YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Houser

lines on the record: 215
first: 2025-10-31
most recent: 2025-10-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“To be clear, because I always like to make this very clear. It was never me. It was always me. Sat alongside people with actual real talent who did amazing things.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the only thing that makes it possibly worth doing. Everything else, everything material is irrelevant. So the only things of value are these immaterial things. You know, I do think. Metaphysics always trumps physics for me.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To watch the universe. The easiest plausible answer is we are designed by the universe to watch itself and to comment on it in interesting ways.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm always nervous about saying finally we have that bit of tech that makes our lives easier, but it looks as if it might be able to do that when you use it the right way. If you use it, you know, if you use it to try and substitute for creativity, it's going to be really generic.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, limited. Absolutely, if used correctly, it will be a great tool. If used incorrectly, it will lead to loads of generic stuff. Know, I've been in games for 29 years, and all the time the piece of tech that's going to make making games much easier and much cheaper is about to turn up. And all that's happened is the games have got much better and way more expensive”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's part of the two ways, try and do it cheaply with yourself in a small group, or join a company that you think is doing it the right way. And I think there's upsides to either of those. I think if you want to make something that's cinematic, AI is going to change some of this. But if you want to make something cinematic, you need resources. You can still make something that's really interesting that isn't super cinematic, but it's an interesting experience in some ways. But the second involving actors and motion capture and one of those big experiences, it's going to cost some money. So therefore, if you want to do that, you've got to figure out what companies you want to work out and figure out how you get to work there.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the great a lot of that's just that development process That is really sometimes feels like it's designed to not make stuff.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should have some little short cartoons coming out in a while for Obserdse and more stuff coming in the next period. But yeah, it just takes a little bit of time. Big movies are four years plus from start to end. With all the legal stuff at the start, you know, we'll be about the same.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“1900, 1895, whenever it was until they invented talking in 1930 or whatever that was. It's not that, and then it's kind of found its modern form. And then by 39, they're shooting in color. And that's basically a modern film, it's no different from a 1939 film. But with games, I still think we've got a long way to go. There's so many different parts of the tech that it's still got a long way to go and you can go in all different fund directions.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I completely, I'm glad you've spoken so kindly about our work, about the stuff that I did and the stuff the whole teams did. It's wonderful, but I just look at it and see problems and see things that we can make do better. You know, I think it was always try each time I do it better. And I've got, you know, some of the stuff we're working on now is going to do stuff that people haven't really seen before. And I think it's just, I think the games can get so much better. They can feel so much more alive. They can be better at storytelling and feel more alive and feel like their systems, all the stuff, the component parts we talked about, we can both make each of those parts better and tie them together better. Technology is all to me, it still feels like it's only just beginning. It's been cinema evolved from like”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His drive and his Vision early on to see what video games could become. He was the one who understood that video games were the next big thing. And I think that was, you know, people would laugh in our face about that in those days. And so to have someone that was strong saying, no, no, we stay to the course and then having the confidence to push through with these big projects”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's more spread out. You get a bit more quiet here. And I love the energy. You know, it was great to work hard and then be able to go out for dinner late. And New York was really, really a fun experience for me.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whenever I'm in New York, there's always sirens. Steam coming out the floor, people screaming at you. I mean, you get people screaming at you in LA at least.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they went to New York and they're just starting Rockstar. And so I got to sort of write the mission statements and whatnot there and help set the tone for that and just ended up staying at the come and go a bit while visas got sorted out and then just ended up staying for ah, stay for a year because New York's pretty fun. It actually was not that, this was the height of Giuliani Foyza Maniac. So he When you went to bars, you were told you couldn't dance because they were trying to clamp down on York being fun. So it was actually less fun than London, but there's still a great energy in New York. And got exposed to the kind of madness of New York capitalism.