Walking in the City Old West: The Performing Gamer and Red Dead Redemption

Abstract

In this ethnographic moment, blogger Michael Abbott recalls the first of his many violent encounters with an anti-Semitic shopkeeper in Rockstar Games' Western title Red Dead Redemption (2010). He notes the Groundhog-Day-like quality of his experience: every five days, he returns to the shop, only to find the same shopkeeper, whom he slaughters again. And again. And again. Taking on a narrative voice that is part Eastwood-as-Blondie, part twenty-first-century-gamer, Abbott figures the shop and its xenophobic keeper as a complicated site for his own performances, within which he infuses the game's ludological possibilities with his own moral framework; in this case, an intolerance of anti-Jewish hate speech.

In this project, I'm anxious to re-position the video gamer as central to game studies and analysis. This project follows hot on the heels (there is literally only a few hours' separation) of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's announcement that it and thousands of online voters have chosen the games to be included in its exhibit - The Art of Video Games,' which will open in March 2012. According to its website (http://www.artofvideogames.org), the exhibit ―will explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects, creative use of new technologies, and the most influential artists and designers.‖