for the game to feel like it remembers you?

1:48:13 You know?

1:48:14 Um, I think with modern tech it's not that hard,

1:48:16 but there's a lot of stuff you need to track to make it interesting.

1:48:20 Yeah, to have a memory.

1:48:22 So that's really powerful.

1:48:23 The mud physics.

1:48:24 So Arthur's boots get muddy and leave actual tracks.

1:48:27 I mean, that's just incredible.

1:48:29 Really, really incredible.

1:48:30 You know, we made a dusty game.

1:48:32 Red Dead 1 is a super dusty game.

1:48:33 Make, you know, the problem with cowboys is that if

1:48:37 you've tried to make a Greatest Hits of the Cowboy game,

1:48:40 and then you've got to make a sequel,

1:48:42 you've got to come up with different geography.

1:48:43 So that's why the game starts in the snow.

1:48:45 So we wanted a game that had snow and mud,

1:48:47 because those were things you hadn't really seen in Red Dead 1.

1:48:49 And then the challenge is how do you make mud good in a game?

1:48:52 And the guys did an amazing job.

1:48:55 I mean, the snowstorm that starts the game, RDR2,

1:48:58 I don't remember the last time I've

1:49:01 experienced anything like it, but you felt it.

1:49:03 I don't know how the hell you do that.

1:49:05 It's not just graphics, it's everything.

1:49:07 Everything together.

1:49:08 I suppose some of the dialogue is really important to that.

1:49:12 Also the acting.

1:49:12 They feel cold.

1:49:13 Yeah, that's right.

1:49:14 And they feel desperate.

1:49:15 There was that feeling of sort of- Yes- exodus.

1:49:17 Like you're running away from something,

1:49:19 that gives the game energy at the start.

1:49:21 And it was at night.

1:49:22 Oh man, it was just masterfully done.

1:49:23 And there was a big group of them.

1:49:24 The other cont-- Yes.

1:49:25 You know, first game, you start off as a lone wolf.

1:49:27 Suddenly you're in this big group.

1:49:28 So it felt very different.

1:49:30 In Arthur's body, bullet wounds persist.

1:49:32 So that, that temporal consistency- ...that's really important.

1:49:35 Underweight Arthur looks gone, and overweight Arthur gets a gut.

1:49:41 And a fuller face.

1:49:42 Again, those decisions that you make reveal themselves in the game across time.

1:49:48 And they're consistent.

1:49:50 I don't know.

1:49:51 I did not see many games do that.

1:49:53 It must be difficult to do,

1:49:54 but to give that level of care to the details in that way

1:49:59 across time and for specific graphical representations of things is incredible.

1:50:05 Yeah.

1:50:05 I mean, I guess-- Do you have favorites where you were first like,

1:50:09 "This is amazing?"- I think all of it.

1:50:12 I think the way the whole...

1:50:13 To me, the thing that I would care about

1:50:14 most was the way the whole thing sat together.

1:50:16 You know, the fact that each of those, they

1:50:19 all feel like they belong together with each other.

1:50:22 You made this cohesive, very, you know, quote-unquote,

1:50:26 "realistic" for a video game experience,

1:50:28 and all the details feel like they mesh.

1:50:31 Well, for me, everything about the horse.

1:50:33 For a lot of people.

1:50:35 Testicle shrinking included.

1:50:38 What's the process of deciding?

1:50:40 The internet seems to really care about...

1:50:42 I mean, they love the game so much, so they want to know if anything was cut.

1:50:46 I'm sure stuff was cut because you have to choose.

1:50:50 What's the process of deciding what to cut, what to cut scenes like?

1:50:53 Is there any scenes that you had to let go of that you

1:50:58 really miss or wish you could've done in either GTA or RDR?

1:51:05 Well, I think the games ended up the way they were supposed to be.

1:51:08 You know, I think there was always...

