Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has revealed his new studio “Absurd Ventures”. This is yet another project he has been involved in since he left the storied games developer in March 2020. His decision to quit the company he helped start sent shockwaves through the GTA and wider Rockstar Games community.
A press release issued on Thursday shares the first details of what his new studio, Absurd Ventures, will be doing. We’ll be taking a look at what Absurd Ventures claims to be.
Firstly we should mention Mr Houser’s first move post-Rockstar before setting up Absurd Ventures. It was announced back in September last year Dan Houser joined Revolving Games as an adviser and investor. Revolving Games started out as a mobile game developer before turning their heads to web3 and blockchain technolgies.
More recently, the lizard NFT project titled Overlord announced they have teamed up with Revolving Games to create a web3 sci-fi game featuring the NFT lizards in their project.
What is Absurd Ventures?
According video game journalist and host Geoff Keighley, a press release was issued revealing Absurd Ventures and what they are setting out to do. Geoff’s tweet reads:
“Absurd is building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a diverse variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.”
Despite the somewhat vague statement, it does appear Dan’s company will be writing stories across several mediums from games to graphic novels and podcasts.
The tagline of the company being used on new website and social media channels is “Storytelling. Philanthropy. Ultraviolence.”
Absurd reveal trailer
The launch of their website and YouTube channel shared this video asking “is it okay to dream again?” and displaying a variety of absurd footage:
The website gives you the ability to sign up for an account and their email mailing list. A feed page displays the trailer as seen above and two images. There are also links to official social media accounts if you wish to connect with them there.
Upon signing up to their mailing list, you’ll receive an email saying “Thank you for registering your account with Absurd Ventures. Perks and benefits will be revealed when we think of them. By signing up, you will be among the first to know about new projects, random musings, and haphazard gibberish. Stay tuned for future announcements.”
According to filings made in the UK, Absurd Ventures In Games LTD was incorporated on 23rd June 2021, almost two years ago at the time of writing.
However the company’s status has been set to dormant for some time. The nature of business is listed as “Ready-made interactive leisure and entertainment software development”. Dan Houser was listed as the sole director of this company.
UPDATE:
Variety report the studio “has a handful of employees” and is located in Santa Monica, California (GTA V fans will know this as Del Perro). Their partners who will help fund the company will be announced “at a later date”.
Are you interested in Dan Houser’s new company? Let us know in the comments. Stay tuned to RockstarINTEL for news updates on Absurd Ventures and everything Rockstar Games.
