A Rockstar Games Co-Founder Reveals Why Agent Was Canceled After Years of Development
Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, recently revealed in an interview with Lex Fridman some behind-the-scenes details about Agent, including why the game was eventually canceled after years in development.
Agent is one of Rockstar Games’ most mysterious titles. It was long awaited after its official announcement in 2009, though early hints about the project date back to 2007. It remained in development for several years before being officially canceled around 2018.
During the nearly ten years between its announcement and cancellation, very little was ever shown of the game, leaving it a mystery that continues to spark curiosity among fans.
Multiple Versions, No Final Direction
Agent was intended to be an action-adventure spy game set in the 1970s during the Cold War. Players would take on the role of a secret agent caught in a complex web of intrigue inspired by the international tensions of that era.
According to Houser, even Rockstar itself was unsure how to move forward with the project, creating several different versions of the same game to test how best to structure it.
“We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open-world spy game, and it never came together,” Houser explained. “Agent had about five different iterations. I don’t think it works, I concluded.”
He added, “I keep thinking about it sometimes, I lie in bed thinking about it, and I’ve concluded: What makes them really good as film stories makes them not work as video games, or I need to think through how to do it a different way as a video game.”
Houser also revealed that the Cold War setting was only one of several versions that Rockstar tested. Agent could have looked very different from what most fans imagine.
“That was one of the versions,” Houser said. “There was another that was set in current times.”
In other news, Rockstar Games has reportedly fired dozens of developers following a unionization effort at the GTA 6 studio, according to the IWGB. Take-Two denies the claims, citing employee misconduct as the reason for dismissal.