1:51:10 There was a bit at the start of RDR where

1:51:15 he'd had a baby who just died in Red Dead 2,

1:51:19 and we ended up cutting it, which was the right decision.

1:51:22 It was too tough in some ways.

1:51:25 But I think it gave him real...

1:51:27 He was not very sympathetic to his occasional girlfriend who'd had the baby.

1:51:32 And so, it made him very, very nasty at the start,

1:51:35 which I thought would be interesting to play around with because

1:51:37 then it would make his redemptive arc even more interesting.

1:51:40 He was not a likable character at the start, and that was one...

1:51:44 We ended up making him slightly more like...

1:51:45 He was still sort of tough and nasty, but he's slightly more likable early on.

1:51:49 That was the right decision commercially.

1:51:52 It's better that way.

1:51:53 But you know, I still like that little bit.

1:51:57 It spoke to me personally.

1:51:59 And just his inability to access his emotions I thought was

1:52:03 really strong because then later in the game he's getting very emotional.

1:52:06 But there are also always little bits and pieces that get trimmed.

1:52:10 You know, and don't...

1:52:12 Or missions that just are not going to work technically.

1:52:15 Usually, it's like, "This mission's not going to work technically.

1:52:17 Oh God, we have to cut it.

1:52:19 Okay, how do we glue the story back together?" We

1:52:22 got better over time at gluing the story across missing chunks.

1:52:25 You get late in the game, and it's just something, you know,

1:52:28 some big challenging moment just is going to look rubbish,

1:52:30 so you just get rid of it.

1:52:33 I think editing film, and I imagine editing video games,

1:52:37 editing down is an art form, but it's also just...

1:52:42 It feels like torture because you're letting go

1:52:45 of things you put so much love into.

1:52:48 Yeah, it could be changes.

1:52:49 You know, if you fall in love with something and everyone else goes,

1:52:52 "Let's change it," that could be...

1:52:53 of course that could be upsetting in some ways.

1:52:55 Otherwise, you can care about it.

1:52:56 But, you know, if I was involved in the big creative thing and you go,

1:53:00 "Okay, it's the right decision," I can probably live with that fine.

1:53:03 I think sometimes for designers when they're only designing four or five

1:53:06 missions in the whole game and two of them get cut, that must be really...

1:53:10 ...Really hard.

1:53:11 Is there DLCs like for RDR or GTA that you wish

1:53:15 you had the time when you were there to have created?

1:53:19 Of course.

1:53:19 There's always things I wished I'd done.

1:53:21 I always wished I'd done more.

1:53:23 What would you have added?

1:53:24 This is a fun, like, nerding out.

1:53:26 We...

1:53:27 the internet knows we made a DLC,

1:53:29 single-player DLC for GTA V that never came out.

1:53:32 And we've also never really worked on another game.

1:53:35 But I like...

1:53:36 the idea of it, it was a GTA zombie game.

1:53:38 That would've been funny.

1:53:39 I think that could've been quite fun.

1:53:42 What was the GTA V DLC?

1:53:43 It was one where you played as Trevor, but he was a secret agent.

1:53:47 Oh.

1:53:47 It was...

1:53:48 it was cute.

1:53:48 It never quite came together, and it was never finished.

1:53:51 It was about half done when it got abandoned.

1:53:52 But I think if that had come out,

1:53:54 probably wouldn't have gotten to make Red Dead 2.

1:53:56 So, there's always compromises.

1:53:58 But it was...

1:53:59 you know, I like making the stories.

1:54:00 For me, I love the model of GTA IV when you had the extra

1:54:05 stories coming afterwards or Red Dead 1

1:54:07 when you had the zombie pack coming afterwards.

1:54:09 I like just doing these extra things.

1:54:11 So, I would've personally liked to have done more of that in that company.

1:54:17 Um, and with stuff we're doing in the future,

1:54:20 we're going to try and come up with worlds where we can add more stories.

1:54:24 I like single-player DLC.

