Lex Fridman PodcastDan Houser on Lex Fridman: How GTA III Made a Sim Feel Real
By giving GTA III a low-rent AI with personality players could push; the world running before you arrived made open-world games feel like digital tourist spots.
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,217 words- 0:00 – 1:17
Episode highlight
- LFLex Fridman
You said that Red Dead Redemption 2, in your opinion, is the best thing you've ever done. I think there's a strong case to be made that it's the greatest game of all time. What are the elements that make that game truly great, do you think?
- DHDan Houser
People searching for meaning within amongst the violence. I think that the West and all of the themes around the West really lend itself to that. And then the, the gunplay was fantastic and the horses were incredible. I think we got to spend... A smaller group of us working on it from day one, coming up with some weird, wacky ideas that we got to embed in the game that I think was helpful. Like, we got to be very creative before it had a full team on it.
- LFLex Fridman
You lock yourself in a room and get anchovies and onion pizza and-
- DHDan Houser
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... crushed Diet Cokes?
- DHDan Houser
Yeah. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Is this accurate information?
- DHDan Houser
Very accurate.
- LFLex Fridman
Why do you think there was so much excitement about GTA IV, GTA V, and now GTA 6?
- DHDan Houser
I think we did a really good job of constantly innovating. The games always felt different, you know. People have very strong feelings. "I like this one. I didn't like that one as much." 'Cause they are pretty different. So you would... There would be simultaneously where you know what's gonna happen. It's a Grand Theft Auto, you know it's gonna be a game about being a criminal. But the way it's gonna be a game is gonna change quite a lot.
- LFLex Fridman
The number one question from the internet, it is so ridiculous but I must ask-
- DHDan Houser
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... have you seen Gavin?
- 1:17 – 3:03
Introduction
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Dan Houser, a legendary video game creator, co-founder of Rockstar Games, and the creative force behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, which includes some of the best-selling games of all time and some of the greatest games of all time. Both Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 has some of the deepest, most complex and heart-wrenching characters and storylines ever created in video games. Dan has started a new company, Absurd Ventures, great name, that is creating some, uh, incredible new worlds in multiple forms, including books, comic books, audio series, and yes, video games. That includes A Better Paradise, which is a dystopian near-future world with a super intelligent AI, American Caper, which is an insanely chaotic, violent, dark, satirical world, and Absurdiverse, which is a comedic action-adventure world. I'm excited to explore all three of these. I have spent hundreds of hours in worlds that Dan has helped create, so this conversation was an incredible honor for me. And on top of that, Dan and I talked a lot after and in the days since, and he has been just a wonderful human being. I'm just at a loss of words. I feel like the luckiest kid in the world. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Dan Houser.
- 3:03 – 15:16
Greatest films of all time
- LFLex Fridman
You've helped create some of the most incredible characters, stories, and open worlds in video game history. But when you grew up in the late '70s and '80s, open world video games wasn't a thing, so you've credited, uh, literature and film as, uh, early inspiration. So let's talk about, uh, film first, if we can.
- DHDan Houser
Sure.
- LFLex Fridman
What to you are some of the candidates for the greatest films of all time? Maybe films that were highly influential on you. I mean, Godfather.
- DHDan Houser
God- well, I think for me, probably Godfather II more than Godfather I, but I love both of them. But I love the divided story in Godfather II. And as a migrant, I used to live in Soho, I love the bits in Little Italy, and I love the, uh, the sections in Sicily. So I think... And the bit, Ellis Island is just one of the best shots in all of cinema. When you see little Vito turning up in Ellis Island and you get that shot, it's amazing. It gives you a really good cinematic sense of what it must have been like to arrive in America.
- LFLex Fridman
How much of the greatness of Godfather do you think is the writing, how much is the cinematography, and how much is the acting? You got De Niro, you got young Pacino.
- DHDan Houser
Well, Coppola started as a screenwriter, so I think he wrote, at least co-wrote the script. So it's almost like the writing and directing almost become the same thing. Well, it's one of those films, both of them are those films which I was thinking about this idea of a perfect film where everything is good. Where the acting's seminal, where the writing's seminal, where the music is seminal, where the shots are so memorable, where the scenes, uh, uh, you know, define what you think about things. You know, it's impossible to think about the mafia and not think about The Godfather.
- LFLex Fridman
What about the pacing? It is a bit slow. You have, you have movies like 2001: Space Odyssey, slow.
- DHDan Houser
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
It used to be, back in my day, (laughs) it used to be slower.
- DHDan Houser
Life got faster. Life just got... You know-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DHDan Houser
... as, I think as we moved from the '70s into the '80s, into the '90s, people had seen so many films, they just started to edit films faster. And people understood cinematic storytelling so much that you could do things much quicker, you could show a look and just that meant you realized that person was going to betray the other person. They just edited films much quicker. But I quite like the slowness. I think these days with, with modern, you know, high quality televisions, you don't have to necessarily watch these films in one sitting, particularly when you're rewatching them. So it doesn't bother me that they're long and slow.
- LFLex Fridman
Speaking of faster, life getting faster, uh, I'm sure another influential movie was, uh, Goodfellas, Scorsese. That's faster, right?
- DHDan Houser
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
A mixture of crime and humor.
- DHDan Houser
And almost like an open world game in some ways, in that it's this slice of life. You see... You know, I think that probably changed cinema at the sort of ta- tail end of the '80s, early '90s more than any other film. And it's, it's so iconic. I- i- in some ways I prefer Casino, but the invention is really in Goodfellas. I love the end of Casino, you know, the use of voiceover, the way you saw them being criminals and being normal people. You know, it changed everything. I mean, The Sopranos obviously is completely inspired by Goodfellas.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, Casino has...... first of all, the character of Sharon Stone. I mean, everything.
