Red Dead Redemption - (The Popular West) by John Wills & Esther Wright

About the Book

In its redeployment and reinvention of the Western's myth and memes, the Red Dead video game franchise speaks to broader aspects of American culture, making this volume a vital, sweeping, and deeply revealing cultural intervention.

Book Synopsis

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.

Drawing on game studies, western history, American studies, and cultural studies, the authors train a wide-ranging, deeply informed analytic perspective on the Red Dead franchise-from its earliest incarnation to the latest, Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). Their intersecting chapters put the series in the context of American history, culture, and contemporary media, with inquiries into issues of authenticity, realism, the meaning of play and commercial promotion, and the relationship between the game and the wider cultural iterations of the classic Western. The contributors also delve into the role the series' development has played in recent debates around working conditions in the gaming industry and gaming culture.

In its redeployment and reinvention of the Western's myth and memes, the Red Dead franchise speaks to broader aspects of American culture-the hold of the frontier myth and the "Wild West" over the popular imagination, the role of gun culture in society, depictions of gender and ethnicity in mass media, and the increasing allure of digital escapism-all of which come in for scrutiny here, making this volume a vital, sweeping, and deeply revealing cultural intervention.

Review Quotes

"Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Games West is an important collection whose contributions deserve recognition for applying their perspectives, in a sustained and well-constructed way, to a video game series that now serves as a cultural touchtone. As one hits the "start" button to read it, this collection offers a vibrant point-of-entry into the larger resonance of one of the most important digital additions to the Western genre."-- Western American Literature


"Like the amply filled satchels and saddlebags of Red Harlow, Arthur Morgan, and John Marson, this collection has you covered, delivering an exquisitely intersectional range of scholarly work on a paradigm-shifting addition to the Western imaginary in the twenty-first century. So, saddle up pard'. Your trail-exploring video game Wests should start here."--Stefan Rabitsch,
author of Star Trek and the British Age of Sail: The Maritime Influence throughout the Series and Films


"Offering a wide-ranging treatment of Rockstar's Red Dead franchise, the essays here meditate on a persistent fascination with the mythic West in the popular imagination. Overall, a valuable contribution to the growing field of contemporary (and historical) game studies."--Matthew Carter, author of Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood's Frontier Narrative


"This timely intervention explores one of the biggest historical game franchises through myriad lenses that together demonstrate the complexity and impact of both the games and the discourses from which they draw. Wills and Wright have shown how videogames, and in particular Red Dead, are the new frontier for the ongoing construction of the historical West in both the US and international imaginary."--Adam Chapman, author of Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice