For years, fans held onto the possibility of Rockstar Games releasing Agent, a Cold War-era shooter. While intended to add to the company’s impressive collection of games, development eventually stopped, and after 11 years, the project was officially canceled.
It’s unusual to hear the creators of Rockstar Games discuss their company so openly. During a three-hour conversation, Dan Houser, one of the co-founders, shared the story of Rockstar, including details about their cancelled project, Agent.
Agent Was Canceled By Rockstar Games Because It ‘Wouldn’t Work’
I was listening to the Lex Fridman podcast, and Dan Houser from Rockstar finally talked about a lot of stuff we’ve all been wondering about for ages. It was really interesting to hear him open up and answer those long-standing questions!
Many believe Rockstar Games’ biggest missed opportunity was a game called Agent. Originally announced in 2007, it was planned as a spy thriller set during the Cold War in the 1970s, putting players in the middle of the era’s intense political conflicts.
The project was first announced back in 2009, but little progress was made for the following decade. In a recent interview with Fridman, Houser shared the reasons why Agent ultimately didn’t come to fruition.
We spent a lot of time developing an open-world spy game, but we couldn’t quite get it working. We went through about five different versions of the game. Ultimately, I realized it just wasn’t going to work. I still think about it sometimes – I’ll lie in bed wondering what went wrong – and I’ve come to believe that what makes a good spy story in a movie doesn’t necessarily translate well to a video game, or maybe I need to find a different approach to making it work as a game.
Houser pointed out that the way people understood the game’s 1970s Cold War backdrop was just one interpretation of the character Agent.
That was just one possibility. We also explored a version set in the present day. We developed so many variations of the game, working with numerous teams over time.
After clarifying his thoughts, Houser ended with a thought-provoking question: “It’s tough to say whether a truly great, open-world spy game is even possible.”
Watch the video below—it will start playing automatically when Dan begins discussing Agent.
That’s a valid observation. A recent example that comes to mind, though it hasn’t been released yet, is the game 007 First Light. While not fully open-world, it does have some large, explorable areas. This actually supports Houser’s idea that there’s a natural conflict between the freedom of open-world games and the urgent, high-stakes storytelling typically found in spy thrillers.
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2025-11-01 16:49