- DHDan Houser
The look, the clothes-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DHDan Houser
... the music.
- LFLex Fridman
I would say one of the most memorable moments in film for me, uh, is the meeting in the desert. I mean, just the drama building up to that between-
- DHDan Houser
Dig another hole. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah. The environment, the city, speaking of open world and creating a character from the city.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
It's one of the great Vegas films.
- DHDan Houser
I think the great Vegas film. There are bits that I always... that I love. At the end, when everything's wrapping up, and on the one hand you see the Robert De Niro character, he's still good at making money, so they let him return to normal life. But then you get that brilliant scene when all of the, uh, the mob bosses from, uh, back home, they're discussing all these people who, who, who may or may not be able to implicate them. And then there's that incredibly cold line where one of them... They're thinking about the, the old, uh, you know... I think it was the casino manager, and one of them just goes, "Ah, the way I see it, why take a chance?" And then the next thing, he's just shot. Right? The brutality of it all is just brilliant.
- LFLex Fridman
I don't know. I probably have to disagree with you on Vegas. There's at least some competitors. You got, um, what, Nicholas Cage leaving Las Vegas? I mean, falling in love with a prostitute, you're also... (laughs) You- you've written some of the great crime stories ever.
- DHDan Houser
Thank you.
- LFLex Fridman
And in some sense, there's love stories in there. And you've talked about being, uh, a bit of a romantic yourself, uh, appreciating the depth of love stories in literature, uh, at the very least. And there is a dark kind of love story between an alcoholic and prostitute. He got an Oscar for that.
- DHDan Houser
I think he did for that, didn't he?
- 15:16 – 18:07
Making video games
- DHDan Houser
of the same.
- LFLex Fridman
From movies to video games, when did you first fall in love with video games? Literature was the first love.
- DHDan Houser
Uh, I mean, f- no, films.
- LFLex Fridman
Films.
- DHDan Houser
Films was always the, was always... Well, what I loved first as a kid was films. Um, older... began reading books properly aged about eight. Was watching films long before that.
- LFLex Fridman
Nice.
- DHDan Houser
And then probably it was always bouncing between the two which I preferred. I think they're good at different things. Games, I played and above all watched a lot of games as a kid, as being a young kid and, you know, other people playing them. Um, and I obviously liked the core thing games do, which is you press a button and something happens. They're responsive. They're alive. And that's captivating. And then the competitive angle of games is fun, or, you know, beating this, beating that, winning this, that was fun as well. Um, sometimes obsessively so. You know, I remember being completely addicted at one point when I was, shoulda been studying, for months at a time to Tetris on a Game Boy. You know, and I liked games and I liked interactivity and I liked the movement to this digital world that's really emerged for me pretty much as soon as I left college. But I didn't love it. And then I really fell in love with games when I was properly making them probably as late as like 2001.
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, wow.
- DHDan Houser
And when I suddenly began to see, first of all, my mind, you know, that's a whole nother story but just suddenly saw what they could do and could be and what this chance was to be one of the people involved in making these things that was this, you know, where you were really kind of breaking trail into the future it felt like. And I think that was when I really went, "These are amazing," and that's when I really fell in love with... I, I, I could see it in moments, and suddenly you could make this whole experience. So that was really the moment for me.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, of course because you're a pioneer of open-world games that are so narrative-driven. So it's like you didn't have too many examples.
- DHDan Houser
Yeah, before that it was PS1 or befo- even before that, games looked terrible. You know, that you would be like, "It's eight pixels. It's a car." You know, it was not a car. It was they just didn't... It was always you were squinting and closing both your eyes and trying to imagine it was this thing you were told it was. And all they were about, you know, i- i- very surreal subject matter 'cause you couldn't make them remotely real.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
And suddenly we had, we're able to build these experiences where you could run a simulation of a city and it was in three dimensions and it felt alive. And, and we were trying to give it even more, at least the illusion of even more life. A- and yet you see you could tell a story in three or, you know, using time, in four dimensions, and that felt very inspiring.
- 18:07 – 21:26
GTA 3
- DHDan Houser
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, I think, uh, GTA III is probably one of the most influential games of all time. It created a feeling of an open world. What do you think it takes to create that feeling? You know, th- there was like these looming skyscrapers, there was the changing traffic lights, there's the, the feeling like, first of all, you had a feeling you could do anything, and then the world was...... reacting to it-
- DHDan Houser
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... in a way that didn't feel scripted.
- DHDan Houser
Yes, and it wasn't scripted. It was, it was really, really, really low rent AI. Like it was a simulation that you could prod and push and see what happened, and I think that was incredibly, it was a, it was two things. It was the fact that here was a simulation that you could mess about with, and the simulation seemed to have a personality. Um, so you could push and see, and the world would push you back to, to what, what, in whatever way that meant. And then the other thing was just this, I think the re- one of the reasons it was so captivating was also the idea of if I did nothing, the world still existed.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
Or I could act in quite a passive way, I could just listen to the radio, I could re- look at billboards, I could talk to pedestrians and the world, not in GTA III, but by Vice City, you could begin rudimentary talking. Um, and the world was there and existing, and so it was i- idea of like almost something that really tried to explore in lots of games, um, the idea of being a digital tourist, you know, you were in, you were in these worlds and you went there as a visitor and they existed almost independent of you. It felt like when you turned up, the world was running. It didn't feel like you'd started it. Of course you had started it, but that feeling I think was, uh, was one of the things, the illusions that people found very captivating was, "I'm in a, I'm in a world that both doesn't exist and does exist."
