Sam Houser

Sam Houser (born 1971) is an English video game producer and developer.^[3][6] He is the co-founder and president of Rockstar Games and one of the creative driving forces behind the games in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, being producer since the third game. He is responsible for taking GTA into the 3D-environment era, creating realistic cities under fully 3D-engines and turning the series into huge profits during video gaming’s sixth-generation era.

Sam Houser was born in London in 1971. He is the son of solicitor Walter Houser and actress Geraldine Moffat, and brother to Dan Houser. Sam drew inspiration from crime films at an early age because his mother was an actor in the respected film genre. As a child, The Getaway was Sam’s main source of inspiration to become an aspiring “bank robber”. Arcade games like Elite and Mr. Do! were Sam’s favourite games growing up. Elite was a “space mugger” game according to Sam, allowing him to explore his “bad boy” side at an early age.

He became an American citizen in 2007.

Sam became a video producer for BMG Interactive after he and his father had lunch with the executive producer of the music label, who claimed that Houser had some good ideas. After BMG partnered with a small CD ROM company, Sam transferred to the Interactive Publishing division of BMG in order to work closely with developing video games.

Credited as executive producer, Houser is also the creator of several of the games in the Grand Theft Auto series with his brother Dan. On Grand Theft Auto III his responsibilities were, in his words, to be “militant on ensuring the game had a look, a sound, a story and a feel that worked.” His description of the series as a whole is that the three sixth-generation Grand Theft Auto games form a “trilogy, [featuring] our distorted look at the East Coast around the time of the millennium (Grand Theft Auto III), followed by our reinterpretation of ’80s Miami (Vice City), and lastly, our look at early-’90s California (San Andreas).”

Despite their status as creators of Grand Theft Auto, one of the most successful video game franchises of all-time, Houser and his brother Dan have shied away from the media spotlight, focusing instead on the Rockstar Games brand, rather than any one person getting the credit for the games’ success. In 2009, both Sam and Dan Houser appeared in Time Magazine‘s 100 most influential people of 2009 list. Houser also produced Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V.

Houser was portrayed by British actor Daniel Radcliffe in the 2015 Television film The Gamechangers.