Former Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has explained why Agent, the studio’s long-awaited PlayStation-exclusive spy game, was ultimately cancelled.
Rockstar Games cancelled its planned PlayStation-exclusive spy game Agent because multiple development teams failed to figure out how to make its open-world concept work properly.
Sony announced Agent at E3 2009, revealing a partnership with Rockstar for an ambitious spy thriller set in the 1970s, and the game was positioned as a major PlayStation exclusive, with Rockstar founders Sam and Dan Houser overseeing development.
However, Agent never received a release date and ultimately disappeared from view.
Speaking to IGN, Houser explained that Rockstar attempted to develop the game with “two or three different teams”, but none could make the concept work.
“And it never came out. We concluded that it was not a game we were ever going to figure out how to make. Other people can try, but I personally think it’s hard,” he said.
The fundamental problem, according to Houser, was translating the global scope of a traditional spy adventure into an open-world game.
Great spy films, including James Bond movies, can take audiences around the world, but Houser argued that “that’s not an experience in an open-world game that really works”.
He added: “So we tried lots of things and couldn’t get it quite right.”
He explained that the teams produced individual elements that worked well but could never combine them into a satisfying complete game.
Agent’s cancellation was particularly notable because Take-Two had once suggested it could become Rockstar’s next major franchise.
In 2009, then-Take-Two president Ben Feder described it as “the next Grand Theft Auto”.
“It’s the A team working on an AAA title,” Feder told GameSpot at the time. “I think the subject matter, the characters, the story, the environment, the background – all the elements are there. It’s such a rich environment to play in.”
Concept art that emerged over the years offered glimpses of what Rockstar had planned, but Agent ultimately joined the long list of cancelled games.
For Rockstar, the next major project led by Rockstar North after Grand Theft Auto 4 was Grand Theft Auto 5 in 2013.
More than a decade later, the studio is preparing to release Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19.
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