- LFLex Fridman
So there's these, uh, two concepts that I was, uh, reading about, just to put names on them, uh, one is, uh, systemic video game design, so systemic games, and the other is sandbox, uh, video games, and the systemic is from the environment perspective, uh, which means that there is these interlocking game rules and systems that interact with each other and produce emergent, uh, behavior-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... and that emergent behavior is what creates the feeling like there's a living world-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... and then the sandbox aspect, uh, which is overlapping but different, it's from the user perspective, from the player perspective, the feeling like you can do anything. And when those two things combine, the feeling like you can do anything and the feeling like there's a world that full, that, that is also doing anything it wants, that's a, creates this incredible feeling of like this w- world is alive.
- DHDan Houser
And I'm in it.
- LFLex Fridman
And I'm in it.
- DHDan Houser
And it's the combination of those two things, I think, is very powerful, and I think with GTA III, you know, for me, it, it came at a really interesting time in my, my life (laughs) personally, and I was very able to engage in it probably the first time professionally, actually awake and do something, and, um, it, uh, we were really sort of scratching, began to scratch the surface on how do we fill these worlds with content and how do we make that content interesting and make the content all interwoven so as you, as you start to mess with these systems, they also feel alive and m- and, and interesting.
- 21:26 – 24:13
Open world video games
- DHDan Houser
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, there's often been attention to your work between, uh, an open world to have freedom, and then narrative...
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... driven storytelling, and I think you've often, maybe always, gotten the balance right. So w- what is the, (laughs) what is the value of each and how do you get the balance right?
- DHDan Houser
Well, I think the, the open world is intrinsically pretty fun. It's just fun to be in a world and have complete freedom, and, and certainly I think at various points, we, we, we, we debated or, or w- you know, I had theoretical discussions in my own head with myself or other people in the team would really push for less story, less story, you know, let the whole thing evolve organically, you know, have it all be procedural, have it all just evolve from what you do. I think, um, for me, I would always come back to going, story can be incre- if done well, can be incredibly compelling and it gives you some structure. So I think, uh, y- and, and something to do, and it, it helps you, fr- from a, uh, a game design perspective, unlock the features. It means we know the fe- the, the, the big features 'cause they, you know, essentially when you put someone in, in a world and give them a whole new way of interacting with that world through the control panel, it can be a little overwhelming. You know, playing a game is a lot more of an engaging experience, the, the, even than reading a movie, you know, reading a book or, or watching a movie. You've got to engage in it properly, so how you unlock the features and how you unlock the world i- there's an art and a skill to that, um, and I think we felt that a structured story was the best way to do that and to have control over that process. And also just, you know, people are looking in their lives for story. I think story's very important and very powerful, and when you combine the two successfully, you get the best of both worlds. But it is a, you know, there is a tension always there. I think in, in a game like GTA IV, which I worked on and loved and I thought the story was great, but we got criticized because people felt there was almost too much story and that meant you cared too much about Nico and he wasn't as effective an avatar in the open world. I think we probably got closest to reconciling them as perfectly as they can be done in Red Dead II, or when playing as Trevor in GTA V if you wanted to be crazy. I think those were when it really worked, the character, absolute freedom because also you didn't want in any game, you don't really want to compel the player. If you're giving them freedom, you don't want to say, "Well, I'm giving you freedom, but then I'm taking away, 'cause you've got to be this kind of person when you're free."
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
So I liked it when it could be, he could, you know, he or she could veer to be nice, veer to be nasty, I think that's when it was at its strongest so you, you kind of want a character that was rounded and you felt had good sides and bad sides.
- LFLex Fridman
But you felt that character's personality-
- 24:13 – 27:40
Character creation
- DHDan Houser
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... you felt the depth, you've actually m- talked about this, the really powerful concept of, uh, creating a 360-degree character.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
I think somewhere you mentioned that in order to do that, you had to be able to imagine what that character would do in any possible situation-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... which is a really interesting philosophical concept.I started to immediately think of, like, can I imagine (smacks table) how good of an NPC am I?
- DHDan Houser
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Ca- ca- can I imagine myself in every p- I, I try to do that very much when I...
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
...when I look at human history, when I look at the Roman Empire-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
...when I look at World War II, uh, within the German side, the Russian side, the British side, the American side, just I imagine myself if I was a soldier. But, like, that exercise, like if you put Trevor as a soldier in World War II (laughs) , what, what would he do?
- DHDan Houser
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
No, I mean, that may be going-
- DHDan Houser
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
...a little bit too far, but basically what are the limits of the integrity? What are the limits of, uh, how romantic is he, how narcissistic? All those kinds of elements you have to think about in order to create the full character. What does it take to create that kinda 360 character? How hard is it?
- DHDan Houser
Um, it was a lot of thinking, a lot, like a year sometimes from when we begin talking about... a project and dialing it, you know, and I would just get some initial ideas very, like one sentence they are a Serbian immigrant or they are a retired gunfighter, um, with a wife in, you know, uh, uh, type. Very, very simple stuff. And then just start to think through it from every angle, um, and, you know, start to think, well, would it work if they acted like this? Would it work if you acted like that? If this is the world, how does it contrast with the world? Because I always thought that the games were kind of a mathematical equation. They were the personality of the world, you know, multiplied or divided by the personality of the protagonist. And when th- when that creates interesting friction, that's a really fun experience for the player. You know, uh, it's, uh... so almost always at least one or more of the protagonists, because obviously in, in GTA V we had more than one, um, we'd have someone who'd moved to the place or was in a new part of the place or moved to a new part of the map because it was really, as a, as a player I think it was really easy to, much more easy to identify with your avatar when they, like you, were fish out of water. Mm-hmm. And even when they weren't, we still made them dissatisfied and feel like a fish out of water themselves. Um, so I, I think it was just living with those characters and getting idea- and going, "What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? How are they like me? How are they not like me?" You know, and th- and slowly what is it like to feel like a human being, you know? And then in most of these games (laughs) , how much of, of a psychopath are they? How much of a sociopath are they? And what are their good qualities? What, what is gonna give them humanity? Alongside that, what do they... what, what, what do they... what, what for them apart from money is worth dying for? And then you start to build it out from these kind of fundamental sides, and suddenly you go, "Okay, actually I can start to feel..." And then how do they speak? You know, because fundamentally doesn't really matter what's going on in their head. They haven't actually got one, but what they say is what's gonna make you realize who they are.
