Dan Houser Is Certain Spy Stories Don’t ‘Work as Video Games,’ but 007 First Light Might Prove Him Wrong

When Grand Theft Auto co-creator Dan Houser sat down with Lex Fridman yesterday, we knew we’d be getting some juicy details about Rockstar Games. But what we didn’t expect was to hear the industry veteran’s thoughts on spy story games.

While offering insights into Agent, one of Rockstar’s most infamous cancelled projects, he said that spy stories don’t work as video games. But with IO Interactive’s 007 First Light set for release in March 2026, it looks like someone is ready to challenge that idea.

Why Rockstar Games’s Agent Never Found Its Footing

Image Credit: @lexfridman/YouTube

Agent has been one of the biggest “what-ifs” of Rockstar’s history. Originally teased in 2007 and formally announced in 2009 as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, it was supposed to take players into the world of espionage, counterintelligence, and assassinations amid the Cold War’s geopolitical tensions.

In the 2023 GTA 5 source leak, a number of documents were included.
One was about the design of the games seabed, and in it there was a lot of screenshots from Rockstar's scrapped game "Agent" (codenamed jimmy) as references or for reusing assets from it. pic.twitter.com/CGsFK2mlkA

In fact, we even got leaked screenshots and early concept art of the game last month via insider Lucas7yoshi_RS. The game looks similar to Grand Theft Auto IV in both tone and visual style. But despite its promise, the project was ultimately abandoned as Rockstar shifted its focus toward Grand Theft Auto V.

But as we know now from Dan Houser, it wasn’t just that. While speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast yesterday, Houser revealed that the game “never really found its feet.” Houser described working through “five different versions” of Agent, experimenting with both Cold War and modern-day settings. The problem, he explained, was at the very root of the project.

According to him, spy thrillers are built around time-sensitive missions. We often watch spy movies where the hero has to save the world, stop assassinations, and retrieve secrets. But obviously, that wouldn’t work in a game, which is how he finally decided that maybe the two ideas don’t mix.

So with the freedom of an open-world design, the tension we usually get in a spy story doesn’t make sense. The genre’s very DNA, Houser concluded, might be incompatible with open-world design.

Even after years of effort, Agent never reached a playable state. The project eventually lost its dedicated staff, many of whom were redirected to help complete Grand Theft Auto V. Take-Two Interactive renewed the Agent trademark multiple times, but by 2018, it was officially abandoned.

Will 007 First Light Get It Right and Prove Dan Houser Wrong?

Fast forward to 2025, and IO Interactive believes it has cracked the code Houser couldn’t. With 007 First Light, the studio has already described the game as “the ultimate spycraft fantasy” (via GamesRadar). This is the same studio that made the acclaimed Hitman series and is probably the best prepared to blend stealth, style, and freedom without losing the urgency central to the spy fantasy.

But how will IO Interactive do this? Well, one way we can think of is in the way the developers implement the world. While Houser’s Agent attempted an open-world model akin to GTA, 007 First Light appears to favor a more sandbox-y mission design. What that basically means is that the game will use large, interconnected environments. Like the recent Indiana Jones game, if you played that.

Houser’s skepticism is valid, and it’s from his own experiences. Few developers understand narrative design as deeply as the man who helped create Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. But still, IO Interactive’s upcoming Bond game may prove that the key to making espionage work isn’t to reject the open world design. Maybe you just need to reshape it in a way that works.

What do you think of Houser’s comments on the spy movie and game genre? Let us know in the comments!

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