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The town was. It's kind of between the old town and the new town in Cartagena. And I got out of the car and then cut my foot on a rock. That was the sum total of my injuries. And then went to an internet cafe because this was probably late 98 and got the chance to come and work on a game for six weeks in New York. And I was like, well, if I stay in South America much longer, I'm going to get myself killed because I was getting into silly stuff.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Colombia, when there was a war raging there. I was making a series of very poor life choices and a lack of life skills age 25. My latest poor choice was to get up too early because the police didn't start work till nine, but the muggers started at eight. And so I was out walking along the beach at eight. And these guys, this raster turned up, who I'd been talking to the day before and started trying to talk to me. And then two guys came up to talk to him and I couldn't tell if they were trying to mug him because he owed the money or he'd bought me to them. But I did notice one of them had a machete and now they had a kind of broken gun. So I thought this is not good. And I ran off, sprinted down the beach in my silly shoes and got to the charts once in my life to run over to a road, jump into a taxi and scream, you know, take me anywhere. Feel like I'm in an action movie. And guys chasing after the machete.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not always, no, but I did the big times where the chance to move to America. For me, that was a big moment. My life was a mess”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jobs are not that hard. Turn up, be enthusiastic, turn up in person, be enthusiastic, help people say you'll be fine in any job.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got chances I was good at taking them, I would say do not worry too young about your career. I would say worry about having a rounded intellectual in a life because you're going to spend the whole of your life in your own head. So the more interesting you find your own head, the more interesting you find the world, the less you're going to annoy yourself. So I would say do not do a vocational degree as an undergraduate. I would say do something else. Do something random and then focus afterwards. That would be, I think I was advocating against the obsession that people had about four years ago with STEM subjects. And now AI is going to make them all irrelevant anyway. So, you know, it's interesting to see everything changes.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was a series of poor life decisions And I ran away. I ran away to South America. It was a poor decision. I ran away from the guy with a knife. That was a good decision. I came to America. That was a good decision. Came to LA. That's, I think, been a good decision. It's been fun to see a different side of America and being a different creative environment. LA is still amazing for creativity and entertainment. The wider entertainment industry stuff, I think that's been fun. What would I say? I would say... When you get a chance, take it. That was one thing I did do well.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think 1984 with the fake wars. And the way that it revealed that everything in it was a setup for him. Something, if he could have seen the internet.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Move That's never the right outcome. The never right outcome is, oh, you've said the wrong thing, you should be removed now. That should never, ever be a thing we should lean towards.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I thought a lot about that. Then, because I was taught by all these disappointed communists, you know, after 89, all of these English communists, you know, like having to discover all these atrocities had happened. So it always fascinated me. And then you think about... Complexities or where one's own values are in the modern moment. And I say whether either of any, what we would call left now or call right now does it have any bearing on the communist era of those words? And I would say probably not. I think things have changed, but fundamentally the one value that I would go think is worth fighting for is go whenever either side starts to move towards thought control.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disappointing thing about the 20th century in some ways was the absolute failure of communism. You know, it was because it was such a quote-unquote beautiful idea and it just did not work time and time again. And these people who fought for it and then saw it not working. I think they're sort of fascinating characters. All of the revolutionaries. From 1917 that were then killed by Stalin, which was all of them apart from him and Lenin.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Loved the bit in life and fate when you get obviously it's in this stalinist period and so the they're all losing they all know that what they thought was going to be wonderful about the revolution isn't going to happen so there's a whole and everyone's scared of being killed by Stalin because it's post the purges but then you get these guys and they're trapped in a building fighting in Stalin grad and so they know at this moment they're dead anyway and they get to live like pure perfect Marxist communists away from Stalin all this nonsense and I thought that section is incredible because you realize like in some ways in all of its horrors the most”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bit intra blinker is one of the most harrowing sections of any book I ever read. And it really, almost more than any other. Piece of art around the Holocaust made me feel what you would feel like at that moment. And he's just incredible piece of humanism.