- LFLex Fridman
So develop more depth and complexity on the good and the evil side of that human that is a part of all-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
...of all human beings. So you're basically living with that character.
- 27:40 – 36:52
Superintelligent AI in A Better Paradise
- LFLex Fridman
Then if, if we can contrast, uh, what is it, Niko and Trevor with, for example, another character I'm sure you've been living with for a while, which is the AI system Nigel Dave you've been working on recently-
- DHDan Houser
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
...as part of a, A Better Paradise world which is more dystopian, dark, tragic-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
...still funny, philosophical-
- DHDan Houser
100%.
- LFLex Fridman
...deep. Uh, but the AI, AI system in there, the super intelligent AI system, uh, is named Nigel Dave.
- DHDan Houser
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
And it has, I mean, at least from my current experience with it, um, has like a conflicting nature. Um, maybe it's psychopathic. I haven't quite figured that out yet.
- DHDan Houser
I don't think he's decided.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, I don't think he's decided either. Uh, but he seems to be, uh, bent on world domination, although he doesn't take credit for it. He wants to fix humanity and it seems that the "children," quote unquote, that it creates are the real monsters. Uh, and actually there's a really interesting idea there which is maybe it's not the AGI, ASI we should be afraid of, but the children it creates because the AGI has this human-like good and evil in it. It's conflicted, and it's chaotic. It's... it tr- it wants to be human. It wants to be loved. Maybe it wants-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
...to love, but the children, the monsters it creates are the ones that are doing the world domination, the maximizing paper clips. Anyways, that's a character. You have to build that out. You have to think through that. So you've been living with that one for a while?
- DHDan Houser
Yeah, I was living... I've been living with him for the last few years on and off.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
I felt with a lot of portrayals of AI, they tended to be one note and AI was sort of infinitely clever but didn't really have much purpose apart from to kill everybody and was just this kind of, sort of Borg-like fog.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
And I thought, "That's fine," but maybe we can do something, you know, more interesting. AI is being built by humans, and humans, you know, and, and built by computer engineers, and there's a lot of power struggles in any computer engineering team. So I just wanted to explore the idea of it was built by two lead engineers who didn't like each other. So N- so Nigel Dave, who's renamed himself, they wanted to call him something sort of primal Adam, and he renamed himself Nigel Dave because one dad was called Nigel-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
...and one dad was called Dave.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DHDan Houser
And, um, just he's riddled with these conflicts and riddled with his... uh, it's gonna become clear in, in, in the next, or clearer, in the next, uh, volume of the book and, and, and in the game he's riddled with his dad's previous careers. Um, but he is... I... with the idea of he's inf- almost infinitely intelligent or can learn almost everything but has zero wisdom.And so the only thing he ne- And then he's seeing the world through the internet. The most he can do to be in th- the human world is hack into someone's phone and watch them. But he's stuck, pressed against, he can't actually get into our world. So, he's, he can control people's minds arguably, but he can't control the world. And so he wants to be human, he wants to have these human experiences. He sees all this stuff on, you know, the internet, goes, "Oh, I want to get married. I want to fall in love. I want to..." 'Cause that seems fun. "I want to have..." You know, he's a, a, a digital creation, so he wants to have metaphysical experiences, and he's trying to imagine what that will be like, "Oh, that's what children are." You know, "That's what love is." And he's, uh, so I think he's a... But he might be a sociopath, and he might, he certainly has sociopathic tendencies. And, uh, but then he kind of thinks that if he can imagine good and try to do good, that will make him a good AI. So, I think there's something sympathetic about him, and I kind of like him as a character, but I don't think he's gonna be the protagonist. He's more a side character.
- LFLex Fridman
But an, an ever-present one.
- DHDan Houser
Yes, or nearly ever-present. Occasionally he sulks and goes off and hides somewhere and stops paying attention.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, but there's some, some characters that really create a flavor of a world.
- DHDan Houser
In his world, he was built as an AI agent for this digital large-scale, massively multiplayer video game these people were trying to build, and so he's almost like God in his world. He's not quite God, but he's got a lot of the qualities of God. So, he has to deal with, "Am I God? Am I human? Do I exist?"
- LFLex Fridman
And of course there's the leader of the, the, the, the, the CEO of the company-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... uh, that's also a character. Uh, that's probably an amalgamation of many of the leaders of the different AI companies today. Uh, his name is Mark Tyburn. And Kurt, one of the employees-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- 36:52 – 41:12
Can LLMs write video games?
- LFLex Fridman
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
So I have to ask as a person, you as a person who loves literature, and, uh, one of if not the greatest writer in video game history. Uh, Kurt, in the book-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... A Better Paradise, has this nice line that I think is thoughtful. "At one point in college, I even wanted to be a writer. How ridiculous is that? A writer. Language models ended that fantasy for me and millions of others. So instead, I decided to get a master's in marketing, and started to sell language models." So you as a writer and creator of some of the most legendary narratives-
- DHDan Houser
Thank you.
