We review the career of the co-founder of Rockstar Games, who leaves the company after 21 years as the main screenwriter of sagas such as GTA or Red Dead.
Dan Houser moved to New York in 2000, with just 25 years. A decade later he had amassed enough money to buy the mansion in which Truman Capote lived. One of those winks that occasionally allows destiny. The Guardian newspaper usually refers to him as the "capo di tutti capi" of video games set in the world of crime. In turn, Time magazine has named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Perhaps for that reason he does not like the government of the United States, which considers him a threat to national security and even opened an investigation in his day by the Federal Trade Commission. It's easy to understand Houser's reasons for wanting to go unnoticed and not lavish too much in the press. However, keeping a low profile is impossible when you are also the founder of Rockstar Games, you leave the company after 21 years and leave sagas as helmsman like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.
A gifted screenwriter
On February 5 the news became official. Dan Houser leaves Rockstar Games. As you could read in the statement released by the company itself, "your last day at the company will be on March 11, 2020. (…) We are extremely grateful for your contribution." It is not for less. Houser has been one of the founding members of the developer, held the position of creative vice president, was the producer of more than 9 projects in the studio, head of GTA and Red Dead, as well as writer of up to 19 different games. Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV and V, Bully, Max Payne 3, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Red Dead Redemption and its sequel … At the narrative level there are probably not too many figures like yours in this industry. It is among the few scriptwriters of video games that have successfully transferred the concept of showrunner to the medium.
The connection with Truman Capote, even through his mansion, could not make more sense. Few authors have delved into criminal psychology as much as they have. It's easy to imagine them as a sort of Holden Ford and Bill Tench, the protagonists of Mindhunter, the David Fincher series for Netflix. Neither Houser nor Capote wanted to ignore in their works the human part that may be behind a murder and they both toured the United States interviewing criminals and relatives, even if that meant going through prisons, reformatories or suburbs. The result has been extraordinary portraits of American society, the eternally forgotten classes and the most dangerous, hidden and marginal. Dan Houser and Truman Capote make up a prestigious Mount Rushmore that complete faces such as Roberto Saviano (Gomorra) and David Simon (The Wire, The Deuce). Although they have not transcended the reasons why Rockstar Games lets out a talent like yours, today in FreeGameTips we are more interested in its origins and methods. This is our profile … from Dan Houser.
From left to right: Aaron Garbut, Sam Houser, Dan Houser and Leslie Benzies collect an award at the BAFTA 2014.
The origins of the capo
Someone who analyzed with such precision and crudeness the gaps of the "American dream" (for the story will be Niko Bellic) had to be from abroad. Dan Houser was not born in the United States, a country with which he would later become obsessed, but in London, United Kingdom, on May 24, 1974. His parents are the lawyer Walter Houser and the actress Geraldine Moffat, whom they came to give a role in Grand Theft Auto V. Geraldine lent his voice to the game and made several sessions of motion capture, but he did not want to go out in the credits and the character he played is still an unknown. Many point out that she could be Trevor's mother because of physical resemblance, accent and because she is one of the few characters that do not appear in the credits, but no one from Rockstar is willing to confirm it. In any case, she was not the only one in the family linked to the world of entertainment. Despite her profession, her husband also loved the stage and the show, which is why she was one of the owners of Ronnie Scott, one of the most famous jazz clubs in the city, where they have come to play names of the size of Nina Simone and The Who. In short, a family of well-off artists and of which the most important and influential piece in Dan's life remains to be named: his older brother, Sam Houser.
