Earlier this week, we learned that Rockstar co-founder, Dan Houser, had brought on board a couple of veteran writers from his old studio to help him out at Absurd Ventures. We also learned about the company's first two projects, American Caper and A Better Life, through trademark filings. While the trademark details pointed to both of these projects being video games, it turns out that is not the case.
Absurd Ventures announced itself as a multimedia company earlier this year, with ambitions to get into comics, TV shows and other areas, alongside video games. While trademarks for American Caper and A Better Paradise listed them under the “downloadable computer software” category, the company is not immediately jumping into game development as we'd thought.
Absurd Ventures has now officially announced both American Caper and A Better Paradise. The former is a graphic novel, while the latter is an audio drama.
American Caper will tell the story of two normal but badly-damaged American families struggling in a world of corrupt business, inept politics and crime, illustrated by comic book artist, Simon Bisley. Bisley has had credits illustrating for several Batman comics, as well as Lobo, X-Men, Halo and others.
A Better Paradise is a radio drama, co-produced by QCODE Media, a company that specialises in audio-based fictional stories. The series will run for 12 ‘episodes' and is described as an “existential suspense thriller set in the near future”.
KitGuru Says: This isn't quite what we expected after the trademark filings were discovered, but it is in keeping with what Absurd Ventures is supposed to be all about. Perhaps we will see a game at some point, but for now, Houser's new company is starting out exploring other areas of entertainment media.