Grand Theft Auto veteran Dan Houser believes people will be the driving force behind creative endeavors now and forever.
Conversation with Radio 4 On his debut novel A Better Paradise (about AI gone rogue), the Rockstar co-founder said he believes what AI technology produces based on large language models is “universal.” This echoes comments Houser made earlier this week.where he said AI “isn't as useful as some companies would have you believe.”
“In most fields, the future of quality writing is writing about people,” Houser told Radio 4 presenter Kate Molleson.
“As far as I'm concerned, most creative endeavors are still dominated by humans and will continue to be forever, at least if they use the equivalent of language models to create anything. It can sometimes create interesting random things, but the level of content they create is pretty generic.”
Houser was also asked about his decision to leave Rockstar in 2020. In short, the development veteran said that the studio's projects took a long time to create and became increasingly complex; he wasn't sure if he had the strength to go through another game.
“The projects are really long and difficult and take a long time to complete,” he explained.
“It can be a difficult journey to create things of this scale when there are so many moving parts in place, and you have 4,500 lines of dialogue and the same number of pieces of other things trying to come together. It's a huge production experience that consumes your time over the years, and I didn't know if I had another game like it in me.”
Recently, Rockstar comes under scrutiny for firing employees who were members of a Discord run by the workers' union, prompting accusations of union-busting that the company denies. In this context, Molleson asked whether the games industry is a good place to work; Houser says, “Essentially, yes.”
“That’s why I’m working on it and why I encourage other people to work on it,” he said.
“No industry is perfect, but my experience in the games industry is that fundamentally… every company is different, but most of the time it is an inherently positive and supportive environment for most people. But nowhere is perfection.”
Houser left Rockstar in 2020. and the following year founded a new company called Absurd Ventures.to officially announcing the firm in 2023.