One of the great anecdotes that is always cited when talking about the origins of Rockstar Games dates back to the childhood of both brothers. Legend has it that one night at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, the famous trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie approached the two young men and asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Dan had it clear. "Rock singer". Sam, too. "Bank thief". It was the first time that fate brought us ahead. As it is said, the name of the developer comes from the dreams and aspirations that Dan had at the time (“Rock-star”), and at the same time, the theme of her star video game (GTA) comes from those that Sam had. They were a constant support for each other during their passage through some of the most prestigious colleges and institutions in the United Kingdom: Colet Court, St 'Pauls School and the University of Oxford. Viewing images of those places is easy to teleport to the fictional campus of Bullworth Academy, where several decades later they would set one of their greatest hits: Bully (known in Europe as Canis Canem Edit). A sample of how much it influences us and marks everything we live during adolescence, a stage that both brothers shared with Patrick Neate, a famous English novelist who shed some light on them in those years.
You can't tell Dan's story without talking about his brother, Sam Houser.
Training as unexpected as fundamental
According to Neate, they both loved hip-hop, skateboarding and the movies that were in the bookstore next to their house, among which were Schlock, Class of 1984 and The Warriors (from which years later they would produce their own adaptation to video game). "Sam was the rebel, he was cool, and Dan was very direct and passionate about football," the author said. (Later he would participate in a soccer game). They loved Bruce Lee, like everyone else at the time (Bruceploitation), and they loved video games, especially Sam. They tested every arcade that came to the arcades and got hooked on any title that fell into their hands and served for the computer they had at home. Dan was a fan of Tetris and Sam of titles like Elite. A common passion for those years of effervescence in which they also ended up sharing class with Terry Donovan, with whom they later founded Rockstar Games. Without knowing it, both were sowing in their imaginary and their "bag of experiences" how much they would need in the future. They just needed to finish their training and have a chance.
Dan Houser graduated in Geography from the University of Oxford. A decision that may seem strange and that made it difficult to predict a future in the videogames sector. Today, with some more perspective, it is easy to see that this was just one more step in his path. We are talking about someone who was going to become one of the kings of the sandbox genre and open world games. A young man who was going to insist that all copies of his games come with a map of the stage where they are set. That I was going to conceive some of the richest and liveliest ecosystems remembered in the sector. Dan learned the importance of locating and choosing a territory; of its climate, fauna and flora; of how it affects the human beings that live there; of the social problems that plague them and of the economic, linguistic and ethnic differences of each zone. What else could someone like that study?
Dan himself has explained more than once that he has become an expert in psychogeography in several of the regions in which he has set his works. With these words, he explained, for example, the reasons why he chose Los Angeles for GTA: San Andreas and why they repeated in GTA V: “L.A. It is the embodiment of American desires of the twentieth century. The houses, the gardens, the tan, everything is a bit fake. It is the end of the western world: the sun sets and tomorrow comes, a different day, a different life. Its industry is the cinema, something as false as the real estate sector, its second strength. It is a region whose architecture speaks of its inhabitants, who try to escape their past, change and reinvent themselves. ” Dan's role has always gone beyond the script and has been fundamental when analyzing and choosing the spaces of the series. For GTA V, for example, he participated in the more than 100 pre-production days that were used to locate and set the scene in California. A transversal talent.
A quick glance at the schools in which it was formed returns us to the Bullworth Academy of Canis Canem Edit, demonstrating how our adolescence marks us.
Videogames, from hobby to work
Back in 1990, Sam Houser finished college and went to work at Bertelsman Music Group (BMG), one of the biggest labels of the time (now part of Sony). In that place he met and worked side by side with Simon Fuller, who according to Billboard magazine is "the most successful British manager of all time", counting in his portfolio of clients and discoveries with names like the Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, Andy Murray or Lewis Hamilton. Perhaps that was the moment in which the careers of both brothers forked and specialized. While Dan took his degree in geography, Sam received from Simon Fuller the best possible master in business management and since then he was always more interested in executive production than in the script and location of projects, Dan's territory. In 1994, to take advantage of “the boom” of video games, BMG founded a new department called BMG Interactive Entertainment. It was there that, when Dan left university, Sam got him his first job.
