How Rockstar’s Dan Houser views the making of GTA V

Grand Theft Auto V could sell 20 million or 30 million copies in the coming months without a peep from Rockstar Games. But Dan Houser, vice president of creative and cofounder of Rockstar, gave some rare interviews this week to [a]list daily, Polygon, and the Guardian. Curiously, none of the interviews focused much on what the mass media always talks about: the extreme violence of the series.

What emerges is a picture of how Rockstar views the open-world game franchise its design goals for a game that took five years and an estimated $260 million to make. Rockstar’s billion-dollar franchise, which has sold more than 135 million units, is the envy of the industry and yet Hauser seems focused only on creating high-quality games that he wants to play.