“I can not keep away from the web of issues now whereas we’re doing this interview,” Lazlow Jones tells me, choosing up his cellphone. He’s sitting in his house workplace in California talking to a reporter half the world away on the south coast of England, explaining what his new enterprise — his Absurd Ventures — is all about. And it’s all about the web of issues. After all, I study this in an interview that wouldn’t be potential with out the web of issues.
“My cat took a shit, and I do know that as a result of I’ve a litter robotic that sends me a textual content message every time he goes to the toilet,” Lazlow continues, placing the world to rights from the backside half of my laptop computer display.
One of the characters in audio science fiction collection A Higher Paradise, referred to as NigelDave (sure, all one phrase, extra on him later) can be making an attempt to “resolve” the downside that’s humanity, however he is utilizing the web of issues to do it. Most likely not the greatest concept.
However that’s what A Higher Paradise and, it appears, a lot of what Absurd Ventures is all about. And it’s rather a lot. There’s this audio collection, sure, but additionally a graphic novel set inside a completely completely different universe, referred to as American Caper. Then there’s the thriller online game — let’s be actual right here, the online game is the predominant occasion — that has already sparked enthusiastic headlines based mostly on job adverts that recommend what kind of online game Absurd Ventures is making an attempt to make.
It’s exhausting not to get excited if you examine former Rockstar builders who’re engaged on an “open-world action-adventure recreation.” Lazlow doesn’t need anybody pondering Absurd Ventures is taking Rockstar on at its personal recreation with some kind of Grand Theft Auto or Pink Useless Redemption competitor. After all he does not — these video games value a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands to make and take years and years to put collectively. However then, these aren’t simply any former Rockstar builders.
Let’s begin with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, who left the firm — and his brother Sam — again in 2020. That is the Dan Houser, the Londoner who wrote GTA and Pink Useless for all these years, who made it large in New York to the tune of billions of {dollars}. After which he left, and now he’s going it alone, making a model new “open-world action-adventure recreation.” Sure, it’s exhausting not to get excited.
Houser isn’t alone, of course. His companion in crime right here is Lazlow Jones, who to the common GTA fan is probably an much more recognisable title than Dan Houser. The previous journalist and radio host turned the voice of GTA for a technology of players after he produced, scripted, and hosted the massively common Chatterbox FM radio station in 2001’s seminal Grand Theft Auto 3.
From there, Lazlow labored with Dan Houser on just about each Rockstar recreation as a co-writer, developing with all types of loopy concepts to satirize no matter place and time had been the focus of the improvement staff’s consideration. Dialogue, quest design, even Easter eggs — Lazlow was there. It’s virtually overwhelming to interview him. The place to begin? Which of the lengthy checklist of Rockstar video games he labored on over a close to 20-year stretch to choose his brains on first?
Maybe it’s best, although, to begin by asking about the finish. With GTA On-line bringing in billions for Rockstar and its dad or mum firm Take-Two, with Pink Useless Redemption 2 an infinite hit in its personal proper, and with GTA 6 improvement ramping up, Lazlow left Rockstar. He left Rockstar. You’re at the prime of the online game improvement mountain, and then you definitely soar off. Why?
Only a few weeks after Pink Useless Redemption 2 launched in October 2018, Lazlow’s sister advised him she had terminal most cancers. He moved her in with him and have become her main caregiver, whereas nonetheless writing and producing and directing and doing all the different issues one should do whereas working for Rockstar. “I spent rather a lot of time writing comedy from chemo awards,” he says, matter of factly, “which is a really attention-grabbing artistic train.”
Taking care of his dying sister “snapped me out to analyze issues,” Lazlow admits. He left Rockstar, after which the pandemic hit.
“I frolicked watching rather a lot of documentaries like that Black Mirror documentary and simply making an attempt to determine what was the subsequent artistic step,” he says. This makes rather a lot of sense to me, having listened to a number of episodes of A Higher Paradise (it’s very Black Mirror). His previous good friend Dan, who had additionally left Rockstar, requested Lazlow to be part of him in forming Absurd Ventures in Santa Monica. And so he did.
I ask about burnout. I ask if he obtained sick of making GTA and Pink Useless. Lazlow received’t go so far as to agree to both suggestion, however does level out that he shipped 9 GTA video games from 2001 to 2020. That’s rather a lot of GTA. He went from GTA 5 to Pink Useless Redemption 2 after which to GTA On-line as that was blowing up, after which GTA 6. He was, he says, “excited” to work on a brand new mental property. When Dan Houser advised him it was set in the future — Lazlow hadn’t labored on something set in the future whereas at Rockstar — it made much more sense to him.
