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Lex Fridman Podcast · 3 min · Oct 31, 2025

Rockstar built characters by testing them from every angle

Dan Houser says developing a protagonist could take a year of imagining how they would act in different situations. He built from their strengths, flaws, humanity and what they would die for.

Dan Houser

Dan Houser is co-founder of Rockstar Games and founder of Absurd Ventures.

Co-created Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, then founded Absurd Ventures to develop games and stories.

  • Lex Fridman, Host · Host, Lex Fridman Podcast

    Robotics and AI researcher at MIT; started the show in 2018.

About this segment

Dan Houser says developing a protagonist could take a year of imagining how they would act in different situations. He built from their strengths, flaws, humanity and what they would die for.

From “Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming | Lex Fridman Podcast #484”, Oct 31, 2025. Watch the full episode

“a year sometimes from when we begin talking about a project and dialing it”
Dan Houserat 25:11 · Lex Fridman Podcast25:11

Takeaways

  1. Start with a simple premise for the character.
  2. Test how the character responds across many situations.
  3. Use speech to make their inner life visible.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 41:03GTA 4 grew from years of notes and a last-minute deadline5:49
  2. 37:22LLMs may raise the bar for creative work without replacing ideas3:50
  3. 1:14:42Arthur Morgan’s family story grew from Houser’s path to fatherhood6:26
  4. 18:02GTA 3 made its world feel alive through reactive systems3:26

  5. 24:59Rockstar built characters by testing them from every angle2:43

  6. 52:57Rockstar expected GTA 3 to sell two or three million copies3:06Up next
  7. 1:20:50Red Dead Redemption 1 risked killing its playable protagonist4:57
  8. 1:56:31Open-world spy games clash with the genre's time pressure2:35

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 25:05

    You have to think about it in order to create the full character. What does it take to create that kind of 360 character? How hard is it? 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 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 were acting 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 though when that creates

  2. 26:06

    interesting friction that's a really fun experience for the player you know it's uh so So almost always at least one or more of the protagonists, because obviously in GTA V we had more than one, 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 player, I think it was much more easy to identify with your avatar when they, like you, were fish out of water.

  3. 26:35

    And even when they weren't, we still made them dissatisfied and feel like a fish out of water in themselves. um so 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 then slowly what is it like to feel like a human being you know and then in most of these games how much of a psychopath are they how much of a sociopath are they and what are their good qualities what what is going to give them humanity alongside that what are they what what what are they 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 it doesn't really matter what's going on in their head they

  4. 27:24

    haven't actually got one but what they say is what's going to make you realize who they are so develop more or depth and complexity on the good and the evil side of that human that is a part of all human beings. So you're basically living with that character.