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think World War II Interesting because it affects everywhere, obviously, and so you can get all these different kinds of stories. And there's so many good, I was just trying to come up with a range of one American, one British, one Eastern European just to get a different perspectives. But there's so many amazing World War II books around all kinds of stories. I think the most complete one, because it is this all of life being there, probably is life and fate. Which is amazing”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember, you know, I was a kid in the Cold War in London, and we were always terrified of Eastern Europeans. You were going to come and kill us all. And then I ended up marrying a Pole And we had Ukrainians who worked for us and worked with us. And we were sitting a few years ago sitting around a campfire in upstate New York with the campfire was built by our old nanny's husband, who's Ukrainian, and he'd been in the Red Army. I was like, history is so strange that you end up, the Red Army used to be the ultimate enemy. We're now just hanging out with everything changes. You think these things are permanent and they're really not.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It can't be that good. And then it was that. I came to it completely cold. Just, oh, I should work my way through this because it's another classic I haven't read. And then it's incredible.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love 1984 had never listened to it or read it. And then I think I did it on Talking Book or I maybe read it. I can't remember during COVID and became, I think I did both, became obsessed by it. And it's the elements of that creeping into a better paradise. But it's so good. I hadn't realized.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I think them as a double act is so amazing. You know, one help discover the other and then died first and then suddenly it died in obscurity and then was rediscovered as a genius while the other one was still alive and falling into not obscurity but into decline. I think it's their relationship is itself very novelistic.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“War and Peace is one of the best novels written in Russian. I would argue, I think both of those are, because if you've only got one book, you want a long book. And they are both books that kind of Something I was always trying to put into games and you know that feeling of all of life is here. Know you've got love, death, violence, romance, the whole human experience in different ways. So I think that there's something amazing about Vanity Fair. I used to love the novel, not the magazine. Because same thing, all of life is here.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hope so. I mean, that's what I've been. I could not be more cynical. I think you put that beautifully. I could not be. More cynical than I was as a child. You know, I could not see goodness anywhere. I couldn't see, you know, I don't think. Late 1970s to early 1990s England was a great, you know. Optimism and naivety, it was brutal. And I was brutal, I was brutal within it. And I think I become much more naive and tried to become more innocent in some ways and always try to see the flawed good in people. Had to force myself to be like that because you know the other way is not fun, it's not nice to not be nice.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd rather not have it, but I certainly have lived with it this far. There's a danger that negativity for me, that negativity and consciousness become the same thing. You know, and sometimes I have to fight to not just be perpetually negative. And that can be part of the human struggle for lots of people and certainly has been for me. I think if you're trying to do good stuff and you're reflective, inevitably, and you live in this world of constant, constant criticisms by the internet, of course, everyone who ever puts something on the internet, bit a picture of themselves or any kind of work they've made or whatever it is, is going to get 50 good comments and one bad comment. And remember the bad comment. That becomes fuel for the negative voice. I don't know anyone that's strong enough not to know we all, you know, some level, you should just measure that stuff in weight, not in...”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's that new thing that we're going to lean into, the bug feature. It's both, isn't it? I mean, it cannot lead that self-critical brain that I think lots of people suffer from. And I think the internet is designed to induce if you didn't have it before, you will have it after being online. Clearly, can become a bug, but it also can give you drive and a lack of complacency so it can also become a feature.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course not. When I think about growing up to the extent that I am capable of growing up, Is about accepting the bad with the good from any situation or any aspect of myself, you know, going, okay, it's not perfect or I'm not perfect.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A really interesting question because it's obviously both times it's both or times it's one or the other. When things are going well, when you feel alive, when you feel like you're connected to things, when you're seeing Beauty in people and joy and experiences. Of course, it's wonderful when you're feeling like bereft and set adrift by the world and that you can't connect it to in some way and you're lost and abandoned by. God or consciousness or fate, or whatever it is, it's awful. You know, when I feel like Dreadful hack, which is most of the time, it's terrible. You'd rather not be doing this rubbish, and then sometimes you're working creatively and it feels good and you feel like you're doing the right thing and it feels fantastic. But that's not very often.