Red Dead Redemption

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About

Red Dead Redemption is a open world action-adventure game by Rockstar Games set in the Old West, in which the player controls the protagonist John Marston on a mission to rescue his wife and son. In October 2016, Rockstar announced that a sequel is set for release in fall 2017.

Gameplay

In the game, players control Marston from a third-person perspective, exploring through the American Frontier setting in which they complete various missions and combat enemies using firearms. Players can tame horses and ride them for increased travel speed, and can ride trains to instantly transport to another location. A morality system grants players with positive or negative honor points based on their actions in the game.

History

On May 18th, 2010, Rockstar Games released Red Dead Redemption for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Over the next year, several DLC packages were released, including Outlaws to the End, Legends and Killers, Liars and Cheats, Hunting and Trading, Undead Nightmare and Myths and Mavericks. In October 2011, a Game of the Year Edition was released for Xbox 260 and PlayStation 3 consoles, containing all previously released DLC packs.

Red Dead Redemption 2

In mid-October, Rockstar Games posted several tweets leading up to an announcement that Red Dead Redemption 2 would be released in Fall 2017 (shown below). Within 24 hours, the announcement tweet received more than 134,000 likes and 108,000 retweets.^[5]

On October 16th, 2016, the video game news site GamesRadar^[2] published an article arguing that Red Dead Redemption 2 should be set in the modern day rather than the Old West.

The following day, Redditor BerserkWolfUK posted a screenshot of the headline titled "When you sigh so hard you spit out your tonsils" to /r/gaming,^[1] where it gathered upwards of 7,500 votes (85% upvoted) and 970 comments. Meanwhile, a post complaining about the article was submitted to /r/KotakuInAction.^[4]

Online Presence

On February 16th, 2009, the "Red Dead Redemption" Facebook^[7] page was created, gaining over 41,000 likes in eight years. On January 24th, 2010, the Red Dead Wiki^[3] was launched, accumulating more than 1,800 pages over the next seven years. On April 4th, the /r/reddeadredemption^[6] subreddit was created for discussions about the game. On May 21st, YouTuber Robbaz uploaded a video in which the player ties up a woman and places her on railroad tracks in front of a moving train (shown below, left). On May 22nd, YouTuber WhereDaBootz uploaded footage of a glitch in which a woman can be ridden like a horse in the game (shown below, right). .

On June 14th, the Machinima YouTube channel uploaded a montage titled "Bloopers, Glitches & Silly Stuff" from Red Dead Redemption (shown below, left). On April 16th, 2013, YouTuber TheGamingLemon uploaded a compilation of "funny moments" recorded in the game (shown below, right).

Reception

The original Red Dead Redemption was released to critical acclaim, having gained an average score of 95/100 on the review aggregator site Metacritic.^[12] By August 2015, the game had shipped over 14 million units. Additionally, Red Dead Redemption received several Game of the Year awards from various video game news sites, including GameSpy, GameSpot and Machinima.

Controversies

PC Release

Many gaming enthusiasts have criticized Rockstar for not releasing a PC compatible version of the original game. Following the announcement of the sequel in October 2016, the lack of PC support was widely condemned online, while many noted that Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto titles received delayed release dates for PCs.^[8]^[10] On October 18th, a petition urging Rockstar to release the sequel on PC systems was submitted to Change.org,^[11] where it gathered upwards of 6,500 signatures within five hours.

100-hour Work Week Controversy

On October 14th, 2018, Vulture^[15] published a piece on the development of Red Dead Redemption 2. In the piece, Rockstar cofounder Dan Houser said that in getting the most intricate aspects of the game correct, members of the development team would often work 100-hour weeks. The piece reads:

The polishing, rewrites, and reedits Rockstar does are immense. “We were working 100-hour weeks” several times in 2018, Dan says. The finished game includes 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue, and many more lines of code. Even for each RDR2 trailer and TV commercial, “we probably made 70 versions, but the editors may make several hundred. Sam and I will both make both make lots of suggestions, as will other members of the team.”

The idea of "100-hour work weeks" led to concerns about unfair working conditions at Rockstar Games. Houser clarified to Kotaku^[16] what he meant by the comment, saying:

The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up… More importantly, we obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don’t ask or expect anyone to work anything like this.

The comments nevertheless led to widespread discussion about heavy overtime in the video games industry, referred to as "Crunch" by those in the business. Twitter Moments^[17] compiled numerous Twitter users' opinions on and experiences with Crunch, including a thread by Jenn Sandercock in which she relayed her story about working at a AAA game development company that chastised her for baking cakes for coworkers so they could take a 30 minute break once a week.

Red Dead Redemption Teasers

Red Dead Redemption 2 Teaser Edits is a photoshop series based on the second teaser image for the upcoming sequel game Red Dead Redemption 2. On October 18th, 2016, Redditor EpicAbcdude uploaded an edited teaser image referencing the cover art for Daft Punk's 2013 disco hit "Get Lucky" to /r/reddeadredemption^[14] (shown below). That day, a compilation of notable examples was published on the video game news site VG24/7.^[13]