Rockstar Games is one of the biggest video game developers in the industry, whose success is based, in part, on making games set in a specific historical period such as the American West at the turn of the twentieth century or Los Angeles in the late 1940s. However, in their efforts to portray American history, a question arises as to how video games create and sell the idea of “authentic” game worlds for the player to interact with. Esther Wright’s book Rockstar Games and American History tries to provide us with an answer through her engaging multidisciplinary analysis, combining film and media studies with game studies and US history.

Wright’s book focusses on two games both set in fictional representations of historical settings: Red Dead Redemption, emulating the American frontier c.1904, and L.A. Noire, based in Los Angeles c.1947. Wright explores how Rockstar aims to sell the “authenticity” of the locations and time periods in which the games are set through “paratexts,” which Wright defines as “the permeable, overlapping sites of content that cannot (nor should not) be separated when talking about historical video games” (8), particularly marketing and advertising material. As Wright explains, these paratexts consist of “official communication channels such as the Rockstar website or social media or via entertainment news outlets as conduits” (9), and can offer discourses that are interconnected with representations of the past presented through other textual and visual mediums. This allows Rockstar to portray their historical games as “authentic,” but Wright’s definition of paratexts as being part of the discourse of promotional materials allows for a more thorough investigation into this claim of authenticity, by exploring the interconnected discourses that are constructed and promoted through the range of films, books, and archives that Rockstar cites when portraying the historical settings in its games. This methodology does not account for the full range of promotional or advertising methods that Rockstar and other studios employ, such as public presentations at video game conventions, but Wright’s choice of paratexts is substantial enough to offer a unique exploration of Rockstar’s construction of “authentic” historical games.

The evaluation of promotional materials and how they create, emphasize, and contrast with the games they are promoting are expertly woven together in Wright’s analysis of L.A. Noire and Red Dead Redemption. In her study, she writes that a key part of Rockstar’s attempt to sell the authenticity of their worlds is to cite the various media they consume and the tropes that they take inspiration from, including “Rockstar Recommends,” a series of blog posts within which Rockstar developers list their favourite films. These posts give reference points to cinema history and the limits of certain genres, such as westerns or noir, but Wright points out that they also offer “an accessible introduction to a Rockstar-authored history of media depictions of America’s past” (72) which often rely on cultural depictions of America rooted in nostalgic, idealized perceptions of America’s past. For example, L.A. Noire acknowledged historical archives and repositories in the game’s credits, yet Rockstar Recommends prefers to cite the “personal favourite” films of the developers, such as Chinatown (1974). Jack Nicholson’s performance in the film as private detective J. J. Gittes “offers the male private detective narrative,” with Wright pointing to Rockstar “using the actor as currency” to enhance the fictional narrative rather than examine the institution of the LAPD in a more rigidly historical setting (94). Similarly, promotional material for Red Dead Redemption features tributes to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films such as The Shootist (1976) and High Plains Drifter (1973) respectively, although Wright explains that any effort to dispel the myths of these old Western films “minimizes the fact that … Rockstar’s selection of them creates some new myths of their own” (78).

The consequences of the Rockstar brand and its effect on the historical perspective are discussed in greater detail in the later chapters of her book. The depiction of women, people of colour, and indigenous people in Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire involves Rockstar lampooning the absurdity of assumed gender or racial positions by, regrettably, reconstructing harmful stereotypes and narratives surrounding those same groups. Although Rockstar’s brand relies on being an “outsider” with a taste for ironic satire, Wright notes that “there is nothing particularly subversive” within Rockstar’s messaging since the player’s experiences of women are presented to them through white male protagonists, without whom they are powerless to advance their own interests (155). For example, the advertising material for L.A. Noire, marketing it as a “noir” game, was decidedly male-centric, containing much of the pervasive sexism within the film noir genre present and making “little reference to narratives and literary material created by women” (172). In terms of positive portrayals of indigenous people in Red Dead Redemption or ethnic minorities in L.A. Noire, these are frequently undermined by the overarching narrative and the reaction of the main characters – usually white males – that the player controls and is expected to relate to. As Wright asserts in an earlier chapter, “give the players the ‘Rockstar Games Presents’ version of history, supported, and authenticated paratextually, and it is a monolithic representation” (136).

Wright’s book ends on a concerning note with the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, acknowledging, in an ironic twist worthy of Rockstar themselves, how the Rockstar brand is causing its fictional settings to stray even further from historical reality than its previous entries, despite the greater attention to visual fidelity and cinematic stylization. Wright explains that the success of Red Dead Redemption 2 serves as an example of how critics and players “are willing to accept omissions or outright marginalisation” (228) if it allows them to explore an open world that feels authentic by way of Rockstar’s marketing and their identity as a brand that creates authentic worlds to play in. However, Rockstar Games and American History is a fascinating and engaging analysis which ends on a note of hope, inviting the reader to reevaluate and imagine how, despite Rockstar’s monolithic viewpoints, we can consume, analyse, and understand video games through paratextual readings such as advertising and marketing materials. In that sense, Wright’s book is a remarkable success for readers looking for deeper readings and understandings of Rockstar Games themselves and the wider world of historical video game study.