Dan Houser

Dan Houser is an English video game producer as well as the co-founder (along with his brother Sam) and vice president of creativity for Rockstar Games. As well as producing video games, Houser is the head writer for Rockstar Games, being the lead for Bully, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3. He has also written, or co-written, almost all of the titles in the Grand Theft Auto series.

Houser was born in London, the son of British lawyer Walter Houser and actress Geraldine Moffat. Houser was educated at St Paul’s School in London and the University of Oxford where he studied Geography. Despite wanting to be musicians, both Houser and his brother Sam had a fascination with storytelling from a young age. Growing up near a video library in London, they watched many American crime and cult films and Spaghetti Westerns. Houser has stated he is a fan of Walter Hill‘s film The Warriors, Rockstar Gameswent on to release a video game version of The Warriors in 2005. In 1995, Houser got a part-time job at BMG Interactive testing CD-ROMs, although he wasn’t a full-time employee until 1996. Dan and Sam later became interested in a video game called Race’n’Chase which was being developed by DMA Design after getting a preview of the game. The Housers signed Race’n’Chase to BMG Interactive as the publisher and changed the name of the game to Grand Theft Auto. Following the sale of BMG Interactive to Take-Two in 1998, Houser and his brother moved with the company to New York, where they founded Rockstar Games. He has cited the 3D Mario and Zeldagames on the Nintendo 64 as influences on his work.

Houser has been credited as a producer for five Grand Theft Auto games, and also works as a writer and voice artist for the series. Despite the high profile of the Grand Theft Auto series, Houser and his brother have shied away from the celebrity spotlight, preferring to focus on the Rockstar Games brand rather than giving any one person the credit for the games’ success. In 2009, both Dan and Sam Houser appeared in Time Magazine‘s most 100 influential people of 2009 list.