Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has formally announced his new studio, Absurd Ventures. If that sounds familiar, it’s because he registered a company under that same name in both the UK and US back in 2021, a year after he departed the Grand Theft Auto developer.
Per the press release, Absurd Ventures is both a game developer and a larger transmedia studio. It plans to release projects for “live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.”
Houser left Rockstar in 2020. Last year announced he had joined the advisory board for blockchain developer Revolving Games.
At time of writing, Absurd Ventures hasn’t announced a specific project in development.
All aboard the transmedia train
Cryptic as the studio currently is, Absurd Ventures openly billing itself as a transmedia studio gives an idea to its larger ambitions. And having Houser’s name to throw around may help make those dreams a reality.
Transmedia efforts have been going on in the game industry for some time now. But the billion dollar success of Nintendo’s Super Mario Movie, and the growing number of video game adaptations (usually from Netflix) show that games are to the 2020s what comic books were to the 2010s.
Earlier this week, for example, Motion Twin announced Dead Cells would become an animated series with a 2024 release.
Some properties have been more fruitful than others, and see varying degrees of success in different mediums. And this would be a first for Houser, since none of Rockstar’s big franchises—Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Bully—have become film or TV projects, despite attempts to do so.