“My brother offered me a job testing CD-ROMs,” Dan himself said in one of the few personal interviews he has given. “Later, since virtual tours were fashionable, I had to do one of the Orsay Museum. At that time I wanted to be a writer and as they knew it, they offered to ask me the questions of a trivial game. They wanted someone to write them with some humor and they chose me. Then they wanted to make a soccer game and needed someone who knew about it, so I also offered. Without realizing it, I had made videogames a full-time job, and it really wasn't my intention. I always thought I would work on something serious, ”Dan joked. It was in these early years that DMA Desing, a consolidated British developer (author of Lemmings, for example) crossed the path of both brothers, who gave them a demonstration of the game that would change their lives: Race and Chase.
Race and Chase, aka Grand Theft Auto, the game that changed the life of the Houser family (and the industry) forever.
The birth of GTA
In its origins, Race and Chase was, who was going to tell us, a police simulator in which the players drove a patrol car to which they were giving criminal search and capture tasks. It was a two-dimensional title that was developed by different cities of the United States, all of them full of traffic and pedestrians. The person at the controls was required to comply with the traffic rules and not to hit the citizens even if they were immersed in a persecution. An alternative version of Miami Vice's successful adaptation for Commodore 64. Of course, DMA Design did not know the people to whom it was selling the project. In BMG they were asked to please make a new version where none of the previous rules were applied. "Nobody wanted to be a policeman, so everything went quite fast," admitted one of its developers, Gary Penn, who has also cited Elite more than once as one of his greatest influences (does anyone remember Sam Houser's favorite game ?) In the second prototype we went from being police to a thief of little mint and we were rewarded with points if we ran over someone, at which time it sounded "pop" and a red spot stretched across the screen. That was something else. It's easy to imagine the eyes of Dan and Sam making chiribitas. The arch was complete. BMG Interactive agreed to act as a distributor and launched the game in 1997, after changing the name to Grand Theft Auto, the reason for its first major controversy (this name is the judicial term used in the United States to define a vehicle theft crime and He did not sit well on the other side of the puddle, where senators like Joe Lieberman publicly complained about the game and condemned his proposal, making him the best possible advertising campaign).
Sales never finished accompanying BMG, even after the launch of GTA, and in 1998 the company decided to sell its video game division to Take-Two Interactive for just over $ 14 million. At that time Dan was 24 years old, curiously the same age as Ryan Brant, founder and president of Take-Two. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why Brant was willing to listen to the two brothers, with whom he connected very quickly and who convinced him to make two decisions that would mark the story. The first was that it allowed them to maintain the videogames section and that it operated as an independent studio within the Take-Two itself, something that at that time was very rare in the sector. The second, which was done with DMA Design and thus happened with the rights of Grand Theft Auto, game that Brant had heard about thanks to the controversy we mentioned before. The pitch of both brothers had to convince him, because that same year Rockstar Games was founded and several expansions for GTA set in London went on sale, waiting for the official sequel that would arrive shortly after, in 1999, being the only one in the saga No Roman numerals
Once upon a time there was a rock singer and a bank robber who were in a jazz club and …
Rockstar Games, the revolution is coming
Little is known about the pitch that the Houser brothers made to Ryan Brant to convince him. According to it is said, both placed special emphasis on their musical training. Born in a jazz bar and trained in one of the most important record labels in the country, they explained that they had to create products such as those in the music industry, that is, high-end titles for young and adult players, far from the productions of low budget that until then drove Take-Two. Games that a rock star would like to play (another of the company's etymological origins) and that had protagonists like those in the movies. Ryan asked them to move to New York and settle there. The rest, as who says, is history. Together with Terry Donovan (his school mate), Gary Foreman and Jamie King (whom they met at BMG Interactive), the Houser brothers founded Rockstar Games. "I am surrounded by people with OCD," Dan once joked, "but at the same time people much more organized and intelligent than me." Today, and with his abandonment already on the horizon, only Terry Donovan (executive director) and Sam Houser (president) remain in the company.
