Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar, stated that to avoid having other works interfere with his creative process, he has not watched the "Extended Look" trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI and has no plans to do so. He also rarely plays open-world games these days.
In an interview with Variety, Houser said he spent a lot of time thinking about how open-world games should be made and marketed, hoping to find new approaches. When playing such games, he tends to immediately analyze the development team's strengths, weaknesses, and design decisions, making it difficult for him to simply immerse himself in the experience. He positions his role as a creative director rather than a game designer, and draws inspiration from earlier media works and long-accumulated ideas.
This doesn't mean that Absurd Ventures, the company he's with, completely ignores its peers. Houser said the company has team members responsible for keeping tabs on what others are doing. He also recalled that while Rockstar was developing Red Dead Redemption, he stopped watching Western films; and when conceptualizing the Grand Theft Auto series, he avoided watching the TV show The Sopranos.
Houser left Rockstar in 2020 and is currently working on several projects at Absurd Ventures, including an open-world comedy game and a dystopian sci-fi game involving runaway artificial intelligence. He stated that he is happy to remain closely associated with Grand Theft Auto, while also hoping that his new company's works will gain recognition on their own merits.