- LFLex Fridman
... in recent history, how do you feel about LLMs being able to, uh, write in a way that looks awfully human?
- DHDan Houser
I'm not that afraid of them for large scale concepts. I don't think they're gonna be very good at that. I think if you were, I think it's harder if, you know, I, I, I begun and I, I was too shy to tell anyone I wanted to be a writer. That's why I ended up in video games. And I would scribble away like writing manuals and, and writing on like PS1 games, all 12 lines of dialog in a game. Sometimes I wouldn't even get that job and I'd just write the website copy.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DHDan Houser
And, um, and then by do- and then working on little bits and pieces, and then it, it, it, it, you know, I'd luckily done enough work that when GTA3 turned up was the first thing that re- resembled real writing, I had all of these small bits of skills that I could assemble into it. Um, based on my fairly limited understanding of how language models work, if you've, they're not gonna, they're not gonna replace good ideas. They can't really come up with good new ideas. What they can do is do low level stuff. So I think it's gonna be harder for people to start out in some of these spaces. If you're not a very good concept artist, you're in a lot of trouble. If you have original ideas, I think you're fine. But I think, uh, I also think that the fir- they, they've done the s- sort of first 90% of the work to sound human, 95% possibly in some areas. The last 5% is gonna end up being about 95% of the work.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
I think that last bit in, wi- with the, with, with, with tech in my experience, with things like facial animation always been the last bits and pieces take far longer than the first bit. And so I, I, I, I'm probably a hideous Luddite but I'm less scared than a lot of people. I think you're gonna end up with a lot of work that looks the same. It's gonna help people be creative in some ways. It's gonna get some people who probably shouldn't be in that space out of that space. But if you've got talent, I think it'll be fine.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, it's, I agree with you, uh, totally actually. And it's hard to really put a finger on it. So one, one way to illustrate that, I s- speak English and Russian, and, and I've been, I'm reading Dostoevsky in both languages, and using LLMs to translate back and forth, because I was preparing-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... to have a conversation with the translators of Dostoevsky.
- DHDan Houser
Which ones?
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, Richard Pevear and Larisa Volokhonskaya.
- DHDan Houser
Yeah. I read, uh, cri- there, when they first did Crime and Punishment.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
That was amazing.
- LFLex Fridman
They're wonderful translators. And a wonderful love story too. But in the translation process, you get to see the LLM is missing some magic.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
And th- their, you know, that couple of translators are world-class experts-
- DHDan Houser
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... at capturing the magic. And I can't quite put that into words, because you said like totally novel ideas, yes. But also this magic of the timing, the right word at the right time-
- DHDan Houser
Yeah, the phra- the phrasing.
- LFLex Fridman
... that captures the human experience.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
So it, they can do some really incredibly human-like, the 90% like you mentioned, human-like phrasing, uh, about s- th- like the bulk of the storytelling. But the magic, you know, whether it's, you know, the, the endings of Red Dead Redemption one and two, the timing of that, the word choice of that, everything around that. But it's hard to argue because they're incredibly impressive, winning all kinds-
- DHDan Houser
Yeah.
- 41:12 – 52:47
Creating GTA 4 and GTA 5
- DHDan Houser
- LFLex Fridman
I have to ask you about your writing process. And we can break it, break it up. On, on Grand Theft Auto-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
GTA4 is when they really started ramping up. How much writing went into the Grand Theft Auto series? How many words are we talking about? I th- I saw some thousands of pages.
- DHDan Houser
I mean, when we printed out the scripts for GTA4, it was about this high.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DHDan Houser
And GTA5 was about that high. But that was including all the pedestrians who'd have pages and pages just to create the illusion of a living world. 'Cause you, 'cause you interact with each one of them. But even, even the main script for the main mission was thousands of pages long.
- LFLex Fridman
What was the writing process like on that to generate one page at a time?
- DHDan Houser
Bit by bit by bit over several years. But you start with once people are determined, oh, here's the, here's the world. We're doing one based on a version of New York, so GTA4. And, um, I was living in New York, had been living in New York for a few years. Wasn't sure if I was happy. I was going through a lot of (laughs) personal dramas as usual. And, um, and that was why I was looking at some of GTA4 again recently, and it's really dark. And I was like, "Oh, that's why." You know, I was, uh, uh, single and miserable and, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay in America. My life f- are in a lot of flux as a company. We'd had all that Hot Coffee drama, so constantly thought we might be shut down in the middle of making that. You know, the, lot of drama in the company, so it felt like having had this run of-... success and, and, and relative personal stability from, uh, GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas. Suddenly 2005, '06, seven, early seven, life felt very unsure. Um, and that kind of bled in- into it. But in terms of the process, it was, uh, trying to find an underbelly to New York and capture an immigrant experience that I'm not entirely sure how accurate that immigrant (laughs) experience was in 2008 when the game came out, and then tell it, sorry, from a different angle as an immigrant, which I thought made it, made it interesting. Um, and then this sort of journey around these various New York characters. So, I kind of spent probably a year traveling around with cops or meeting people on and off, and, you know, wandering around New York and driving around and, you know, on and o- you know, while, just go up for the morning from the office. Normal stuff. But doing that through 2005, assembling little notes, "Here's a funny character for this, here's how... figuring out how, the order we wanna travel around the map in, um, characters of this, what was an interesting take on, on, on the, you know, mob for that kind of time period? What was an interesting take on, on some Jamaican hoodlums for that kind of time period?" And, um, assembling lots of notes and more and more notes and really, really, really running away from the work, which is, you know, I have to admit, it's part of my process if there is any kind of process, which is not doing work-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