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is terrifying. I mean, I tend to. I tend to spent Long periods of my life tormented by that stuff. The last few years, I tend to believe there is a purpose and a point to life and that we have some kind of Spiritual or soul based existence. I'm not quite sure if it matters if there is a God or not. We should probably live our lives the same way either way. But I tend to think that there is a metaphysical purpose to life. And part of that purpose is to, you know, search for the purpose. But at other points, you read too much science, you get wrapped up in the nothingness of it all.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father passed away. Lot more since then, obviously. I mean, I think about it a lot. Am I afraid of it? Don't know. Some days intensely, and some days not at all. I would love to stay. Alive long enough to see my kids properly go up and settle, of course, for them. I don't, aside from that, some days I feel spiritually connected to the universe and not afraid of death at all. And other days I feel like a sort of Random piece of good luck who's going to get struck down by an angry fate and turn to nothingness and that terrifies me.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It made school difficult. They sent me this very formal school Was like it might as well have been set in the 1870s, in the 1990s. But then they, you know, I was always getting trouble just for not for doing anything that wrong, just answering teachers back all of the time. Couldn't be quiet.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, you know, whenever life goes crazy He just was always on the side of the underdog and the ridiculous. And I think that he always wanted to answer people back, always give the silly comment. And I certainly taken that from him to my detriment probably, but it makes life more fun. Like he always would just say the obnoxious thing. It just didn't give a fuck. And that was, you know, I think that was probably quite inspiring.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think so I hope so. And he was for a lawyer. He really venerated At some level, giving the quote unquote the man the finger.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Show up, to be present, to go to work every day Creative things. You know, he was a lawyer, but he's also jazz musician. And he did both to the best of his abilities to value family as... More important than either of those things. Know he was a present guy. And he loved books, always loved books, always loved, but loved films, loved music, wasn't it to video games, but liked that we were doing weird things.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and hard to pull off. You've always sort of debating the sweet spot between that and the strong story And strong mechanics, it's hard to get them all, and as a game making team, the team's kind of have to figure out where they want to fall on that line.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, they're real RPGs. The games that I've worked on, they've not really been RPGs. They've had RPG elements onto a story-driven action game. It's a kind of, just a slightly different emphasis, but I still think what they do is amazing. He's brilliant at doing it.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is great at what he That's slightly I mean, from a technical perspective, we have always involved the same with the new games, we're constantly trying to find the balance between RPG, a role-playing game and an action game and try to go, well, an action adventure game with RPG elements and what does that mean? And I think they've all kind of moved into roughly the same space. But for me, it always just comes down to, is it easy to play? Are our mechanics super slick? And then can we keep our dialogue feeling very alive I'm not always a great just for what we do. I like when other people do it for what we do. We always want very punchy dialogue. So don't give big trees, but still have it interactive. So we're going to lose a touch of interactivity, but we'll still have the dialogue feeling like it's alive.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but it's amazing. It's almost like The new ones they almost to me feel like Hitchcock. They're just speaking the language of video games. You know, like you know everything's going to work this way and that way. It's quite systemic, but it's so how it all glues together is so amazing. It feels like when you watch a Hitchcock film, it's not reality. He's speaking the language of cinema in a very, very strong accent almost. It's very, very cinematic. It's not realism at all. And that's what those Zelda games kind of feel to me. They are these amazing things that could only be video games. They couldn't be anything else.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the N64 All of those early 3D games were very amazing when you first saw them. On the N64 PS1, when you went, suddenly it was like these games, they were alive and they're believable in a different way. I think that was very interesting.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, nothing. No personality at all. It's a completely different thing. But perfect in his way. Open World Games can't be that perfect. He was dream of making something like that.”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the perfect device for playing that game. I never liked as much anything else. My wife was trying to get a retro one for my kids, trying to get them for Christmas right now. It was the most addicted I ever was to anything in my life of far too many addictions. I was obsessed by it, dreaming about it. And when you link two together with the cable, and if I got four, it would push yours forward. It was like the perfect game design. So from a pure... Puzzle perspective, nothing comes close”
2025-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source