Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Mechanisms of Time in Video Game Westerns from Gun Fight to Red Dead Redemption 2

Wills, John (2023) Mechanisms of Time in Video Game Westerns from Gun Fight to Red Dead Redemption 2. European Journal of American Culture, 42 (2-3). pp. 197-214. ISSN 1466-0407. (doi:DOI: 10.1386/ejac_00105_1) (KAR id:104023)

Abstract

This article explores the video game Western and its relationship with ideas of temporality surrounding the American West. The fledgling video game industry first put ‘Cowboys and Indians’ on arcade screens in the 1970s, creating a playable digital West for gamers. Content and aesthetics proved decidedly simple, with game worlds reliant on prior filmic presentations. By the 2000s, thanks largely to technological advances, video game Westerns began to offer quantifiable depth and complexity, with Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption series (2004-2018) a leading example. The video game Western represents the next technological as well as cultural representation of the ‘Wild West’ in all its complexities. In this article, I explore how both old and new video game Westerns have toyed with notions of ‘time’ and how we experience ‘the frontier’ a century on from the lived historic period. I argue that games not only invite players to (re)visit a distinctive ‘frontier time,’ but, by their coding and mechanics, actively encourage players to subvert the temporal flow of Western history onscreen, and even disrupt the West’s larger cultural meaning.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: DOI: 10.1386/ejac_00105_1
Uncontrolled keywords: Western, Videogames, Temporality, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games, Western history
Subjects: E History America > E151 United States (General)
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation. Leisure
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
Depositing User: John Wills
Date Deposited: 22 Nov 2023 10:45 UTC
Last Modified: 22 Nov 2023 10:45 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/104023 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.