Grand Theft Auto 2 did not meet expectations, but its third installment did. A hit with more than 14 million units sold that became one of the most successful titles of 2001. Without being the first open world game in the sector, it was the first to feel “real”. Since then the series is listed as the fourth most prolific franchise in history, only behind Super Mario, Pokémon and Call of Duty. A couple of years ago, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, at FreeGameTips we dedicate a heartfelt tribute to three articles Back to the Past (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). A series of reports by the master Joaquín Relaño that have 88 pages and 55,262 words. Exhaustive and recommended as few for all those who want to know the secrets of the saga and how the evolution of Rockstar was since then. We will continue our profile of Dan Houser outside the games, focusing now on his working methods, the opinion that the industry deserves and the controversies that have splashed him.
Hermeticism voluntary? Dan, not without motives, has deprived us of knowing more about one of the great geniuses of the sector.
What is Dan Houser really like?
The mental image we have of Dan Houser is made up of the different descriptions that his interviewers have given him over the years. The Guardian, for example, defines it as "a flurry of words" and ensures that it chews gum more times than it blinks. A thoughtful and thoughtful man who "as soon as he immerses himself in a pause of several seconds as he explodes in a succession of thoughts and ideas." He himself says he has a BlackBerry because on an iPhone he can't write fast enough and loses the course of his thoughts. Stuff magazine ensures it always goes with jeans, shirt and cap. “He looks like a British teenager. He is somewhat overweight, has a youthful face and speaks very quickly and concisely. ” A portrait very similar to the one they made of him in Vulture: "He is tall, bald, wears gym clothes and white Adidas shoes, as if he had been trapped in the early years of his company." Of course, the press has never had much mercy on him. The first time he came across the New York Times, the newspaper editor said that “it is hard to believe that with his shirt, worn jeans, his cap and his pale appearance, Dan is the mastermind that according to politicians corrupts the youth of America. "
Perhaps the greatest truth is what his mother contributed when describing him for Yahoo! News, where she was asked by her children and referred to Dan as “the most relaxed of the two. The intellectual, the writer. Sam is the man of ideas. ” There was a time when even Dan himself had to go out to defend himself publicly and described himself in The Wall Street Journal: “Despite my reputation of encouraging people to break the law, I am the most conservative guy who They will meet. I have a panic attack if I get a traffic ticket. ” He has been pointed out so many times by the media that he already rejects interviews by decree and even refuses to pose with his brother in the press photos. He believes that fame entails a series of responsibilities that he is not willing to accept, "you have to sell your soul to them," and fear that people will only approach him for his money. A breastplate that, unfortunately, also involves many silences and gaps about his method of work and his way of addressing the different scripts in which he has participated.
The controversies in which the GTA saga has been involved have splashed all its members, who have not always had it easy.
Witch hunt
Dan Houser was not the only one persecuted by the generalist press, who for a long time pointed out and put the entire work of Rockstar to public trial. Its developers had to endure how public opinion was put against them. The first GTA, to name a few examples, was denounced by the Police Federation of England and Wales, which said it was a game "sickly, deceptive and despicable behavior." Years later, Australia banned the sale of GTA III in its stores because it contained scenes of “sex and violence” that exceeded the age classification that was then in the country. In 2005, Hillary Clinton said that "children play a title that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then kill them," in clear allusion to the series. "It's hard to digest." The franchise was taken multiple times before the courts in Alabama, Florida, New Mexico, Ohio and Tennesse by lawyers such as Jack Thompson, who took their crusade against GTA as personal and became true activists against video games. "I will not be happy until Rockstar is out of business," Thompson said. With San Andreas, a lobby of lawyers filed several complaints that also forced to increase the age rating of the game, costing the company millions of dollars that surely would not have been recovered had it not been for its subsequent success. Not to mention the Federal Trade Commission that opened to the company and the dozens of political programs that promoted laws against "similar video games."
