Dr John Wills from ICCI and Director of the School of History’s Centre for American Studies, is currently working on a new book, the first to tackle Rockstar Game’s hugely successful video game franchise Red Dead Redemption.
Contracted with the University of Oklahoma Press, and set for release in early 2022, Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West is set to explore a range of issues pertaining to the popular Western-themed video game series, as well as video game industry as a whole.
In 2018, Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption 2, an open world adventure exploring life on the American frontier, to huge artistic and commercial acclaim. The New York Times described the title as“ true art” while for Forbes magazine, the game represented “an epic masterpiece.” Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold in excess of 35 million copies worldwide.
John is working on the title with fellow Game Studies scholar Esther Wright, an expert on Rockstar based at Cardiff University. Joining them are a range of new and established video game scholars, including Soraya Murray at University of California Santa Cruz and Poppy Wilde at Birmingham City University.
A series of online Digital Culture talks at Kent focused on the game have already started, with Bob Whitaker (Collin College) talking about Red Dead Redemption, as well as his podcast/youtube channel ‘History Respawned,’ coming soon.