4/24/2024 0 Comments Subversive gameplay![]() ![]() ![]() Such restrictive definitions, suggest Mia Consalvo and Christopher A. For example, in a post on the website Gamefaqs titled, “WHY is everything so goddamn sloAccusations of slowness are shaped by gendered and normative understandings of video games and temporality as privileging a particular form of play for a particular player demographic. One of the biggest complaints in the discourse surrounding RDR2-as-cowboy-sim is that its commitment to verisimilitude frequently slows gameplay to a crawl, detracting from its more conventionally fulfilling actions like combat or exploration. Game elements that lent to this characterization include complex recipe and clothing crafting systems, item searches requiring players to open and close furniture drawers one by one, and - easily the most common observation shared online - horse testicles that would swing freely or retract depending on a region’s climate. Along with numerous industry awards and accolades, RDR2 also earned the cheeky “cowboy simulator” (or “sim”) label for its fastidious attention to detail. For example, the game features dynamic weather and wildlife systems ensuring that one’s extended horseback journeys would remain varied and novel even after dozens of hours of play. Red Dead Redemption 2 ( RDR2) earned nearly universal praise from critics and fans for its technical achievements made on behalf of its perceived commitment to realism. As these proverbial narrative, epochal and existential clocks tick down, the game takes great lengths to stretch out, at times painfully, its waning moments in an effort to have players experience a mythologized West that was celebrated by critics for its authentic and contemplative design. Placed in the boots of Arthur Morgan, players witness their own gradual demise to a terminal case of tuberculosis. They are also an aging group of outlaws who find that as the western frontier closes, so too goes their vagabond lifestyle. Most immediately, they are running out of time to escape the dragnet closing around them. But the Van der Linde gang is a group that is running out of time. Plagued by misfortune, poor planning and backstabbing, the gang relocates from one temporary camp to another in the pursuit of one final score that will secure their financial safety. The player assumes the role of Arthur Morgan, the competent right-hand man of the gang’s charismatic leader, Dutch Van der Linde. ![]() Its single-player campaign introduces us to the Van der Linde gang, a motley group of outlaws who are running from the law in a fictionalized version of 1899 America. Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Studios, 2018) is a video game that is fundamentally about time - and slow time in particular. Keywords: video game, game time, western, temporality, capitalism, productivity Once Upon Some Times in the West Regardless of whether this temporal mode is embraced or criticized by players, RDR2’s use of slow game time reveals the unmarked hegemonic game time that governs mainstream action-adventure design conventions and transforms what might be subversive gameplay in another context, emphasizing process, stillness and unproductive play, into a dominant mode of engagement in a major blockbuster game. Unlike most multi-platform computer and video games that enjoy critical and commercial success, RDR2 frequently employs slow game time, which breaks from mainstream design approaches that employ what we call hegemonic game time, or a privileging of player action, efficiency and optimization. This article introduces “slow game time” as a way of explaining some players’ negative responses to the prevailing animation, gameplay and storytelling tempo of Rockstar Studios’ 2018 blockbuster western saga, Red Dead Redemption 2 ( RDR2). Press X to Wait: The Cultural Politics of Slow Game Time in Red Dead Redemption 2 by John Vanderhoef, Matthew Thomas Payne Abstract
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