Rockstar tried making an open-world spy game called Agent, but the project never came together. Dan Houser says Rockstar had “two or three different teams” working on it, but they couldn’t figure out how to make the concept work. “We tried with two or three different teams to make an open-world spy game and could not get it right, so it never came out.” The biggest problem was the genre itself. Spy stories are built around urgency and constantly moving between distant locations, while open-world games encourage players to slow down and explore. “The momentum of a spy story pushes you forward in time, whereas you want games to be a bit more spread-out.” After trying several approaches, Rockstar eventually decided it was a game they weren’t going to figure out. “Other people can try, but I personally think it’s hard.”