“We have always been an easy target. In 2003, when we released Manhunt, our most violent and antisocial game, so to speak, we were pointed out and tried to publicly scold, when in theaters they were playing movies like Saw 3, much more violent and still, applauded and acclaimed as a slasher classic, ”Dan recalled. “Interacting with a system like one does in video games is no better or worse than watching the images of a movie or reading the words of a book. I do not believe that our society is in a great state of form, but of course I do not believe that video games are to blame. It's very frustrating when people don't understand what you do and even worse, they don't want to understand it. Anyone who has tried our games and wants to criticize them after experimenting with them and knowing them, is more than welcome to do so. But all those people who criticize without trying them … it's very frustrating. There is a large part of the population that continues to live in ignorance and just listen to scary stories about what we do. ” However, Rockstar has never shown any intention to change and has learned to take it with philosophy. "If people don't like them, they are free not to play them."
Dan has always rubbed shoulders with the brightest minds in the industry in the lists that reviewed the most illustrious names in the industry.
Your referents, a 21st century hermit
Dan has always been one of those who believes that, to write, the first thing to do is read "hundreds of books." Of course, he prefers not to read anything contemporary. "I don't want to be accused of stealing ideas." Among the authors he usually mentions are Charles Dickens, Henry James, John Keats, William Thackeray, Émile Zola and Ernest Hemingway. He acknowledges that he loves to look at the smallest and most concrete details that these authors reflect on society, "as when Arthur Conan Doyle mentions trade union disputes in Pennsylvania or gives some brilliant detail about the Mormons in Utah." Enjoy analyzing and dissecting people's concerns and ways of speaking. Dan argues that it is easy to find the same problems that today's societies have in yesterday's stories. The same happens in your games. "We never try to make a character represent Donald Trump and another character Barack Obama, for example, but we always have the feeling that our stories have an echo today." In any case, if he has to keep a fundamental book, for him "there is no better character in the history of literature than Uriah Heep of David Copperfield."
As far as series and movies are concerned, Dan Houser admits that "for professional reasons" he also runs away from all contemporary and popular series that touch gangster and crime stories. "I haven't seen The Wire, or Breaking Bad, or Boardwalk Empire … and I only saw a little bit of The Sopranos." The author is enough with the imaginary he formed during his childhood, and as we said before, includes films such as Schlock, Class of 1984 and The Warriors. The Guardian also confessed his human condition and said that "much" of what he consumes comes from the internet and is "real garbage." “I always say that I will sit down and enjoy some game, read everything that a great writer has published or watch all the films of a director… but that lasts me three minutes. Soon I consume the usual garbage in an obsessive way ”. Even so, the rest of the script team and members of artistic departments tend to document themselves with many visual resources, to the point that the lists of films and series that have served as inspiration are a regular of the months prior to each release of the company.
In video games, Tetris and Elite on the sidelines, the first video games that arrived at the Houser house were Pac-Man and Space Invaders. “I was particularly hooked on Space Invaders and Galaxian, but most of the games I missed were Japanese. The console I played the most was Mega Drive. NES is also from that era, but we don't buy it, ”recalls Dan. “I was never as involved in them as Sam. I recognize that I joined the industry from an economic point of view, thinking about leaving it to do something more creative later. I never imagined how involved I would be. I had a certain technical background and thought that making video games was boring. I thought I was going to be surrounded by a group of geniuses who only spoke technicalities and did tutorials and things like that for people like me, to whom something like this surpasses them. Now I realize that it is much more fun. ” Finally, he never denies the influences of Mario and Zelda. “Anyone who plays 3D games and says they don't borrow anything from them is lying. I don't necessarily talk about modern deliveries, but about those that arrived with Nintendo 64. ”
Even when compared to great masters of universal literature, Sam has always recognized having the same problems as everyone to write.