1:54:25 I just think the audience loves it, and it's really fun to make.

1:54:28 Does it make you a little bit sad that the gaming industry,

1:54:31 in general, is moving towards more online, less single-player DLC?

1:54:35 Maybe that observation is incorrect.

1:54:37 But it feels at this moment, to me, it feels like,

1:54:42 It's easier to make a lot of money with online...

1:54:47 If you get it right.

1:54:48 If you get it right.

1:54:49 And so the game companies are reaching for that.

1:54:52 And it just makes me really sad because there's so much power to the...

1:54:55 What you did with Red Dead Redemption 2,

1:54:57 I don't know how during that time you were able to pull that off,

1:55:00 but that was like a breath of fresh air.

1:55:02 Or, in a time where everybody was moving to online and there

1:55:06 was that huge incentive to that, you go on and draw,

1:55:09 again, the greatest narrative in video game history

1:55:11 and the greatest character in video game history, single-player.

1:55:16 We still love single player games.

1:55:18 And I think as we started up Absurd, we did a lot of soul searching.

1:55:23 And also a lot of cynical looking at what goes well in the industry.

1:55:28 Luckily, if you want to do what we're forced to do and also what I want to do,

1:55:33 which is make new IP, you need single player games.

1:55:35 You can launch a multiplayer game as with new IP.

1:55:39 It's just extremely hard.

1:55:41 So, luckily, we are focusing on what we're

1:55:44 good at, which is open world single player games.

1:55:47 And we might add multiplayer components to one of them.

1:55:52 I think one of them is going to be really tough, later on.

1:55:54 But we're still thinking that through.

1:55:56 But I think we're really leaning into single player experience as being

1:56:00 a strength for us as a company and something we love to do,

1:56:04 and I think something a large part of the audience prefers,

1:56:07 and I'd love to, with all of those, keep

1:56:10 single player DLC one way or another, going.

1:56:14 Were there some other game ideas

1:56:16 you considered while at Rockstar and afterwards?

1:56:19 that you didn't go with?

1:56:22 So, like, worlds...

1:56:23 Oh, yes- ...or pirate games?

1:56:24 I mean, what...

1:56:25 I would love to see the notes, the possible options.

1:56:28 Never thought a lot about a pirate game.

1:56:31 Yeah?

1:56:31 My son is obsessed with that game, Sea of Thieves, at the moment,

1:56:34 so he's constantly saying,

1:56:35 "Do a pirate game." Haven't really thought about it too much.

1:56:38 We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open world spy game.

1:56:43 Yeah.

1:56:43 And it never came together.

1:56:45 So Agent?

1:56:45 Agent, and it's had about five different...

1:56:48 iterations-...

1:56:49 so good.

1:56:50 I don't think it works.

1:56:52 I concluded I, and I keep thinking about it sometimes.

1:56:55 I sometimes lie in bed thinking about it, and I've concluded as an open,

1:56:58 as what makes them really good as film

1:57:02 stories makes them not work as video games.

1:57:05 We need to think through how to do it in a different way as a video game.

1:57:08 So for people who don't know,

1:57:10 it would be hypothetically set in the 1970s Cold War era.

1:57:13 That was one of the versions.

1:57:14 There was another one that was set in current.

1:57:16 We had so many different versions of this game.

1:57:18 Got it.

1:57:18 We worked on so many different teams.

1:57:19 But it would be more geopolitical,

1:57:22 like espionage-- That, yeah, espionage, like...

1:57:24 and assassinations.

1:57:25 Yeah, assassinations.

1:57:25 I don't know what it would've been 'cause it never really...

1:57:28 We never got it enough to even do a proper story on it.

1:57:31 We're doing the early work as you get the world up and running.

1:57:34 It never really found its feet in either of them.

1:57:37 So interesting.

1:57:38 And I sort of think I know why, because one of those films,

1:57:43 they're very, very frenetic and they beat to beat to beat.