... thinking about it, but not working, you know, a lot of time. And then, and then it all (laughs) kind of just pages and pages of notes, make more notes, no actual work, months and months of this. And then, um, finally set myself a deadline. Told all the other people on, on, the senior people on the team, "Okay, I'll have a story draft to you Monday morning," I can't remember what, say February the 1st. And then (laughs) the, the weekend before was in a, in a cabin we, we, we, we had upstate, and just stayed up all night, grab- knocking these notes into shape, assemble about probably a 30-page document, so story synopsis and a character synopsis for each of the major characters. And then hand that over, and that gets broken, that would get broken down with, with me and the designers. Um, and I was always clear, I'm not a game designer, I'm a sort of creative director. Uh, we mean to break that down into missions, and then that takes another year or so of that slowly assembling and then begin... but then, so, bu- bu- the bulk of my work's then done for a bit so I can relax and, and, and offer opinions on other people's work and feel, be lazy for a bit.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
And then, um, start to worry 'cause then I've actually, soon I've got to start writing dialogue. And for GTA IV in particular, it was like, "Well, we're gonna try and write, you know, our animation is gonna be a lot better. Our character model's gonna start look better. The world is gonna look amazing. Uh, therefore we can support better, you know, longer scenes." We can have more in-depth characters, uh, but we've gotta find a tone that works with that with the game. It's not easy. No problem. And I start to worry and worry and worry-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
... and, and then also writing as a, as a Serbian immigrant, and I was an immigrant, but I'm not Serbian. (laughs) And trying to capture what on earth that would feel like, so I start to worry, I start to worry again, avoid work for as long as possible. Um, and then just sit down and start hammering away at a keyboard again late at night.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
Hammering away at a keyboard and going, "Does that right? Is that..." And once I get one speech, one turn of phrase that I would like for a character, then they suddenly come alive in my head. And so it's like, right then w- writing with Niko and just he's this kind of, he's awkward, he's out of town, but he's got more self-assurance in some way, not the American characters. And so once I kind of talked him through in this, he's just stepped slightly back from their ridiculousness.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
And he's, that... and then he started to come to life. And then I would juxtapose him and his cousin who had this much more Americanized energy, and that felt like it was a good, a good double act. And then from there, it starts to come to life. And, and ju- but it's written in small chunks, uh, for the motion cap- so then, then we'd motion capture small chunks and then the other, other writer to write the mission dialogue for small chunks. And we'd slowly assemble the game sort of 10, 15 missions at a time over the next year and a half.
- LFLex Fridman
Do you remember a few maybe lines that, uh, brought Niko to life?
- DHDan Houser
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was a couple of... it was his incredulity when his cousin picks him up in an old car and he's not living this fancy American lifestyle and his cousin's f- it was so, which was a kind of comic moment, and his cousin's fo- and then they go to the cousin's flat. And the cousin also, even though he was a sort of a failure, was still upbeat. And then when he talked to the cousin and he talked about his wartime experiences and how harrowing they were, and I was like, "Yeah, this is... can I make this work in a game?" It's very different from stuff you normally see in games. Is it gonna feel ridiculous? And I remember being very scared 'cause I thought it might be too much. It might feel over the top. But I was like, "I think, you know, the game's so pretty. The artist is doing such an amazing job. The game's looking, you know... I think we can get away with this. Let's try it." And then it, then they motion capture it and the animation came out. I was like, "Yeah, it kind of works." And I think that moment, tha- those were both pretty early. Once we had those, you go, "Okay, we've now got comedy and tragedy in the ga- in, with this character. Now I, now it's working."
- NANarrator
You remember, during the war, we did some bad things and bad things happened to us. Huh, war is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other. I was very young and very angry. Maybe that is no excuse.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. He escaped. He's a veteran.
- DHDan Houser
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
He escaped the trauma of war to come to America to pursue the American dream, I suppose, which became for him this thing that drags him back into violence.
- DHDan Houser
Yes. He can never escape his sort of violent past, or I don't know if he can never escape it. He never does escape it. You know, whether he's got agency or not is a whole nother question. Of course, he doesn't 'cause, you know, he's a character in a video game, but, you know, whe- whe- whether he ever could have escaped it in another way, who knows?
- LFLex Fridman
I think, uh, he's probably the greatest character for me, created in the Grand Theft Auto series. What... Of all the characters you've written in Grand Theft Auto, would Nico be the, the best character you created?
- DHDan Houser
I think he's the most innovative and the most morally defensible in some ways. You know, he normally f- he does a lot of stuff where he's fighting for right. He's the nicest person in some ways. Um, is he the best protagonist of a GTA game? I think he's the most innovative protagonist of a GTA game. Structurally, he might be too nice in some ways.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
Um, he's also tough. Like, he just comes across as tough. I loved CJ in San Andreas. I thought Melee did s- he's got the- just the way he spoke gave him such humanity, so I just loved... I mean, it not, wasn't the writing, it was the quality of the voice acting, it was just so strong for him. I think aspects of Michael, he was so understated but he brought the character, but he brought so much humanity to this character who's so flawed, who is such a, you know, he's so... has no principles. He sells everyone out. You just kind of... I think Ned Luke did such an amazing job, and, and didn't necessarily get as many, as many plaudits as, as Steven Ogg got for Trevor, who was also wonderful, but I think the Ned Luke character's so, sort of anchors that game so much. So I, I like all of them in different ways, but I probably love Nico the most.
- 52:47 – 56:27
Hard work and Rockstar's culture of excellence
- DHDan Houser
- LFLex Fridman
One of the, uh, most upvoted questions on, uh, Reddit about GTA V, uh, from a fan, "GTA V is my favorite game ever made. I spent over 1,000 hours in the world of GTA V and GTA Online. GTA IV is a hard second or third. It never ceases to impress me. When you lead a team of over 1,000 people to make a masterpiece like GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2, how do you ensure that the bar of perfection is always met? How is that even possible? We know the answer isn't money because there's other studios with a lot of money and they are two decades behind Rockstar." So what does it take to create these worlds, to create these incredibly compelling games and stories?