The secret formula
When someone who has given us characters like Tommy Vercetti, Carl Johnson (CJ), Cesar Vialpando, Niko Bellic and Trevor Phillips, among many others, talks about writing, it is best to shut up and listen. Even when he does it to recognize that he puts on his pants like everyone else, first on one leg and then on the other. Or what is the same, when he recognizes that he wastes time like anyone else. Houser thinks he can write anywhere (the office, his house, a plane …), “or not write anywhere. It depends on whether I have access to the internet, where I waste much of my time. There are times that I put myself at the end of the night to write something and I wonder how I could have thrown myself all day with that. Gradually I have managed to reduce the time between turning on the computer and start doing productive things in less than three hours. ” A declaration of humanity, a sign that he also bleeds, which is hard to believe when one remembers that games like GTA IV have more than 1,000 pages of script and up to 660 scenes only for pedestrians, with more than 80,000 lines of dialogue in total.
"Something like that requires a lot of effort and work, so you better be passionate," Dan warns those who want to dedicate themselves to the environment. “We take every release very seriously and there are times when your life is not too pleasant. The longest part of the process is to create the world in which the story is set. I don't know if it's the right way to do it, but we work like this and from the point of view of production you should always build the game world as soon as possible. Once you have it, the characters come out of it. We also spent a lot of time outside choosing the spaces and chatting with strangers that serve us for the plot. From policemen who show us their first-hand investigation to members of the FBI, undercover agents, mafia experts, street gangsters who explain the jargon, convicts in prisons in the middle of the desert … It can be really tiring and depressing. ”
Magazines like Observer have compared Dan's work with Herman Melville and Dickens, and TIME magazine, when cited among the most influential in the world, did the same with Thomas Wolfe, Balzac and, again, Dickens. Classic authors whose work method is very similar to theirs … once created this world. From that moment on, he doesn't stop writing. There is a team for the main plot, another for the kinematics, one for pedestrians and secondary, a room focused only on radio stations, people only for the particular region, internet pages and leisure mini-games, someone for the descriptions of the inventories … Everything follows one of Charlie Kaufman's maxims, "writing is rewriting", which means that pages and pages of script are often dropped. In Red Dead Redemption 2, to name the last, up to five hours of play were eliminated due to the simple fact that “they didn't work. They felt superfluous. It is a part of the process in which everyone loses things from the game they love. ”
Scripts of more than 2,000 pages, up to 80,000 lines of extra dialogue only for pedestrians, locations of more than 100 days … the work behind each work is mastodóntica.
So far comes our particular profile of which is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant writers of the audiovisual sector. Despite the secrecy surrounding the figure of Dan Houser, whose essence we hope to have approached a little today, there are so many stories, information and controversies around the author that there would be material for a second part of this article con una extensión aún más amplia si cabe. ¿Cuál ha sido su papel concreto como guionista en cada juego? ¿Cuáles son sus principales temas e inquietudes como autor? ¿Qué especialidad se le da mejor a la hora de escribir? ¿Cómo responde él a las acusaciones de machismo que, como Tarantino, envuelven a sus personajes femeninos? ¿Es cierto que justo antes de fichar por Take Two tuvo una travesía al margen de la ley por Colombia? ¿Cómo vivió la presión que supuso la investigación de la Comisión Federal? ¿A quiénes tuvo que enfrentarse dentro de la propia Take-Two cuando pasaron a formar parte de la compañía? Estas y muchas otras preguntas tendrán que esperar, pero tranquilidad porque habrá tiempo de abordarlas. El camino de Dan se aleja de Rockstar Games, sí, pero su obra parece lejos de haber concluido. Mientras aguardamos impacientes el nuevo capítulo de su legado, os dejamos con una cita suya, con la que acostumbraba a defender los videojuegos como medio principal de entretenimiento. “Los libros te cuentan algo. Las películas te muestran algo. Los videojuegos hacen ambas cosas y además, te dejan hacer algo”.
