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Dan Houser has revealed he is working on two new video games today.
IGN senior executive editor Ryan McAffrey interviewed Dan last week. After going through all the Grand Theft Auto-related questions he had, McAffrey asked what he was making now.
Dan said this:
Well, we’ve got two games in development. One is in our comedy world, which we’re calling the Absurdaverse. It’s uh going to be an open world, third-person comedy.
And the other is set in our other universe, which is called A Better Paradise. It’s going to be a third person dystopian tragedy, or dystopian mess.
Both are in early development, and it’s really exciting to be working on something new.
What Dan Houser Is Not Making
Houser does not intend to make anything that would be competing directly with Grand Theft Auto. That didn’t mean that he would no longer be making video games at Absurd Ventures.
What Houser meant was that he would be exploring stories and ideas that just would not fit in with the Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar universes.
What Is Absurdaverse?
Absurdaverseis the most mysterious of Dan’s new projects. The Absurd Ventures website had these descriptions:
A very first look at just a few characters from the Absurdaverse. Prepare to meet some new kinds of heroes (and watch them suffer).
More information to come this year about the first animation projects and about our original story-driven action-comedy adventure game set in the Absurdaverse, now in development at Absurd Ventures.
They revealed Absurdaverse on February 2025. Absurd Ventures has a few months left to reveal this project.
What Is A Better Paradise?
A Better Paradise is the first released Absurd Ventures’ project. On this end, Houser already delivered on his plan for a transmedia franchise.
It already has a successful podcast. There is a print novel coming later this October too.
The official website comes with this description:
Set in the near future, A BETTER PARADISE tells the story of the ill-fated development of an ambitious but addictive digital game-world project led by inventor and psychologist, Dr. Mark Tyburn.
As the advanced software they developed began delivering unexpected and disturbing results, the team fell apart under strange circumstances and the project was abandoned. The game world and the super-intelligence within were discarded, left dormant and undiscovered. Until now.
A BETTER PARADISE is an expansive new universe created by Absurd Ventures, the new company founded by storytellers behind Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto.
As you may immediately see, this franchise already has a metafiction/semiautobiographical level to it already.
Will the A Better Paradise video game be the same one described in the podcast? Or will it be a game about the game?