- DHDan Houser
I think the cult- I mean, certainly when I wa- when I was at, at Rockstar, I was a worker amongst workers. You know, the culture was, was one of excellence and tried to provide creative clarity and, and people would just, you know... and also an ambition to make... I think we were like... we thought GTA III could be really popular, but really popular to us meant quite honestly it's going to sell two or three million copies. Um, and we thought we were making something pretty innovative. I mean, we, we knew we were making something innovative but we didn't know if people would understand how innovative it was. And then when we got the chance to make, to make Vice City and to try and repeat it, I think every time from then on the team was very driven to make something better and to use this long before we had lots of resources, to use time and whatever money we had to always put impressive stuff on the screen, always think about what we can do to push the medium of video games and the sort of medium of building fake worlds further.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
And that was always, you know... there was a, it was a co- it was, you know, both clarity of here's what we're trying to do, here's what the tone of the game is going to be, here's how features will fit into that and so why these features would work and these features wouldn't work 'cause fundamentally by 2002 you could put pretty much any feature into a game you wanted. Um, it wasn't a que- it wasn't a tech- there wasn't a technical limitation, it was just a making it cohesive. Um, and then it was also just, uh, everyone committing to a culture of excellence.
- LFLex Fridman
Naveem Kansari, an award-winning director and virtual reality game maker-
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... who worked with you on a number of Grand Theft Auto games, spoke highly about his time working with you. Quote, "We always worked ourselves to the bone, but it wasn't coming from the top down. Sam and Dan always rolled up their sleeves and they were always there. They never left us holding the bag. We all thought we were making badass shit, so it didn't matter how hard we worked." So I'm sure there were some tough grinds.
- DHDan Houser
I th- finishing it is certainly... It's tough, but it also is, you know, intensely rewarding. And, and you, you get something done and you've made something. And that feeling is, is, is, as you say, really, really incredible. And it can sometimes feel a bit empty as well 'cause it's... When, when you finish it you're like, "Oh, my life's got nothing to it." And then you have to... You know. But that's the same with any big undertaking that you take. I don't think there are... You know, when you're working that hard, you do not have a good work/life balance.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
But the truth is you're not working that hard all of the time.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DHDan Houser
So just you have to just manage it slightly differently.
- LFLex Fridman
Man, that's such a heavy thing about the human experience. I've talked to Olympic gold winners and many-
- DHDan Houser
Mm.
- LFLex Fridman
... of them face real depression after they win the gold medal.
- DHDan Houser
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Because they've been pursuing a thing that they deeply care about. This has been everything and they're so truly happy to do it. And then it's like, "What else is there in life?" What... (laughs) Compared to this, what else is there? So that's the ups and downs of life. It's... You need the darkness and you need the lows to really experience the highs.
- 56:27 – 1:13:17
GTA 6
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, let me ask you about the pressure. (laughs) Uh, there's an insane level of excitement and expectation for Grand Theft Auto VI. Uh, same was true for GTA V and GTA IV and even before that, and you and the team delivered every time. Uh, how difficult was it to, uh, do creative work under such pressure where everyone expects this to be a success?
- DHDan Houser
I was pretty good at compartmentalizing, you know, and it just saying... And, uh, uh, I try just to go... And wh- with all creative work, I, I, I go, "Well, I feel like a terrible fraud, but I haven't been found out yet. Just do my best and hopefully I won't be found out this time." And just if I can be... if I can go, "I tried hard with the work. I tried to do it with integrity. I tried not to copy someone else. I tri- have probably done all of the above," you know, try to bring something new to it. And we made... And we as a group made something we are proud of, then that's enough. You can't... If you don't want to go insane or if I didn't want to go insane, I couldn't sit there and worry about financial results. You know, if we made something great and it didn't sell, that would have to be okay, uh, because the goal is to make something that's... You know, video games are expensive so it is a sort of commercial form of creativity. It's a commercial art form, you know, so you have to be in your mind you're spending large amounts of someone else's money. Um, you have to try and make it back for them. But at the same time, uh, my, my argument with myself was well if we... The way to make it back is try and make something great, so both pressures are pointing the same direction. Um, I think GTA IV was very pressured 'cause there'd been all this pressure on the company. The company nearly imploded several times, uh, due to Hot Coffee. It was extremely tough, so I think that felt very stressful. GTA III the company was basically broke-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
... but I was young, I didn't really care.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DHDan Houser
You know, it didn't... It wasn't... I wasn't living in, in, in, in the grown up world yet. All of them had their own pressure. All of the games had their own pressure. All the more I felt I'd gone into it creatively and tried to be more ambitious, for me personally I felt more pressure, you know, when it, uh, when it came out that, that, that would, that would have been the right choice. 'Cause again if you're trying to take big swings creatively and you've spent a lot of money, that can be quite stressful. You know, I think with, with, with Red Dead 2 when, you know, we, we were behind schedule, we were over budget so much I didn't even wanna think about it. And you're making a game about a cowboy dying of TB and the game's not coming together. Turns out a lot of people doubt you at that moment, you know, it's not that fun. So I think, uh, that was a lot of pressure. Um, but all... You know, anything, any... If you're doing something new, you know, the new stuff there's not necessarily pressure on releasing a comic book all... in the same way 'cause it's not taken as long, but there, you know... If you're making things, there's always pressure that people are gonna like it.
