Dan Houser and Lazlow alongside creative partners from Dark Horse Comics, Smilegate and Kevin Anderson & Associates, shared insights on building immersive worlds beyond video games
NEW YORK, NY — June 15, 2026 — As part of the Storytelling Summit at this year’s Tribeca Festival, Dan Houser, founder of Absurd Ventures and longtime creative force behind the Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and Bully franchises, took the stage on June 13 for “LUMINARIES: DAN HOUSER’S ABSURD VENTURES,” a wide-ranging conversation on storytelling, worldbuilding and the future of entertainment.
Joined by longtime collaborator and Absurd Ventures founding member Lazlow, Dark Horse Comics Head of Publishing Tim Wiesch, Kevin Anderson & Associates CEO Kevin Anderson and Smilegate Vice President of GTM Paul Lee, Houser discussed the creative philosophy behind Absurd Ventures and its growing project slate across three original universes spanning video games, books, comics, audio fiction, animation, television and more.
Moderated by award-winning broadcaster Elle Osili-Wood, the session drew attendees from across the entertainment, publishing, gaming and media industries for a conversation centered on creativity, innovation and the next generation of worldbuilding.
“It always comes down to story or narrative… What we’re looking for is something we find interesting and then a conflict. A character who is not at one with his world, and then that evolves into something bigger. Then we’d bat it backwards and forwards, and some things would blossom and some things would shrivel. But you start to go, “I think this has legs.”
-Dan Houser on the writing process and where an idea starts
“The whole point of an open world game is we provide guides, but we want you to experience the story…The players enjoying being in the world, mucking around, doing whatever they want to do, messing with the systems. The most fun thing about the game isn’t any rubbish we write, it’s the systems that we make. That’s still always going to be the most fun – it’s being in this world, seeing what happens when you jump off this building, when you punch that person, you drive that car, when you interact with this thing or that thing, whatever way, that’s always going to have a sort of magical quality to it — and we are on some level on the story side, just the icing on the cake. We can’t be precious about what they do. We can encourage them to play it the way we want them to play it, but we have to give them agency.”
-Dan Houser on the players experience in open world games
“Some jokes don’t age that well — society changes values… In terms of jokes, you find things that you think are funny that have some kind of eternal truth about human foibles in them, and then most of them should stand on the test of time. Politicians are always going to be hypocritical. They may not always be comparable in this way or that way – but if what you’re exposing is the hypocrisy, that’s probably going to last. I think it’s always about looking for something that feels both topical in some ways but has some eternal truth.”
-Dan Houser on balancing topical satire with timeless storytelling
“We love creating universes that people get lost in, and they can’t find the bottom of it. When you’re writing the dialogue for those games and making those rich universes, if people hear every line of dialogue that you’ve written, you haven’t written enough. Because you’ve got living, breathing worlds with those NPCs that have lives and personalities. So, we said, “Let’s keep doing this amazing stuff but in new spaces.”
-Lazlow on creating original IP universes alongside collaborator Dan Houser
“Dan and Lazlow have created the most iconic franchises in entertainment, and their work showed the industry how powerful games can be as a storytelling medium…What brought us together wasn’t simply a publishing opportunity, but the understanding of what it takes to build something that lasts…we come from different parts of the world, but we have the common goal of making great games and great IP that people will remember for years to come.”
-Paul Lee on Smilegate’s partnership with Absurd Ventures for A Better Paradise
“You know, having people that know how to tell a story in a medium where you know you have no control over how the end user is going to interact with it — games and comics have that in common, where you can put all the best intentions in there, but if somebody turns the page or skips that cutscene, all your work is lost…I knew that as soon as I read the first script of American Caper that night, that this was going to work.”
Tim Wiesch on what made Absurd Ventures a good fit for Dark Horse
“It’s rare to find a comic that is both hyper satirical and very representative of exactly what’s happening right now. It’s to an extreme and very elevated level when you can see the truth of our world in America right now happening in this book in real time.”
-Tim Wiesch on American Caper
Most recently, Absurd Ventures debuted American Caper — its darkly comic, politically charged crime fiction series created and written by Dan Houser and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist David Lapham — through Dark Horse Comics in November 2025. Issue #1 became the bestselling crime-fiction comic book in America per November ICv2 sales data, and the first collected edition, American Caper Volume 1: Red-Pilled Blues, arrives July 14, 2026.
Last year, the company also expanded its sci-fi thriller universe A Better Paradise with the first novel in a series of books, following the audio fiction series that debuted as the #1 fiction podcast on Apple.
With Absurd Ventures’ third universe — an animated comedy-satire world called the Absurdaverse — set to debut an untitled animated series and an untitled original story-driven action-adventure game currently in development, the company’s slate continues to grow across every medium.
For the latest news and updates from Absurd Ventures, visit AbsurdVentures.com and follow along on social media at the following:
About Absurd Ventures
Absurd Ventures is a storytelling-driven entertainment company creating original video games, live-action and animated film and television, audio fiction, books, comic books, and more. The company was founded by Dan Houser, who was previously co-founder of Rockstar Games, and the lead creative force behind some of the most successful entertainment properties in history. Absurd Ventures’ original IP, created by Houser, includes sci-fi-thriller universe A Better Paradise, crime-fiction universe American Caper, and comedy-satire universe Absurdaverse. Its debut project, an audio fiction series set in the A Better Paradise world, debuted as the #1 fiction podcast on Apple. In 2025, Absurd Ventures released the American Caper comic book series, an A Better Paradise novel, and more. Absurd Ventures is headquartered in Santa Monica, with additional studio offices in Marin, California. Storytelling. Philanthropy. Ultraviolence.
