'I sometimes lie in bed thinking about it': Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser explains why open world spy game Agent never worked out

Remember Agent? After first mentioning it in 2007, Rockstar formally announced it in 2009—an espionage game in an open world, GTA meets James Bond, with all the cars-turning-into-submarines gadgetry that implies. After bouncing between different Rockstar studios for a while, Agent vanished off the radar, with its death finally being confirmed in 2021.

In a rare interview, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast recently to discuss all things GTA and Red Dead Redemption, though Agent also came up. "It had about five different iterations," Houser explained. "I don't think it works, I concluded. I keep thinking about it sometimes, I sometimes lie in bed thinking about it and I've concluded what makes them really good as film stories makes them not work as videogames—or I need to think through how to do it a different way as a videogame."

When you think about spy movies, from The Ipcress File to the latest Mission Impossible, while they may involve car chases and shootouts they're all about agents with a more singular mission than GTA's free-roaming loose cannons. "Those films, they're very very frenetic and they're beat to beat to beat," Houser said. "You've got to go here and save the world, you've got to go there and stop that person being killed and then save the world. And an open world game does have moments like that, when the story comes together, but for large portions it's a lot looser and you're just hanging out, and you're just doing what you want."

Which is why, he suggests, Agent never came together. The open world formula Rockstar had created, while well-suited to the life of a gangster or a cowboy, couldn't simulate being a spy in the same way. "That's why it works well being a criminal," Houser said. "Because you fundamentally don't have anyone telling you what to do. And we try and create external agency through these people forcing you into the story at times, but as a spy, that doesn't really work because you have to be against the clock. For me, I question if you can even make a good open world spy game."

The missions in the GTA London games where you pretend to be the Austin Powers-esque Endeavour Chambers may be the closest we ever get to a Rockstar open world spy game. Meanwhile, IO Interactive's 007 First Light seems like it might be more mission-based, as you'd expect from the Hitman studio. It's due out on March 27, 2026.