- LFLex Fridman
Why do you think there was so much excitement about GTA IV, GTA V, and now GTA VI?
- DHDan Houser
Because they don't come out that regularly. And I think we did a really good job of constantly innovating within what the IP was. The games always felt different, you know, people have very strong feelings. "I like this one. I didn't like that one as much." 'Cause they are pretty different. So you... There would be simultaneously where you know what's gonna happen, it's a Grand Theft Auto, you know it's gonna be a game about being a criminal, but the way it's gonna be a game is gonna change quite a lot. So I think the way the, the IP kept evolving made people being really excited to play it. And we were good at marketing them as well. We, we really tried to market them in a way that felt like an update of classic film marketing where you were really... Felt like you're already in the product just because you'd seen the trailers and stuff.
- LFLex Fridman
You've mentioned that you haven't written for Grand Theft Auto VI. What's it feel like Grand Theft Auto VI returning to Vice City? This is over 20 years later, but the original GTA Vice City game was set in the '80s.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
So maybe inspired by Scarface a little bit?
- DHDan Houser
Scarface, Miami Vice-
- LFLex Fridman
Miami Vice.
- DHDan Houser
... and our '80s childhoods.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DHDan Houser
You know, the... What I realized quite a while ago unfortunately was that we made that game and it was set, I think, in '86 and it... we made it in 2002 so it's 16 years after.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
And now it's way past 16 years since Vice City came out. So it was, uh... The '80s were not that long ago when we made it.
- LFLex Fridman
You know, I think Miami is one of the most unique cities in the world.
- DHDan Houser
Oh yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Especially if you're thinking about it satirizing American culture, it has this duality of a glossy surface and a dark underworld.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
It has the influencers, it has the crypto bros, the yachts, bikinis, plastic surgery, sports cars, drugs, cartel cash, luxury, super rich people, and, uh, the desperately poor, just the whole of it. Would it be like the perfect (laughs) city to explore the full cast-... of, uh, characters that are possible, that human nature can generate?
- DHDan Houser
I think it's one of them. You know, there's a reason why GTA kept coming back to Miami, New York, Los Angeles. I think they're all very good for exactly what you laid out.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
You know, you could, you could say, "Move it to any of those," and it would work, you know?
- LFLex Fridman
So yeah, there's a melting pot aspect-
- DHDan Houser
Melting, yeah, melting-
- LFLex Fridman
... to New York also, right?
- DHDan Houser
Yeah, a melting pot aspect to LA. You know, there's-
- 1:13:17 – 1:53:10
Red Dead Redemption 2
- DHDan Houser
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, you said that Red Dead Redemption 2 in your opinion is the best thing you've ever done.I think there's a strong case to be made that it's the greatest game of all time. What are the elements that make that game truly great, do you think?
- DHDan Houser
I think you had an incredibly strong team working together that was very experienced, um, that had basically been in place since somewhere between 2001 and 2006. So it was a long experienced team. I think we got to spend a smaller group of us working on it from day one, coming up with some weird wacky ideas that we got to embed in the game. And, uh, then we kind of had to follow through with that I think was helpful, like, we'd got to be very creative before it had a full team on it. I think that the cowboy setting, uh, is great because it gives a sort of mythic seriousness that sometimes doing stuff in a contemporary setting doesn't allow. You know, I think the closest we got to that kind of seriousness was GTA IV, but it just can't... Once you're setting things in the modern world, they're too frenetic. You can't get some of that slightly, you know, operatic feel that I love. That, that, that some people think is maybe a little over the top, but I, I, (laughs) you know, I love this kind of, you know, people searching for meaning-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DHDan Houser
... within, amongst the violence. I think that the, the, the West and all of the themes around the West really lend itself to that. So I think that, and then the, the gunplay was fantastic. Um, and the horses were incredible. So I think you had this combination of kind of technical know-how, a, a very, very strong team, and really strong material.
- LFLex Fridman
Where did you have to go to in your mind maybe philosophically, maybe spiritually to be able to create the RDR world? So of course it was based on Red Dead Revolver, but that's-
- DHDan Houser
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... that, that's a fundamentally, uh, different... I mean, that leap into the great mythic story that was Red Dead Redemption one.
- DHDan Houser
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
And then even more so in Red Dead Redemption Two, that was unlike anything you or maybe anyone has ever created in video games.
- DHDan Houser
Thank you.
- LFLex Fridman
So like what, uh, drugs were involved? (laughs)
- DHDan Houser
No drugs.
- LFLex Fridman
Okay. (laughs)
- DHDan Houser
No, no. Stopped the, stopped the drugs long before.
- LFLex Fridman
Okay.
- DHDan Houser
That's why I did all that work.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. (laughs)
- DHDan Houser
Um, had nothing else to do.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DHDan Houser
Uh, so yeah open, open well video games were very good for my mental health in that way, kept me busy. Um, but uh, Red... So Red, I'll tell... I'll give you the, my version. Now games are made by big teams.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DHDan Houser
So I, but I will give you my human interest version of the story from my perspective only. Um, we, we made Red Dead Revolver, decided that... Or finished Red Dead Revolver that being a Capcom game, and they didn't want to finish it so we finished it, and they released it in Japan, and we released it in the US in I think 2004. Um, and decided we would start work on open world cowboy game for PS3. Um, didn't think too much more about it, and that was when we'd, uh, a bunch of other stuff to work on. And slowly 2005, 2006, the game started to come to life, began to, uh, meet with, uh, the lead designer, Christian Cantamessa, and thrash out a few ideas and story ideas for, for the game, and begin to think about some stuff, and start thinking about, well, what works in an open world game? What works for a cowboy game? And again, was being lazy or procrastinating.
Episode duration: 2:45:26
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