1:57:46 You gotta go here and save the world.

1:57:47 You gotta go there and stop that person being killed and then save the world.

1:57:52 An open-world game does have moments like that when the story comes together.

1:57:56 But for large portions, it's a lot kind of looser,

1:57:58 and you're just hanging out and doing what you want.

1:58:01 I want freedom.

1:58:01 I wanna go over here and do what I want,

1:58:03 and I wanna go over and do what you want.

1:58:05 That's why it works well being a criminal,

1:58:06 because you fundamentally don't have anyone telling you what to do.

1:58:09 We try and create, you know, external agency through these people kind

1:58:14 of forcing you into the story at times.

1:58:16 But as a spy, that doesn't really work because you have to be against the clock.

1:58:20 So I think for me, I question if you can even make a good open-world spy game.

1:58:25 So interesting.

1:58:25 So you have to be able to ride around in a car and listen to the radio.

1:58:29 Yeah, and cruise about.

1:58:30 Or ride a horse and just look at nature.

1:58:35 So lots of things would work as open-world games,

1:58:37 but I don't know if a spy does.

1:58:39 That's brilliantly put.

1:58:40 But to me, there's such espionage and assassinations and...

1:58:43 ...the geopolitical international context is so interesting.

1:58:46 But you're right.

1:58:47 I just wanna listen to what is it?

1:58:49 Lazlo and, uh...

1:58:51 Yeah.

1:58:51 Well, you can't.

1:58:52 You gotta save the world.

1:58:53 And so you need this time pressure.

1:58:56 With a Russian accent?

1:58:57 Or something.

1:58:58 Yeah, wow.

1:58:59 Wow.

1:59:00 That's really interesting.

1:59:01 Then we played around with the knights concept that was looking at...

1:59:04 Nice- ...you know, knights, and sort of trying to do a version

1:59:07 of a mythological game that could have been fun.

1:59:11 And you know, still love that idea, but never went very far with it.

1:59:15 Knights would be going really far back in history.

1:59:18 Yeah, it would have to go.

1:59:19 It never got to writing any of it.

1:59:21 Just did some backstory and played around with a few ideas.

1:59:24 But it was always something I thought I would never do,

1:59:27 and then kind of fell in love with it a little bit.

1:59:30 You left Rockstar in 2020 and eventually launched Absurd Ventures,

1:59:34 as we've been talking about.

1:59:36 What do you miss about your time at Rockstar?

1:59:39 Are there specific moments that bring you joy when you think about them?

1:59:43 Of course, it was my whole, you know,

1:59:45 it was my life for 20 something years, 21 years or something.

1:59:49 It was, and I moved to America to do it, and grew up doing it.

1:59:54 I was always living in New York.

1:59:57 It was at times, very intense and at other times, a magical experience.

2:00:02 But it was also just a huge chunk of my life.

2:00:06 The lows and the highs?

2:00:07 And the middles.

2:00:08 It was just my life, you know?

2:00:09 My life was that job and the people I knew in New York, and my family.

2:00:13 And we were doing something that was intense and innovative, and, you know,

2:00:20 both loved and hated by wider society in different ways and at different times.

2:00:25 And in this weird company that was constantly in trouble.

2:00:28 So it was really fun.

2:00:30 Just even looking back at that time to today,

2:00:32 how did you evolve as a creative mind across those 20 years?

2:00:36 Well, I was a child.

2:00:38 I was a 25-year-old child.

2:00:40 I didn't know anything, and I wanted to be a writer.

2:00:44 But I still wasn't writing.

2:00:46 And I bought a notebook and I'd occasionally scribble in it,

2:00:49 and I've still got those notebooks somewhere.

2:00:50 And I was working in video games,

2:00:52 which were the least literary medium it's possible to imagine at the time.

2:00:56 There was no room for that on PS1 games, really.