Nonetheless, all this new stuff, the whole lot Absurd Ventures is doing, is satire in the truest Rockstar sense. It’s a satire of an imagined future somewhat than the America of as we speak or a long time previous, however it’s satire nonetheless. Rockstar has kind when it comes to nailing a sure time interval. Absurd Ventures is making an attempt to nail the future.
The place do you begin? AI, it appears. I roll my eyes at the thought — I’m already sick of AI and it’s simply getting began. Absurd Ventures, although, is coming at it from a Rockstar-style perspective. That’s, how do you are taking the piss out of AI in 2030? In 2040?
Again to NigelDave, a comedy AI character with a cut up persona. In the A Higher Paradise story, NigelDave, performed by British actor Paterson Joseph, is an AI created by a fictional future online game improvement staff to assist construct the open-world recreation they’re engaged on. In the course of, NigelDave tries to work out what humanity is all about, and struggles a bit.
Here is the Black Mirror bit: A Higher Paradise imagines a future the place AI is used to create commercials in real-time to manipulate the viewer into shopping for a product. “We’re headed in that path,” Lazlow says, extra aggravated than involved. Maybe we’re there already.
It began small, simply Dan Houser and Lazlow Jones and two canines in the early days, however Absurd Ventures has grown steadily as work on three(!) completely different universes, two of that are introduced, ramped up. Different former Rockstar builders have joined the staff. One thing, it appears, is going on right here.
Three completely different universes, an audio fiction collection and a online game set in a single, a graphic novel set in one other, and who is aware of what else set in the third — it’s an excessive amount of for a developer with no single title below its belt to tackle proper off the bat, absolutely? Lazlow has a solution for this, and it goes again to his time at Rockstar, the place the staff labored on masses of differing types of media for GTA and Pink Useless all of the time, all at the similar time.
“This morning I used to be engaged on A Higher Paradise Quantity 2, and once I run out of gasoline on that, I soar over to American Caper or the third IP that we’ve not formally introduced but,” he says, enthusiastically. “And so it permits my artistic mind to soar between various things and vastly completely different universes. It is thrilling.”
It is rather a lot, then, however rather a lot faster, too. Rockstar takes a very long time to make video video games. It’s one of a handful of builders in the world that may afford to achieve this. There shall be a 12 yr hole between the launch of GTA 5 and GTA 6, assuming GTA 6 does certainly come out fall 2025 as Rockstar has mentioned it’s going to.
Hopefully it received’t be lengthy earlier than we see one thing of this online game Absurd Ventures is engaged on. Maybe we’ll see it earlier than GTA 6 comes out. However what’s it, precisely? Don’t spend too lengthy questioning, it is not that deep.
“We have confirmed that we’re engaged on a recreation that is in the A Higher Paradise universe, and folks which might be making an attempt to dig round about what does that really feel and sound like?” Lazlow begins. “Effectively, the audio fiction collection is a couple of fictional recreation staff in the future, making an open-world recreation. As you pay attention by means of the 12 episodes, there are scenes the place the dev groups engaged on that open-world recreation are having conversations about its options. You hear folks enjoying the recreation, you hear folks inside the open-world recreation exploring round, particularly because it begins to get weirder and weirder with the AI creating completely different facets of that world. So rather a lot of the questions could possibly be answered by listening to the collection.”
It’s all very meta (not the Fb variety), and, I believe, all very The Truman Present. It’s a world inside a world, however one we mess around in understanding full properly that we, the gamers, are an element of the story. It is a online game “developed” by a fictional online game developer, itself created by a real-life online game developer. I believe Absurd Ventures is making an attempt to say one thing right here.
Maybe it is making an attempt to say one thing about the future (the now?) of online game improvement. In A Higher Paradise, folks discover they’re getting dangerously addicted to this open-world recreation, nevertheless it’s as a result of the AI has mined their recollections and is tailoring the recreation world to their expertise. One character sees a lifeless member of the family in the recreation, one other has a dialog with a clone of himself. Gamers cannot put the controller down as a result of the recreation is simply so private, after which issues begin to go incorrect.
A Higher Paradise is about 10 or 20 years in the future, nevertheless it appears like a satire of a future proper round the nook. I wouldn’t be stunned to see, say, Ubisoft or EA and even Rockstar giving such an AI-driven online game expertise a great go, little question powered by some not possible to perceive Nvidia tech that has shareholders salivating. On PlayStation 6? The subsequent Xbox? Why not? It doesn’t sound so absurd.
For Lazlow, his exit from Rockstar a now four-year-old reminiscence, he is getting to play otherwise, too. “Fb’s going to convey us all collectively,” he remembers of the social community’s authentic promise. “You’re going to have the option to see when a good friend from high-school had a child and, oh my god! It is going to be this heartwarming future. However Fb has changed into this factor that has turned the downfall of Western civilization into leisure.”
A Higher Paradise certainly.
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You’ll be able to attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.