2:00:59 Thinking I needed to stop and do something else,

2:01:04 but not having the skills or the confidence to do it.

2:01:07 And I'd been doing that in London.

2:01:09 Then I came to New York, and it was fun,

2:01:11 really fun to be in New York and really fun to do a new company in New York.

2:01:15 And that was an amazing adventure, but I was still lost as a human being.

2:01:18 And then when I was 27, I was still completely lost, a child.

2:01:23 And I stopped some of my bad behavior,

2:01:26 and the next day pretty much the chance to write on, work on open world games,

2:01:32 and all the skills I'd half learned over

2:01:34 the previous years and my way of thinking,

2:01:35 where I thought about space a lot because

2:01:37 I was a geographer rather than a historian,

2:01:40 came together, and I got the chance to work on an open world game.

2:01:43 So it felt like it was meant to be.

2:01:45 It was fun to explore,

2:01:46 but really fun to explore with this team that was, you know,

2:01:49 Alex Horton and Navid and Leslie and the guys

2:01:51 in Scotland and all the people in New York,

2:01:54 making these new games in this new way.

2:01:57 And going, "Oh, we need to find a hundred voices.

2:01:59 We've got no money.

2:02:00 How the hell are we going to do that?

2:02:01 We'll get everyone's friends in and just record all

2:02:04 lines of dialogue each as we kind of would

2:02:06 invent the way that pedestrians would speak in video

2:02:07 games." No one else was doing that kind of stuff.

2:02:09 It was insane.

2:02:10 So I think that that period from kind of 2001, 2005,

2:02:14 it was lots of early innovation and felt

2:02:17 really exciting because we were doing new stuff.

2:02:20 It didn't feel...

2:02:21 It felt creative, but it didn't feel like writing yet.

2:02:25 Just becoming that.

2:02:26 We felt like we were doing lots of creative things and learning

2:02:29 how to assemble the stuff and learning what it could take.

2:02:31 And then I think, we talked about it earlier,

2:02:33 but the journey into doing GTA4 when it

2:02:36 began to feel more like a proper writing experience.

2:02:38 And I was probably ready for that at that point.

2:02:41 And then I was like, "Well, this is better than films.

2:02:43 This is something that films can't do." You know,

2:02:46 this 360-degree experience of being this immigrant.

2:02:49 And it still felt, we were still only scratching the surface.

2:02:52 I mean, it still feels like that now in some ways, but it still felt a little...

2:02:57 And then that five games, you know, GTA 4 and 5,

2:03:02 Red Dead 1 and 2, all the extra packs for them, and Max Payne 3.

2:03:05 I think we took the games thematically into new places through that period.

2:03:08 From a writing perspective, that was the most exciting period.

2:03:11 From a business and sort of early creativity period,

2:03:14 the period 2001 to 2005 was probably the most exciting.

2:03:18 to use the original starting team, all doing well, yeah,

2:03:22 personal life was doing okay, didn't feel like such a mess.

2:03:27 And then from 2007 onward, '07, '08, was happy personally.

2:03:32 Having children, happily married, and the games were just getting much better.

2:03:38 But there were lots of pressure in the business.

2:03:40 You know, the budgets got really big, so it added to the stress.

2:03:43 So there's always good bits and stresses, but, you know,

2:03:47 I always just tried to show up and do my best

2:03:52 and think about how I could do it in a new way.

2:03:54 Always trying to go, "It's a new medium.

2:03:56 What can we do that's new?"- But as a writer, as a scholar of human nature.

2:04:02 First of all, were you surprised that you were actually able,

2:04:05 like you had it in you,

2:04:07 through humor and tragedy, to create these incredibly compelling characters?

2:04:12 Because I think I remember reading somewhere that James Joyce,

2:04:15 when he was 20, said that he's going to be the greatest writer ever.

2:04:21 And I feel like every 20-year-old says this.

2:04:24 It's just James Joyce pulls it off.